Author: VD

Veniunt, Infamaverunt, Mortui Sunt

Another platform for hit pieces aimed at the Big Bear and me is headed for the dustbin of history:

The Daily Beast is gutting its senior editorial team after implementing voluntary buyouts last month, with nearly 70% of unionized staffers leaving the outlet, TheWrap has learned.

The senior staffers taking buyouts include media reporter Justin Baragona, political investigations reporter Jose Pagliery, senior national reporter Pilar Melendez, senior reporter Emily Shugerman, and more, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation. Twenty-five unionized staffers took the buyouts, equivalent to nearly 70% of the guild, including almost all of the outlet’s senior staffers.

Additionally, non-union editorial staffers are expecting another round of layoffs at the end of the month. “We’re currently watching the collapse of The Beast,” the individual told TheWrap. “There is no doubt the site won’t be able to recover from this.”

They come, they slander, and then they die.

It’s rather amusing to see how they always assume they are powerful and influential enough to discredit, deplatform, and destroy us, and yet they’re not even capable of surviving without being constantly propped up with someone else’s money.

Our organic and unauthorized community of Dread Ilk and Bears, along with our allies in the Razorforce and the rest of the Unauthorized, is observably stronger, more resilient, and longer-lived than these organizations that are founded by billionaires, lavishly funded, and massively supported by their fellow media organs. Which is why their inevitable demises are worth celebrating when they occur.

At this point, I won’t be surprised if we outlast The Guardian, founded in 1821, despite it being the beneficiary of a massive trust fund. The Guardian stopped reporting its daily circulation in 2021 after falling from 161,152 in March 2016 to 105,134 in July 2021, and is now estimated to have a circulation of only 60,000.

Who’s Next?

UPDATE: Owen comments: “Yeah, bludgeoning is the go-to for a bear.”

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How Clown World Lost the Plot

The answer is that the retarded second- and third-generation elites genuinely believe the falsehoods that their evil, but more intelligent predecessors preached:

In May 2023, Reuters reported that the EU had approved $1.61 billion to buy out Dutch farmers whose cattle were deemed overly enthusiastic with their belching, peeing, and defecating. The farmers then started a political party called the Farmer-Citizen movement, backing the anti-establishment Geert Wilders, whose party won the general elections in November 2023, then went on to a second place finish (and a six seat gain) in the EU vote.

In Germany, as farmers and truckers gathered at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to protest the EU establishment’s crushing bureaucracy on everything from climate change to Ukraine, the misplaced priorities and inability to make ends meet resonated so loudly with the average German that 69% of them backed the protest movement – which would explain the second place finish of the anti-establishment party (the AfD) attacked by the establishment as being in cahoots with the farmers. Turns out that a whole lot of Germans were, too.

In France, 90% of voters backed French farmer protests and were disgusted when Macron showed up at the annual Paris International Agricultural Fair with a bunch of riot squad goons who unloaded their tear gas on presumably innocent cows (although who knows, maybe they were silently setting off some planet-killing farts) while he ran from an initial confrontation with angry farmers. And well, what do you know. It turns out that 90% support for the farmers roughly translated into 93% of French communes voting for the National Rally in the EU elections.

Surely it’s all just a big coincidence. Who knew that messing with people’s food and livelihood while focusing on costly ideological priorities that are mainly of interest to the little elite cabal in charge would ever be the recipe for regime change?

And speaking of self-inflicted wounds that the clowns are inflicting upon themselves, a rather big financial bomb just went off in Japan.

Today the proverbial canary stepped on a neutron bomb inside the Japanese coalmine, because according to Nikkei, Norinchukin Bank “will sell more than 10 trillion yen ($63 billion) of its holdings of U.S. and European government bonds during the year ending March 2025 as it aims to stem its losses from bets on low-yield foreign bonds, a main cause of its deteriorating balance sheet, and lower the risks associated with holding foreign government bonds.”

