Is the Pope a Fascist?
If we compare him with Fascists of the past, his ideas are clearly Fascist. Fortunately, however, he has none of their power. "But how can such a nice guy be a Fascist?" one might ask. In answer to that remember that "Pope" is a version of the Italian word for "father" and that both Mussolini and Hitler were seen as fatherly figures in their times. Hitler had most Germans convinced that he loved them. And even in the mouth of a holy man bad ideas can be destructive when other people take them seriously.
And the church has always accomodated Fascism. In 1929 Mussolini and Pope Pius 12th signed the Lateran treaty -- which is the legal basis for the existence of the Vatican State to this day -- and Pius in fact at one stage called Mussolini "the man sent by Providence". The treaty recognized Roman Catholicism as the Italian State religion as well as recognizing the Vatican as a sovereign state. What Mussolini got in exchange was acceptance by the church -- something that was enormously important in the Italy of that time.
It should also be noted that Mussolini's economic system (his "corporate State") was a version of syndicalism -- having workers, bosses and the party allegedly united in several big happy families -- and syndicalism is precisely what had been recommended in the then recent (1891) "radical" encyclical De rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII. So that helped enormously to reconcile Mussolini to the church. Economically, Fascism was more Papal than capitalist (though in the Papal version of syndicalism the church naturally had a bigger role).
Syndicalism was of course a far-Leftist idea (with Sorel as a major prophet) long before it was a Papal one but the Holy Father presented a much more humanized and practical version of it and thus seems in the end to have been more influential than his Leftist rivals. Mussolini was of course acutely aware of both streams of syndicalist thinking and it was a great convenience to him to be able to present himself as both a modern Leftist and as a supporter of the church.
So that is the Catholic intellectual inheritance, making Frank's ideas not at all outlandish in a Catholic context. Catholic economic ideas in fact formed the basis of Italian Fascism. And Frank has built on that foundation using more modern ideas.
In his recent encyclical, Frank has made it clear that he idealizes a simple and definitely non-capitalist rural past. Hitler did the same and the modern-day Green/Left do the same. So exactly from where did Frank get those ideas? As well as from Catholic economic thinking, he got them from liberation theology. Liberation theology is a very Leftist doctrine that is widespread among South American priests and Frank is a South American priest. So where did South American priests get their ideas? From the prevailing South American culture. And South American thinking is typically Fascist. Latin America has had heaps of Fascist-type dictatorships in the recent history of its governance so that is hardly controversial. Fascism explains Latin-American poverty. Fascism is a form of Leftism and Leftism is always economically destructive.
So where did South American Fascism come from? Initially from Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of South America. Bolivar wanted to replace the king of Spain by a South American elite, not by mass democracy. And to this day the Venezuelan regime describes itself as Bolivarian. Bolivar and his ideas are far from forgotten. Bolivar emphasized the importance of a strong ruler and the constitution he wrote aimed to establish a lifelong presidency and an hereditary senate. He explicitly rejected the liberal ideas of the U.S. founders. Fascist enough? Memories of a certain Tausend Jahr Reich come to mind. So the Latin American dictators have simply been good Bolivarians.
So that is the mental world that formed Pope Frank as he was growing up in Argentina. And who is to this day the most influential political figure in Argentina? Juan Peron, another Fascist and a friend of Mussolini in his day. And it was of course Peron who gave refuge to many displaced Nazis after WWII. And what was Peron's appeal? He claimed to be standing up for the descamisados", the "shirtless ones". In typical Leftist style he claimed to be an advocate for the poor.
The Laudato Si encyclical on climate, sustainability and the environment prepared by and for Pope Francis is often eloquent, always passionate but often encumbered by platitudes, many of them erroneous.
The pope believes climate change is largely manmade and driven by a capitalist economic system that exploits the poor. Therefore, he says, we must radically reform the global economy, promote sustainable development and wealth redistribution, and ensure "intergenerational solidarity" with the poor, who must be given their "sacred rights" to labor, lodging and land (the Three L's).
All of this suggests that, for the most part, Pope Francis probably welcomes statements by his new friends in the United Nations and its climate and sustainability alliance.
However, statements by other prominent prophets of planetary demise hopefully give the pope pause.
Ehrlich again: "Giving society cheap energy is like giving an idiot child a machine gun." And most outrageous: The "instant death control" provided by DDT was "responsible for the drastic lowering of death rates" in poor countries; so they need to have a "death rate solution" imposed on them.
Radical environmentalism's death campaigns do not stop with opposing DDT even as a powerful insect repellant to prevent malaria. They view humans (other than themselves) as consumers, polluters and "a plague upon the Earth" – never as creators, innovators or protectors. They oppose modern fertilizers and biotech foods that feed more people from less land, using less water. And of course they are viscerally against all forms and uses of hydrocarbon energy, which yields far more energy per acre than alternatives.
Reflect on all of this a moment. Unelected, unaccountable UN bureaucrats have given themselves the authority to upend the world economic order and redistribute its wealth and resources – with no evidence that any alternative they might have in mind will bring anything but worse poverty, inequality and death.
Moreover, beyond the dishonest, arrogant and callous attitudes reflected in these outrageous statements, there are countless basic realities that the encyclical and alarmist allies sweep under the rug.
We are trying today to feed, clothe, and provide electricity, jobs, homes, and better health and living standards to six billion more people than lived on our planet 200 years ago. Back then, reliance on human and animal muscle, wood and dung fires, windmills and water wheels, and primitive, backbreaking, dawn-to-dusk farming methods made life nasty, brutish and short for the vast majority of humans.
As a fascinating short video by Swedish physician and statistician Hans Rosling illustrates, human life expectancy and societal wealth has surged dramatically over these past 200 years. None of this would have been possible without the capitalism, scientific method and hydrocarbon energy that radical, shortsighted activists in the UN, EPA, Big Green, Inc. and Vatican now want to put in history's dustbin.
Over the past three decades, fossil fuels – mostly coal – helped 1.3 billion people get electricity and escape debilitating, often lethal energy and economic poverty. However, 1.3 billion still do not have electricity. In India alone, more people than live in the USA still lack electricity; in Sub-Saharan Africa, 730 million (equal to Europe) still cook and heat with wood, charcoal and animal dung.
Hundreds of millions get horribly sick and 4-6 million die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, due to breathing smoke from open fires and not having clean water, refrigeration and unspoiled food.
Providing energy, food, homes and the Three L's to middle class and impoverished families cannot happen without nuclear and hydrocarbon energy and numerous raw materials. Thankfully, we still have these resources in abundance, because "our ultimate resource" (our creative intellect) has enabled us to use "fracking" and other technologies to put Earth's resources to productive use serving humanity.
Little solar panels on huts, subsistence and organic farming, and bird-and-bat-butchering wind turbines have serious cost, reliability and sustainability problems of their own. If Pope Francis truly wants to help the poor, he cannot rely on these "alternatives" or on UN and Big Green ruling elite wannabes. Who are they to decide what is "ecologically feasible," what living standards people will be "permitted" to enjoy, or how the world should "more fairly" share greater scarcity, poverty and energy deprivation?
We are all obligated to help protect our planet and its people – from real problems, not imaginary ones. Outside the computer modelers' windows, in The Real World, we are not running out of energy and raw materials. (We're just not allowed to develop and use them.) The only species going extinct have been birds on islands where humans introduced new predators – and raptors that have been wiped out by giant wind turbines across habitats in California and other locations. Nor are we encountering climate chaos.
No category 3-5 hurricane has struck the USA in a record 9-3/4 years. (Is that blessing due to CO2 and capitalism?) There has been no warming in 19 years, because the sun has gone quiet again. We have not been battered by droughts more frequent or extreme than what humanity experienced many times over the millennia, including those that afflicted biblical Egypt, the Mayas and Anasazi, and Dust Bowl America.
The scientific method brought centuries of planetary and human progress. It requires that we propose and test hypotheses that explain how nature works. If experimental evidence supports a hypothesis, we have a new rule that can guide further health and scientific advances. If the evidence contradicts the hypothesis, we must devise a new premise – or give up on further progress.
But with climate change, a politicized method has gained supremacy. Based on ideology, it ignores real-world evidence and fiercely defends its assumptions and proclamations. Laudato Si places the Catholic Church at risk of surrendering its role as a champion of science and human progress, and returning to the ignominious persecution of Galileo.
Nor does resort to sustainable development provide guidance. Sustainability is largely interchangeable with "dangerous manmade climate change" as a rallying cry for anti-hydrocarbon, wealth redistribution and economic transformation policies. It means whatever particular interests want it to mean and has become yet one more intolerant ideology in college and government circles.
Climate change and sustainability are critical moral issues. Denying people access to abundant, reliable, affordable hydrocarbon energy is not just wrong. It is immoral – and lethal.
It is an unconscionable crime against humanity to implement policies that pretend to protect the world's energy-deprived masses from hypothetical manmade climate and other dangers decades from now – by perpetuating poverty, malnutrition and disease that kill millions of them tomorrow.
We sort of knew that already. The correlation between low IQ and poverty is well-attested. The latest journal article below however takes the story a bit further in that it identifies which brain regions are responsible. Certain areas of poor people's brains are actually shrunken! The authors seem to have frightened themselves by their boldness, however, as they have tacked a totally illogical conclusion on to their findings.
If poverty is a result of the shrunken brain you were born with, does it not follow that there is not much you can do about it? The authors below avoid that conclusion. Instead they say that poor households "should be targeted for additional resources aimed at remediating early childhood environments". An hereditary problem can be fixed by changing the environment? That's a pretty good Non Sequitur as far as I can see.
