Category: Uncategorized

Soft biowarfare

It would appear the Chinese have inadvertently discovered how to break the chains of global US hegemony, as both Pat Buchanan and The Saker are both contemplating the same potential consequences of Corona-chan:

Seeing what happened on the carrier Theodore Roosevelt, the coronavirus could have a major impact on U.S. global commitments.

Americans were already coming home from the Middle East, drawing down our 12,000 troops in Afghanistan after a deal with the Taliban, and moving our 5,000 troops in Iraq into fewer bases.

We have disengaged from the Saudi war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and are drawing down our forces in Syria.

In Libya’s civil war, it is Russians, Turks, Egyptians and Gulf Arabs, not Americans, who are the supporting actors.

American soft power is also in retreat from the world.

Some 10,000 Peace Corps volunteers have been brought home. Scores of thousands of U.S. citizens have been repatriated by the State Department. We have shut the door to Europe, China, the world.

What now becomes of the U.S. geostrategic “pivot,” the shift of planes, troops, ships and bases from the Middle and Near East to the Indo-Pacific theater to contain a rising China?

And contain China with what?

The Roosevelt has been ravaged by the coronavirus. As of Tuesday, 589 cases of COVID-19 were reported from a crew of 4,800. Four thousand sailors in Guam are in various stages of a 14-day isolation period in hotels and spare rooms across the island.

But it is not just the Roosevelt. Every U.S. warship — carriers, cruisers, frigates, destroyers, subs — has cramped quarters conducive to the spread of the coronavirus.

How many of these vessels will soon be doubling as hospital ships?

The same question might also be asked of the U.S. Army and Marine barracks in South Korea, Japan, Australia and Okinawa.

There are allegations that the coronavirus did not originate in the Wuhan “wet market” where bats are sold for food but instead escaped through a horrible blunder in a Chinese bioweapons laboratory a few miles away.

Whatever the truth, the Wuhan virus appears to have become the most effective means of disabling U.S. hard and soft power that we have encountered in many a decade.

The Saker observes that carrier diplomacy is no longer an option when an entire carrier group can be disabled by arranging to infect a single sailor on shore leave.

First, the obvious: USN carriers cannot operate effectively under a bio-attack (a truly weaponized virus would both be much more transmissible than SARS-COV-2 and it would be far more deadly). This also indicates that they would probably do no better under a real chemical warfare attack either.

Considering that in reality USN carriers are a instrument of colonial repression and not ships to be engaged against the USSR (which had real biowarfare capabilities), this makes sense (while most university labs & the like could produce some kind of virus and use it as a weapon, truly weaponized viruses, the kind effectively used in special delivery systems, can only be produced by a limited list of countries). However, in theory, all the formations/units/subunits/ships/aircraft/armor/etc of a military superpower should be trained to operate in case of a nuclear, chemical and biological attack. Clearly, this is not the case with US carriers, most likely because nobody in the USA really expected such an attack, at least not during the Cold War.

For the current situation, however, I think that the lesson is clear: the USN simply does not have an effective capability to operate under NBC attack conditions.

Jury fraud and fake justice

The railroading of Roger Stone continues:

The federal judge overseeing the trial of longtime Trump associate Roger Stone on Thursday denied his motion for a new trial, which was based on a claim of juror bias.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said Stone’s lawyers failed to demonstrate that a woman selected as a juror was biased against President Donald Trump, that she failed to disclose those views during jury selection and that she should not have been allowed to serve.

“The defendant has not shown that the juror lied; nor has he shown that the supposedly disqualifying evidence could not have been found through the exercise of due diligence at the time the jury was selected,” the judge said.

The fact that the defendant showed the juror lied and that she was biased, was, of course irrelevant. This is why The Trial of Roger Stone has to be read in order to be believed. The corruption of the justice system is even worse than you probably imagine.

A fraud and a pedophile?

Nobel Laureate Bob Zimmerman is chock-full of fascinating confessions in his newest release:

I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, the Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again.

Step aside Murakami. You may as well put the pen down, David Sylvian. It’s just as well that you’re long dead, Tolstoy. That’s some quality literature right there.

Speaking of music, I’d tell you what we’re working on, only you would not believe it. All right, those who know me would probably believe it, but they wouldn’t want to do so. Also, apologies in advance, mi muy buen amigo….

Alt★Hero Episode 2

Alt★Hero Episode 2: Job Offer is now live on Webtoons. This series runs every Friday. The comics offensive continues even as the establishment continues to crumble. We’re already being contacted by top talent who had previously worked with Marvel and/or DC. This is further evidence that having a relatively small, but disciplined and high-morale legion is more important than numbers, resources, established brand, or infrastructure.

