Author: VD

Big Sale Next Week

So, a few things to let everyone know about in the leadup to the annual Castalia Library and Castalia House Thanksgiving sale. We’re going to have a number of Arkhaven and Castalia House products on sale at the NDM site as well as the Library and Libraria books, and we’ll have Library, Libraria, and Junior Classics on sale at the Arkhaven store. So, you’ll definitely want to check out both sites, although I’ll try to have a post with links to everything here.

The Based Book ebook sale is also coming up, and we’ll keep you posted on that too.

Now, we also have an offer for MIDNIGHT’S WAR backers. For a variety of reasons, mostly relating to artists, we’re not going to be doing the planned 7-12 issue anytime soon. However, what we are offering both paperback and hardcover backers as a substitute is the following:

  1. Your choice of any Arkhaven omnibus of the same length of 140+ pages
  2. The soon-to-be-released THE TRAGEDY OF THE TRIBUNE: A Throne of Bones Issue 1, which is now complete, 150 full-color pages, and includes stories from A Throne of Bones and Summa Elvetica. We never crowdfunded this one, but it was illustrated by Midnight’s War illustrator Ademir Leal and colored by Blond, so it’s absolutely top quality.
  3. We’ll also include a complimentary ebook and paperback edition of the now-complete Midnight’s War novel OUT OF THE SHADOWS for all of the affected MW backers.

I’ll send out an email tomorrow to all of the MW 7-12 backers so everyone can let me know their preference. We still plan to tackle it someday, but it’s so far out of the schedule at this point that we don’t want to leave those backers hanging any longer. The leather edition backers are unaffected; we will still be releasing that as well as NIGHT STREETS soon, as it is complete.

And finally, since we decided to do the larger edition of Hypergamouse for the coffee table backers, we’re going to be offering the smaller ones, which are probably some of the highest-quality traditional horizontal comic books ever produced, for sale to anyone who wants one until the 150 or so copies that we’ve got run out.

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The Truth About Shakespeare

Dennis McCarthy provides a useful summary about the facts concerning the true authorship of the plays supposedly written by the actor William Shakespeare, but were actually written by Thomas North.

Here’s a brief summary of the North/Shakespeare Story:

  • Thomas North (1535- ~1604?), 29 years older than Shakespeare, wrote plays for decades for Leicester’s Men (from late 1550s to 1588). These plays were performed in front of small, noble audiences and were never published. But sometimes these early Shakespearean plays (like a Romeo and Juliet in 1562, before Shakespeare was born) were recorded by the original spectators or in records of payments for plays at court—though the author remained unnamed.
  • In the 1590s and 1600s, Shakespeare published his own adaptations of older plays in quarto form: These include briefer, swifter, inferior staged renditions of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Henry V (all originally written by Thomas North for Leicester’s Men). Shakespeare also wrote the “good quartos” of The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1 and 2 Henry IV—plays he adapted but are deemed “good” only because North’s originals were never published and have now been lost. Shakespeare also produced other mediocre, differently-styled plays like A Yorkshire Tragedy, The London Prodigal, and Locrine that Shakespeare had written with (or adapted from) other playwrights. For example, orthodox scholars have concluded that Thomas Middleton is a very likely coauthor or originator of A Yorkshire Tragedy, while they attach Robert Greene to Locrine. The bad quartos, apocrypha, and makeshift “good quartos” compose the true Stratford canon.
  • When the publishing syndicate of Edward Blount, William Jaggard, William Aspley, and John Smethwick decided to produce a collection of Shakespeare plays now known as the First Folio (1623), they got into squabbles with the publishers who owned the rights to the Shakespeare plays that had already been published. So in many cases, they printed North’s original versions—as they did with Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, 2 Henry VI, 3 Henry VI, etc., which were still in the possession of Shakespeare’s theater troupe. Indeed, the First Folio even advertised that the plays had been “Truely set forth, according to their first ORIGINALL,” and the printers added special emphasis to the word “ORIGINALL,” putting it in all caps and a kind of italics. Still, many of the plays in the First Folio, especially the comedies, are indeed Shakespeare’s adaptations of North’s originals.
  • For centuries, scholars had studied and praised the plays of Shakespeare’s First Folio, leading them to associate him with the masterpieces therein. It was not until the 19th century that researchers began rediscovering the “bad quartos.” For example, Shakespeare’s rewritten, staged version of Hamlet, published in 1603, did not come to the attention of researchers until 1823, long after faith in Shakespeare’s genius had become traditional, universal, and unyielding. Researchers faced with such lesser renditions “by William Shakespeare” found it less onerous to try to explain them away one at a time—rather than abandon their view of Shakespeare. Editors and academics never stopped to assess all the evidence as a whole, looking at all the documents “by William Shakespeare” to determine what he had really written. Conventional scholars also shrugged off the clear statements from contemporaries that derided Shakespeare for getting too much credit for other people’s plays, as we find in comments about Shakespeare in Groatsworth of Wit, Jonson’s On Poet Ape, etc.

