We’re looking for a male narrator for The Missionaries. If you have a genuine posh English accent, or Australian accent, and you’re interested, shoot me an email. No American voice actors who can do accents for this one, please.
Author: VD
Milo corners Twitter
Either Twitter is desperate or they have some seriously incompetent lawyers handling @nero’s data request.:
Twitter attempted to dodge Milo Yiannopoulos’ data request by falsely claiming that he lives in the United States of America and is therefore ineligible to receive the information.
“Twitter International Company provides the Twitter Services to individuals who live outside the United States of America. We understand that you live in the United States,” said Twitter in their reply today, despite the fact that Yiannopoulos has permanent residence in the United Kingdom and remains a citizen there.
“As a result, we are not a data controller in respect of your personal data. Consequently, we will return your postal order, in the sum of €6.35, to you.”
Yiannopoulos replied shortly after, stating:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
I do not live in the United States. I am a permanent UK resident at the address listed on my letter, and a citizen of the United Kingdom.
You are clearly prevaricating by waiting until now to make this statement as opposed to making simple inquiries as to my country of residence.
Twitter has the choice of waiving the EUR 6.35 or paying the shipping and handling costs of sending a new money order, which will be EUR 7.
As a matter of interest, given that you have my UK address, where did you send the money order back to? To dispatch it to a UK address seems quite at odds with your proposition that I am a resident of the United States.
You have 21 days from the date of the original Subject Access Request to reply in full. This situation has not changed. I look forward to receiving the information requested within the time frame permitted by law.
Yours
Milo Yiannopoulos”
Seriously, who advised them to try to play that sort of ridiculous game? I’ve noticed that American companies often fail to take foreign courts very seriously, as if they assume they are merely some sort of state-level court that can be beaten at the federal level. No wonder so many of them end up paying massive fines.
I know for a fact that Milo’s been in London recently anyhow. It’s just a bizarre, time-wasting response by Twitter.
The fruits of cuckservative Churchianity
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
– Matthew 7:15-20
If an apple tree brings forth a withered pear, it is not a good apple tree, but a corrupt one. So it is with men.
There was a time when Americans considered America blessed by God. What sort of madman would dare to make that claim now?
UPDATE: the cartoon was created and commissioned by Faith and Heritage. Clearly an organization that understands the concept of good rhetoric.
Not so, however, with ‘cuckservative.’ Not only does it not suffer from the vagueries of its close equivalents; it also cuts much deeper because its targets cannot be in doubt. It lays finger on the more personal dimensions of treason – the relinquishment of one’s own house, wife, and children to invasive predators. The power of its poignancy lies in the fact that it highlights the abdication of a man’s most intimate duties. It brings home the implications of liberalism on border and race issues as violating the principle of 1 Timothy 5:8, disregard of one’s own family. It impugns the manhood of its subjects, and concomitantly any and all professions of a man’s Christian faith as well. So yes, the acerbic potency of this word is couched in the most basic allegiances and undergirded by the biblical understanding of familial duty. Even if it would seem indecipherably archaic to post-family Marxists, those yet anchored to traditional categories, however so tenuously, still comprehend the gravity and accuracy of the charge.
The caterwauling it has evoked from so many so-called conservatives is indicative of not only its power, but the identity of those to whom it most applies. As the old chestnut goes, “When you pitch a rock into a pack of dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit.” Its targets simply cannot be mistaken. Yes, they may cavil that allusions to cuckoldry are somehow just not cricket. But none putting on the most delicate Victorian airs presently ever imagined the term cuckold as improper before now; in the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or the whole roster of English literati since, it appears no one ever took the term ‘cuckold’ as unchristian, uncharitable, or inappropriate till the dawning of the age of the Social Justice Warrior and Neo-Christianity. Clearly, the reason so many Beltway Conservatives* balk at it is that it crystallizes the depth of their betrayal and heaps burning coals upon their heads.
I have to say, I kind of like these guys.
Discredit. Disqualify. Deplatform.
It’s interesting to see how cuckservatives and conservatives are rapidly adopting SJW tactics too. Unfortunately, like the good moderates they are, they’ve adopted them in order to utilize them against those whose side they claim to be. This little rant from Patrick Frey, who is attempting to convince Tom Woods to stop interacting with me, is a good example:
Patrick Frey [Original post 8/15/2016]
I know little about Vox Day, other than that he told my friend Ken White, a great man and free speech warrior who has also written courageously about his struggles with mental illness, to “get off the Internet for [his] own good” because “no place for the depressed, the bipolar, or the schizophrenic.” I know VD loves to beat his chest about how “ruthless” he is (“We won’t hesitate to strike at your vulnerabilities” is an actual quote — ooh! he’s going to unleash the dreaded Internet Attack on his enemies!) And now, VD is explaining how American nationalism is really White nationalism:I guess I’ll listen to Tom’s conversations with him, in which (so far) he manages to come across less like the rank jackass he has always been in his interactions with Ken White. But I’d really rather see Tom, whom I admire greatly, spending less time interacting with a guy who has acted like such a cretin online.
