#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
There has been a lot of talk about whether Milo would return to Berkeley and whether #FreeSpeechWeek would take place there. But yes, he is back and it is on. Team Milo has even prepared a little gift for everyone for the occasion. It’s called The Antifa Handbook (PDF), and, as it happens, it is almost entirely unlike the 4GW Handbook.
Donald Trump comes out hard against the NFL players protesting during the national anthem:
“We’re proud of our country. We respect our flag,” Trump said to loud applause at a campaign event in Alabama. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now’? He’s fired! He’s fired!”
Trump said an NFL owner who releases a player would instantly gain broad support across America.
“Some owner’s gonna do that. He’s gonna say, ‘That guy that disrespects our flag? He’s fired. And that owner . . . they’ll be the most popular person in this country. Because that’s total disrespect of our heritage. That’s total disrespect of everything we stand for,” Trump said.
Trump added that he believes fans should walk out if players don’t stand for the anthem.
“If you see it, even if it’s one player,” Trump said, “Leave the stadium.”
It’s a perfectly reasonable stance. We all know that the NFL wouldn’t hesitate to act if players started throwing Nazi salutes; they already come down hard on the expression of any opinion that is negative about homosexuality.
The Rubicon has been decisively crossed, so it’s time to start cracking down on “speech” Americans don’t like.
Always play by the rules that are actually in place, not by the rules that you wish were in place. I won’t say that I’ve entirely given up on the NFL, but I did not buy Game Pass this year and I have yet to watch a single game. I don’t think I will start this weekend either.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s response:
The NFL and our players are at our best when we help create a sense of unity in our country and our culture,” Goodell said. “There is no better example than the amazing response from our clubs and players to the terrible natural disasters we’ve experienced over the last month. Divisive comments like these demonstrate an unfortunate lack of respect for the NFL, our great game and all of our players, and a failure to understand the overwhelming force for good our clubs and players represent in our communities.”
I hope one of the NFL players calls out Goodell on this by kneeling while holding up a middle finger or a Nazi salute. It would be amusing to see how fast Red Roger would do an immediate 180.
Galactic society is ruled by algorithms. From interstellar travel and planetary terraforming to artificial intelligence and agriculture, every human endeavor has become completely dependent upon the hypercomplex equations that optimize the activities making life possible across hundreds of inhabited worlds. Throughout the galaxy, Man has become dependent upon the reliable operation of ten million different automated systems.
And when things begin to go wrong and mysterious accidents begin to happen no one has any idea what is happening, except for a sentient medical drone and the First Technocrat of Continox. But their ability to even begin to try fixing the unthinkably complicated problem of galaxy-wide algorithmic decay is made considerably more difficult by the fact the former is an outlaw and the latter is facing a death sentence.
Narrated by Jon Mollison, The Corroding Empire Book One: Corrosion, is 7 hours and 3 minutes long.
I’m also looking for 10 reviewers of Jerry Pournelle’s There Will Be War Volume VII. Email with V7 in the subject if you’re interested and can review on Amazon.
This doesn’t strike me as a positive development. The Saker contemplates the significance of a Russian special forces operation in Syria.
Something rather unprecedented just happened in Syria: US backed “good terrorist” forces attempted a surprise attack against Syrian government forces stationed to the north and northeast of the city of Hama. What makes this attack unique is that it took place inside a so-called “de-escalation zone” and that it appears that one of the key goals of the attack was to encircle in a pincer-movement and subsequently capture a platoon of Russian military police officers deployed to monitor and enforce the special status of this zone. The Russian military police forces, composed mainly of soldiers from the Caucasus region, fought against a much larger enemy force and had to call for assistance. For the first time, at least officially, Russian special operations forces were deployed to rescue and extract their comrades. At the same time, the Russians sent in a number of close air support aircraft who reportedly killed several hundred “good” terrorists and beat back the attack (Russian sources speak of the destruction of 850 fighters, 11 tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, 46 armed pickup trucks, five mortars, 20 freighter trucks and 38 ammo supply points; you can see photos of the destroyed personnel and equipment here). What also makes this event unique is the official reaction of the Russians to this event.