In summary, if you still believe that William Shakespeare wrote the versions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet traditionally attributed to him, you might as well believe in the theory of evolution by natural selection and that Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, walked on it, and then returned to Earth.

The historical evidence against it is, quite simply, overwhelming.

But if you want to know why I, personally, am convinced of the truth of Mr. McCarthy’s claims, it is because I am an editor. I know exactly how recognizable any writer’s writing is. And the AI analyses of the various works make it very, very clear which author’s work is the original of the high-quality plays that we still revere today.

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The Failure of Holocaustianity

As I pointed out in a public debate with Louise Mensch in 2018, the Holocaust, such as it is, is over. In 2025, it is as emotionally relevant to the average individual on the planet as the Boxer Rebellion, the Sacking of Carthage, and the Battle of Manzikart, which is to say, no one alive today actually cares about it in the least. Surviving Boomers aside, it’s now a dead rhetorical letter.

Which, of course, is why those who are still trying to play that card are discovering, much to their surprise, the various ways doing so tends to backfire on them.

  • Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz laments to Jewish Federation that people are finding content from “Al Jazeera and Nick Fuentes” on social media and seeing videos of “the carnage in Gaza.” Holocaust education has backfired in part as people see Palestinians as Jews’ victims, she adds. “They think the lesson of the Holocaust is…you fight the big powerful people hurting the weak people.” The lesson they were supposed to get is that it gives Israel the right to commit genocide in perpetuity.
  • The Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles on Saturday took down an Instagram post that said, “‘Never Again’ can’t only mean never again for Jews.” The Jewish group lamented that the post was misinterpreted by some as a “political statement” reflecting the “ongoing situation” in “the Middle East” but “that was not our intent.”

The Gazacaust appears to have been a serious blunder by the Netanyahu regime, although it may simply be the same logic that applies to the current anti-semitism push and the anti-Iran campaigns by AIPAC, which is that time is running out on both a) Zionist influence and b) the power over which that influence is held, so however suboptimal the strategy might be, they’ve got to make use of that power before it ceases to be useful.

Either way, the Holocaust dies with the Boomers, and although a few people have been jailed or otherwise punished for their failure to believe that exactly six million people of a very specific ethnicity were killed by eagles, bears, medical experiments, and flaming roller coasters of death during a four-year period in the 1940s, no amount of propaganda and rhetorical appeals are going to convince anyone that being a fourth- or fifth-generation descendent of a survivor of those heinous historical acts grants one a lifetime license to subject other people to ethnic cleansing and genocide just because one’s great-great-grandfather’s relatives were subjected to it.

And for those who claim that it does, perhaps it would be well to keep in mind that we American Indians would obviously possess a much better claim on any such license than the descendants of survivors of much smaller, much shorter, much less comprehensive genocides.

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DEATH AND THE DEVIL hardcover

The hardcover edition of DEATH AND THE DEVIL is now available at Amazon, at Barnes and Noble, and your local bookstore. I also turned one of the stories, “Death and the Maiden”, into a song that you can listen to at AI Central if it happens to be of interest to you.