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The Next Library Serial

Yesterday marked the end of the successful 116-part serialization of Sir Charles Oman’s STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, which ended with an intriguing take on the iconoclastic brilliance of the Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley by Sir Oman.

He knew what was expected of him: “I am the Duke of Wellington, and must do as the Duke of Wellington doth”, was one of his touches of sardonic humour. But it was also one more indication of the fact that he regarded an inflexible adherence to his own peculiar code of duty as the highest obligation.

But above all, to thine own self be true,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

In the aftermath of the completion of the STUDIES, we want to know which Library or History book you would like to see serialized next on the Castalia Library substack. Please feel free to share your opinion on the matter by voting for one of the four selections in the next 24 hours. The serialization will be announced and begin tomorrow. And if you haven’t subscribed yet to the substack, you really should consider doing so, since it is free.

Library and History subscribers debate the next serialization.

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RIP Willie Mays

Willie Mays was a genus of one. He was a bolt of lightning, a game-changing force of athleticism and beauty on the diamond that snapped you to attention. There is no second strike of his kind of lightning. The likes of Willie Mays were seen never before and will never be seen again. Mays passed away at age 93 Tuesday, just two days before he and his fellow Negro Leaguers are to be honored at a game between the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field. Opened Aug. 18, 1910, Rickwood is the oldest ballpark in America. It is the Mother Church of baseball. It is the cradle of the career of the greatest all-around player who ever lived. And now it is where we say goodbye.

Willie Mays haunted my teen years. Not because I watched baseball, but because my younger brother loved a song called “Say Hey Willie” that was sung by some little kid. No sooner did we get into our Oldsmobile station wagon – the white one with the fake wood panels – than he would start calling “Willie, Willie!” And so we’d have to listen to it three or four times every time we got in the car to go anywhere.

Total nightmare. But I did read up on Willie Mays as a result of wondering why there was this song about a baseball player, so it wasn’t a total loss. Requiescat in pace Willie.

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Why Putin Waits

Simplicius explains why the Russians are in no hurry to finish off the Ukrainian resistance:

Everyone understands the dry points of Putin’s demands, which he has articulated over the course of months, about deNazification, keeping to current battlefield gains and ‘realities’, etc. But the single most important point which has flown completely under the radar, and which I believe is actually the very heart of Putin’s proposal, is hinted at in the earlier video where he says that mere ‘ceasefires’ are inadequate, and that he is seeking a permanent solution of some kind.

He didn’t specify there, but he has before—multiple times. What Putin alludes to is that in order to end the Ukrainian war for good, Russia will take no less than a re-working of the entire European security framework. This is why he harps on Zelensky’s illegitimacy, it’s because Putin wants to build up to the fact that there must be a far larger, overriding framework of guarantors which is immutable and inviolable, rather than flimsy and ephemeral like Zelensky.

What Putin is seeking is revolutionary: he wants to re-establish a whole new, modern Westphalian Peace. He wants the Ukrainian war to be the linchpin of a new global security system that plays into all the recent BRICS declarations of ‘reworking the UN’ and every other major global institution. Putin wants to reshape how the entire international system functions vis-a-vis their security relationships; in essence, it would be the first new concrete paradigm of the post-Cold War and ‘Iron Curtain’ era.

So for all those people who are asking: what is the ultimate price Putin is willing to pay to give up Russia’s maximalist aims in Ukraine—would he do it for the basic terms of demilitarization, no joining NATO, and all that? Not likely: because there is no way to guarantee Ukraine’s adherence to any such agreements. The only way to end the war would be a reworking of the entire system in such a way as to give Russia credible confidence in the new system holding indefinitely. It would take, as I said, a new Westphalian framework that institutionalizes new, much broader realities of what countries can and cannot do in overreaching via provocative actions against one another. If you really listen to Putin’s speeches and statements on this issue, this is the secret he’s intimating—though not very loudly or aggressively, for now. The reason for that is likely because he knows it’s too ambitious of an opening ‘ask’, and he would prefer to first lure the parties in via basic conditions before escalating it to the logical conclusion when it comes to the issue of: how do we realistically guarantee such conditions between parties?