To be clear: I’m obviously not trying to tell Tom how to run his show. If he wants to give a platform to the likes of VD or Milo, that’s obviously his choice. I hope I can express my extreme dislike of these people forthrightly without it seeming like an attack on Tom — who, again, has added much of value to my life.
Seriously, though — just read through this blog post by Vox Day attacking my friend Ken White, and see if you can refrain from laughing at the way VD sells himself as Big Bad Tough Guy Vox Day. It really is tough to take this guy seriously.
Let me see if I have this straight. It is really tough to take me seriously, therefore it is imperative for Tom Woods to stop taking me talking to me lest he acquire unserious cooties or something. The threat of striking at one’s vulnerabilities is something to laugh at, but simply observing that a mentally unstable individual is, in fact, mentally unstable and is behaving in a manner indicative of mental instability, is an outrage to be decried.
Does he really think that Tom Woods, of all people, is liable to fall for this sort of nonsense?
Look, it’s not my fault that Ken White is mentally unstable. Nor is it my fault that, as a consequence of his being crazy, Ken White has repeatedly chosen to take unprovoked shots at me. It’s not as if I’m outing the poor guy as a whack job; if White hadn’t a) written about being institutionalized, and, b) taken unprovoked shots at Roosh, I wouldn’t know anything about it.
It’s not as if I read him or pay any attention to White. He may be back in the funny farm already for all I know.
What I do know is that I have absolutely no time for suggestions concerning with whom I should, or should not, associate myself. I’ve noticed that the bigger one’s platform becomes, the more people will try to hijack it and offer unsolicited guidance. I’ve had people try to talk me into disavowing Roosh, Louise Mensch, and more recently, Ricky Vaughan. But no matter who they are, my answer is always the same: no.
I pay no heed to thought police, speech police, tone police, or relationship police. Anyhow, I suspect Tom will be less than concerned about Patrick’s demands:
Tom Woods @ThomasEWoods
Social Justice Warriors: who they are, and how to deal with them — my conversation with @VoxDayTy & Aliyah @StopDividingUs7
And of course, typical supremacist making you pay to listen / view.Tom Woods @ThomasEWoods
Typical genius unable to press PLAY on a free podcast.Ty & Aliyah @StopDividingUs7
No, it requires viewers to download a bunch of your crap first. That is a heavy price to pay.Tom Woods @ThomasEWoods
No, it doesn’t. You are seriously inept. You just press the play button.
I’ll admit it. I laughed.
UPDATE: Patrick Frey is doing his best to create a wedge:
VD also says Tom Woods is “considerably less serious as an economist than I had imagined him to be” … again, watching a sort of middling intellect deem himself to be smarter than Woods and Sowell is amusing.
“Didja hear what Janey said about you, Tina? Didja hear?”
I don’t know how to break it to Mr. Frey, but based on my interactions with Mr. Sowell, I’m at least a standard deviation more intelligent than him. Tom Woods is quite sharp, and I have a lot of respect for him, but nevertheless, he’s not up to speed on free trade yet. There is no shame or insult in that; Ian Fletcher certainly got there before I did.
I have no doubt that Tom Woods will eventually as well.
Well, who needs roads?
Tell me again how immigration is good for the economy:
Migrants wielding bats and knives have been smashing up vehicles on roads near Calais as their owners sit in traffic, reportedly “just for fun”. Local residents are warning others to avoid the area, saying that the migrants are not even checking to see whether children are in the vehicles before they set upon them.
One resident has posted pictures to Facebook of her brother-in-law’s car, which sustained more than €500 worth of damage when over a dozen migrants set about it with bats, completely smashing a side mirror and the rear window, and shattering the windscreen.“You’re leaving work and then you’re attacked by migrant shits just for fun – it disgusts me!” commented Maëva Mayla, in a post which has been shared by more than 6,000 people.
“Tell your relatives so that they can avoid it happening to them,” she advises, before appealing for others who have experienced similar attacks to come forward so that they could mount a joint compensation claim.