WHEN THE MAIDEN MEETS THE REAPER

Beneath Avignon’s ancient stones where mortals drink and dance,
A maiden stood inside of time, well-suited for romance
She glimpsed beyond the darkest veil where certainty takes form
The reaper in his fearsome grace, his presence strangely warm.
While others feared the final dark, she met his eyeless gaze,
And smiled upon that paradox: the end of numbered days.

Time and again, Death returned though duty didn’t call,
Compelled by something strange to gods both great and small
An immortal incarnation beyond mortality
She questioned him with humble words: “What troubles such as thee?”
No fear adorned her countenance, no reverence, no prayer—
Just a woman’s heart with a capacity to care

What strange communion finds the heart that sees its own eclipse?
What bride would seek eternity upon those bony lips?
The universe conspires in Creation’s cruel design
When the maiden meets the reaper, the last of the summer wine

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5GW is the New Reality

There can be no question that the nature of modern warfare has been fundamentally changed by the new advances in military technology:

The revelations from this frontline soldier, one who has the rare claim to have shot down an incoming Russian drone attacking her patients, are chilling.

“You have had encounters with Nato training teams. You’ve talked to Nato when you’ve been back in Europe. Do you think that they’re ready for the next war with Russia?” The Independent asks her.

“No. No, I’m honestly a little bit terrified,” she replies – after more than 40 months at war here.

She goes on to explain: “If you were to talk to Nato military officials, they would reassure you that everything is under control, they’re well equipped, they’re well prepared. But I don’t think anyone can be prepared for a conflict like this. I don’t think anyone can.

Maciorowski has undergone training with Nato forces in the last year and says what they taught was relevant to Afghanistan and Iraq – not Ukraine.

“When I went to train with Nato, the factor of drones was not really filtered in. It was very much the tactics that were learnt in the previous war. And these tactics now do not apply because you’re not making a linear assault.

“Everything has changed with drones. And I don’t think it was factored in, at least not in this training,” she says in her secret medical evacuation headquarters…

“We are changing the structure of the war on the go,” says Oleksandr Yabchanka, commander of a drone unit in the Da Vinci Wolves, part of the 59th Brigade.

“There is bad news for Ukraine and Europe. Russia is adapting just like us. It is a colossal threat and very underestimated in Europe.”

A spokesperson for the British-led programme Operation Interflex said that 61,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been trained for “putting them in the strongest possible position as they resist ongoing Russian attacks”.

He said that Ukrainian military experts and drone operators had served as consultants to train soldiers going to war and that 91 per cent of Ukrainian soldiers who completed Nato’s basic training “feel more confident of their survivability at the end of the training”.

However, a recent study by Jack Watling at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) warns that Nato needs to catch up with understanding that war has changed.

The advent of small, deadly drones, often flown with first-person vision (FPV), frequently guided by fibre-optic cables, and capable of pinpoint accuracy far beyond what were considered front lines, has transformed conflict. Nato doctrine focuses on what it calls “combined arms manoeuvre”. This means an emphasis on the concentration of aircraft, armour, infantry and artillery with the aim to surprise and overwhelm an enemy.

That doesn’t work any more.

Dr Watling explains that “pervasive networks and sensors have made the ability to achieve surprise difficult”. Known as battlefield transparency, the modern surveillance of battlefields means that an unexpected attack is almost impossible.

On top of that, “the ubiquity of precision weapons” makes concentrated forces vulnerable to “rapid attrition”.

Armoured vehicles, engineering equipment, electronics warfare kit – it can all be spotted and picked off with ease, and over long distances. This means that the front lines are wide, deep, shattered and almost empty of infantry.

If you want to better understand what’s happening in Ukraine and why NATO is totally unprepared for war with Russia, I strongly recommend reading my essay: The Fifth Generation of Modern War: Drones, Attrition, and the Collapse of the Logistics Sanctuary.

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Revolt in Mexico

An uprising against the Clown World government in Mexico:

Several thousand people took to the streets of Mexico City on Saturday to protest crime, corruption and impunity in a demonstration organized by members of Generation Z, but which ended with strong backing from older supporters of opposition parties.