This is why Putin is likely in no great rush to end the war: in order to effect such an ambitious world-reshaping plan, he knows the current political class has to first be waited out.

As I’ve been pointing out from the beginning, Putin knows he’s not at war with Ukraine. He’s not even at war with the USA or the West. He’s at war with Clown World, and there are safer, easier ways to defeat his enemies than to wade through literal continents of armies to do so. He understands, as does Xi, that time is on his side.

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Another Reason to Subscribe

Folio Society is celebrating… something.

We want to hear about your LGBTQ+ recommendations

One of the greatest comforts reading can offer is the feeling of being seen, whether in the form of fiction or true stories.

We’d like to do our part in amplifying voices and connecting more readers with stories that have moved them.

So in celebration of Pride month, we’re asking you which LGBTQ+ books and authors you’d like to see as Folio collectibles. Editor’s Pick:

Conundrum

A memoir of identity and belonging, and the pain, joy and discovery that the journey from man to woman entailed.

From the team at Folio, Happy Pride!

I’d very much like to see Folio do an edition of Space Raptor Butt Invasion by award-winning author Chuck Tingle. If any work embodies the spirit of Pride, it’s that epic and inclusive tale of interspecies love in space. But failing that, Moira Greyland’s The Last Closet would be my recommendation.

It’s not going to get any better going forward, because the lunatics aren’t just running the asylum, they literally own it now. If you want to help us defeat the complete convergence and eventual demolition of the deluxe book industry, there are three things you can do:

  1. Subscribe to a Library, History, or Libraria subscription.
  2. Buy a leather book from Arkhaven or NDM Express.
  3. Subscribe to Castalia Library or the forthcoming Signature Society.

Speaking of NDM Express, the first t-shirt of the month has been announced and it is the very handsome Castalia History LEGO ERGO SCIO shirt.

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Green Flag Confirmed

Netanyahu and the Israeli government knew all about the planned Hamas attacks, but permitted them to take place without warning the Israeli public or permitting the IDF to stop them:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned in mid-September that Hamas was planning to invade the country and capture more than 200 hostages, Israel’s Kan broadcaster reported on Monday.

Three weeks before Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7, the IDF’s intelligence directorate compiled a report stating that the Palestinian militants were training for a large-scale invasion of the Jewish state, Kan has claimed, citing anonymous security sources. The document allegedly warned that dozens of Hamas commandos would take part in the raid, which would be aimed at bringing between 200 and 250 hostages back to Gaza.

Several thousand Hamas fighters carried out the actual October 7 assault, killing around 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages back to Gaza.

According to Kan’s sources, Hamas members had been spotted practicing attacks on mock IDF outposts, rehearsing how to capture military and civilian hostages, and training how to handle the captives once they were detained in Gaza. The document reportedly made its way to senior officials in the IDF’s Gaza Division, but was “completely ignored,” Kan stated.

Kan is not the first source to claim that Israel was forewarned about the October 7 attack. Within days of the assault, Egyptian intelligence officials said that they had repeatedly warned the Israeli government that Hamas was planning “something big” in the days leading up to October 7, but that these warnings were ignored in West Jerusalem.

As to why Netanyahu allowed the attacks to take place, we can only speculate. But Occam’s Razor strongly suggests that the Hamas attacks were permitted in order to give the Israeli government an excuse to whip up support for ethnically cleansing Gaza of the resident Palestinians.

Which raises some fascinating historical questions. After all, if the Israeli government was willing to sacrifice thousands of lives in exchange for Gaza, how many lives were the Zionists of the 1930s and 1940s willing to sacrifice in order to be granted a claim to Palestine?

