Category: Uncategorized

The Galileo List

Won’t the SFWA be proud to have made the list of organizations purging the politically correct? Their purge of me is number 75 on it, which is a nice synchronicity, since when my books were still being published by Hinterlands there, Amazon listed me as the #76 most popular science fiction writer.

Refugee blowback

These new concerns about internal attacks by pro-Syrian “Americans” is an object lesson in the foolishness of foreign intervention and granting residence to foreign allies from the losing side:

Islamic extremist groups in Syria with ties to Al Qaeda are trying to identify, recruit and train Americans and other Westerners who have traveled there to get them to carry out attacks when they return home, according to senior American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

These efforts, which the officials say are in the early stages, are the latest challenge that the conflict in Syria has created, not just for Europe but for the United States, as the civil war has become a magnet for Westerners seeking to fight with the rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. At least 70 Americans have either traveled to Syria, or tried to, since the civil war started three years ago, according to the intelligence and counterterrorism officials — a figure that has not previously been disclosed.

The director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, said Thursday that tracking Americans who have returned from Syria had become one of the bureau’s highest counterterrorism priorities.

From WWII to the Syrian civil war, refugees have created massive problems for America. It’s one thing to grant humanitarian assistance and to help resettle people who are in danger. But semi-civilized peoples shouldn’t ever be resettled in civilized first world nations.

Diversity encompasses the civilized and the savage alike. And it is always a mistake to allow barbarians to enter the gates.

Puhutko suomea?

Thanks to the two translators and JartStar, the first two translated ebooks are now finished and will be released once the process of republishing my Selenoth and Quantum Mortis books is complete. The Finnish and Bahasa Indonesian versions of A Magic Broken will be released then, and I’m told there is a chance that the French version may be ready by then as well, depending upon how long it the process actually takes. Some of the books should enjoy broader distribution than they did as Hinterlands books, as we will be putting them into the Apple Store and other distribution outlets that hitherto went unaddressed.

Those who speak English and have no interest in the translations may, however, be interested to know that there will be a new English ebook released as well. (No, it isn’t TAODAL 2. That will be December with some luck and a strong tailwind.) I won’t say anything more about the new book for the time being, but if everything goes as planned, we should have the previous QM and Selenoth books, as well as the four new additions, all out and available by the end of the month. The seven other translations in the works will be published as they are completed; I am myself particularly fired up about the Wallisertiitsch translation of Quantum Mortis:Gravity Kills.

In the meantime, if you happen to speak either Finnish or Indonesian and you are willing to proofread the relevant ebook, please shoot me an email and let me know. I’m still looking for more translators too, so if your mother tongue is something other than English and you have been considering a new challenge in the new year, this might be an interesting one to tackle. It has certainly been fascinating for me to learn which  English idioms don’t translate well, and frankly, I am just a little shocked to have been informed of some of the Finnish quasi-equivalents. They are a naughty people.

UPDATE: Okay, I didn’t anticipate any problem finding a Finnish proofreader. But I was a little surprised to learn that there is more than one regular reader who is a native speaker of Bahasa Indonesia.

More highly evolved

It should be interesting to see how those who are true believers in both a) the religion of TENS and b) the myth of human equality react to this scientific claim from Penn State that Africans are less evolved than Europeans:

Light skin in Europeans stems from a gene mutation from a single person who lived 10,000 years ago. This is according to a new U.S. study that claims the colour is due to an ancient ancestor who lived somewhere between the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Scientists made the discovery after identifying a key gene that contributes to lighter skin colour in Europeans.

In earlier research, Keith Cheng from Penn State College of Medicine reported that one amino acid difference in the gene SLC24A5 is a key contributor to the skin colour difference between Europeans and West Africans. ‘The mutation in SLC24A5 changes just one building block in the protein, and contributes about a third of the visually striking differences in skin tone between peoples of African and European ancestry,’ he said.

