Year: 2023

A Tale of Two Invasions

A brief survey of the public statements made in response to the weekend’s events suggests that it would really be a great thing for Americans if US politicians would be just one-quarter as bloodthirsty in response to a multi-decade invasion of the USA that has cost tens of thousands of American lives as they are about a weekend immigration by 250 New Israelis into Israel.

Pat Buchanan was right all along. Washington DC is occupied by those who observably sympathize with Zion, not with America.

$8 billion for defending Israel’s borders. Nothing for defending America’s.

Ironically, neither Israel nor the USA are likely to survive as sovereign and unitary states.

UPDATE: Color me skeptical.

“Dozens” of American citizens are among the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan told Fox News on Sunday, acknowledging the government was still working to draw up an official list of names. Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador to the US, confirmed the presence of Americans among the hostages in an interview with CBS, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said his office is currently working to verify precisely how many Americans have been captured or killed since Hamas attacked Israel on Saturday.

What are the odds that precisely none of the Hamas hostages are Americans and all of them are so-called “dual citizens”?

UPDATE: The neoclowns’ old “Faster Please” Narrative continues:

Iran ‘helped plan Hamas attack on Israel and gave green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last week’: Islamic Republic ‘devised assault’ that plunged the Middle East into war.

Sure they did. Not only that, Iran planned it for Hamas in the room that Saddam Hussein was storing his weapons of mass destruction! This whole thing is looking more and more fake by the day. Miles Mathis has already concluded as much.

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An Informative Analogy

An open admission that the recent Hamas attacks are akin to the historical Japanese attack on the USA:

Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) international spokesperson Jonathan Conricus has summed up what this day means for Israel, calling in the country’s “Pearl Harbor” moment.

“The entire system failed. It’s not just one component. It’s the entire defense architecture that evidently failed to provide the necessary defense for Israeli civilians,” he told CNN of the surprise invasion from Gaza militants. “This is a Pearl Harbor type of moment for Israel, where there was reality up until today, and then there will be reality after today.”

So, did it fail or was it turned off? If this truly was Israel’s “Pearl Harbor”, then we know it didn’t fail. Remember, the most effective rhetoric points toward the truth…

“There will be a mighty vengeance for this dark day” doesn’t quite live up to the standard set by “a date which will live in infamy,” though.

UPDATE: It’s becoming increasingly likely that this is all very cold-blooded geopolitical theatre that is an attempt to ensure that the Middle East conflict becomes the second WW III front instead of the South East Asian conflict.

  • I say with certainty this was a “stand-down” order – they do indeed have a very expensive “obstacle” to prevent this, sophisticated tracking surveillance with remote operated machine gun emplacements, and even if they were “overrun by surprise” which is IMPOSSIBLE, the IAF has Apache helicopters for this case, and there were NONE airborne until at least 6 hours later (when hostages were being taken back to Gaza, and the terrorist were coming and going as they pleased in great numbers). The Navy managed to destroy every single enemy that attempted a mass distributed coastal landing without a single loss.
  • None of the above (eight separate border security systems listed) was working. Hamas militants were able to cross open ground and infiltrate into multiple Israeli cities and yeshuvim without detection or being challenged. Hamas militants were even able to make it back into Gaza afterwards with the bodies of captured soldiers, civilians and vehicles. Somehow every single security measure was ineffective. This does not make sense.
  • “Hamas is a creature of Israel.” – Yassir Arafat
  • Over 800 Israeli settlers storm Al-Aqsa compound during Jewish Sukkot holiday. Rabbis, heads of settlement associations and far-right university lecturers were among 832 people who stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Thursday morning.
  • Iron Dome appears to have been turned off rather than overwhelmed.
  • Since Saturday, Israel has struck more than 400 targets it says are ‘linked’ to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is not unusual in itself. This time, however, jets have also been targeting the houses of top Hamas commanders and political leaders, sending a message to the group that their whereabouts are well known.

The logical conclusion is that the Hamas attacks were provoked and knowingly permitted by the Netanyahu government and the IDF, in much the same way the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was provoked and knowingly permitted by the Roosevelt administration and the US Navy. It’s what I think can be best described as a Green Flag rather than a False Flag.

The purpose of permitting such a large-scale Green Flag at such apparent cost to the Israeli citizenry appears to be two-fold. One, to provide a justification for an IDF attack on Gaza that could range from a punitive short-term incursion to a full-scale Hama-style assault that amounts to ethnic cleansing. Two, and much more important, to provoke Hezbollah into attacking northern Israel and using that as a means of drawing Iran into what Netanyahu has already declared is a “war”, with the ultimate aim of forcing the USA to abandon its support of Ukraine and Taiwan and focus its military resources on Israel instead.