Head of the Main Operations Department at Russia’s General Staff Colonel General Sergei Rudskoi declared that:
“Despite agreements signed in Astana on September 15, gunmen of Jabhat al-Nusra and joining them units that don’t want to comply with the cessation of hostilities terms, launched a large-scale offensive against positions of government troops north and northeast of Hama in Idlib de-escalation zone from 8 am on September 19 (…) According to available data, the offensive was initiated by American intelligence services to stop a successful advance of government troops east of Deir ez-Zor“.
Today, other Russian officials have added a not-so-veiled threat to this accusation. The Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov has declared that:
Russia unequivocally told the commanders of US forces in Al Udeid Airbase (Qatar) that it will not tolerate any shelling from the areas where the SDF are stationed (…) Fire from positions in regions [controlled by the SDF] will be suppressed by all means necessary.This is unprecedented on many levels. First, the Russians clearly believe that this attempt to kill or capture a platoon of the Russian military police was planned by the United States. The fact that they are making this accusation officially shows the degree of irritation felt by the Russians about the duplicity of the Americans. Second, this is the first time, at least to my knowledge, that Russian Spetsnaz forces had to be sent in to rescue a surrounded Russian subunit. All Spetsnaz operators survived, but three of them were wounded in the operation (the Russians are not saying how badly). The close air support by very low flying SU-25 aircraft was obviously coordinated by Spetsnaz forward air controllers and probably saved the day. In other words, this was a close call and things could have ended much more badly (just imagine what the Takfiri crazies would have done, on video, to any captured Russian serviceman!). Finally, a US-organized attack on what was supposed to be a “de-confliction” zone combined with an attempt to capture Russian soldiers raises the bar for American duplicity to a totally new level.
It’s time to get US troops out of Iraq and Syria. Iran and Russia succeeded where the US failed, and now the US presence there is only likely to lead to trouble that the Trump administration cannot afford in light of the Korean situation.
Always focus on fighting on one front at a time unless one has absolutely no ability to avoid it. To do otherwise is not merely foolish, but risks disaster.
I want to be sure that I didn’t forget any of them in the chapter of SJWADD devoted to them. I’m talking about the specific tactics, such as the “bait-and-report”, rather than the larger tendencies such as those described by the Three Laws of Social Justice.
If anything occurs to you, throw it out. I want to be as comprehensive as possible.
A group of mainstream comic SJWs from Marvel and DC were caught planning to try to harass, and incite violence against, a critic of their work:
The comic book world has had its share of scandals, including the very recent and highly protested revelation that Captain America is really a Nazi, angering fans worldwide. Mark Waid, who recently took over the Captain America comic book for Marvel, has stepped into more hot water after appearing to call out a fan and popular YouTube reviewer for targeted harassment at this year’s Comic-Con on his Facebook page.
Richard Meyer has a YouTube channel called Diversity & Comics, where he reviews current comic books. Most of his reviews mock the overreaching and suffocating leftist messaging that has infiltrated the entire industry. I’ve seen enough of them to say with confidence that Meyer seems like a pretty nice guy with a passion for comic books. His reviews contain no swearing or major insults, just mild humor and a lot of chuckling.
To make matters worse and more embarrassing for the SJW crowd of comic book writers, a secret Facebook page was revealed where writers plotted to target Meyer with harassment meant to incite violence.
Taylor Esposito is a letterer for DC Comics and is clearly seen on the not-so-secret Facebook page insinuating that critics of their comics are likely to be violent, calling them “nutjobs.” Kelly Thompson of Marvel’s Star Wars Phasma and IDW’s infamous lady Ghostbusters joined in, claiming fear of the awful critics as the major reason she’s never been to a con as a professional. B. Clay Moore, who seems to have written something a long time ago, actually suggests harassing Meyer to the point of violence.
Meyer’s videos are low budget, filmed with his phone usually while sitting in his car or house flipping through comic books and chatting about the stories and plot lines, artwork and themes. It’s not exactly a hate crime. He is knowledgeable, interesting and intelligent and he clearly loves comic books. But he, and others like him, are facing an industry that seems to not want them anymore.