We already know that the three major continental groups are not even equally human on the genetic level, with Africans being the only pure homo sapiens sapiens. This new claim indicates that Africans are lower in the evolutionary order, not that the skin color gene can be described as a speciation event. Regardless, one wonders why those who stubbornly, and ignorantly, continue to insist on human equality despite these undeniable genetic differences which are much more than skin deep are not yet tarred by the label “science denier”.

What I find amusing is that the scientists have already leaped in with some strained explanations to cram natural selection into the process when it is very clear from modern human behavior that the rapidity of the growth of the mutation would much more likely have stemmed from sexual selection. There need not be any environmental advantage to lighter skin for it to be preferred. Of course, that would also be a hate fact, as it would be scientific evidence that whites are more attractive than blacks. That being said, a fact is a fact.

However, that’s not the intriguing stuff. Here’s a much more interesting thought. The 10,000 year time frame is not all that far off from Bishop Usher’s famous 6,000 year estimation for the Age of the Earth. But most forget that the bishop’s estimate was based on Adam, not the Earth. So, what if it can eventually be determined that the single genetic mutation was actually an artificial one? That would certainly set the cat among the equality pigeons.

A warning to fake reviewers

Someone should send news of this legal decision to the attention of Virginia Conterato of Minneapolis, the fake reviewer of A Throne of Bones. As well as the various fake reviewers on GoodReads.

In a decision that could reshape the rules for online consumer reviews, a Virginia court has ruled that the popular website Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers who anonymously criticized a prominent local carpet cleaning business.

The case revolves around negative feedback against Virginia-based Hadeed Carpet Cleaning. The owner, Joe Hadeed, said the users leaving bad reviews were not real customers of the cleaning service — something that would violate Yelp’s terms of service. His attorneys issued a subpoena demanding the names of seven anonymous reviewers, and a judge in Alexandria ruled that Yelp had to comply.

The Virginia Court of Appeals agreed this week, ruling that the comments were not protected First Amendment opinions if the Yelp users were not customers and thus were making false claims.

It will be interesting to learn what position GoodReads and Amazon take on this, since in most cases the reviewers are customers, but are provably making false claims with the complicity of the site host given its ability to check if they have purchased the book or not.

Given where this appears to be going, I think Amazon would be well-advised to take a strong position against fake reviews and only permit those who have a) bought the books and b) are willing to click a checkbox affirming that they have read the book in its entirety are permitted to post reviews there.

I have always felt that it was fraudulent to post a fake review and it is good to see that this is indeed the case.

The survival genius of the House of Saud

Courtesy of Steve Sailer comes this fascinating explanation on the way the House of Saud survives by destabilizing its rivals by the War Nerd:

The Middle East has been Saudi-ized while we looked on and laughed at those goofy Saudis who didn’t understand progress. No wonder they’re content to play dumb. If we took a serious look at them, they’d be terrifying.

And of all their many skills, the one the Saudis have mastered most thoroughly is disruption. Not the cute tech-geek kind of disruption, but the real, ugly thing-in-itself. They don’t just “turn a blind eye” to young Saudi men going off to do jihad—they cheer them on. It’s a brilliant strategy that kills two very dangerous birds with one plane ticket. By exporting their dangerous young men, the Saudis rid themselves of a potential troublemaker while creating a huge amount of pain for the people who live wherever those men end up.

Saudis have shipped money, sermons, and volunteers to Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Russia’s North Caucasus just as they’re doing now in Syria. It’s a package deal—to get the money, you have to accept the Wahhabism and the volunteers. And it works. The Saudi package is usually resented at first, like it was by the Afghans who were outraged to be told they were “bad Muslims” by Saudi volunteers.

But Afghan Islam has been Wahhabized over time. The same thing happened much more dramatically in Chechnya, where Saudi volunteers showed they were serious about war and religion, a nice change from the coopted quasi-Soviet imams the Chechens had known before. Saudis like Ibn al-Khattab, Abu al-Walid, and Muhannad (all noms de guerre) provided the only real jobs a young man could get in Chechnya, and in the process did a great job of miring the Chechens in an endless war that has killed something like 160,000 people while forcing Chechen women into Saudi-style isolation, eventually leaving Chechnya under the control of Ramzan Kadyrov, a second-generation death-squad commander who does most of the Kremlin’s killing for them. This is a typical Saudi aid result: A disaster for the recipients, the Chechens, and their enemies, the Russians, but a huge win for Saudi. Same thing is going on in the rest of Russia’s North Caucasus, especially in Dagestan, where the Boston Marathon bombers’ parents live.