It's not totally daft in that genetics accounts for only about two thirds of IQ. There are some other influences that have an effect. But all the research shows that family environment is NOT part of those other influences on IQ. It's jarring but that is what all the twin studies show. So the hairy lady and her colleagues below are just ignoring the evidence. But they need to in order to sound nicely Leftist about it all.
Footnote: The authors of course avoid the term "IQ" like the plague but the standardized tests of academic achievement they used are little more than IQ tests and correlate highly with acknowledged measures of IQ. So their findings show that IQ, income and brain development all cluster together.
By Nicole L. Hair et al.
Importance: Children living in poverty generally perform poorly in school, with markedly lower standardized test scores and lower educational attainment. The longer children live in poverty, the greater their academic deficits. These patterns persist to adulthood, contributing to lifetime-reduced occupational attainment.
Objective: To determine whether atypical patterns of structural brain development mediate the relationship between household poverty and impaired academic performance.
Design, Setting, and Participants: Longitudinal cohort study analyzing 823 magnetic resonance imaging scans of 389 typically developing children and adolescents aged 4 to 22 years from the National Institutes of Health Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Normal Brain Development with complete sociodemographic and neuroimaging data. Data collection began in November 2001 and ended in August 2007. Participants were screened for a variety of factors suspected to adversely affect brain development, recruited at 6 data collection sites across the United States, assessed at baseline, and followed up at 24-month intervals for a total of 3 periods. Each study center used community-based sampling to reflect regional and overall US demographics of income, race, and ethnicity based on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development definitions of area income. One-quarter of sample households reported the total family income below 200% of the federal poverty level. Repeated observations were available for 301 participants.
Exposure Household poverty measured by family income and adjusted for family size as a percentage of the federal poverty level.
Main Outcomes and Measures: Children's scores on cognitive and academic achievement assessments and brain tissue, including gray matter of the total brain, frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and hippocampus.
Results: Poverty is tied to structural differences in several areas of the brain associated with school readiness skills, with the largest influence observed among children from the poorest households. Regional gray matter volumes of children below 1.5 times the federal poverty level were 3 to 4 percentage points below the developmental norm (P less than .05). A larger gap of 8 to 10 percentage points was observed for children below the federal poverty level (P less than .05). These developmental differences had consequences for children's academic achievement. On average, children from low-income households scored 4 to 7 points lower on standardized tests (P less than .05). As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes.
Conclusions and Relevance: The influence of poverty on children's learning and achievement is mediated by structural brain development. To avoid long-term costs of impaired academic functioning, households below 150% of the federal poverty level should be targeted for additional resources aimed at remediating early childhood environments.
The high cost of Australia's housing "obsession"
It's an "obsession" that people want a house to live in?
The stockbroker below is an economic moron. Negative gearing is normal accounting. It means that the cost of earning income is deducted before you are taxed on that income. Any other system would be hugely destructive, It would mean taxing people on money that they do not have. There is no "subsidy" involved, just normal cost accounting.
And we read below: ""If someone borrows money to buy residential property, it doesn't create any jobs," he said." How does he think residential property gets built? By fairies? The housing industry is in fact a major employer.
AUSTRALIA spends 20 times more money on subsidising negatively geared property than funding start-up businesses and this could cost us jobs and our economic future, one senior financial analyst says.
Ivor Ries, a Morgan's stockbroking firm analyst, said one of the greatest weaknesses in the Australian economy was the lack of investment in infrastructure and early stage businesses.
"We are miles behind places like the US in financing young, growth businesses. We're pathetic really compared with the US," he told the ABC this week.
He said about $250 million was available in venture capital for young entrepreneurs each year. This was about 20 times less than what taxpayers spent subsidising investment properties, which do not create jobs.
"We currently give $4 billion a year to investors via the tax system to subsidise people buying negatively geared rental accommodation," he told news.com.au.
Mr Ries said Australia was basically a country that subsidised nonproductive capital. "If someone borrows money to buy residential property, it doesn't create any jobs," he said.
It also meant that Australia was basically "exporting jobs".
"It just means there will be less jobs here in the longer term. We're just exporting jobs at the moment," he said.
The money spent on venture capital was even less than the $1 billion Australians spent buying luxury sports utility vehicles (SUVs) every year. A high proportion of these vehicles will be used as private cars but written off as a business asset, which the taxpayer pays for.
"The reality of life in Australia today is we subsidise people buying high-end SUVs but we don't give as much to venture capital," Mr Ries said.
Mr Ries said the tax system should be tilted back towards things that actually created wealth and jobs. He saw at least two businesses a week that had developed some fantastic technology but could not get funding.
"I'll give them a list of 25 venture capital funds in Australia and I will say to them, 'Don't expect to get any money out of them because they are fully committed' and I think any small business that's got great new technology, or a great new business idea in Australia at the moment is probably getting that advice from multiple sources around the country," he told the ABC.
If Australians did start investing in venture capital at the same rate the US did, spending would jump from $250 million to $4.9 billion a year.
The risk of not doing this could condemn the country to low employment growth and a sticky unemployment rate, which is hovering about 6 per cent.
I guess lots of people have heard old fogies like me complaining that education "ain't what it used to be". And of course it is not. The world of today is different from the past and education must reflect that to some extent.
A century ago, a "Greekless" person was regarded as not fully educated, for instance. Even if you were not fluent in ancient Greek, you were expected to know the more famous quotations and be able to at least figure out the bits that you did not know. These days a knowledge of html is much more important and helpful. It certainly makes blogging easier.
But good stuff has undoubtedly been lost in today's schools and replaced with blah. Important areas of cultural awareness have been supplanted by lessons about fluid sexual identities and the importance of saving the planet! Not to mention the evils of patriarchy and lies about Hitler being a conservative.
And it takes us old guys to be aware of that. If you have never been exposed to something you cannot know what you have missed. And to have missed exposure to our great cultural heritage is a great loss indeed. There is, of course, culture of all sorts. But what I am talking about is areas of enjoyment that have stood the test of time. And poetry, literature and music are such areas.
And it is particularly in the area of culture that the other half is important. Scientists, engineers and philosophers of the past have now mostly been completely superseded. Isaac Newton, for instance, was brilliant in his day but physics has long gone beyond him in its understanding of the universe. But cultural contributions are really never superseded. Monteverdi might have written the Vespro della Beata Vergine 400 years ago but it is still performed and enjoyed to this day. And, for religious music, no-one has surpassed J.S. Bach, who lived from 1685 to 1750.
And its the same in poetry. Poets like Coleridge and Tennyson just simply cannot be replaced. They are sui generis and give particular pleasures that no-one else does. There are other good poets but to miss out of Tennyson and Coleridge is to miss out on much of the pleasure that poetry can bring. Tennyson died in 1892. Samuel Taylor Coleridge died in 1834. And if you like poetry but know nothing of either of those dead white men, you have simply missed out on a great experience.
So I am glad that I went to school when the importance of the culture of the past was still recognized. In the '50s I went to a totally undistinguished Australian country school but came away from it not only with some knowledge of mathematics, chemistry and physics but also a knowledge of the great poets, a basic grasp of Latin and Italian -- and a good introduction to the language and literature of Germany. At age 15 I was even learning to recite and sing Schubert Lieder in the original German. And I knew English language poems by Tennyson and others by heart. And it was also courtesy of my school that, at age 13 or thereabouts, I first heard Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.
But most of that will be Greek to young readers today. They have no idea of how much enjoyment and satisfaction has been hidden from them.
So how come I learnt all that highbrow stuff in a country school half a world away from where it originated? It was basically because Britain's very prestigious "public" (meaning private!) schools taught that sort of thing. And because of the acknowledged excellence of such schools, they became a model that everyone wanted to emulate. I was, in short, taught a curriculum not too different from what I would have got at Eton.
But nowadays everything from the past is wrong in our Left-dominated educational system so Eton traditions are the last thing that a "modern" educator would respect.
And yet the past can be so helpful. Readers of novels, for instance, always have the problem that you usually have to read a fair bit of a novel before you know whether it is any good. Without guidance of some sort you cannot know in advance whether a novel is worth reading and you can waste a lot of time on something that in the end gives you nothing.
But classic novels are classics because lots of people have found them good over a long period of time and recommended them to others. They are the sort of book of which people have long said: "You MUST read ...". So knowing which are the classic novels can greatly upgrade the pleasure you get out of reading.
For instance, I greatly enjoyed reading many years ago what some say is only the second novel ever written in English -- "Joseph Andrews" by Fielding. Can anybody who has read that book forget "Madam Slipslop"? I cannot. Sometimes a classic novel has great insights but it is always entertaining. And fortunately, you can get a reading list of great novels and enjoy them.
It's not so simple with poetry. The great pleasure of poetry is not to read it just once but to KNOW it. And that means to know at least some of it by heart. If you do, you will often recite it, either out loud or just in your head. And you will enjoy doing that. But there's the difficulty: The older you get the harder it is to memorize things. Anything that needs memorizing basically has to be done when you are young -- preferably at school. So if you were never taught any of the great classic poems at school, the pleasure of poetry has basically been ripped away from you. Sorry. But that's it. If you want to try yourself out, here is a famous but short poem by Tennyson. It's a lament over the death of his homosexual lover. The Left seem to think they have invented homosexuality recently. They have not.
It's a wonderful and heartfelt poem by a master of the English language. I learnt it at school.