Book Review: The Last Emperox

An anonymous book reviewer reviews THE LAST EMPEROX by Tor’s Three-Million-Dollar Man, John Scalzi. While I have not read any of the three books in the trilogy myself, it would not appear that Tor made a wise investment.

I was a few chapters into The Last Emperox when Scalzi did something he’d never done before in the Interdependency trilogy.  He made me laugh.

It was not a snicker at one of his jokes.  It was not a wry chuckle at the semi-snarky dialogue that passes for humour.  It was a genuine laugh when it hit me that Kiva Lagos is Donald Trump, with breasts!  Intentionally or not, Scalzi’s foul-mouthed rapist mess of a hero has a lot in common with the leftist perception of Trump, from the manners of a bullying braggart to the habit of rolling the dice time and time again until she comes up trumps.  There is a certain irony, in fact, that the titular character is someone who has so much in common with a populist politician Scalzi detests.  I’d apologise for the spoiler, but really there’s little to spoil.

Scalzi’s fans compare him to Heinlein.  A better comparison would be Harry Harrison.  Harrison’s comic novels didn’t take themselves too seriously, making light of everything from planetary invasions to full-scale war with a coalition of alien races.  When Harrison tried to write more serious novels, they were rarely satisfactory.  Scalzi has the same problem.  Old Man’s War was funny, but Scalzi is simply incapable of turning his keyboard to more serious work.  The Collapsing Empire and its two sequels are based on a cool concept, but their author fails to do them justice.  They simply don’t live up to their promise.

Scalzi himself admits, in his afterword, that he has a habit of procrastinating for months before turning in the first draft.  This is a major problem, as he says, because the editors don’t have time to do their job.  The three books would have made a fairly decent story if they’d been written as one volume – and had a good editor, who had the time to fix the problems – but as a trilogy they simply don’t work.  There are entire sections that Scalzi skips over, or hand-waves, or relies on his audience to fill in the gaps.  The story hops from idea to post-idea without showing us the idea being put into effect, dancing through time-skips in the hope we won’t notice.  This is irritating as hell.

The real problem is that he was incapable of developing the concept into a story.  There was ample room for a space opera on the same scale as The Night’s Dawn trilogy, but he chose to skip over the details that would have made it feel real.  The interdependency feels like a very thin universe indeed, without the sense of age or depth that writers such as Hamilton, Sanderson and Jemsin work into their stories.  Instead, he focuses on a tedious political battle and struggle for power that I thought had been resolved in the second book.  The concept of saving the vast majority of the population through flow-manipulation is better than I expected, but it simply isn’t developed.  The story does not end with the salvation of humanity or the preservation of a chunk of human civilisation.  Instead, it feels more like a retread of old ground that solves nothing.  It is, indeed, difficult to summarise the book because so little actually happens (and most of the important events happen off-stage)!

This is best reflected in the endless struggle between Cardenia Wu-Patrick, Kiva Lagos and Nadashe Nohamapetan, a struggle that would have been cut short if either of the three had shown a little more intelligence or ruthlessness.  (Seriously, Nadashe showed a little more cunning than earlier, but she would have won if she’d shot Kiva).  The bickering over who will take power, if anyone can when the writing is firmly on the wall, comes across as more than a little pointless.  More interesting plots – ways to navigate the Flow, developments on End – are hand-waved away, as if Scalzi realised he was running out of words and wrapped things up quickly.  This flows from Scalzi’s limitations.  It’s fairly clear he knows little about how militaries, power brokers and monarchies work.  A comic book empress can afford to be ignorant.  A real-life empress who’s going to inherit real power (even if she’s the spare) will have been trained for the role from birth.  Kiva Lagos is a liability to any real power broker because people like her – “whirling amoral vortexes of chaos” – tend to make enemies, people who will try to knife her in the back out of sheer spite and/or a desire for revenge.  There’s no hope of building a permanent relationship with someone you treat like shit, even if they are petty small-minded gamma males.  That too is something she has in common with Trump.

Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat books featured the beautiful and deadly Angelina, whose comedic sociopathy is funny, as long as you don’t think about it too much.  Harrison gets away with it because he’s writing comic novels, where reality is twisted to accommodate humour; Scalzi does not get away with it because his books are meant to be serious fiction and Kiva’s behaviour is horrible.  Sure, running up behind someone and yanking down their pants can be funny, but it’s also sexual assault.  It’s always fun until someone loses an eye.  I’m not laughing.