A number of people have left comments of support, and expressing anger at the situation in Calais. Nathalie Brioit said it is “a shame they have all the rights,” while Marine Gabrielle confessed “I no longer use the highway as I’m so scared.”
Let reason and outdated economic theory be silent when experience contradicts it.
Debunking Snopes
A number of people have referred to the Snopes “debunking” of the Hiroshima-Detroit comparison, failing to realize that a) it doesn’t address blacks at all, and, b) I wrote my post in the first place because the supposed debunking was so feeble.
Here is an accurate summary of the Snopes argument.
1. The picture is not of modern-day Hiroshima.
the next image in the set supposedly depicts modern-day Hiroshima — except that it doesn’t. It’s actually a snapshot taken from the Landmark Tower Sky Garden in Yokohama, Japan
That’s true of the pictures to which Snopes was referring. It’s not true of the pictures I used, which one can see is clearly of past and present Hiroshima. Furthermore, Hiroshima is in very good shape today, as Snopes itself admits. One down.
2. The picture of modern Detroit is only of one building.
the thing to note about the use of this image to portray Detroit as a locus of Hiroshima-like devastation is that all we actually see is one long-abandoned, crumbling building. It doesn’t make the case.
That one picture doesn’t conclusively prove the case, but it correctly demonstrates the actual case intended. Detroit’s population is now 36.7 percent of its 1950s peak and is now 83 percent black. 95 percent of the whites who resided there in 1950 have left. The city filed for bankruptcy in 2013. “aerial photos reveal the tiny urban island that is left – a clutter of high-rises surrounded by empty housing plots now covered in grass.” Two down.
3. The picture of Navin Field is from the 1930s, not the 1940s.
Lastly, we’re shown a photo supposedly depicting Detroit in its mid-1940s heyday — except that it was taken in the mid-1930s
So what? That only makes it that much more clear how advanced Detroit was, and how far Detroit has fallen since. This is petty pedantry, as the relevant point is still demonstrated. Three down.
4. It was the Democrats fault, but it wasn’t only their fault.
Did Democrats and Democratic policies play some role in the fall of Detroit? Surely they did. Every Detroit mayor since 1962 has been a Democrat, after all. But Republicans held the seat for the 12 years prior to that, from 1950 through 1961. The Packard plant whose hollowed-out remains were displayed above closed its doors during that time. Whatever blame is to be allotted to politicians must be shared by both Democrats and Republicans on the national level, as well.
Here is a tip: when you admit that the case being made is correct, even in part, it is not a debunking. Four down. There is not one single effective point that was made in this so-called “debunking”.
The ironic thing about those responding to my modified Detroit-Hiroshima comparison with “Snopes says” is that I rebutted the cuckservative “Democrat policies” explanation for the difference between the two cities more effectively than Snopes did by pointing out that if Democrats are responsible for the decline of Detroit, Hiroshima should be even worse, because it was ruled by Socialists for most of the latter half of the 20th century.
Are there other factors that have contributed to the decline of Detroit beyond the fact that 478,112 blacks moved into the city between 1900 and 1960? Certainly. But that doesn’t change the fact that if a city has a choice between being hit by an atomic bomb or acquiring 774,485 new black residents, the available evidence strongly indicates that the former will prove vastly preferable to the latter in the long term.
Book of the Week
VFM, can you get me the contact information for Simon Nicholas Hawke? Preferably telephone, but I’ll settle for email. I can find his street address, but telephone numbers are restricted to IP addresses outside the USA. I cannot believe this guy’s books are not all in print. I loved the Time Wars books when I was younger; the first one, The Ivanhoe Gambit, is this week’s Book of the Week.
Reality TV and the fall of civilization
James Delingpole observes that troglodyte culture matters even to the highbrow, because politics is downstream of culture, in The Spectator:
‘But why do you even care about this crap?’ people sometimes ask me. They’re the same sort of people who, were they living in Rome circa 476, would be congratulating themselves on how bloody marvellous aqueducts and hypocausts and testudo formations are. Yes indeed. But that was then and unfortunately we’re living in now. The barbarians are through the gates, imposing their weird, alien values, but the forces of civilisation are holding their noses and looking the other way because they find modern culture so vulgar, ugly and incomprehensible.
What I think should trouble us most about the Biggins eviction is the perverse moral inversion it represents. Instead of inhabiting a universe where sticks and stones may break our bones but words can never hurt us, we’ve been ushered into one where the language you use carries more weight than the way you behave. As a writer and English literature graduate I ought to be delighted by this — except that the new rule seems to have been invented by incredibly thick people with no sense of tone, nuance or context.