And then there is music. Fortunately, the simpler music from the past has been much revived by the folk music movement -- so remains accessible regardless of your education. It was the folkies who introduced to "Cutty Wren", written over 200 years ago. If you know that song can you ever forget "John the red nose"? I cannot.
But some of the slightly more complex songs from the past should also be enjoyable to many. I think particularly of madrigals. They were once taught as part of a good education. In some private schools they still are. Take Monteverdi's Chiome d' Oro ("Tresses of gold"). It's a love song to a lady with blonde hair! A not unfamiliar idea, though probably politically incorrect these days. The many ladies who blond their hair these days would sympathize. A good performance here. It's wonderful. Monteverdi wrote it around 400 years ago. Words translated from the Italian here.
And that brings me to another important cultural element: languages. If you learn (say) German at school you will almost certainly never get to the point of being able to have a reasonable conversation in it. That is not the point. It is much more likely that you WILL get to the point where you can make some fist of reading texts in that language. And that IS useful.
Translating plain text into English from another language is difficult enough but translating a work of art into English is just about impossible. The translation will never be as gracious as the original. That came home forcefully to me when I was reading the translation of Chiome d' Oro. Italian was one of the languages I studied in my schooldays and the translation of Chiome d' Oro is nowhere as magical as the original Italian. Every Italian would agree with me on that! You just miss so much if your cultural awareness is limited to English.
All that came back to me recently when Anne asked me "Who is this Goethe fella?". Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is of course Germany's most famous and beloved poet. And seeing that he wrote in the land of music, it is no surprise that his poems have been set to music -- by Hugo Wolf, Franz Schubert and others. Some of Schubert's most famous Lieder are to texts written by Goethe. So I was able to introduce Anne to Goethe via the Schubert Lieder.
So, for the benefit of anybody reading this who might have an interest in classical music let me link to just two of the songs I found. Let me revisit some things that it has been my great good fortune to enjoy for nearly 60 years.
And if the song is good, just the music Schubert wrote for it is great too. There is an incredibly sensitive performance of it for solo piano by a Chinese lady -- Yuja Wang -- here. What a treasure it is that the East Asians seem to like our classical music even more than we do! If, as seems likely, the Leftists achieve the destruction of our civilization, China will preserve our great cultural treasures.
And, getting back to Goethe, there is Erlkoenig set by Schubert -- one of the most famous of the Schubert Lieder. A version sung by the young Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a famous German baritone) is here -- with English subtitles. The story is of an ill child who is having hallucinations while his father is riding frantically to get the child home. It is very dramatic.
Will the screed above benefit anyone? Probably not. But I still think it concerns things that should be noted down.
The controversy over part-Aboriginal footballer Adam Goodes continues. The crowds boo him a lot and the powers that be are trying to stop that. It has just been handed down from on high that such booing is "racist".
What the wise-heads are ignoring is that Goodes is aggressive, confrontational and a whiner. He has done a lot to make himself unpopular. He recently did some sort of Aboriginal war dance on the football field, complete with an imaginary spear thrown in the direction of the opposing fans -- Not exactly the "mature discussion about the state of race relations in this country" that his Leftist supporters have called for.
The latest episode in the uproar is here. It seems that he just has to run onto the field now to get booed. He has made himself an oppositional figure.
MIRANDA DEVINE (below) summed Goodes up pretty well a month ago. I am not sure why she uses British slang but "pillock" translates roughly into American slang as "jerk". Old-fashioned Australians might say "galah".
I'm sorry, but people are not booing Adam Goodes because he's Aboriginal. They're booing him because he acts like a pillock from time to time. And if Sydney Swans CEO Andrew Ireland is genuinely interested in race relations then he shouldn't cry "racist" with no evidence.
5. He was rewarded for outing this powerless little girl with the honour of Australian of the Year which he then turned into a grievance pulpit to bag Australia as a racist nation.
Unlike most sports gurus in this town, I loved Goodes' indigenous war dance last month as the Swans beat Carlton. For one thing, it's about time we beat the Kiwis and their haka at their own game.
For another, he just did it so well. Bravo, I say. He stole the show.
But he also served it up to the opposition fans, deliberately riling them up. That's what he does.
So when he gets booed, it's just the crowd's natural response to his invitation. It's a tough game that Goodes started and only he can finish.
But for sports administrators and sanctimonious journalists to denounce the crowds as somehow anti-Aboriginal is the real racism. It's that sort of patronising victim-pandering that holds Aboriginals down.
If Adam Goodes wants to be a pillock, good for him. He will be booed like any other pillock, no matter what the colour of their skin.
Many people have suggested that he is more a provocateur than anything else and I agree with that. He loves publicity and outraging people -- and his claims have got him heaps of that. He has travelled the world for decades generating controversy wherever he goes. One of his provocations was to have his car painted brown and then declare the color as "N*gger brown". He undoubtedly enjoyed the howls over that.
Convicted Holocaust denier David Irving addressed fascist sympathisers and neo Nazis at a secret meeting in London yesterday.
Irving, a historian who famously lost a libel case after denying the existence of Nazi gas chambers, was the star speaker at an event that attracted an audience of 120 Right-wing sympathisers, including women and teenagers.
Behind closed doors at a four-star hotel in South Kensington, the discredited author gave a speech condemning the Second World War Allied bombing campaign over Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe as 'a war crime'.
But he was widely discredited after his high-profile libel trial and being sentenced to three years imprisonment by an Austrian court in 2006 for denying the Holocaust.
The secret meeting will add to concerns that far-Right groups are trying to garner support in London and Europe amid a rise in austerity and Islamic terrorism.
It comes just three months after The Mail on Sunday exposed a similar meeting of far-Right figures from around the world, organised by the same group, who call themselves the London Forum.
Anti-fascist campaigner Gerry Gable condemned Irving's appearance at the latest in a 'growing series of closed international far-Right extremist conferences'.
Former Spandau prison worker Abdallah Melaouhi, self-described 'best friend' of Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, was also a speaker at yesterday's event.
Also present was Arkadiusz Rzepinski, leader of the Polish nationalist party, NOP, in England.
The invitation told those wishing to attend the meeting to call a mobile number at 8am yesterday. Those who rang were told to meet at South Kensington Tube station at 11am, where they were greeted by retired teacher and known fascist supporter Michael Woodbridge.
They were then led to the four-star Rembrandt Hotel, opposite the Victoria and Albert museum.
Attendees filed into the St James function room, which the group had booked out in a different name, from 11.30am – some wearing tweed and blazers, others in khaki trousers and black T-shirts with the logo of fascists groups including the far-Right Greek group Golden Dawn.
Among the paying attendees were British National Party members and Polish nationalist skinheads wearing camouflage – complete with boots and chains – who filed through the lobby past bemused hotel guests. About 10 women attended and one man brought his teenage daughter.
In 1996, Irving sued Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin books for defamation after being called a Holocaust denier. Irving lost the very high-profile case, which cost him a reported £2 million.
In parts of Europe Holocaust denial is a criminal offence and in 2006, an Austrian court sentenced Irving to three years in prison after he made speeches denying the Nazis used gas chambers. He later said he had revised some of his views.
The respected historian and broadcaster Andrew Roberts said: 'It is depressing that such a meeting should take place in the 21st Century. The idea of treating David Irving as a historian at all is absurd.
Speaking in German, with translation provided by Irving, Melaouhi told the crowd about his time working as a prison nurse. He attended to Hess between 1982 and 1987 when Hess was held prisoner in Spandau, Germany, for war crimes.
Hess, Hitler's deputy who during the Second World War was held prisoner after his plane crashed in Scotland in 1941, hanged himself in 1987. Melaouhi claimed Hess was murdered and released a book about him, describing him as 'a man of great vision, intelligence and compassion'.
In April, we exposed a similar meeting of the London Forum where the star speaker was Spanish self-confessed Nazi Pedro Varela.
Also present was America's leading peddler of revisionism, Mark Weber, 63, director of the right-wing Institute for Historical Review.
Gerry Gable of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight said: 'This conference is another piece of evidence of a growing series of closed international far-right extremist Conferences.
I hesitated for some time before ordering this Singspiel. I read the synopsis and was not impressed: Too complicated and not set in an operetta-type setting. But the music was by Strauss II so I ordered it.
"David Pountney's production is not attuned to the bulk of the work, which can hardly breathe under the weight of his heavy symbolism and the heavy, enormous sets"
But I kept on watching, all the while keeping an eye on the track numbers. I have often found that the initial tracks of an operetta DVD are very skippable so I was looking for a point in the show that seemed a good starting point for me. And I did find one! Track 14, about half of the way through the show. From that point on it became closer to a normal operetta, even having quite a few laughs. And the customary two happy couples at the end, of course. With a lot of cuts to the many slow-moving bits and a naturalistic setting, it could be quite a reasonable operetta.
And the plot was not really as complicated as it appeared to be. The story is that a soldier killed his brother in a battle of the terrible "30 years" war that raged in Central and Western Europe during the 17th century. He was so grief-stricken at what he had done that he put his eldest son into a monastery and retired with his little son into the forest to lead the life of a religious hermit.
But the little son eventually grew up and was taken back into society as an ingenue. Meanwhile it transpired that the father and son were of noble birth and were wanted for the purposes of marrying into another noble and rich family. But nobody knew where the father was and nobody knew who the son was. So a couple of other claimants emerged wanting to marry the rich bride.
They were discredited, however, and we eventually found out who the son was. And that simplified everything so that, after a few complications, everybody got married to the spouse of their choice. Quite a simple plot, basically, and quite in operetta style.
