Category: Uncategorized

Descent into post-civilization

This may explain why it is so hard to get diseases under control in Africa:

Four members of a family the U.S. Ebola patient was staying with were confined to their Texas home under armed guard Thursday as the circle of people possibly exposed to the virus widened and Liberian authorities said they would prosecute the man for allegedly lying on an airport questionnaire.

The unusual confinement order was made after the family was “noncompliant” with a request not to leave their apartment, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

Texas State Health Commissioner David Lakey said the confinement would help ensure the relatives can be closely watched, including checking them for fevers over the next three weeks.

“We didn’t have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to,” he said.

Several days of food have been delivered to the apartment. The family will not be allowed to receive visitors, officials said.

And so much for the idea that airport questionnaires are an adequate substitute for quarantines and travel bans.

The cost of foreign interventions

Take these numbers and cram them down the throats of everyone who declares the USA absolutely has to intervene in the latest round of Levantine slaughter:

By the end of the year, Congress will have appropriated more money for Afghanistan’s reconstruction, when adjusted for inflation, than the United States spent rebuilding 16 European nations after World War II under the Marshall Plan.

A staggering portion of that money — $104 billion — has been mismanaged and stolen. Much of what was built is crumbling or will be unsustainable. Well-connected Afghans smuggled millions of stolen aid money in suitcases that were checked onto Dubai-bound flights. The Afghan government largely turned a blind eye to widespread malfeasance. Even as revelations of fraud and abuse stacked up, the United States continued shoveling money year after year because cutting off the financial spigot was seen as a sure way to doom the war effort.

As the Pentagon winds down its combat mission there at the end of the year, it’s tempting to think of the Afghan war as a chapter that is coming to an end — at least for American taxpayers. But, as things stand, the United States and its allies will continue paying Afghanistan’s bills for the foreseeable future. That commitment was solidified Tuesday as the American ambassador in Kabul and Afghanistan’s security adviser signed a bilateral security agreement that will keep a small contingent of NATO troops there for at least two years.

The United States and NATO partners recently agreed to spend $5.1 billion a year to pay for the army and police, until at least 2017. Western donors are expected to continue to give billions more for reconstruction and other initiatives, recognizing that Afghanistan won’t be weaned off international aid anytime soon. In fact, the government appears to be broke.

The actual figure is $109 billion. That is nearly $1,000 per taxpayer. And what did you get for your money? It’s one thing to say “we must do this” or “we must do that”. But then, recollect that it’s going to cost you over $1,000 in order to feel good about pretending to prevent one group of murderous foreigners from killing another group of foreigners, who not infrequently were previously murdering the other group.

And, of course, that doesn’t count the $42.50 you’ll be spending every year on the Afghan army and police. Or the social and economic costs of importing the inevitable allies and refugees to the USA and settling them there.

Superversivity

An important essay by Tom Simon:

For about a hundred years now, ever since the First World War broke the confidence of Western civilization, it has been fashionable to praise subversion. Art, music, and literature, as many of the critics tell us, are not supposed to go chasing after obsolete values like truth or beauty; they are supposed to shock, to wound, to épater les bourgeois – to subvert the values of society. Here is a fairly typical example, from the literary critic, John Grant: 

It must meddle with our thinking, it must delight in being controversial, it must hope to be condemned by authority (whatever authority one chooses to identify), it must be at the cutting edge of the imagination, it must flirt with madness, it must surprise.

Grant is prescribing goals for fantasy, but the same demand has been heard in every genre and every art form, much to the harm of the arts. Most people don’t share Grant’s ideological preoccupations; they see the arts not as vehicles of propaganda, but as entertainment. Trying to get yourself condemned by authority may be good sophomoric fun while you are doing it, but it makes a dull spectator sport. Considered as entertainment, it has no virtue except novelty; and it has not been novel since about the 1920s. This is one reason why the ‘serious’ arts see their audiences shrinking year after year, until they are only maintained in precarious existence by public subsidy.

Part of the trouble comes from that apparently blank cheque, ‘whatever authority one chooses to identify’. In practice, this always means the same authority: the ghost of Mrs. Grundy, the narrow-minded, puritanical, bourgeois authority that lost most of its power in 1914, and does not exist at all anymore. If you rebel against a different authority – the Chinese Communist Party, or the rulers of militant Islam – you will not find the critics so approving. They will call you reactionary or even neocon, and the hand of Buzzfeed will be raised against you.

For the world of art and literature is largely dominated by the Left, and the Left is dominated by people whose world-view is inherited from their great-grandfathers. In this view, we need labour unions to defend us against the peril of child labour, Big Government to defend us against Standard Oil. America is one false move away from theocracy and Jim Crow; Europe is one false move away from another World War. Nothing can save us except a wonderful new panacea called Socialism, which has never been tried before, and with which nothing can possibly go wrong. These, in the main, are the ideas of the Left even today; and the people who believe these things have the nerve to call themselves Progressives.