And one aspect of that victory is the elimination of potentially troublesome young males who might have made trouble inside Saudi. Jihad is like the princess in those fairy tales: It draws all the daring young princes to undertake quests no underwriter would insure, and in the process gets them far away from home during their most aggressive years. Better yet from the Sauds’ POV, most of them die.

It certainly puts a troublesome spin on America’s various crusades for global democracy, does it not?

Sparklepunter retreats

The bravely outspoken Chris Kluwe is rapidly retreating from his
previous comments about the moral imperative to blackball Mike Priefer
and render him unemployable now that current Vikings are speaking out against him.

Harrison Smith came to the
defense of special-teams coordinator Mike Priefer on Friday, calling the
accusations made by former punter Chris Kluwe “a shame.”

As
a rookie in 2012, Smith said he attended many special-teams meetings
with Priefer and Kluwe. “In my experience with Coach Priefer, he has
been nothing but a
classy guy,” Smith said in a phone interview. “He’s been respectful for
everybody’s views, whether you’re black, white, Mexican, any religion.
… I just think it’s a shame to take a shot at a guy when he can’t
defend himself. I just don’t think it’s very fair that you can say
whatever you
want that somebody said something to you and you don’t really have any
person to back it up. I don’t think that’s good. I just think it’s a
slippery slope.”

The article also notes that Vikings kicker Blair
Walsh has also spoken publicly in defense of the special teams coach.
Underlying Sparklegate is the fact that there isn’t a single sane player
in the NFL who wants the league to get into the business of politically
policing the views of its players and its coaches. Even if Priefer did
say it would be a smashing idea to put all the gays on an island and
nuke it until it glows, not only is that his perfect right to express
his opinion, but I guarantee it is a more moderate view than that held
by many of the black players in the league. They’re not exactly what one
would call keen on “that sweet stuff”. Can’t be in there with that,
nah.

As an NCAA D1 sprinter, I competed against several
future NFL players. And believe me, merely being a) white, and b) under
200 pounds was enough to provoke suspicious stares and the occasional
interrogation about your sexual preferences. From what I observed, elite
black athletes really do not like the “little white faggots” who
fetishize them.

Remember, the NFL does not only consist
of educated white coaches who speak in hyperbole. As politically
correct as the league is, it also has to be coldly realistic about the
possibility of groups of 75 IQ steroid-addled physical specimens
reacting to an inappropriate pass in the locker room by beating someone
to death. The Hernandez case is bad enough; like it or not, the NFL has
very good reasons for wanting to keep homosexuality tightly locked in
the closet and none of them involve religious white conservatives.

It appears Sparklepunter is finally beginning to realize just how deeply he has put his foot in it. If he doesn’t continue to rapidly backtrack, he’s going to come out of this looking more racist than a card-carrying Ku Klux Klan member.

Hitler’s escape to Residencia Inalco

This is either the non-fiction coup of the 21st century or a spectacular example of WND going off the rails of the crazy train:

In the National Archives at College Park, Corsi discovered a clipping from the U.S. military newspaper “The Stars and Stripes” published Oct. 8, 1945, reporting a shocking statement made by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, then the supreme commander of the Allied Forces.

The short piece read: “There is ‘reason to believe’ that Hitler may still be alive, according to a remark made by Gen. Eisenhower to Dutch newspapermen. The general’s statement reversed his previous opinion that Hitler was dead.”

Tracing Hitler’s escape route, Corsi found in the National Archives documentary evidence Hitler got to Argentina in a German submarine, the U-530 that mysteriously surfaced outside the harbor at Mar del Plata under the command of Otto Wermuth and his executive officer, Karl Felix Schuller, after having spent weeks making surreptitious drops of passengers along Argentina’s Atlantic shore.