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Believing Their Own Word-Magic

Morgoth observes that the insane retardery of Clown World has now gone from redefining invaders as refugees and Pakistani rapists as English grooming gangs to a very dangerous redefinition of war as not-war:

It is stated quite clearly by a left-leaning, neoliberal outlet that there should be no brakes whatsoever on action taken against Russia because they’re all talk and no punch. Yet, the entire reason we’re in this mess is precisely because Russia invaded Ukraine in the teeth of Western opposition and condemnation. The reality of what is being proposed here is bombing campaigns inside Russia, including Russian cities, using weapons and aircraft supplied directly by Western powers, including personnel.

However, if we just play fast and loose with the definitions and framing, it will lose its bite; we can spin it a bit so the Western public can consume it more handily. It is hardly novel to highlight the degree to which Western journalists and politicians exist within their own bubble; now, they’re convincing themselves, entombing themselves within a narrative, that they can treat Russia however they like.

Niland certainly isn’t a lone voice. Establishment figures such as Boris Johnson have angrily demanded the West give Ukraine everything it needs to stay in the fight; the block was always that Russia is a nuclear power and allied with China. The evolving narrative is that Putin just talks a lot, and he won’t retaliate whatever we do. It is the logic of the drunk driver convincing himself he’s good for another four pints because he had a hearty dinner — it’s convenient bullshit rather than a reflection of reality.

I’m by no means a Putin fanboy; the camp I’m sitting in is the “anti-dying slowly in a cloud of nuclear fallout camp”. Putin is no stranger to weaving bullshit narratives himself. After all, he never even “invaded” Ukraine; he conducted a “special military operation”. The more we in the West convince ourselves, or are told by our betters, that Russia can be attacked with impunity, the more it will be. The more Russia is attacked, the greater the chance of retaliation because the Russian people will demand it.

Yet, astonishingly, Western establishment politicians and journalists are unable to see and understand basic logic in the same way they managed to convince themselves or compartmentalise foreign rape gangs or that a piece of paper doesn’t make a Somalian Irish.

Once you start believing lies in the face of the observable truth, you have no control over when to stop because you no longer have the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, or reality from your own wishful thinking.

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Gearing Up for War

China is rapidly producing and deploying nuclear weapons:

According to the SIPRI report published on Sunday, the US and Russia are by far the largest nuclear powers, possessing nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. However, China is “expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country,” according to Hans M. Kristensen, associate senior fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program. SIPRI’s findings indicate that Beijing’s nuclear arsenal grew from 410 to 500 warheads between January 2023 and January 2024.

The report concludes that “China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade, although its stockpile of nuclear warheads is still expected to remain much smaller than the stockpiles of either of those two countries.”

China has much greater industrial capacity than either the US or Russia, so its stockpile of ICBMs and nuclear warheads will eventually surpass both. Also, the state of the US military’s nuclear weapons is unknown, but it is unlikely to be any better than the state of its conventional weapons.

This doesn’t mean China is intending to nuke anyone, but it’s clear that they have no intention of again being subject to the sort of treatment they received from Britain, France, the USA, and Japan during their “Century of Humiliation”. Especially since they know perfectly well that the West’s foreign rulers possess absolutely no sense of justice or fair play.

I hear a lot of people say, “Americans have eavesdropped on the German Chancellor Merkel. They have stolen data from around the world, as we learnt from Edward Snowden. Why worry about Huawei when the Americans do exactly the same?” What do you say to this?

Well, [chuckles]. A former head of the Central Intelligence Agency told me it’s a matter of whether we steal everybody’s data or the Chinese steal everybody’s data. And don’t you prefer having the Americans steal your data?

Actually, no. China doesn’t have hundreds of military bases all over the planet. China didn’t financially rape Russia in the 1990s. China isn’t driving the entire West into economic ruin or forcing its puppet regime in Kiev to keep sending Ukrainians into the abbatoir of the Donbass. Fucking Clown World… Every day is always Day Zero and they are always the purest of hearts with the best intentions who never did nothing bad to nobody.

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