The demonstration was mostly peaceful but ended with some young people clashing with the police. Protesters attacked police with stones, fireworks, sticks and chains, grabbing police shields and other equipment. The capital’s security secretary, Pablo Vázquez. said 120 people were injured, 100 of them police officers. Twenty people were arrested.

It appears that the mainstream media is attempting to minimize the extent and intensity of the protests.

  • CHAOS is breaking out as anti-cartel Mexicans breach the security wall in Mexico City. They were spotted calling President Sheinbaum “NARCO-PRESIDENT.” This is what happens when you let your country get hijacked by the cartels.
  • Battle in Mexico City. In the main square, Zócalo, while patriots battle with police protecting the Presidential Palace. Officers launch tear gas and bullets! . Mexico rises up against Sheinbaum!!
  • The Mexican anti-cartel Gen Z rebellion has reached Claudia Sheinbaum’s presidential palace in Mexico City. The crowd has torn down the wall she built a few days ago and is now trying to get past the riot police who have taken cover in an ancient Roman testudo (turtle) formation

It would appear that the Aztecs and the Argentines are considerably less inclined to submit to Jewish rule and its idiosyncracies than Americans, who for the most part have blithely accepted the limitations being imposed upon their God-given, Constitutionally-protected rights to have an opinion about past and present events and not engage in commerce with whom they please.

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China Warns Japan

The first female Prime Minister of Japan has already managed to seriously put her foot in it with regards to the island of Taiwan.

Japan will suffer a “crushing defeat” by the Chinese military if it tries to use force to intervene over Taiwan, China’s defense ministry said on Friday, ramping up the rhetoric over Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks about the island. Takaichi sparked a diplomatic row with Beijing with comments in parliament last week that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could amount to a “survival-threatening situation” and trigger a military response from Tokyo.

China’s top diplomat in Osaka shared a news article about Takaichi’s remarks about Taiwan on X and commented “the dirty neck that sticks itself in must be cut off”, prompting a protest from Japan’s embassy in Beijing to Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong.

Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Jiang Bin said that Takaichi’s words were extremely irresponsible and dangerous. “Should the Japanese side fail to draw lessons from history and dare to take a risk, or even use force to interfere in the Taiwan question, it will only suffer a crushing defeat against the steel-willed People’s Liberation Army and pay a heavy price,” Jiang said in a statement.

On Thursday, Sun summoned Japan’s Ambassador to China, Kenji Kanasugi, to lodge a “strong protest” over Takaichi’s remarks.

The Chinese have already issued a travel alert concerning Japan and the Foreign Ministry has made it clear that the new Prime Minister is an obvious concern of the Chinese government.

People’s Daily: Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said last week that the mainland’s use of force on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan. It’s reported that during Diet deliberations, Sanae Takaichi said her remark is in line with the government’s position and she will not retract it. What’s China’s comment?

Lin Jian: In the Diet last week, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made provocative remarks on Taiwan which imply the possibility of armed intervention in the Taiwan Strait. Despite China’s serious démarches and protests, she still refused to change course and take back what she had said. The wrongful remarks grossly violate the one-China principle, the guiding principles set forth in the four China-Japan political documents, and the basic norms of international relations. That constitutes a blatant interference in China’s internal affairs, a challenge to China’s core interests, and infringement on China’s sovereignty. China firmly opposes and will by no means tolerate such remarks. The Japanese side must correct its wrongdoing at once and retract the unjustified remarks. Otherwise, all the consequences arising therefrom must be borne by the Japanese side. 

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. It is also the 80th anniversary of the recovery of Taiwan. Japan committed innumerable crimes during its colonial rule in Taiwan. Over the last century, Japanese militarists have waged aggression more than once under the pretext of “survival-threatening situation.” For example, Japan brazenly created the September 18th Incident under the pretext of exercising the right of self-defense. Its aggression against China inflicted untold suffering on the people of China, the rest of Asia, and the wider world. What’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi up to by reviving the phrase “survival-threatening situation”? Is Japan going to repeat its past mistakes of militarism? Does Japan try to once again make enemy with the Chinese and other Asian people? Does Japan attempt to subvert the post-WWII international order?