The involvement of Swedes in what was basically a German civil war may seem odd to some but is good history. Der Schwed did indeed take part. Protestant King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden did lead his troops South to help the German Protestants, having a considerable influence on the outcome. He could in fact be said to have saved Protestantism in Germany.
I watched the show three times but felt that there was nothing in it that would draw me back to it so I gave the DVD away: No great arias, no great singing, not much in the way of jokes and repellent staging. It's just not jolly. But Martina Jancova as Tilly is attractive and acted well, while Piotr Beczala is a classic love-stricken tenor. Some other operettas I have watched innumerable times. When watching Wienerblut, for instance, I start laughing long before the punchlines of the jokes arrive.
An excerpt from Simplicius here -- with subtitles! Judge for yourself. It's just bombast.
Does Australia lock up too many blacks?
The wail below is written by a lawyer, not a social scientist -- and shows no knowledge of the people concerned at all. All he knows is how to look up simple statistics. When he finds that they look bad what does he do? Does he ask why? There's no sign of it. He just seems to to assume that we are all somehow at fault. That makes him a good Leftist but also what Australians call a drongo -- very stupid.
So as someone who has written quite a lot in the academic journals on race-relations, sociology and criminology, let me point out what is really going on.
Before the arrival of the white man, Aborigines were well adapted to a stone-age life. They had been adapting to it for around 50,000 years so the adaptation was extreme. Their visuo-spatial abilities were (and are) simply wonderful. Such adaptations helped them to capture and eat furry animals. But adaptations favourable to stone-age life are not at all suited to modern Western society. People originally from the Eurasian continent evolved very differently. The much larger population there produced innovation -- and that gave us the modern world.
So how are Aborigines disadvantaged in Australia today? The mother and father of their handicaps is low IQ. They are the race with the world's second lowest measured IQ (South African bushmen are the lowest). They survived by sharpening their perceptual abilities, not their reasoning abilities -- and basically are therefore very bad at dealing with anything new and complex.
I have known many of them and admire good qualities in them. They are for instance very polite, unaggressive and tend to have a good sense of humour. But some of their qualities are good yet also their undoing. In particular, they have evolved as a sharing culture. When some hunter succeeded in bringing down a big animal, it was shared around in the assurance that other such fortunate kills by others would also be shared around. There was no refrigeration so no other system made sense. You COULD not keep your kill to yourself.
So, like other native peoples (e.g. the Maori) the concept of private property is just not there in them. If you want something it seems simply right and just to take it, regardless of a property claim that someone else might have on it. I have seen it happen.
An Aborigine in fact just CANNOT keep substantial assets to himself. He must share any windfall, even if that windfall is in fact the proceeds of his own hard work. So you can see how strongly our concept of theft clashes with Aboriginal instincts.
Then there is the alcohol problem. We have had perhaps 60,000 years to learn how to handle our booze. And even then we sometimes do a rather bad job of it. But Aborigines never had alcohol until the white man came. So their use of alcohol is often catastrophic and lies behind perhaps the majority of their arrests.
I could say much more but the sad truth is, I think, clear: Aborigines are just not adapted to the world in which they now find themselves -- so are constantly breaking its rules. All that we CAN do is to enforces the rules. If we exempted Aborigines we would produce huge uproar and disruption. As it is, some judges DO punish Aboriginal infractions more lightly -- but that DOES produce big criticism. Physical abuse of women and children -- sometimes extreme abuse of women and children -- is a big sub-set of Aboriginal crime. Do we WANT to condone that?
With pitifully simplistic thinking, the drongo below says that better education is needed for Aborigines. Does he have any idea how hard and how unsuccessfully many governments have tried to get Aboriginal children into school? And how is education going to change attributes built up over thousands of generations anyway?
The US might be the home of mass incarceration – and it is, with 5 per cent of the world's people, it has a quarter of the world's inmates – but America has nothing on Australia in its enthusiasm for disproportionately locking up black people.
Indigenous Australians are imprisoned at a rate 13 times that of other Australians, according to figures collated by the Productivity Commission. That's not 13 per cent higher, or twice as high, but 13 times the rate, 1300 per cent of the rate for the rest of the population. At any one time, over 2 per cent of the Indigenous population is locked up, which doesn't remotely compare with the figure for the rest of us.
The effect of that proportion of people out of one group over time is almost unfathomable, the disruption to the prisoners' lives, their futures, their families.
It's not as if this is a new problem, but it's a rapidly deteriorating one. In 2000, the Indigenous imprisonment rate was merely 8 times as high. Those where the golden days.
So not only do we jail Indigenous people at a far higher rate than even the US imprisons black men, we're speeding things up, putting a greater proportion away. We're increasing this most self-defeating of gaps.
A particular point of Australian difference is our ability to do it harsher for children. For young people, who are meant to be locked up only as an absolute last resort, Indigenous children are jailed at a rate 24 times that of other children.
When Obama turns his attention to a justice system that seems anything but colour blind, the world listens. When Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner, late last year proved Aboriginal incarceration to be every bit the catastrophe he labelled it, Australia scarcely rolled its eyes. Most didn't even notice.
His figures put the difference in rates at 15 times, and found the reoffending rate for children in detention – 58 per cent within 10 years – was higher than the proportion of children who stayed at school until year 12. "We do better at keeping Aboriginal people in prison than in school," Mr Gooda told the ABC.
If most of us continue to ignore this catastrophe, as the country seems determined to do, we will deepen this social disaster. Every year it gets worse, or merely stays the same, or only marginally improves, is another year squandering the potential of an enormous fraction of the Indigenous population and wasting hundreds of millions across the country on unnecessary incarceration.
The Productivity Commission called out four major factors contributing to this shameful reality – education, drugs, child neglect and employment. We need to fix all of them, but surely education is the low-hanging fruit.
Cutting education reforms, like the short-lived Gonski package, is one way to perpetuate the catastrophe. The absence of opportunity leads, for far too many, to the absence of anything but a life hurt by crime – as both victim and perpetrator.
Ethnic self-segregation is a common thing and the Brisbane suburbs of Sunnybank and Sunnybank Hills seem to have been adopted by East Asians, mainly Han Chinese. And the Asian presence really is amazing at times. I remember standing in a queue outside a popular Japanese restaurant there with my son -- and noting that my son and I were the only exception in a sea of black hair around us. We were taller than most of them so we could see that sea.
I was actually pleased by that. Asians are a lot more peaceful and patient than we Anglo-Australians are. My son and I in fact were not patient. We decided not to wait and went to another less popular restaurant instead.
And there is no doubt that the food in the area is great value. My son and I often go to a Japanese fast-food joint there called "Mos burgers".
Because they tend to be exemplary citizens by any standard, there is in general very little hostility to Asians in Australia these days. There are a lot of them and they fit in seamlessly. Just this morning on an outing I saw a Chinese lady rush up to an old-Australian lady and give her a big hug. They were obviously old friends. And I know of no physical attacks on Asians aside from what emanates from our small African sub-population.
An advocacy group have called on Facebook to take down a 'xenophobic' page that they believe perpetuates 'incorrect stereotypes' about the Asian community in a Brisbane suburb.
The group Global Asians for Action and Social Change (GAASC) have slammed the 'Humans of Sunnybank' page for posting 'harmful and offensive' images that 'insult the English language abilities' of Asian migrants and 'falsely' portray the community as dog meat eaters.
The page, which has amassed 16,000 followers, is loosely based on the popular blog Humans of New York and has published more than 60 images, accompanied by captions that 'crudely mimic' an Asian accent.
GAASC said this is a clear attempt to 'create an atmosphere of xenophobia'.
'Unlike the ground breaking Humans of New York which showed faces which build New York as a cosmopolitan destination and shares enriching human interest stories, Humans of Sunnybank instead insults and offends by using various incorrect and offensive stereotypes regarding Asian people, and posts it in a fashion that promotes continued racism,' GAASC said in a statement.
According to GAASC, Sunnybank is home to almost 3,000 residents of Asian heritage, making up approximately 35 per cent of the region's population.
The page, which predominantly use stock images of Asian people, claims to use 'genuine first-hand interviews' to paint a picture of the culturally diverse suburb- 'one story at a time'.
One posts uses a stock image of seven Asian men squatting in a circle, a common practice in Vietnam.
Another used a stock image of an elderly man who appears to be driving a car.
Erin Chew, a founder of GAASC, reported the page to Facebook administrators for 'promoting hate speech', however it was found the page did not violate Facebook's community standards.
She said the social media giant should understand the difference between allowing free speech and allowing a group to use its platform to racially vilify another.
A spokesperson from Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Commission told Daily Mail Australia that some of the material that features on the 'Humans of Sunnybank' Facebook group would be considered vilification under the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991.
She said anyone who believes they have been subjected to 'unlawful vilification' can lodge a formal complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland.
She said the only other alternative is to continue lobbying Facebook to have the page shut down.
GAASC have started a change.org petition demanding Facebook to remove the page from its site.
Ms Chew said she plans to lodge a formal complaint with Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland and the Australian Human Rights Commission on Friday.
Daily Mail Australia contacted Facebook and the administrators of 'Humans of Sunnybank' however neither were available for comment at the time of publication.
Australian policymakers may need to adjust their idea of the country's ideal growth rate to account for a slowdown in population growth and other demographic changes, according to Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens.
Mr Stevens told diners at the Anika Foundation lunch in Sydney that better-than-expected unemployment rates and signs that business confidence had picked up over the last 12 months suggested Australia might need to rethink its definition of trend growth, from the 3 to 3.25 per cent "we have assumed for many years".