It looks like a very risky bet at first glance, especially in light of the possibility that China and Russia could support Iran more effectively than the USA can support Israel, but it could be considered a necessary gamble given the way it is now obvious to every military strategist that US econo-military power, and its concomitant ability to successfully intervene in the Middle East, is in rapid decline. If Israel is going to fight a war with Iran, and for whatever reason, both the neocons and the Israeli Right have been seeking that war for at least 40 years, the time to do so with any reasonable probability of success is right now, under the aegis of WWIII.

But even if Israel is unsuccessful in drawing Iran into direct conflict – and I think they will be unsuccessful in doing so – achieving the elimination of Gaza as Plan B would be seen as a major win by the Israeli Right as well as a significant improvement in the strategic challenge presented by the post-Pax American world.

UPDATE: Please note that I wrote the above before the news that Hezbollah and the IDF have exchanged artillery fire in the north. However, what is being reported as “Hezbollah attacks” and “the northern front” do not appear to be much more serious than the organization’s previous statement about “monitoring the situation.”

Hezbollah has officially joined the attack by Palestinian armed factions against Israel by launching attacks from southern Lebanon. In a statement released on October 8 morning, Hezbollah announced that it had attacked three sites of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in the occupied Shebaa Farms in support of “the glorious Palestinian resistance and the struggling and patient Palestinian people.”

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Saturday Arktoons

SHOTGUN SAMURAI Episode 15: Shotgun Samurai 15

FULLSTRIKE! Episode 25: The Prelude

FAIRY DOOR Episode 46: Chaos and Mourning

CHATEAU GRIEF Episode 300: Plane Speaker

THE WISE OF HEART Episode 43: Trust the Spin Doctors

THE CHRONICLES OF THE ADVENTURE, HUNTING, AND LIQUIDATION COMMITTEE Episode 19: Turning Boys Into Men

FLYING SPARKS Episode 92: Choose Your Battles

Congratulations to CHATEAU GRIEF, which has just posted Episode #300! Get caught up here.

How KU Destroyed the Ebook Market

At first glance, Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited looks like a great deal to serious readers. For only $9.99 per month, you can read whatever you want from a catalog of more than 2.5 million books. And it is a great deal, for now. The downside is that it has had terrible consequences for authors and publishers alike, consequences that will only continue to get worse over time. Here is the fundamental problem with the KU program from a book industry professional’s point of view.

The proper price range for an ebook, as defined by Amazon, is $2.99 to $9.99. Outside that range, the 70 percent royalty is halved, so those are the relevant price boundaries. While the Big 4 publishers price their new ebook releases at $9.99, Castalia generally prices its ebooks at $4.99, so we’ll use that for the purposes of analysis.

Using a hypothetical 300-page book as an example, an ebook sale generates around $3.49 in royalties for the publisher after Amazon deducts its delivery fee and infrastructure charges. A full Kindle read of the same ebook generates around $1.20 per finished book, the precise amount depending upon the monthly KENP royalty, which has recently averaged around .0040 per page read.

So, on it’s face, KU means reducing the payout to the author by about $2.29, or 52 percent. That’s bad, but superficially survivable for a successful writer.

However, the reality is considerably worse. Think about what percentage of the books you read that you actually finish. I read 4.5x faster than the average reader, I consciously try to finish every book I read on principle, and I would still estimate that my book-completion rate is only around 90 percent. Sometimes a book just isn’t that interesting, sometimes a better book comes along, and sometimes you only want a specific piece of information contained in a particular book that is otherwise of no interest to you.

And consider the fact that Amazon literally markets KU as a means of “trying out new authors”, which tends to increase the number of books that the average individual samples, but doesn’t finish, as he tries, and discards, new authors he doesn’t like.

“I would never be able to afford reading so many books if not for KU. It also allows trying new authors and series. Since I don’t need to pay extra, I’m willing to try books/authors I would normally hesitate to spend money on.”

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that KU readers finish one out of every 3 books they download onto their Kindles. That estimate is probably on the high side, given the way there is a strong correlation between readers and collectors, but it will serve to illustrate the point. This means that while an author gets paid for every ebook sold, whether it is read or not, he’s only going to get paid for the partial percentage of his KU books that were actually read.

(This is probably why KU only reports normalized pages read, not book downloads. It would likely be depressing to a lot of authors to realize how few of their books downloaded are actually read at all, let alone in full.)

Multiplying the difference between a sale and a book read (0.48) by the percentage of completed books (0.33) suggests that on average, authors are making about 15.84 percent of what they were making prior to Kindle Unlimited being introduced. It also means we can estimate the amount of ebook sales revenues that has been eliminated by Kindle Unlimited by multiplying the monthly KDP Select Global Fund for Kindle Unlimited by 6.3131, which is the inverse of that 15.84 percent.