The Last Emperox has its moments, but it does not live up to its promise.  It does not present a scene of humanity getting around the problem, nor does it present a desperate struggle for survival right out of a disaster movie.  It does not even end with the collapse of the Flow and the dawn of a new era.  The plan to avoid disaster and save millions of lives is workable, but we never get to see it.  Scalzi concentrates on politics and avoids actually coming to grips with his universe.  The interesting characters get shoved aside, or forced to make stupid decisions, while the boring ones carry the show.

The series overall has its issues.  The Interdependency itself doesn’t make much sense.  The idea of End being both the sole inhabitable world in known space and an isolated backwater is bizarre.  You’d think it would be the most valuable piece of real estate in the galaxy.  The Interdependency brought some of its problems on itself, but the way it did that should have prompted it to avoid the problems.  Scalzi tries to justify it, but it isn’t convincing.  He might have been better leaving the collapse of the Flow as a natural event, as unpredictable (to the average person) as a hurricane.

A good series should have a strong beginning, a firm middle and a resounding end.  The Collapsing Empire is a weak beginning, The Consuming Fire isn’t enough to save the series and The Last Emperox ends with a whimper rather than a resounding crescendo.

I stand by my earlier opinion.  As a single book, the series would have worked (with a decent editor). As a trilogy, it’s a waste of money.

“Hurting your witness”

Any self-professed Christian who uses the term “hurting your witness” in an attempt to police the behavior of Christians is almost certainly worshipping something that is not Jesus Christ.

Sadly, Christians seem to be disproportionately fooled by conspiracy theories. I’ve also said before that when Christians spread lies, they need to repent of those lies. Sharing fake news makes us look foolish and harms our witness.

We saw this in the last election when some of the troll factories focused on conservative, evangelical Christians. Here we go again.

What now?

First, we need to speak up— particularly to those fooled yet again— and lovingly say, “You need to go to trusted sources.” Social media news feeds are not a trusted source. That’s why we created coronavirusandthechurch.com, to provide credible information for pastors. But, there are plenty of credible news sources— generally from outlets that do not have a track record of conspiracy peddling.

Second, God has not called us to be easily fooled. Gullibility is not a Christian virtue. Believing and sharing conspiracies does not honor the Lord. It may make you feel better, like you are in the know, but it can end up harming others and it can hurt your witness. 

I’m not saying this guy actually has small bodies buried in his garden or has visited Epstein’s island, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to learn that he is a massive fan of Star Trek. Christians are supposed to follow the truth, and if there is one thing that we have learned over the years, it is that the truth is one thing in which “credible news sources” absolutely do not traffic. They are, in fact,  the primary factories of fake news.

You can always tell the Churchian because his primary concern is to avoid looking foolish in the eyes of the world.

Shutting down Congress

It is a national emergency, after all. It’s interesting to see how the President is continuing to assert his authority while continuing to deny resources and restricting the capabilities of bad actors:

Today President Trump warned congress he may invoke Article II, sec 3, due to the COVID-19 crisis and his need for administration positions that have been delayed by democrats in the Senate for more than two years.

The coronavirus pandemic would seem to qualify as an “unusual circumstance” where recess appointments would be needed, valid and justified. However, senate democrats would likely fight any attempt in court.  The Senate has refused to adjourn session since President Trump was inaugurated, and multiple cabinet officials have been blocked from confirmation.

The disingenuousness of the President’s opponents has seldom been more clear than the protests that “this is not the right time” to defund the World Health Organization. But if a time when the organization has been exposed as being corrupt, inept, ineffective, and criminally negligent is not the right time to stop funding it, there will never be a right time.

That being said, if I had one piece of advice to give the President, it would be to stop threatening and posturing. Just do it! The time for negotiations is over. This is a full-blown war and the evil being fought is not reasonable and will not fight fair.

Castalia Library is go

On last night’s Darkstream, I was extremely pleased to announce that the first book in the Castalia Library, The Missionaries by Owen Stanley, has been printed and bound. It will begin shipping on Friday. Below are three pictures of the very first book that was completed at the bindery yesterday.

Unfortunately, since the first set of goatskins did not pass the rigorous quality standards required by the bindery, the Libraria books are not ready. We do not know when they will be ready because the second set of goatskins are still in Italy. So, we are sending a free Library edition of The Missionaries to all Libraria subscribers now, and will send the elite goatskin editions out as soon as they are ready. Due to the slim nature of the volume, we elected to go with a vertical alignment of the title on the spine, as Franklin Library did with books like Machiavelli’s The Prince and Shakespeare’s Poems, although we followed the example of the two-line approach of the latter as we felt it was more attractive than the single-line approach of the former.