Growth in gross domestic product comes from expansion in one or all of productivity, population and participation in the workforce.
Australia's aging population and slowing immigration or birth rate means two of these factors could be under pressure. According to some estimates, the number of people in Australia rose almost 400,000 in 2013 and 360,000 last year but only 160,000 so far this year.
Elaborating on one of the central themes of the minutes of the RBA's July board meeting, released on Tuesday, Mr Stevens said the bank had been surprised by the underlying stability of the unemployment rate which, at 6 per cent, is unchanged from a year ago.
He suggested the better-than-expected set of labour market outcomes could be the result of statistical discrepancies, slower population growth, wage restraint or more economic activity than suggested by official data.
"Some or all of [these] possibilities may be at work," he said.
"Time will tell which ones, but a few observations may be worthwhile at this point.
"First, the economy is making the adjustments required, even if it is a bit slower than we would ideally have liked.
"Second, if the slow growth of wages has in fact been a significant saver of jobs, that would appear to indicate a degree of labour market flexibility in operation.
"Third, to the extent that the data are hinting that our assumptions about trend growth may need to be revisited, that will be worth some discussion," the RBA governor said.
Mr Steven said it "need not be the case" that GDP growth per head would be any lower if the slowdown was the result mainly of more sluggish population growth.
However, he added: "If there are assumptions about absolute growth rates embedded in business or fiscal strategies, or retirement income plans, they would need to be re-examined."
Mr Stevens said the bank's two cuts to the cash rate this year appeared to be working to stimulate activity in non-mining industries. However, he again warned of the limits of monetary policy and reiterated that while a further cut was still "on the table", the RBA was loath to move too quickly.
He said the 24-hour media cycle and abundance of high-frequency data, surveys and "obscure indicators" had placed policy-makers under increasing pressure to "respond to events and to deviations of economic performance from what had been anticipated".
"The risk . . . is that this process can lead to a mindset in which policymakers end up responding to quite short-term phenomena, using instruments that take quite some time to have their full effect, including effects that might actually turn out to be adverse," Mr Stevens said.
"This is relevant to our situation.
"A period of somewhat disappointing, even if hardly disastrous, economic growth outcomes, and inflation that has been well contained, has seen interest rates decline to very low levels.
"The question of whether they might be reduced further remains, as I have said before, on the table."
Australia's dry spell and a strengthening El Nino are proving a boon for US hamburger lovers.
Queensland's most widespread drought ever is sending a near record number of cattle to feedlots as ranchers cull cows at the fastest pace in more than three decades. That's boosting beef exports to an all-time high, including a more than 70 per cent surge in shipments to the US, government data show. Most of that is destined to become burgers.
The US last year overtook Japan as Australia's most important beef export market, while a prolonged drought through Texas saw a four-year slide in American beef output. Supply there will stay constrained even as the herd rebounds from a six-decade low, because it takes about 20 months before cattle are big enough for slaughter. That's seen companies including Chipotle Mexican Grill turn to our shores for beef.
"Feedlots have been pretty much full for the last 12 months," said Paul Deane, an analyst at ANZ Banking Group in Melbourne. "It's been profitable to have cattle on feed here in Australia and process them and sell into the US market."
About 70 per cent of Australian beef shipped to the US is so-called manufacturing beef, used to make hamburgers. Importers include McDonald's, the world's largest restaurant chain, and Carrols Restaurant Group, the largest Burger King franchisee. Chipotle said last year it was sourcing some grass-fed beef from Australia to meet demand, citing the US herd dropping to a 60-year low.
Hamburger chain Carl's Jr. earlier this year started selling an all-natural burger in the US made with Australian beef. The meat is from free-range cattle that are grass fed and not given antibiotics, according to its chief executive, Andy Puzder.
Australia is the top supplier of beef and veal to the US, accounting for 37 per cent of imports last year, US Department of Agriculture data show. Purchases of Australian beef surged 65 per cent in the first five months of 2015 from a year earlier, the data show.
Tourism could replace mining as the driver of the Australian economy as new attractions and a plunging dollar increase the country's appeal for Asian visitors.
After his company won the bid to develop part of Brisbane's waterfront into a huge casino and resort complex, Echo Entertainment boss Matt Bekier said on Tuesday that Australia could be seeing the beginning of a tourism boom.
"This is going to be the next mining boom," the Echo chief executive said. "If we look in Asia in terms of the aspiration of where people want to go to, Australia stands out as No 1 in terms of aspiration and desire to go to. But we're about number 14 of the places they actually go to, there's a huge opportunity."
China is Australia's fastest growing tourism market with 918,000 visitors in 2014 - a rise of 21.7% - and second only to New Zealand. Chinese visitors were, however, the biggest spenders in Australia, splurging $5.7bn in 2014, up 19% on the previous year.
The continuing fall in the Aussie dollar, which some experts believe could fall to around US60 cents, is likely to help Bekier's prediction by making tourists' money go further.
The US dollar strengthened again overnight on Monday after James Bullard, who sits on the US Federal Reserve's rate-setting committee, said a rate rise was likely in September.
Combined with the falling price of key commodities such as iron ore, gold and oil, his comments put more pressure on the Aussie which lost ground on Tuesday to sit at US73.51c in afternoon trading.
The minutes of the July meeting of the Reserve Bank of Australia also kept the downward momentum on the currency when they were published on Tuesday.
The bank said the Aussie's drop against the US dollar to six-year lows was not boosting the economy as expected.
"Further depreciation seemed both likely and necessary," the RBA said. However, it noted noted signs of continued improvement in the jobs market, and said inflation remains well contained.
Bekier said Echo, which beat James Packer's Crown Resorts to the Brisbane prize, would be moving its headquarters and 300 staff to the city to oversee the new project.
The Queen's Wharf waterfront precinct includes five hotels, three residential towers, 50 bars and restaurants, a grand ballroom, a cinema and new footbridge to across the river to South Bank.
The Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, said the project would attract millions of tourists annually. "The flow-on effects will be felt for decades to come," she added.
Tourism Australia managing director, John O'Sullivan, said that Australia was entering an important economic cycle where its service sectors would play an increasingly important role in driving the country's future success and sustainability.
"With international tourism to Australia continuing to grow to record levels continued investment in new product, including integrated resorts, as well as existing tourism product is critical to ensure we are able to cater to the growing number of visitors," he said.
"Ensuring we have a diverse range of product and experiences to meet the rapid growth and needs of this market in particular will become all the more important," Mr O'Sullivan said.
Construction on the Brisbane project is set to begin in 2017.
A graphite bonanza for Australia?
Australian companies are searching high and low for new graphite deposits, and their hunt is seeing old mines reopen from Port Lincoln to northern Sweden.
Graphite is an important industrial material, used in batteries, laptops, lubricants, construction materials, medicine and, of course, pencils.
Its derivative, graphene, is just a single atom thick, 150 times stronger than steel and more conductive than silicon or copper.
Many of graphene's future applications have not yet made it out of the lab, but some, like its use as an additive to plastics and cement, are already being commercialised.
Graphene has received glowing media attention since its discovery in 2004, but as junior miners rush into the market and talk up their discoveries, some are beginning to question whether the hype matches the reality.
The only mine actually producing graphite for the market at the moment lay dormant for many years before Christopher Darby and his Valence Industries team saw its potential.
The Uley site, outside of Port Lincoln on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula, has played an important role in the city's past, and is now supplying high-tech manufacturers both in Australian and abroad with graphite.
Valence recently brought a new customer on board, adding to its list of customers using the company's graphite in batteries, medical applications and a range of materials.
With no open market for graphite, success is dependent on these companies being able to mine the ore and sell as well.
"You really have to understand why a customer needs to use it in that application, and work with them to deliver it in a way that is most effective for them," Darby said.
Valence also 'value-adds' to its graphite in South Australia, raising the purity of the ore it mines to exact specifications before offering it customers.
"You have to prove and qualify your production from your own facility," Mr Darby said.
"That means not only do you have to go through exploration and construction of your plant, you have to deliver production from that plant to the customers, and qualify it before they will really commit to long-term sales.
"That creates a drain on cash, and you need to be able to fill that gap to get you through to filling the pipeline of production."
Experimental NASA satellites from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) continue to provide accurate measurements of Australian groundwater.
Data collected over time indicated water levels of the Great Artesian Basin were declining, but it is not the same story for Central Australia's Amadeus Basin.
Professor Alfredo Huate, from the University of Technology Sydney, said the groundwater measurements were a great outcome, but that it all happened by accident.
Mr Huate said people figured out that the weight of water and in particular groundwater was being sensed by the satellite.
He said the find was significant because getting information on water levels across an entire basin was previously very difficult.
"It's hard to get an idea of how the groundwater might be changing and quite tedious to do so because you would need a lot of bores," he said. "With a satellite you get continuous information."
Mr Huate's colleague, Professor Derek Eamus, wrote recently on the ABC's Drum website about the data from the GRACE satellite indicating that water levels in the Great Artesian Basin were declining.
But Mr Huate said the satellite data indicates the same cannot be said for Central Australia's Amadeus basin. "From 2002 until 2008 there was a statistically significant decline in the groundwater," he said.
"But in 2009 and until the end of 2011 the total water has almost doubled from what it was before the satellite went up in 2002. "It's a tremendous spike in total water now available."
Mr Huate said that water from Central Australia's extreme wet events was not going to get used by plants or evaporate and would therefore replenish the groundwater table.