It’s going to be amusing to see just how upset these lunatics are next week. But in the meantime, it should surprise precisely no one that SJWs would attempt to destroy someone, however harmless and inoffensive he might be, for failing to submit to the Narrative.
If only it weren’t for those evil GamerGaters ComicGaters, they’d have gotten away with it too!
By the way, if anyone can suggest 3-5 examples of current SJW comics as bad as that recent She-Thor debacle, please put the links in the comments here. The more recent, the better.
UPDATE: Since I was apparently insufficiently clear, I am requesting links to the actual panels online, not YouTube videos or links to where the comic is sold.
Alex Macris explains his critical theory of superheroes:
- Ordinary person accidentally becomes extraordinary through chance.
- Determined person becomes extraordinary through dedication and will.
- A person born with extraordinary gifts lives up to their birthright.
These are, respectively, proletariat, bourgeois, and aristocratic views of human achievement.
The proletariat sees success as a product of chance. “He got lucky.” “He won the lottery.” “He don’t deserve what he got.”
The bourgeois sees success as a product of hard work. “I earned what I’ve got.” “I tried harder.” “It’s a meritocracy.”
The aristocracy sees success as a product of nature. “Some people are born superior.” “Blood runs true.” “I was born to lead.” Examples of aristocratic heroes are Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Green Lantern.
Examples of bourgeois heroes are Batman, Green Arrow, Nightwing, Ozymandias, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow.
Examples of proletariat heroes are Spiderman, Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four.
Marvel’s mutants are interesting. A mutant who sees his mutation as a mighty gift, like Magneto, is aristocratic but typically a villain. A mutant who sees his mutation is a random event tends to be portrayed as a proletarian hero. Most of the X-Men fall into this group.
Overall, Marvel’s heroes tend to be more proletarian, while DC’s heroes tend to be more aristocratic, with bourgeois heroes in both. Under progressive influence, these roles still apply. DC heroes act with noblesse oblige as aristocratic patrons of the oppressed. Meanwhile Marvel heroes tend to suffer from oppression themselves, as in much of the X-Men tales.
Bourgeois heroes tend to be least susceptible to progressive re-purposing as their bootstrap heroism is inherently a conservative message. Hence the progressive critique of Batman for being a successful businessman who uses his skills to beat up criminals, e.g. oppressed people. A progressive Superman can use his powers to defend illegal immigrants, but a progressive Batman is just George Soros.
This analysis helps explain why the Batman movies had conservative undertones, and the X-Men movies had liberal ones.
As it happens, Alt⭐️Hero superheroes will initially be a combination of aristocratic and proletarian due to the unique collective origin story. But there will be more conventional bourgeois heroes as well as time goes on. As with most of my novels and short stories, there is the story, the metastory that encompasses it, and the metasquared story that underlies the whole thing that is not immediately apparent to the reader.
For example, very, very few readers of the Arts of Dark and Light epic fantasy series are aware yet of the metasquared story aspect of the series, if indeed any of them are.
The Spanish government’s attempt to send in the Guardia Civil is being resisted by Catalonian dockworkers as well as the regional government.
More than 4,000 members of Spain’s Guardia Civil are being dispatched to the troubled region amid concerns over divided loyalties in the autonomous community’s own police force, the Mossos d’ Esquadra. Spanish authorities wanted to house the Guardia Civil officers on four cruise ships – two in Barcelona, one in Tarragona and another in Palamos.
But as thousands took to the streets to protest against the detention of Catalan officials, local dock workers joined the backlash. The Assembly of Stevedores of the Port of Barcelona announced that workers would not provide any services to boats carrying security forces, a decision it said was taken “in defence of civil rights”.
Colleagues in Tarragona quickly followed suit and the Catalan government then denied permission to dock in Palamos – which, unlike Barcelona and Tarragona, falls under regional rather than national control.
The moves to disrupt the deployment comes amid seething anger in Catalonia over the arrests of 14 people, most of them high ranking Catalan officials, during preparations for a referendum that has been declared illegal by Spain’s constitutional court.