Hidden away in the National Archives, Corsi found a U.S. naval intelligence report written July 18, 1945, by the Naval Attaché in Buenos Aires who notified Washington there was reason to believe U-530 had landed Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in the south of Argentina before the submarine journeyed on to surrender at Mar del Plata.

Corsi had newspaper reports translated of Hitler and Braun being welcomed by wealthy Nazi sympathizers among Argentina’s large German community. The Germans there had constructed a mansion hidden away in the dense mountain forests of Bariloche to provide the Nazi führer with comfort and security in his elder years

Corsi writes: In 1943, architect Alejandro Bustillo, at the request of German supporters of Hitler then living in Argentina, designed and constructed an elaborate resort residence for Hitler and Eva Braun, Residencia Inalco, located in a remote area between San Carlos de Bariloce Villa La Angostura, bordering the Nahuel Haupi Lake, outside the city of Bariloche, in the province of Río Negro, Argentina.”

In southern Argentina in the region of the Andes adjoining Chile, he writes, “the surroundings and the Hitler residence were selected and designed to have a distinct feel of Hitler’s Obersalzberg retreat above the town of Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler moved into the residence in June 1947.”

For all that he likes to tackle controversial subjects, Corsi is a careful reporter and his statements here are extraordinarily detailed, so it should be fascinating to see how this plays out.  Either way, it is one hell of an attention-grabbing trailer. And those whose instinct is to mindlessly dismiss it as “conspiracy theory” should keep in mind what happened after Corsi called Obama’s birth certificate into question. Considering how inept the current administration has shown itself to be, I wouldn’t put it past them to try to pass off some ribs from the local barbecue shack as Hitler’s real remains from the bunker.

I can’t say I would be in the least bit shocked if it turned out to be true that the suicide in the bunker was a red herring. I can recall that even as a juvenile WWII enthusiast, I thought it was all rather suspiciously convenient that the bodies were burned and buried. And, as we now know with regards to the many Nazis protected by American military and scientific elite, it’s no longer unthinkable to believe that the top brass might have struck a deal with Hitler in order to remove him as an obstacle to a speedy unconditional surrender.

As the admiral of the Germany Navy, Doenitz, who ultimately offered the surrender, would have likely been privy to any secret U-boat transport.

And, if it turns out to be true that Hitler escaped the bunker with the knowledge of U.S. officials, I think it is safe to say that we can confidently await the admission that the Moon landings were faked in another 20 years or so. Regardless if there is such a Nazi resort residence, one should be able to find it somewhere near here on Google Maps. It’s fascinating to see there is a “Refugio Berghoff” up in the hills, not far from the Aldea Andina Resort, in light of this:

“The Berghof was Adolf Hitler’s home in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany. Other than the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Hitler spent more time at the Berghof than anywhere else during World War II. It was also one of the most widely known of his headquarters, which were located throughout Europe.”

Social policies have long-term consequences

That is Dr. Helen’s primary message in Men on Strike. She was interviewed by Jerry Bowyer in Forbes.

Jerry: “It’s interesting – you mention Kay
Hymowitz’s book, which is in some ways similar to yours but in other
ways very different. Let’s not single her out in particular, but there
does tend to be a scold-y tone. Yeah, that’s really going to work with
men, right? There does tend to be a scold-y tone in a lot of the “what’s
wrong with men” vein, the “failure to launch”, “they’re not going to
college”, “they’re not participating in the economy” – a tone that seems
to (interestingly for liberals) place no obligation whatsoever or no
causal effect whatsoever on larger societal factors.”

Helen: “I definitely think there is a scolding
factor and I think people are so used to shaming men, and that’s very
prevalent in the culture. I think that we see – I mean, there are so
many messages through the commercials, through the media, that men are
just no good. And so it’s just so easy to pick up and say that, “Yeah,
men are worthless. They’re not good fathers.” We’ve got so many messages
out there and I think that’s a really negative thing to be sending to
men and particularly young boys in schools and in society. Going back to
some of these books like End of Men or Manning Up, you’re right: the
message is basically, “You know what, you’re doing this because you’re
just an immature man.”