"It's definitely a good idea to make use of the data sets for [exploratory and developmental purposes]," he said.
NASA, said Mr Huate, are about to launch new satellites that will be more accurate and were specifically designed to measure groundwater.
Sea levels could rise by as much as 10 feet in the next 50 years due to 'highly dangerous' global warming, a leading climate scientist has warned.
Dr James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate scientists, and 16 other researchers are preparing to publish new projections for how the oceans may respond to climate change.
They warn an increase in average global temperatures of just 1°C could result in dramatic changes in sea level and an increase in powerful storms.
They conclude that 2°C of warming – the international target for limiting global warming – will be 'highly dangerous' to humanity.
The study warns that glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic could melt 10 times faster than projections put forward by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicted sea levels would rise by around one metre (three feet) by the end of the century.
The scientists said: 'Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea level rise could be devastating.
Dr Hansen, who was Nasa's lead climate scientist until 2013 when he retired and now holds a post with Columbia University's Earth Institute, has described the paper as his most important to date.
Dr Hansen was one of the first scientists to publicly highlight the risk of global warming during evidence he gave to the US congress in 1988.
He said he now plans to take the results of the latest study to policymakers in an attempt to make them realise the importance of taking action to curb climate change.
Last year the UN's IPCC warned world leaders they need to restrict global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial targets by cutting carbon emissions.
However, the new study by Dr Hansen and his colleagues, which is to be published by the online journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussion, suggests even keeping climate change within these limits may not save the world from disaster.
The 66-page long report highlights evidence that ice loss in many parts of the planet is accelerating.
Previous estimates of sea level rise have assumed ice loss would occur at a consistent rate, but the new evidence suggests it can double within 10 years.
They warn that as ice loss increases, the ice sheets could suffer large scale disintegration and it could change the circulation of the oceans due to large amounts of cold fresh water appearing in the seas.
Last winter, widely seen as the warmest on record across much of the world, saw the water in the North Atlantic reaching the *coldest* temperatures on record, perhaps due to ice loss from Greenland.
Dr Hansen and his colleagues claim this could eventually lead to the ocean currents that circulate warm and cool water around the globe shutting down.
This would lead to the tropics warming more without the ocean to pull heat away towards the poles and this could also lead to more powerful storms.
Their paper notes that in the Eemian period, an interglacial period around 120,000 years ago, there is evidence that gigantic waves moved huge boulders from the seafloor to the top of hills in the Bahamas.
At the time sea levels rose by between 16-30 feet (5-9 metres) due to ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland. It is thought that global temperatures were around 1 degree C warmer than today.
According to the Washington Post, Paul Hearty, a geologist at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, who co-authored the study, said: 'During this last warm interglacial, not much warmer than the present, [the world saw] not only a higher than present average sea level, but ultimately a significantly higher sea level that required the melting and or collapse of probably both Greenland and West Antarctica, along with basically this great oceanic disturbance.
However, some scientists have reacted sceptically to the findings in the paper.
Dr Ruth Mottram, a glaciologist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said she did not think such large rises in sea level were possible and doubted the rate reported in the article.
Dr Michael Mann, a climate researcher at Penn State University, told the Washington Post that he felt the shut down of heat transport in the oceans 'seems rather far fetched'.
However, he said their arguments for the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and substantial sea level rise that would result was 'compelling'.
"I agree that the Duke of Windsor is not giving the Nazi salute. If it were a Nazi salute, the Duke would be giving it as a greeting to Der Fuehrer, and if that were so, then all the other Nazis present would be giving it as well. It's just a wave to the crowd."
Richard Strauss is a long way from being Johann Strauss and I would not normally pay a cent for anything by him -- but Der Rosenkavalier is often described as a comic opera. So I thought that maybe Richard Strauss had his moments. He didn't. It was the DVD set from the 2004 Salzburg festival that I bought and I am mightily glad that I did not pay much for it. There was not a single laugh in it that I could see -- and not a single memorable aria.
I realize however that I am coming from a particular place. I like Austro/Hungarian operetta from either side of the dawning of the 20th century, and although Richard Strauss is of roughly that period, he is not of that ilk. He belongs within the tradition of 19th century grand opera. He is a "romantic" in the sense that Wagner and Verdi were romantics. He has a few good moments but that is the best I can say of him.
Der Rosenkavalier was full of meandering "philosophical" reflections that could have been completely excised for the benefit of the story -- and the first half of the show was a sustained display of disgusting behaviour.
Hitler liked the works of Richard Strauss and I think I can see why. "Baron Ox" would have been a sympathetic figure to Nazis. He is of course the very anathema to me.
The only thing that distinguishes the show from a 19th century grand opera is that it had a happy ending. We must be thankful for small mercies I guess. It was first performed in 1911 when operetta was in full popularity so the happy ending may have been a concession to the times.
Hmmmm.... On reflection, I guess that what I am supposed to find funny was the pomposity of the baron and his various downfalls. But I found his egotism and bad attitude to women all too real. I guess I should watch it again but just watching it once was trial enough for me. I just don't find arrogance and a bad attitude to women funny.
My attention has just been drawn to what I gather is a popular 2012 rant on Daily Kos: "An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America". It is very amusing indeed. I have often observed that if you want to know what is true about Leftists, you just have to look at what they say about conservatives. They can't imagine that conservatives do not share their hostile emotions. They "project" onto others what is true of themselves.
So what are conservatives accused of in the article? Hate.
The writer goes through a whole range of current conservative ideas and policies and asserts that they are motivated by hate. No reasoning or evidence for each assertion is offered. It is supposed to be self-evident, apparently. And to the writer and other Leftists it presumably is. That it could be otherwise motivated they are not capable of considering and they live anyway in a little mental bubble from which conservative discourse is zealously excluded. They figuratively (and sometimes literally) run away from hearing conservative arguments.
Take just the first assertion of the rant: "You hate gay people". A typical Leftist sweeping assertion devoid of any nuance. All the conservatives I know are essentially indifferent to homosexuals, though some think that homosexual marriage is destructive of social order. So the writer is quite simply wrong.
And the rest of the assertions in the Daily Kos rant are equally at variance with the real situation.
The big omission in the article therefore is any discussion of the full range of relevant evidence and reasoning on any issue. In typical Leftist fashion, the writer tells only half the story. If he told the whole story about any of the issues his balloon of rage about them would largely deflate.
The whole rant is an amazing example of intellectual incompetence but that is no surprise. Hostile emotions are what drive the Left, not evidence and reason.
I am not big on tooting my own trumpet but if you want to see an argument backed up by a host of facts and careful deductions, my three part exposition on the nature of Leftism is here, here and here. It's much more voluminous than the Daily Kos piece but that's because it considers the issues with proper care. I see no point in bare assertions like the Daily Kos piece.
Below is a picture of Gfrerer that shows something I particularly like -- her big smile.
I have watched her in both the Zurich 2004 performance of Die Lustige Witwe and in the 1998 Moerbisch performance of Der Vogelhaendler -- very different roles but well sung and well acted in both cases.
"In fact, singing is so integral to the Austrian social fabric, that a performer in Austria might find their audience joining in on their performances. Gfrerer had one such transcendent experience while recording one of her live concert performances in Austria, where she sang a traditional folk song from her countryside. "When I got to the second verse, the audience began humming along with me," recalls Gfrerer, "Then in the last verse, they all started singing in 4-part harmony, and it was so beautiful. It could only happen in Austria!"
Amazing. Singing along is one thing but singing along in 4-part harmony is another. Austria is certainly a superpower where great music is concerned.
There is a very good 2012 interview with her here that contains a lot of personal reflections -- In German.
In her early years she was particularly interested in operetta but in more recent times she has had a particular devotion to the music of the prolific Kurt Weill. She is regarded as a leading interpreter of it, in fact.
She also shows her versatility here with a 2013 rendition of Piaf's famous song La Vie en Rose. I think she outdoes Piaf but what would I know about French music? Though others have also highly praised that rendition. I liked the way the happy Austrian lady emerged from the soulful French singer as soon as the song was over.
Gfrerer seems to be a rather jolly lady in general, though her part in Lustige Witwe was almost wholly serious. She was even asked, rather absurdly for her, to be Eine anstaendige Frau (a respectable wife).
Her natural talent for gaiety did however surface in the dancing scenes of Lustige Witwe. She was in any dancing going, whether the part really called for it or not. She even led the cabaret dancers towards the end of the show. With big smiles and shrieks, her happiness throughout the dancing was a joy to watch. She even got herself tipped upside down in that last segment! She is a naturally happy lady, I think. And being born both beautiful and talented why should she not be happy?
I see life as if it were rose-tinted.
And that does something to me.
the cause of which I know full well.
He said that to me, swore to me "forever".
the cause of which I recognise.
He said that to me, swore to me forever.
And what does it tell us that the French song is infinitely better known than the Austrian one? That tragedy is more interesting to most people? I am inclined to think so.
And I suppose that it is rather churlish to mention that "tragic" love songs are a rather common phenomenon. In popular culture "Both sides now" by Joni Mitchell is a splendid example. But in the classical music world the famous Goethe/Schubert song Gretchen am Spinnrade anticipated La vie en rose by a considerable time.
Operetta stars seem rather generally to keep pretty quiet about their personal lives but I see that Gfrerer had a daughter named Maxine in 2006. She would have been 41 at the time. A late run! Pregnancies that late often indicate that the lady has had a lot of trouble finding a man who suits her. She is such a happy lady that seems unlikely in her case.


Today's Inside Out Beauty Food is the ever-popular and delectable avocado!