Dramatic scenes unfolded across Barcelona and other Catalan towns as the Guardia Civil mounted 41 raids targeting government and presidential departments, as well as warehouses containing election material.
Regardless of the rights and wrongs and legalities of the matter that have been debated here over the past few days, it is apparent that the Catalonian secessionists are currently winning at the moral level of war despite the relative restraint of the Spanish government. This would suggest that they will continue to gain support from previously neutral parts, within and without Catalonia.
John C. Wright rightly excoriates the SJW demolition of the comics:
Logic and good storytelling are flung out the window by these Philistines.
Spiderman has been blotted out by Miles Morales, a half-hispanic half-black with no particular personality. The writers seem not to want to give him any personality, for fear of giving his troubles and woes, which in turn might open them to the witchhunter accusation of being racist.
Hawkeye has been blotted out by female Hawkeye. He has an interesting backstory, and some dramatic personal problems. She is a nonentity who suddenly is the best archer in the Marvel Universe for no particular reason.
Iron Man has been blotted out by Riri Williams, a teen-aged black girl who steals things and accidentally conquers eastern European nations. Instead of having problems like shrapnel lodged near the heart as Iron Man does, the girl version of Iron Man is both utterly incompetent, and utterly flattered, praised, and supported by one and all.
Wasp has been blotted out by Wasp, a girl who never puts on her wasp suit, never shrinks down and never fights crime.
Hulk has been blotted out by Amadeus Cho, and also by She-Hulk, both of whom now use the name Hulk. Unlike Bruce Branner, whose is cursed by a Jekyll/Hyde and Frankenstein’s Monster combo of infinite strength and brain-destroying rage, Cho and She-Hulk are possessed of perfect self control, and have no drama. She-Hulk has lost her John Byrne era good looks, her green skin, and her desire to fight crime, and instead looks ugly and gray skinned.
Sam Wilson, the Falcon, has replaced Steve Rogers as Captain America. This one is not as egregious as the others, and, if taken in isolation, might have seemed legitimate, not an attempt at blot out. But Sam Wilson now has the same problem any black student in an affirmative action college has, when people can no longer tell is his diploma was earned or merely granted.
Also, I like Falcon. Why is his black super identity being smothered? Are blacks somehow not legitimate in SJW eyes until they put on the garb and take up the name of a white original?
Let me emphasize that these are not cases where, for example, Robin grows up into Nightwing and someone else puts on Robin’s outfit to replace him, or where Blue Beetle takes up the costume and legacy of the original Blue Beetle.
Neither is any one of these a case where Superman has a cousin or Commissioner Gordon has a daughter who is a female version of a previously established character. That kind of thing happens in comics all the time, and no one cares or minds. Those things are meant to honor the previous character, or provide an interesting variation on a theme.
This is different.
This is like Muslims dynamiting the giant statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. It is the destruction of the icons and symbols of infidels.
This is blotting out the old character. Anyone who is white, straight, heroic or male is being replaced by someone who is not…. Plots, writing, drama, and storytelling has been flushed away down the water closet with very few exceptions.
The fact of the matter is that SJWs cannot tell stories. We saw this same thing in the science fiction field among the Hugo nominees: the more SJW was in a story, the less drama. The reasons for this are complicated, but the basic problem is that SJWs have a worldview that is false to facts about nearly every aspect of human nature and human morality, and instead have a fake, flat, one-dimensional view which contains neither heroism nor personal responsibility.
You might think John is exaggerating. I mean, it can’t possibly be that bad, right? I knew SJWs in comics had gotten out of hand. That’s why, after nearly three years of people requesting one, Castalia House is creating an alternative to the converged mainstream comics. But, as it turns out, the convergence is even worse than I’d ever imagined!
So, Thor is now a woman, who villains (as women) won’t fight out of respect for what she’s doing (as a woman), because it isn’t easy for her (as a woman), but instead engage her in lengthy, boring chatter about their romantic relationships before voluntarily going to prison because girl-power. I”m only surprised the two new gal pals didn’t go on to break out the teapot and sit down to discuss their favorite quotes from Hillary Clinton’s new book over a nice cup of tea.