They call for progress; but they are still trying to progress from 1914 into 1915. They call for subversion; but the thing they are trying to subvert no longer exists.

Superversivity is an important concept. It is the philosophy of the builder rather the destroyer. It is the ideal of those opposed to the pinkshirts, to the SJWs, to the de facto Chantry Guild that infests every modern institution and organization and pasttime that seeks to disqualify, redirect, and destroy everyone and everything that is insufficiently supportive of their societal subversion.

It is our job to build Western civilization’s intellectual redoubt and ensure that the next generation is even more resistant to the poison than we are. Because eventually, the infestation will burn itself out and collapse due to its internal illogic and inconsistencies.

I have but one criticism of Mr. Simon’s piece. He implies that the neocons are the enemies of the Left. This is not true. Neoconservatism has always been of the Left and is, in itself, a form of subversion.

A new spin on “Homeschool or Die”

Dallas parents are pulling their kids out of school rather than risk further exposure to Ebola:

Parents rushed to get their children from school Wednesday after
learning that five students may have had contact with the Ebola patient
in a Dallas hospital, as Gov. Rick Perry and other leaders reassured the
public that there is no cause for alarm. The patient, identified
by The Associated Press as Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, arrived in
the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit family. Dallas County Health and Human
Services Director Zachary Thompson said county officials suspect that 12
to 18 people may have had contact with Duncan.

“Right now, the
base number is 18 people, and that could increase,” he said. Thompson
said more details are expected by Thursday afternoon. The number
includes five students at four schools, Dallas school district
Superintendent Mike Miles said.

“This case is serious,” Perry said
during a news conference at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas,
where Duncan is being treated. “Rest assured that our system is working
as it should. Professionals on every level on the chain of command know
what to do to minimize this potential risk to the people of Texas and of
this country.”

They’ve already permitted foreigners from a land where the virus is out of control to not only enter the state, but mingle freely with a) sick people at a hospital and b) schoolchildren, but everyone is supposed to trust that they know what to do?

I don’t think so.

Liberians could see their family members if their family members were repatriated. Wasn’t the whole idea of Liberia to send Africans back to Africa? Why is the USA reimporting Africans in the first place?

The fury of the American public if white schoolchildren start dying of Ebola is not going to be pretty. Perhaps there is no cause for alarm, one hopes there is no caue for alarm, but so far, the noises out of the politicians smack more of frightened people worried about the public’s reaction if it knew the truth of the situation than of people in control of the situation. I expect we’ll find out soon enough.

Regardless, all travel from West Africa needs to be halted now. It should have been halted six weeks ago. Air France, British Airways, and Emirates stopped all flights to Liberia and Sierra Leone back in early August. Congressman Alan Grayson called for a travel ban from Liberia and other infected countries in July! So, why is anyone from West Africa still being permitted to enter the USA?

From ZEROHEDGE: Now that Ebola is officially in the US on an
uncontrolled basis, the two questions on everyone’s lips are i) who
will get sick next and ii) how bad could it get? We don’t know the
answer to question #1 just yet, but when it comes to the second one, a
press release three weeks ago from Lakeland Industries, a manufacturer
and seller of a “comprehensive line of safety garments and accessories
for the industrial protective clothing market” may provide some insight
into just how bad the US State Department thinks it may get. Because
when the US government buys 160,000 hazmat suits specifically designed
against Ebola, just ahead of the worst Ebola epidemic in history making
US landfall, one wonders: what do they know that we don’t?

And then there is this from the CDC: “Because we still do not know exactly how people are infected with Ebola,
few primary prevention measures have been established and no vaccine
exists.” 

UPDATE: The magic of diversity and geographical translocation in action.

Two days after he was sent home from a Dallas hospital, the man who is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States was seen vomiting on the ground outside an apartment complex as he was bundled into an ambulance. “His whole family was screaming. He got outside and he was throwing up all over the place,” resident Mesud Osmanovic, 21, said on Wednesday, describing the chaotic scene before the man was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday where he is in serious condition. 

UPDATE 2: “TEXAS HEALTH OFFICIALS INCREASE NUMBER OF POSSIBLE CONTACTS OF EBOLA VICTIM TO 100″

That’s up from 12…. 

This explains so much

Atheist eye candy? It’s not that she’s got an ugly face or anything, but her body does appear to serve as evidence that it was nothing more than the result of time, random mutations, and large quantities of doughnuts rather than the aesthetic talents of a Creator.

I’d send her a copy of The Irrational Atheist, but I’m afraid that doing so is considered tantamount to forcing women into sex slavery these days.

Shut them up twice as hard

Since academic freedom does not prevent a professor from being denied a tenured position due to his anti-semitic statements, there is no reason not to put pressure on universities to begin cracking down hard on any expression of anti-Christian views by university professors:

Steven Salaita, who was set to begin teaching at the University of Illinois this fall, says he was simply speaking his mind when he tweeted out messages during Israel’s military conflict in Gaza earlier this year. But the school deemed the tweets offensive and pulled its offer of a tenured position in its American Indian studies program.