There’s a chapter in Hymowitz’s book about Child-Man in the Promised
Land and it’s looking at how men just have so many options and this is
why they’re doing what they’re doing. My point in my book is that men
are not going to participate in a society that is not going to reward
them for that behavior. In other words: if you’re a good father, a good
husband, and you do all of the things you’re supposed to do, society
still will go after you if you step out of line in any particular way.

In the old days, it was sort of like – fifty years ago a man was head
of household, looked up to, treated with respect, and now a married man
in many ways is seen as less of a man (not more of one) and it’s doubly
so if he has kids.

Men on Strike is a very good book, not so much because it contains anything that will be new to the readers here, but because it is putting those ideas in front of a lot of people who have never considered them before. And one of those things that many people haven’t seen before is what the Forbes writer describes as “a lack of scoldiness”; Dr. Helen is one of the few female writers on intersexual relations who is actually sympathetic towards men and understands that the world is not a zero-sum game where the sexes are concerned.

The fact that something is bad for men doesn’t mean that it is good for women.

Lessons of the 1920s

This isn’t a bad basic primer on the cause of the Great Depression and the connection between it and the beginning of the Great Depression 2.0.

The lessons of the 1920s are clear, and they bear directly on the build-up to the present crisis. Developed capitalism without social democracy and strong labor unions leads to productivity increases far outpacing wage growth, extreme inequality, insufficient working-class purchasing power, an unprecedented buildup of household debt and nowhere for profits to go but into capitalist consumption and financial speculation. With financial growth not reflecting comparable health in the productive economy, a bubble formed in stock market speculation and household debt grew faster than household income. By their nature, bubbles break. The popping of the speculative bubble brought about the stock market crash of 1929.

The crash and ensuing Depression afflicted what we have seen was a highly vulnerable economy. Because the economy had by the 1920s become industrially mature, growth no longer depended upon the breakneck expansion of the capital goods sector, but was now, and for the first time, fuelled by the production and consumption of consumer durable goods like refrigerators, radios, vacuum cleaners and, most importantly, automobiles. Consumption replaced investment as the driver of economic growth. (4) Robust growth would now require high wages.

With wages stagnant, working-class households’ ability to sustain the consumer durables boom became dependent, as it would again from the mid-1970s onward, on unsustainable household debt levels. Supplementing income-based purchasing power with credit had been a fact of life since the late nineteenth century, but the debt increments increased especially rapidly during the 1920s. The proportion of total retail sales financed by credit increased from 10 percent in 1910 to 15 percent in 1927 to 50 percent in 1929. When working-class purchasing power and household debt approached their limit by 1926-1927, the rate of growth of consumer purchases began to decline. Key growth markets like autos and construction became saturated and excess productive capacity became conspicuous. Production fell and profits were directed to financial speculation and bubble creation. The stock market and the economy responded accordingly. The Great Depression was at the door.

A comparable dynamic was in effect during the period preceding September 2008. From the mid-1970s to the year before the housing bubble began to leak, 2005, the gap between productivity growth and flat wages grew wider and wider. As in the 1920s, national income shifted steadily and increasingly to the top. Inequality approximating that of the 1920s grew. 1928 and 2007 were the highest inequality years since 1900. (Each year, not coincidentally, was followed by a major meltdown.) Workers once again resorted to debt to maintain living standards. The ratio of outstanding consumer debt to disposable income had more than doubled, from 62 percent in 1975 to 127.2 percent in 2005. Since 1995 the debt burden, measured by the percentage of household income pledged to debt service, had become increasingly concentrated in the lower three income quintiles. Financial speculation, which had accelerated since the mid-1970s, took off with a vengeance after 1999. Echoes of the 1920s were loud and clear.

That’s a great piece of data I hadn’t seen before, concerning the increase in the percentage of retail sales “financed by credit” from 1910 to 1929. It clearly shows the same debt parabola that we often observe before a period of credit contraction.