In the third image, you can see how the endpapers feature a map of the archipelago that contains the fictional Elephant Island, which features a little Easter Egg for those who enjoy maps. You can also see the gilding on the pages as well as the gold ribbon bookmark. A number of people have asked if there will be copies available for purchase; as we are only producing 500, there are a few still available but they will be offered first to Castalia Library subscribers at the subscription price with the exception of two copies that will be offered at the retail price of $150 on Abe Books. If there are any left, they will be offered at the retail price at Arkhaven.

Anonymous is a Red State cuckservative

Never, ever, trust a cuckservative, as the President has now learned:

Victoria Coates, an art history Ph.D. who served as an adviser to Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been identified as “Anonymous,” administration sources tell RCP reporter Paul Sperry:

A protégé of Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Coates embedded with the U.S. military to cover the Iraq War for RedState.com, a blog run by Erick Erickson, an early critic of Trump but who has since modulated his opposition. She filed positive reports from Baghdad, while knocking down criticism that the war was a debacle.

NSC investigators put stock in the fact that Coates has a history of concealing her identity in her writings. For years she blogged anonymously for RedState.com. The site eventually revealed that Coates was the blogger writing under the pseudonym “Academic Elephant.”

They found her by one of my favorite means of distinguishing truth from falsehood, textual analysis:

The sources said that to crack the identity of the rogue Trump official,  investigators ran previously published works authored by Coates through forensic author identification programs, and they matched the prose style of Anonymous.

Investigators were able to profile the author of the op-ed and book by sentence structure, grammar, punctuation and syntax. They then compared that writing profile to Coates’. The stylistic traits synced up, sources said.

Researchers have found that authorship recognition tools can identify an author with a high level of accuracy when there are several thousand words of available content to analyze, as was the case with the sample size the White House analyzed. Coates’ own body of written work spans two decades and includes several books and dozens of columns, as well as policy papers, speeches and a doctoral thesis.

In short, the authors share the same punchy but at times breezy writing style, with pithy sentences punctuating a fluid narrative.

What’s more, the same manners of expression and phrases, such as “like-minded” and “clear-eyed,” kept turning up in the writings of both Coates and the secret Trump betrayer. The two also shared distinct vocabulary — such as the uncommon “sextant” — another linguistic fingerprint that pointed to the same authorship.

As we’ve observed here over the years, it is ridiculously easy to identify someone once you are sufficiently familiar with their literary style and habits. For example, I can quite often spot a banned troll on his first anonymous post-ban comment; no two people think or write exactly the same way. And it’s very easy to tell when news reports are concocting fake quotes from nonexistent people; if it sounds like it’s from a movie, it’s reliably fake.

Anyhow, it’s good that the treacherous infiltrator was exposed and removed.

The financialization of the US economy

Encapsulated in a single picture.

The coronavirus death toll in the U.S. — now topping 23,000 — skyrocketed as families continued to huddle in their homes uncertain of what’s next, while an unthinkable number of more than 16 million people have now filed for unemployment amid an economy grappling with the shutdown.

Yet, somehow, the stock market has managed to push higher. In other words, at least those fortunate enough to own stocks had something to smile about. Democratic strategist Justin Horwitz summed up the disconnect with this tweet that went viral across Twitter TWTR, +2.68{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} :

As you can see, that’s CNBC’s Jim Cramer talking about the rally in the market while the chyron points out the grim reality of the historic job losses.

One commenter captured much of the response on social media by saying, “The Dow is not the economy. It is a giant government sanctioned Ponzi scheme for the wealthy.”

Another pointed to the fact that, according to Federal Reserve data, 84{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of stocks owned by U.S. households are held by the wealthiest 10{de336c7190f620554615b98f51c6a13b1cc922a472176e2638084251692035b3} of Americans — essentially Wall Street vs. Main Street.

The financial industry doesn’t lubricate the economy. To the contrary, it is both a huge parasite and a massive anchor that drains more than one-third of ALL corporate profits out of the real economy. To put this in perspective, the total amount of all retail trade profit was $154 billion in 2018. The total amount of all transportation and warehousing profit was $55.6 billion. The total amount of all food, beverage, and tobacco profits was $50.5 billion.

The total amount of financial profit was $448.3 billion, and that almost certainly understates it. If you want to know what is wrong with the economy, the answer is “the transfer of profit to the financial institutions” which is done through ever-expanding debt. This is why either a debt jubilee or mass defaults and the total collapse of the US economy is absolutely inevitable.