In fact, as I write this, I am enjoying the most delicious avocado toast, at one of my fave coffee shops, topped with radishes, carrots, goat cheese, and pickled onions. Just. So. Good.
Clearly the secret is out about about avocados. But, being the healthy food nerd that I am, I always love learning more about why a particular food is so healthy and what exactly it supports in our bodies. And the more I learn about avocados, the more in awe of them I become.
I chose avocados for today's beauty food because, they are so wonderful for our skin health in so many ways. You'll notice a theme for the past three days with my focus on "plumping" foods - chia seeds, coconut oil, and avocados are all raw, plant-based sources of healthy fats. When we reduce difficult-to-digest, rancid fats from our diets and replace them with easy-to-digest, plant-based ones, it results in some amazing benefits for clearing skin (damaged oils are a major component of breakouts and uneven skin), as well as reducing dark under-eye circles and adding that youthful suppleness we all want.
Why? Because we are adding moisture and lubrication on a deep cellular level, which results in reducing dryness on the outside (aka your skin!) too. In fact, they can literally prevent wrinkles by rejuvenating moisture. Not only are avocados wonderful for our skin, but they are also great for our joints. Oftentimes, a foods own properties are an indication of what they help in our own bodies - call it natures cue to us. For examples, walnuts, which quite literally look like mini brains, help our brain health and cognition function. Um...thank you, nature - you so smart!
Avocados contain vitamins A, C, and K, as well as minerals like potassium, copper, and iron and fiber. Technically a fruit, avocados are the most abundant fruit source of vitamin E. They also contain anti-aging amino acids glutamine and glutathione - both environmental protectors and antioxidants.
For today's recipe, I'm doing a super hydrating and cleansing avocado gazpacho. It also happens to be added-oil-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan! It makes the perfect light lunch, snack, or side dish. In fact, I threw my leftovers in a mason jar and took them with me to work and basically drank it like a smoothie. It left me feeling light yet satiated for hours.
Also amazing for plumping and hydrating the skin? Every other ingredient in this recipe. And together, they form a symphony of awesomeness. Did you know herbs and spices not only have their own beautifying properties, but also increase the bioavailability of other foods? i.e. garlic, cayenne, and cilantro (all in the recipe, below) help increase your body's access to the vitamins and minerals in the avocado and cucumber. To top it off - there's no annoying steps like peeling and deseeding the cucumber - because, why would we want to throw away all that goodness?! Plus, I think the dark specks in the finished gazpacho look super cool.
Combine all ingredients, in order, in high-speed blender. Blend starting on low, speeding up to medium-high, making sure blades don't get stuck or stop spinning food. Blend ~45 seconds until you reach desired consistency. Add more water as needed to thin-out.
Add toppings of choice and enjoy!
Gazpacho will stay fresh for several days in an air-tight container in your fridge.
I hope you love this recipe! And I hope you loved learning more about avocados. Their beauty gets me every time. I mean, just look at that pit...isn't it amazing?!
Tomorrow, we'll be moving to BALANCING beauty foods for three days. Get excited.
Today's beauty food is coconut oil! I've chosen coconut oil because it has some pretty magical properties, and I've seen the results at work in my own life.
While it goes without saying that oils should be a small portion of our diet, when we swap out processed and oxidized or damaged oils, and add in less-processed oils in their more natural state - fresh-pressed and unrefined, especially from foods with healing properties like the coconut, it is majorly beneficial to our bodies and our skin. Upgrading our oil game is also good news for our livers, which are freed up to run more smoothly. Instead of filtering out and storing the toxins from oils, they are able to devote more effort to maximizing our beauty potential - like replenishing and hydrating our skin! In other words, they go from panic-mode to beautifying-mode.
Not only does upgrading to coconut oil keep us from consuming more harmful oils (like canola and soy - both heavily GMO'd crops), but it has health benefits of its own.
- Coconut oil contains medium-chain saturated fat (or medium chain triglycerides/fatty acids aka MCT or MCFA) lauric acid, caprylic acid, and capric acid - health-promoting fats whose only other abundant source in nature is human breast milk. In the body, lauric acid is converted into a highly beneficial compound called monolaurin, an antiviral, antibacterial, and antiprotozoal monoglyceride that destroys a wide variety of disease-causing organisms. (1) The medium chain fatty acids found in coconuts digest more quickly than other fats. This means that they are more quickly converted to energy and not readily stored as fat.
- Antiviral and antibacterial also means that coconut foods kill bacteria by disrupting their lipid coating. This is also why coconut oil is a great cancer fighter - it actually prevents cancer from developing, especially in the case of stomach cancer. It also kills or inactivates fungi, yeast, some species of ringworm.
- Anti-inflammatory means it's great for people with chronic inflammation anywhere in the body, including people with arthritis.
- Anti-pathogenic due to its lauric acid and antioxidant content. This also means it is effective in reducing candida, or the overgrowth of bad bacteria.
Not only does coconut oil have a myriad of benefits, it also increases the bioavailability of the other foods it's consumed with.
And that leads me to today's recipe! I've paired coconut oil with some other beauty and skin-boosters - raw, local honey, which is another antibacterial, antiviral inside-out skin-smoother that is rich with amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, and, of course, matcha!
Matcha is a stone ground green tea powder that is rich in chlorophyll, making it a powerful detoxer. Its catechins trap and inactivate free radicals, which over time translates to less toxins in your body and a more glowing complexion. It can also help with rosacea and acne!
I love the idea behind Bulletproof coffee - coffee blended with Brain Octane Oil (refined coconut oil) and butter or ghee. The fat content slows the release of the caffeine leading to more prolonged, even energy. However I try to stay away from coffee in general. Not only is it acid-forming in the body, I don't love the spikes and crashes in energy, even with Bulletproof coffee. I also like to get the most health-supporting benefits from the food and drinks I consume. Hence where matcha comes in! Matcha has been the only coffee alternative that has kept me satisfied and coming back for more day after day. Not only is it delicious, it's almost like I can feel it's superpowers working the minute I start sipping it.
Side note: my friend Michele started the most awesome matcha company, called Matcha Konomi, and is sourcing her matcha straight from Uji, Kyoto Japan. She uses only the best ceremonial grade, radiation-free, organic matcha. The more I learn about matcha, the more I love it, which is why I'll be doing more posts about it in the future!
Local, raw honey, Matcha Konomi's Akira Matcha, Dr. Bronner's Organic Virgin Coconut Oil.
Combine all ingredients in heat safe blender (like a Vitamix). Blend well, increasing speed, for approx. 30 seconds to incorporate oil and get a nice froth.
*If you don't have a blender - you can still make this. Just use 1/2 the water and a bamboo whisk to incorporate matcha. Then add remaining water and ingredients and mix well, allowing honey and coconut oil to melt.
Back in June of last year, the American Heart Association published an advisory saying that Saturated fats, including coconut oil, can lead to cardiovascular disease.
This is simply not true, and beyond that, irresponsible of the AHA to advise. When we understand the motives behind the advisory, it makes it much easier to understand. The funding had ties to statin drug pharmaceutical companies, as well as the canola, soy and walnut oil industries.
If you'd like to read more, this article from Observer.com sums up the coconut controversy well.
Thank God we're over the fat-free thing!
We're pairing this Inside Out Beauty Food with the No. 2 Plumping + Peony line from Beautycounter. We chose this combination because, like the fat-free food craze (and fear of coconut oil) that started back in the 50s and lasted for decades, I have had a similar fear of putting oils on my face. The teenager in me is worried that I might breakout from putting oil on my skin. But alas, I've overcome my fear and am now using facial oil with no teenage-inspired worries - only softer, smoother skin.
To get entered to win our Beautycounter giveaway, simply shop through the links I've provided and for each item you buy, you'll be entered to with their Color Intense Lipstick.
Wishing you all the health and inside-out beauty you need to go out and conquer your day!
(1) The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods, 2005. Michael Murray, N.D.
Seeds are one of those things in life that has me so totally blown away by the power(s) that be. The fact that a tiny little seed holds everything a new life needs to sprout is just mind-bending and so freaking cool. Add to it a healthy place to grow (soil), and the energy to draw it to the surface so that it can sprout (sunlight) and you're on your way to whatever beautiful plant that seed was destined to become; be it a giant redwood sequoia, a nutrient-rich carrot, or in this case, an adorable chia pet.
The fact that a seed is full of a budding life, means that it is super nutritious for us humans to consume.
The first three days of my blog series focused on BRIGHTENING foods for the skin. For the next three days, I've chosen foods designed to support PLUMPING to align with Beautycounter's No. 2 Plumping + Peony collection skincare line. Who doesn't want nice, supple, plump skin - it signifies a healthy youthfulness that can be had at any age. Thankfully over the years, we as a population have moved away from our fear of healthy fats and away from the fat-free era (which ironically made us fatter and less healthy). We now understand the value of healthy fats and the amazing benefits they can have for our skin. I can tell you from personal experience and experimenting with my own diet over the years, that the addition of some beauty-boosting fats in my diet has lead to smoother, plumper skin, as well as the disappearance of some seriously dry skin, especially in the winter months.
So, let's get to the beauty food of the day - CHIA SEEDS!
These adorable little seeds are also rich in vitamins, minerals (like magnesium and boron, which both help with calcium absorbtion), and fiber - further beauty-boosters. Like any food that has gelatinous qualities (Aloe Vera is another one), chia seeds have the power to cling to toxic substances and impurities in your body and draw them out. Chia oil contains the perfect mix of essential fatty acids - the precise balance our bodies need of Omega-3 and Omega-6 - thank you mother nature!
