#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
Argentina have won the World Cup. Congratulations to the Albiceleste and their fans. It’s good to see a national team that actually represents its nation win, instead of the team that represents the state that successfully imports the best Africans. And while it was a fun and exciting tournament, one is left with one conclusion.
Too many penalties. So many penalties.
The game really should not be designed to encourage teams to build their offense around playing for fouls in the box.
On the sixth day of Christmas, John Bradley gave to me: a promise he can’t possibly keep.
Days Left: 7
% of Goal: 196.0 percent
% of Stretch Goal: 97.9 percent
Backers: 342
If we hit the stretch goal, I will post the second chapter of MIDNIGHT’S WAR: Out of the Shadows here.
UPDATE: And thanks to the backers, the first stretch goal has been unlocked! On Monday, I will post the second chapter here and a limited edition hardcover of MIDNIGHT’S WAR: Out of the Shadows, a 30,000-word novel set in the Midnight World, will be offered as an add-on. You can read the first chapter here.
Michael Hudson explains the basic operation of what passes for Clown World’s economic system in an interview:
MEGA Radio: In your new book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism, or Socialism you state that the world economy is now fracturing between two parts, the United States and Europe is the dollarized part. And this Western neoliberal unit is driving Eurasia and most of the Global South into a separate group. You just stated this in an interview from November. Could you explain this for our outlet?
Michael Hudson: The split is not only geographic but above all reflects the conflict between Western neoliberalism and the traditional logic of industrial capitalism. The West has deindustrialized its economies by replacing industrial capitalism with finance capitalism, initially in an attempt to keep its wages down by moving abroad to employ foreign labor, and then to try and establish monopoly privileges and captive markets or arms (and now oil) and high-technology essentials, becoming rentier economies.
A century ago, industrial capitalism was expected to evolve into industrial socialism, with governments providing subsidized basic infrastructure services (such as health care, education, communication, research and development) to minimize their cost of living and doing business. That is how the United States, Germany and other countries built up their industrial power, and it also is how China and other Eurasian countries have done so more recently.
But the West’s choice to privatize and financialize its basic infrastructure, dismantling the role of government and shifting planning to Wall Street, London and other financial centers, has left it with little to offer other countries – except or the promise not to bomb them or treat them as enemies if they seek to keep their wealth in their own hands instead of transferring it to U.S. investors and corporations.
The result is that when China and other countries build up their economies in the same way that the United States did from the end of its Civil War to World War II, they are treated as enemies. It is as if U.S. diplomats see that the game is lost, and that their economy has become so debt-ridden, privatized and high-cost that it cannot compete, that it simply hopes to keep making other countries dependent tributaries for as long as it can until the game finally is over.
If the U.S. succeeds in imposing financial neoliberalism on the world, then other countries will end up with the same problems that the United States is experiencing.
Read the whole thing. It’s really good and it even references Crusader Kings. And Hudson points out that the cruelest thing Russia can do to Europe is not to invade it, but rather, to abandon it to the rapacious rule of the US financial elite.
If you take the ticket, you’re not going to be celebrating Christmas much longer.
Harry and Meghan’s ‘paper free’ ‘holiday season’ card features a glitzy black-and-white photo from the night they received an award for opposing ‘structural racism’ in the Royal Family but fails to include any mention of Christmas.
It’s very telling that the most staunch opponents of “racism” are just as opposed to Christmas. And it’s not a coincidence. Never trust anyone or any organization that makes a point of evading the celebration of the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
None of this sort of thing is accidental. It is always purposeful signaling, and if you pay attention to it, you will seldom be surprised when the bad actors eventually reveal themselves.
On the fifth day of Christmas, John Bradley gave to me: one snow-white dream.
Okay, for once, it wasn’t the vaxx. Or at least, it probably wasn’t the vaxx:
A huge aquarium exploded inside a German hotel today, injuring two people and filling the lobby with 1,500 fish and a million litres of water. The 46ft-high tank in the foyer of the Radisson Blu hotel in central Berlin burst at around 5.50am.
The incident at the AquaDom aquarium left two people suffering injuries from glass shards and caused ‘incredible maritime damage’, German police said.
The explosion filled the hotel lobby with over a million litres of water and 1,500 tropical fish. The leaking water reached the outside of the complex, prompting police to close a nearby street.
I stayed there about 10 years ago for a technology event that was being held there. The aquarium absolutely towered over the lobby; it was massively gigantic and I can’t even fathom what it must have been like to see it explode.
Press F for the 1,500 fish.
There is not, and there has never been, any such thing as a right to free speech or freedom of expression. And we’re seeing how false the pretense that there is again now that Elon Musk is kicking a few journalists off of Twitter.
Evil always plays by the principle of “rules for thee but not for me”. It will switch from “free speech absolutism” to “there is no place for hate speech” in a blink of an eye depending upon whom is being affected. This is why there was never any reason to permit the Enlightenment war against Christianity, and in particular, the “free speech” campaign against the Christian blasphemy laws, which was the entire purpose of that campaign from the very start.
If you don’t believe me, read A HISTORY OF THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT by historian JB Bury, who was not only a great historian and the editor of THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY SERIES, but a strong and effective champion of Enlightenment principles.
On the fourth day of Christmas, John Bradley gave to me: a ballad in two-part harmony
It’s official. You’re anti-semitic.
As for me, I am opposed to equality in all its forms. And I will certainly enjoy informing the next virtue-signaling individual waxing on about how he doesn’t judge people by race, creed, or color that he is, officially, an anti-semite.
Let’s face it, for all its lunatic awfulness, sometimes Clown World can be amusing.