At the time of the Leveson inquiry, there were lots of wise, nicely turned, historically literate articles in civilised journals about the importance of free speech and how defending it must of necessity include protecting the right to offend. The problem is that the only people who read them were clever, sensible, well-balanced types like us. Unfortunately, we’re not the ones who make the rules.
Why do you think the Big Brother bosses axed Biggins? They’re rather less concerned about what Mick Hume, Claire Fox, Douglas Murray or Nick Cohen might write in an erudite essay on the significance of Areopagitica and the importance of ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ than they are about what a noisy minority of pigshit-thick but Taleban-zealous social justice warriors might say on social media.
This is why it matters when the Hugo Awards anoint mediocre SJW detritus as the best that the field has to offer. This is why it matters that we tear down the gatekeepers, we tear down the SJW-infested institutions, and we replace them with new ones. This is why it matters when even people we despise are attacked by those who seek to control them and us, and why it is important for us to defend them regardless of how we might feel about them.
Delingpole understands this, but then, he is demonstrably well-read on the subject.
How do we resist this loathsome trend? Well, the first step is to acknowledge that it’s happening; and the second is to create a stink. I’d highly recommend reading Vox Day’s SJWs Always Lie, which outlines how these activists operate (‘point and shriek’, ‘isolate and swarm’) and then describes how to defeat them. Absolutely key is refusing to let these malign professional grievance-mongers set the terms of the debate.
And we’re not. Read the whole thing. Have you noticed that the Alt-Right is beginning to drive the public discourse on a few small issues here and there? That’s just the start. The mainstream media is on its heels, forced to respond to the issues that are being raised by a new generation of social media that is filling the role that AM talk radio once did. The difference is that while the talk radio guys were still subject to gatekeepers in the form of station owners and the FCC, we are only limited by the potential biases of Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Also, an AM signal doesn’t carry very far, but the Internet reaches to the ends of the Earth.
Castalia New Releases
This is a very good time to sign up for the Castalia House New Release mailing list if you don’t subscribe to it already, as we have at least three books coming out in the next four weeks, and we regularly offer free bonus books to subscribers who buy new releases on the first two days of publication.
We don’t spam, we don’t sell email addresses, and we only send out emails when we have a new release coming out. So, if you are interested in one or more of our authors, from Tom Kratman, John C. Wright, and Jerry Pournelle to Nick Cole, Peter Grant, and Rod Walker, I’d encourage you to sign up for it.
All you have to do is enter your email and hit Subscribe. It will take you to a page informing you that you will receive an email asking you for confirmation; it can take up to 10 minutes for the confirmation email to arrive, so don’t resubscribe if it doesn’t show up right away.
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Reinventing the tank
There isn’t going to be any ground war in Russia. There had better not be, anyway:
Russian experiences in Ukraine—where both sides are using upgraded Soviet-built tanks and anti-tank weapons—have shown that despite the best active, reactive and passive armor available, a tank will eventually be penetrated. “We discovered that no matter how skillful the crew, the tank would get up to ten hits,” Pukhov said during a luncheon at the Center for the National Interest in Washington, D.C.—which is the foreign policy think-tank that publishes The National Interest—on July 26. “Even if you have perfect armor—active, passive. In one case it will save you from one hit, in another case from two hits, but you’ll still get five hits and you’re done. That’s why now you’re supposed to have some kind of Tank 2.0.”
The Tank 2.0, as Pukhov describes it, is not the T-14 Armata—which despite its advanced unmanned turret and active protection systems—is still a more or less a conventional tank design. “I know Russians are thinking about this new tank and this tank is not Armata,” Pukhov said. “It’s what we call among us Boyevaya Mashina Podderzhki Tankov [Tank Support Fighting Machine]—but in fact it’s not a Podderzhki Tankov, but which can protect itself. So there is a serious debate about it.”
Later, during a one-on-one interview at the Center the same day, I asked Pukhov to elaborate on the Tank 2.0 concept. Pukhov said that traditionally, infantry has protected tanks—particularly in built up urban areas—but given the speed of modern armored vehicles, that is no longer possible in many cases. But while during previous eras tanks were more or less protected against weapons like rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles, the latest generation of those weapons can punch through even the toughest armor.
What should alarm Western planners is that the Russians are rapidly transforming their military into a much more effective one than its larger, cumbersome Soviet predecessor. In both Ukraine and Syria, both air and ground arms have proven to be very effective; the swamp-them-with-numbers approach is clearly a thing of the past.
This wouldn’t be a problem, of course, if the Bush-Obama administrations hadn’t sought to make them an enemy rather than an ally in the Third Wave of Islamic Expansion.