Since the September 2023 KDP Select Global Fund was $49.6 million, this suggests that Amazon is now destroying about $313 million in potential ebook sales every single month. And this doesn’t even get into the fact that because Amazon controls the sales across its site with its A9-A11 algorithms, as well as secret algorithms like Project Nessie, to influence prices and pick winners and losers on a monthly basis.

People familiar with the FTC’s allegations in the complaint told the Journal that it all started when Amazon developed an algorithm code-named “Project Nessie.” It allegedly works by manipulating rivals’ weaker pricing algorithms and locking competitors into higher prices. The controversial algorithm was allegedly used for years and helped Amazon to “improve its profits on items across shopping categories” and “led competitors to raise their prices and charge customers more,” the WSJ reported.

So, if you want to know why so many great little independent publishers have disappeared, why independent authors are struggling, and why genre publishing houses like Tor and Baen Books are teetering on the edge of failure, and why the comics publishers like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, and IDW are facing the prospect of looming shutdowns, you’ve got your answer: Amazon ebook sales hurt the print market, and Kindle Unlimited is killing the ebook sales market.

Now, you don’t need to worry about Castalia. Even though we’ve seen the same cataclysmic decline in ebook sales that other publishers and authors have, starting in October, you’re going to see us publishing more hardcovers, paperbacks, and ebooks than you’ve seen us publish in the last three years. We just published CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED by Chuck Dixon, and next week we’ll be publishing THE ALTAR OF HATE by yours truly and QUANTUM MORTIS: A MIND PROGRAMMED & OTHER STORIES as soon as the cover art is ready. And a whole host of books that haven’t appeared in print before, including THE CASTALIA JUNIOR CLASSICS Volumes 7 and 8, are in production. We’re also going to systematically expand the number of ebooks and print editions available on the Arkhaven Store over the next year.

CHUCK DIXON’S CONAN #2: CARAVAN OF THE DAMNED

But while we probably deserve some credit for anticipating the negative consequences of KU and taking steps to avoid them, it’s your support of Library, History, and our various crowdfunding projects, and your willingness to buy books directly from us, that is the main reason Castalia is healthy while publishers who relied upon bookstores, comic stores, and Amazon to keep them afloat are rapidly circling the dustbin of history.

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Fireworks in Israel

Hamas is reported to have fired thousands of rockets into Israel:

Israel’s military has declared a ‘state of war’ after Islamic militant group Hamas fired a claimed 5,000 rockets into the country early on Saturday.

Forces in the country have ordered residents to remain indoors and air raid sirens are sounding in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem after Hamas militants infiltrated the country – in some cases flying in via paraglider in order to evade the country’s high-tech border.

Hamas supreme military commander Mohammed Deif said the operation, Al-Aqsa Storm, was a declaration that ‘enough is enough’ as he urged Palestinians to confront Israel.

Videos on social media appeared to show armed troops from the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ militant arm, moving through built-up areas firing weapons. Israeli media reports suggested an Israeli soldier had been kidnapped by Hamas militants as they swept the streets.

One has to wonder at what all these rockets are being fired. They never seem to accomplish very much, especially when compared to the extreme destruction of the Russian-Ukrainian front or even a night of immigrant riots in France. It could, of course, presage an opening of the Middle Eastern front by Iran, which we’ll know soon if Hezbollah gets involved, but at least for now, it doesn’t look like much more than the regular flare-up.

Hopefully the Israelis in the community can shed more light on the situation.

UPDATE: It looks more serious than the customary PR-focused attacks. Israeli radio is reporting that Hamas has captured 35 Israelis so far.

Israeli media reported that clashes are taking place in seven different towns and settlements. Other reports suggest that the Palestinian Resistance has managed to strike at 21 different military positions.

UPDATE: On the other hand, Hezbollah is showing no sign of being interested in opening a northern front and is doing nothing more than “monitoring the situation”.

UPDATE: A little confused about this very unwelcoming response by the Israelis to their newest immigrants. Don’t they realize all these young working-age men coming into their country will make their economy stronger?

UPDATE: The “Israel’s 9/11” scenario is looking increasingly likely given the way anyone who suggests the obvious possibility of the attacks not having been “the staggering failure of intelligence services”, but rather, effectively permitted by those services simply looking the other way is being hounded into retractions immediately.