“We believe that our classrooms ought to be a place where opinions, regardless of their origin or their perspective, ought to be able to be offered freely and students not feel intimidated or unable to express their opinion and that’s what led us to the decision,” said University of Illinois President Robert Easter.

Every single Christian at the University of Illinois should begin compiling a list of offensive anti-Christian statements by members of the university faculty and demand that all of the responsible professors be fired. After all, Christian students should not feel intimidated or unable to express their opinions in the classroom.

Freedom of speech and expression are now dead in America. So, it’s time for Christians to stop playing by the old rules and start flexing their demographic muscle at the expense of all the various minorities who demanded the rules be changed.

To paraphrase Breitbart, shut them up twice as hard.

Brave women warriors

What was that again about women being capable of front-line combat?

The man who scaled the White House fence and was able to run through the front doors made it farther into the building than was previously reported, CBS News has learned. Secret Service Director Julia Pierson is scheduled to answer questions about the incident when she appears at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Tuesday morning.

The man, 42-year-old Omar J. Gonzalez, ran unobstructed for 70 yards across the front lawn of the White House before entering through the North Portico. On the way, he brushed by a Secret Service officer with a drawn gun, sources tell CBS News’ Bill Plante.

Gonzalez then proceeded to run through the entrance hall to the cross hall of the White House, past the staircase that leads up to the first family’s residence. He was confronted by a female Secret Service agent, who he overpowered, and made it all the way to the East Room, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CBS News, citing whistleblowers.

If trained, armed Secret Service agents aren’t able to deal with unarmed lunatics, what chance do they have against battle-hardened ISIS soldiers and elite Spetsnaz special forces?

And just think, the people overseeing these jokers are responsible for dealing with the Ebola crisis….

Kindle format at Castalia

It’s only Wednesday, but we’ve already had a busy week at Castalia House, as over 50 people signed up for the New Book Release mailing list, we finished getting all 4,500 pages of the nine-volume The Empire’s Corps series by Christopher G. Nuttall online, we acquired a new Associate, and we added a Kindle-compatible format, MOBI, to most of the books being sold at the Castalia Store. So, after making your purchase, you can choose between EPUB and MOBI format, which means that Kindle users now have the option to buy directly from Castalia as well as from Amazon.

We have also created an Astronomy Homeschool Bundle, which includes all four books for the Astronomy & Astrophysics course as well as the Castalia Classic novel First on the Moon, for the price of $49.99. This is not only one of the best homeschooling curricula available, it is is arguably the best homeschooling deal you will find anywhere. Unfortunately, we can’t offer a complete Selenoth or Quantum Mortis bundle yet, due to Amazon’s Kindle Select policies, but we may do so in the future.

There is still a lot to do, as we still have yet to get the various translations on the Castalia Store and figure out how to transform the Chinese translation of QM:AMD into a recognizable ebook format. (If you have any ideas about this, do share them.) As for the image above, it is by our newest artist, and as you have probably already surmised, it will be featured on one of our forthcoming 4GW-related books.

As for our new Associate, we are pleased to be able to offer Sci Phi Journal #1 for sale on the Castalia Store. Among other things, it features a new John C. Wright novelette entitled The Ideal Machine. A complete review of the new journal by Daniel Enness can be found here.

Ebola in the USA

Apparently travel to and from West Africa is more important than keeping Ebola out of the country:

A patient being treated at a Dallas hospital is the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday.

The person, whose identity was not released, left Liberia on September 19 and arrived in the United States on September 20, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC.

At that time, the person did not have symptoms. “But four or five days later,” that person began to show symptoms, Frieden said. The person was hospitalized and isolated Sunday at a hospital in Texas.

Fabulous. One hopes this will work out better than the failure to quarantine those with AIDS did.

Competitive asset-stripping

Russia calls the globalist bluff:

Russian courts could get the
green light to seize foreign assets on Russian territory under a draft
law intended as a response to Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. The draft, which was submitted to parliament on Wednesday
by a pro-Kremlin deputy, would also allow state compensation for an
individual whose property is seized in foreign jurisdictions.
Italian authorities this week seized property worth about
30 million euros ($40 million) belonging to companies controlled by
Arkady Rotenberg, an ally of President Vladimir Putin targeted by the
U.S. and European Union sanctions.
The draft law, published on a parliamentary database,
would allow for compensation for Russian citizens who suffer because of
an “unlawful court act” in a foreign jurisdiction and clear the way to
foreign state assets in Russia being seized, even if they are subject to
international immunity.

Asset-stripping sanctions aren’t going to be very effective if the Russians simply compensate those whose assets are stripped by taking them from Western companies with Russian assets. This could have some interesting knock-on effects in the NBA.

And isn’t it remarkable how the sanctity of free trade is so readily disrupted when something is at stake besides the livelihoods and standards of living of the working and middle classes?