Taiwan belongs to China. How to resolve the Taiwan question and realize national reunification is a matter for the Chinese people to decide and brooks no interference by any external force. The attempt by the leader of Japan to wade into cross-Strait affairs is a serious affront to international justice, a blatant provocation to the post-WWII order, and a great blow to China-Japan relations. If Japan dares to attempt an armed intervention in the cross-Strait situation, it would be an act of aggression and definitely meet a firm response from China. We will firmly exercise our right to self-defense under the U.N. Charter and international law and defend China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Our message to Japan is clear: Japan must fully repent for its war crimes, immediately stop its wrong and provocative statements and moves that interfere in China’s internal affairs, and stop playing with fire on the Taiwan question. Those who play with fire will perish by it!

It’s abundantly clear that the LDP did a deal with the Clown World devil in order to retain power despite its minority status, as both Takaichi and her predecessor aligned themselves and their party with Japan’s occupiers, who plan to use Japan as their primary fortress in Asia against China.

So, rather like Americans, the Japanese are desperate for a leader who will restore their demographics and instead find themselves saddled with another Clown World puppet pushing them into wars of zero interest for the people.

Because democracy…

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It is Good to Hate the Boomer

So, we’ve finally reached the first Boomer cartoon in the Hypergamouse series on Sigma Game. In less than FIVE MINUTES from the new post going live:

Boomers were generations in the making. You have the wrong target and your hatred will get you to a place you don’t want to be.

The Boomers simply never grew up. They’re entering their 80s now and they still can’t take any responsibility for their own collective actions across more than sixty years of putative adulthood. Our hatred is not at all misplaced; God himself hates the wicked. Moreover, He appears to harbor particular hate for wicked generations who don’t care for, or about, the succeeding generations.

The Boomers collectively denied the faith and are worse than infidels. So it should not be a surprise that the judgment of the younger generations is falling so hard on them. Or that, by and large, they remain wholly unrepentant.

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. – 1 Timothy 5:8

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Get Them Out Now

Donald Trump tells Britain and Europe to deport their migrants or lose their countries:

Speaking last night, Trump turned his attention to the immigration debate in the UK and said: ‘When you have people coming into your country and they’re bad people the wrong people it doesn’t work and it’s not working.

‘If you don’t get them out you’re not going to have a county left.’

Adding that immigration is ‘more important than inflation’ he said: ‘You have to take them out, you have to take them back immediately…

The President also hit out at Europe, saying it is ‘not the same place’ amid mass migration.

‘I’m saddened to see what happened in Europe with the immigration. I think above all else, the immigration, but the bad taxing policies,’ he said.

‘When you look at, you know, Europe is not the same place. I can’t say every place, but pretty much almost every place. 

The President is obviously not wrong, but his approach is still too little, too late, too civic nationalist. If the USA, the UK, and the European states are going to remain viable in a world of resurgent nationalism increasingly dominated by China and Russia, they are going to have to restore their demographic balances to something much more akin to what they were in the 1950s, prior to Windrush, the Gastarbeiten, and the Merkel migration.

Illegal immigrants are a problem. Legal immigration from incompatible nations, religions, and cultures is a much bigger one, particularly when it stems from nations that are larger than the invaded nation. That conservative “it’s not the immigration, it’s the illegality” was always evasive rhetoric that obscured the issue and allowed people to pretend they were addressing the problem when they were actually enabling it. Prioritizing being seen as being nice is neither an effective means of determining government policy nor is it a responsible one.

Some nations will restore their demographics, sooner or later. Some won’t, and those that don’t will disappear into the trash heap of history in a cloud of chaos, crime, and economic collapse.

It’s not a game. The Enlightenment progressive equalitarian philosophy is a complete and comprehensive failure. It’s time for everyone to stop pretending it provides any forms of moral imperative or even a functional basis for a civilized society.

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Nuclear Rhetoric

The man who lived by the meme is now dying by it.

It certainly cannot be argued that either the first or the second Trump administration has even begun to make the USA America again, much less make America great again.

This doesn’t mean it was wrong, stupid, or foolish to have had hope. It just means that most men fail in the end, regardless of what their intentions might have been.

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