A Harvard professor has been forced to apologize for implying the Hamas attack on Israel was an attempt to distract from Benjamin Netanyahu’s ‘own corruption.’ Those who saw it were outraged calling the professor an ‘idiot’ who needs to ‘go commit’ himself somewhere. Liberal political commentator Keith Olbermann also criticized Tribe’s claims, calling it ‘moronic and indefensible,’ Fox News reported.

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Psyop City: Population One

I’m not saying this ex-conspiracy theorist miraculously healed of his doubts about Global Brother is necessarily gay, but he is absolutely and indubitably fake.

Brent is a real individual. There are many recent videos involving him, where he touts how he abandoned conspiracies that he once believed. However, all his live appearances show a nice-looking man with a limited vocabulary and a small repertoire of ideas. Brent could not elaborate on even one “conspiracy theory” that he believed and could not explain the specifics of how he was wrong about any particular idea.

Brent is never specific on any conspiracy theory he supposedly believed in the past. He speaks in generalities and mostly uses little words. Most conspiracy theorists I met love details! They would go on and on about “raised seals on Obama’s birth certificate,” “missing plane in front of the Pentagon,” and so on. Quite conversely, Brent is never specific about any of his past beliefs. So, I have to wonder if he is truthful about his past.

Brent Lee seems to have significantly changed. He posted semiliterate one-liners on Twitter until 2018. Then, his Twitter account changed suddenly to be much more verbose and oriented towards the daily fights of UK politics. Finally, his Facebook posts, much longer and with a much more diverse corporate vocabulary, are written in a style completely different from Twitter’s.

Clown World relies upon belief in its illusions and its word spells if it is to survive and continue to exert influence over the masses. So, the fact that it is now waging war on truth, which in its inversion it calls “disinformation” and aggressively attempting to discredit the truthtellers it calls “conspiracy theorists” is a positive sign that it knows its ability to keep its facade propped up is fading.

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Vaxxing the Proles

New Zealand exempted 11,005 government employees from its harsh vaxx mandate.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health granted vaccine exemptions to key staff while hypocritically rolling out the world’s most draconian vaccine mandates and insisting the public be vaccinated. The hypocritical vaccine exemptions for the elite were granted by former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s government before she stood down and accepted a new role as the World Economic Forum’s global “disinformation czar.”

Ardern’s decision to allow the elite to refuse the vaccine while forcing the vax on normal people was revealed by an Official Information Act (OIA) request HNZ00023978 dated 2 August 2023 which asked the following question:

“According to the legislation at the time in 2021, there were operational exemptions available for those who were not getting vaccinated against Covid 19. Your website outlines the process of applying for an operating exemption under clause 12a. How many requests were received? How many were approved by the ministry?”

Matt Hannant, Interim Director, Prevention, National Public Health Service, Te Whatu Ora replied:

“From 13 November 2021 to 26 September 2022, a total of 478 applications for Significant Service Disruption exemption (SSD) were received. 103 applications were granted, covering approximately 11,005 workers. Please note that it is not possible to provide the exact number of workers that were covered by SSDs. This is because it was possible for an organisation to submit an application to cover more than one worker.”

Still think it was “safe and effective”? The lesson, as always, is this: never obey the rules set by global depopulationists.

Meanwhile, the immune-stripping feature of the vaxx is slowly, but surely, coming to light.

The data reveal that the double vaccinated population across Canada have now lost on average 74% of their immune system capability, and the triple vaccinated population across Canada have now lost on average 73% of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system of their unvaccinated counterparts.

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Perhaps She Just… Evolved?

There appears to be a very strange situation surrounding JF Gariepy, the evolutionary biologist I debated on the subject of the mathematical impossibility of evolution a few years ago.

So, basically, there are accusations floating around that JF Gariepy murdered his wife and dumped her body in a remote forest in Canada. She apparently went missing in June, and he never told anybody. The cops only showed up when a neighbor noticed he hadn’t seen her in a while and started asking questions. So now it’s October, and this is the first thing he’s apparently said about this to anybody. Other than that when he got home, he went on a massive three-day cleaning spree, that (in his words) “sanitized” the house.

Basically, he claims one days she told him out of nowhere that she was leaving him to go live a life of adventure in the woods. Demanded that he drive her to a remote gas station at the edge of a forest, bringing nothing with her but her phone and the clothes on her back. No sleeping bag, no change of clothes, nothing. So then she got out and disappeared, and he never heard from her again. And I’m not kidding – that’s really the story he’s going with.

Considering that it took JFG three tries to understand a basic mathematical relationship, it’s not absolutely impossible that he might think it’s possible to rely upon such a flimsy and dubious explanation. But JFG is sufficiently neurologically unique that it’s also possible that he’s simply telling the truth.

Anyhow, here is hoping that it’s simply the usual e-drama over nothing.

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