Chia seeds also contain another inside out skin-plumping nutrient - vitamin E.
Because chia seeds can absorb 10-15 times their weight in liquid, they are super hydrating for our bodies. And on top of that, they fill us up and keep us satiated long after eating. A little chia seed snack may look small, but it is mighty! It can fill you up and give you level energy that lasts for hours. Since chia seeds are rich in soluble and insoluble fiber, they promote a slow conversion of starches to sugars, which helps balance blood sugar levels - for this reason they are great for those with type 2 diabetes (or any of us looking to balance blood sugar).
- While nuts and seeds have amazing health benefits, you don't want to over-do it. Keep it to 2-3 ounces per day max.
- Beware of commercially-packaged nuts and seeds as they are sometimes cooked in hydrogenated oils. This means that not only have they been heated to high temps, but also that unhealthy trans fats (and probably lots of salt) have been added. Damaged oils are major beauty-busters. Buy raw and unsalted whenever possible.
- For delicate seeds like chia and flax, keep them out of direct sunlight. I keep mine in mason jars in the refrigerator!
- Side Note: Peanuts and cashews are susceptible to accumulating potentially toxic molds (this may be part of what makes them such common allergens). They are usually steamed to remove their outer shell, in which case they are not truly raw, also making them un-sproutable through soaking.
Seeds and nuts are protected by inhibitor enzymes also known as phytates. In nature, it helps protect them from germinating before they are ready. By soaking your chia seeds (and same goes for any raw seed, nut, or bean) you help deactivate the inhibitor enzymes, making them less acid-forming for your body, and making their nutrients more bioavailable for your cells!
If you want to nerd-out on soaking, check out this helpful link. I am relatively new to soaking - it used to totally intimidate me. Now that I've done it, I realized it's super easy and just requires a little bit of planning. If you have a dehydrator - you can soak in larger batches and then dehydrate at a low temperature for easy grab-and-go snacks.
Since chia seeds literally PLUMP, I thought they were the perfect food to pick for today's focus on plumping the skin!
I started making this recipe I'm sharing with you today just a few weeks ago. And I'm totally hooked. It's super easy to edit based on what you have on hand and very on-the-go friendly. Since all of us are on-the-go pretty much all of the time (who's with me!?), it's nice to have something you can throw together on your way out the door and save you from that rumbling stomach in your 10am meeting! Just make sure to stock your fridge with coconut yogurt and coconut milk, your freezer with frozen berries (also great for throwing in smoothies) and any fresh fruit in your kitchen is an added bonus, plus, of course, chia seeds! My favorite part of this easy snack, is that by using frozen berries, they defrost perfectly and keep the whole thing cold for a few hours until you're ready to eat - no refrigeration required! OR you could definitely make this ahead the night before and keep refrigerated until you're ready to head out the door.
Layer ingredients in order into 16-ounce mason jar, starting with frozen berries and banana, then coconut yogurt. Be sure that the coconut yogurt creates a sealed-in layer on the top so that when you add the coconut milk, it sits on top. Then add coconut milk and chia seeds. Gently stir chia seeds with milk to mix, but without breaking the layer of yogurt. Top with your favorite spices. Add lid and wait at least 45 minutes before consuming.
Adding the top layer of chia seeds before gently stirring with the coconut milk.
Want more chia in your life?
And see below for my video on chia seed pudding!
If you want to participate in our Beautycounter giveaway, just use the link below to shop. Each item you buy will enter you for a chance to win a Lip Intense Lipstick!
Thanks so much for joining me for today. Four beauty foods down, eight more to go. I'm thrilled you're here!
1. The Beauty Detox Foods, 2013. Kimberly Snyder, C.N.
Prepping for my Inside Out Beauty Foods blog series.
For the next twelve days, I'll be sharing one food per day that helps with beauty from the inside out.
As women, we spend hundreds of dollars a year on beauty products. And while I love me some quality skincare and makeup goods, my best ever skin, hair, and nails, has come with changes to what I put in my mouth (and has less to do with what I put on my skin/hair/nails). I have also been someone who bought my favorite beauty products without looking so much at the ingredients. That is, until recently.
Through my holistic nutrition education at Bauman College, I realized that while I am mindful about eating, I haven't been very mindful with regards to my beauty regimen. And with skin being our biggest organ, and absorbing the things we put on it, I can no longer bury my head in the sand when it comes to the things I'm putting on my body.
I was realizing this connection, but feeling overwhelmed with the sea of information about how to know what to buy. One day, I was serving my fresh-pressed juices at a yoga event here in Sonoma and I met Jenna Maze, a Licensed Cosmetologist specializing in hair and makeup, and mom who learned she was pregnant with her third child and, that very same day, found out she had cervical cancer. Jenna and I quickly bonded over our love for holistic living and I was totally blown away by her story. Now, almost two years later, thanks to a successful surgery and with her healthy, cute-as-can-be baby Norah on the way to turning one(!), Jenna has spent the past two years learning about the ingredients being put in our personal care products and becoming and advocate for women's health in the process.
As someone who had spent almost a decade, at the time, around harmful, yet legal products working in the beauty industry, Jenna felt misled and betrayed by the companies and industries who have kept known carcinogens legal and rampant in their products. She also felt inspired to be a part of the change. She joined Beautycounter, a company whose mission it is "to get safer products into the hands of everyone" and bring accountability to the world of personal care. They sell skincare, makeup, sunscreen, shampoo, and have products not only for women, but also for men, babies, and children.
Over the past two decades, the European Union has banned more than 1,300 chemicals in the product formulas of personal care products and restricted the levels of over 250 more in such products. The United States has only partially banned 30 to date.
What's worse is that the Food and Drug Administration (the agency that regulates cosmetics in the United States) allows companies to use chemicals known to be extremely harmful in the products we put on our bodies and on our kids' bodies every single day, day after day, and to make their own judgments about safety.
And while I am a proponent of all natural personal care products and companies, be they big or small, and I am not affiliated with Beautycounter, what I love about this company is that they take the guess work out of it. They have banned 1,500 questionable or harmful chemicals in their products in what they call the "Never List." As a busy gal, I know I won't spend the hours researching, so I love having the peace of mind that I can buy anything from them, and trust that they have done the legwork. I also totally respect the work they are doing to lobby congress for change to make our laws stronger to protect the ingredients in our products and ban known carcinogens (a.k.a. cancer-causing ingredients).
And, in this day and age, it is so awesome that we, as consumers, can put our money where our mouth is. We can stand for causes we believe in through our purchasing power. That's why I believe in companies like this one and that's why I decided to join forces with Jenna to do this 12-day challenge.
While there are always crash diets and quick fixes, true and long-lasting beauty comes from real foods and real ingredients. It's not about being perfect or uptight about everything that's going in and on our bodies, but it is about making an effort and being aware. It's about taking accountability and ownership for the health of ourselves and our loved ones. We can no longer trust that the powers that be are always acting in our best interest, and even if they are trying and want to, industries and corporations have moved faster than laws.
We have to face the fact that there are things in our products (food and beauty) that are not only major long-term beauty busters, but also cancer and disease-causing. We have to read the labels and know the sources. The more we do this, the more powerfully we can impact industries. And while we may feel small and like our day-to-day decisions don't have much of an impact, they add up. And they have the power to inspire positive changes in those around us. Positive changes in our health and that of the planet. It's all connected.
My hope with this 12-day Beauty Food series, is to inspire healthy habits and small shifts that can have a massive impact on your health and wellness. I love natural foods and am blown away at how much they have changed my life. For years I struggled to find the secret to being skinny, healthy, and beautiful and it was right there the whole time - real, whole foods. Fruits and vegetables in all colors, shapes and sizes. With a few tweaks in timing, especially my morning routine, I really unlocked the healing power of foods.
I want to share that love with all of you!
Over the next twelve days, I'll focus on one food per day. To illustrate the food-beauty connection, I've aligned the foods with four of the skincare lines by Beautycounter - No. 1 Brightening, No. 2 Plumping, No. 3 Balancing, and Countermatch Hydrating Collection - three foods per line. So each day you'll have a new beauty food to try out with an easy recipe idea for how to incorporate it into your life. Some of the foods (like avocado), you've no doubt heard of and used, but we'll explore exactly why it is so beneficial for your skin and health. Others will be a bit more obscure (like dulse seaweed).
My challenge to you is to give each of these foods a try! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you are inspired to integrate some new healthy beauty foods into your daily life, just in time for spring.
Okay, are you ready?! Let's amp up our beauty from the inside out!
For every purchase during the 12-day challenge, you'll be entered to win the brand new Lip Intense Lipstick.
Did you know that 60% of lipsticks still test positive for lead?! Since lipstick sits on our lips, not only do we absorb it through our skin, we also literally eat it off our lips (albeit in small amounts).
I had the pleasure of wearing this lipstick recently and not only was the red a beautiful color, but it had some serious staying power - I'm obsessed!
If you have a hankering for a decadent, chocolatey milkshake, sans the sugar rush and upset stomach, look no further. This afternoon I was craving something indulgent, so I whipped up this little number and it did not disappoint.
So without further ado, I give you my most favorite concoction for a vegan, dairy-free, no-fake-sugar shake.
Combine all the ingredients in a high-power blender. Start with 1/2 cup coconut milk, add more to reach desired thickness. Blend again briefly to incorporate the added coconut milk.
Garnish with cacao nibs and cinnamon.