And doesn’t this all sound a little… familiar? SJWs write science fiction without science, fantasy without the fantastic, military science fiction without war, and superhero comics without heroics. They are dramatic poison, and they are this way by necessity, due to the intrinsic falsity of their worldview.
Next week we will launch the Alt⭐️Hero Freestartr campaign. I guarantee it will be absolutely nothing like this pallid, boring SJW nonsense into which DC and Marvel have devolved. Although I can’t promise we won’t make ruthless fun of it from time to time….
UDPDATE: According to the SJWs, the declining sales of SJW-converged comics are totally not their fault. See, it’s actually the fault of evil right-wing GAMERGATE COMICGATE harassing all those legions of women who totally want to go to comic stores and buy Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Muslim Ms Marvel and Magic Negro Batman, but are frightened out of doing so by evil right-wing ComicGaters failing to make them feel welcome.
Like videogaming, comics culture is steeped in rightwing victim culture, where you convince yourself both that you and your hobby are horribly oppressed and bullied by the jocks, the popular clique, riajuu and that your particular brand of pop culture is superior to what the brainless masses consume because they don’t spent their Wednesday evenings waiting for the new issue of whatever The Avengers is called this week. So you get a culture and industry that bemoans the fact that nobody loves comics anymore, but resents any step made to make people feel welcome.
Give credit to the man, unlike some of the younger SF-SJWs, he understands there is a time to criticize and there is a time to eulogize. His post is titled A Sadness:
Jerry Pournelle has passed away. He was 84.
It would seem that he attended Dragoncon in Atlanta, caught some kind of bug, and died in his sleep on September 8, after complaining of feeling unwell in his last blog post, on the 7th.
Pournelle has been a major figure in the field for as long as I have been a part of it. I first met him in 1973 at the worldcon in Toronto, where both of us were finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer (along with Lisa Tuttle, Ruth Berman, George Alec Effinger, and Robert Thurston). That was the very first year the award was given. To the surprise of no one, Pournelle won, though Geo. Alec Effinger finished so close behind the con gave him a special second place plaque, the only time THAT ever happened. (How close, you may ask? Ten votes, two votes, a single vote? No one knows. In those days, worldcons did not release vote totals).
The Hugos were given at a banquet in those days. I could not afford a ticket, so I came in after the meal for the awards. It was rather an unusual ceremony. The Hugo rockets had not arrived, so the winners received only empty bases… except for Jerry, since the Campbell sponsors (Conde Nast, in those days) HAD managed to come up with a plaque. There’s Jerry holding it, above.
The other weirdness about that night was that toastmaster Lester del Rey, for reasons only known to himself, chose to present the awards backwards. In other words, he started with Best Novel (the ‘Big One,’ then as now), working his way though short fiction and to the fan awards, and ended with the brand-new never-given-before Campbell. Thing is, people started leaving after each award was given, and by the end, there was hardly anyone left in the hall except me, Jerry Pournelle and his party, and the other nominees and their friends (I think Lisa Tuttle and Ruth Berman were there, but Thurston and Effinger were not, someone else accepted the plaque for Piglet).
I came out of the night all right. It was an honor, a huge honor, just to be nominated. And in the aftermath I came up with the idea of a Campbell Awards anthology. A couple editors told me it was an idea worth pursuing, but of course I needed to get all the nominees to sign on… and the key one was Jerry, the winner. So I bought him a drink and pitched him the notion, and he said yes (though, being the consummate pro, he made that contingent on me being able to pay competitive professional rates). Eventually that conversation led to my NEW VOICES anthology, and launched my career as an editor and anthologist… and I’m still going strong there, forty-four years later.
The Hugo voters knew what they were doing when they gave Pournelle that first Campbell; he went on to have an amazing career, both on his own and in collaboration with other writers, particularly Larry Niven. With INFERNO, LUCIFER’S HAMMER, FOOTFALL, and (especially) MOTE IN GOD’S EYE, the two of them helped transform the field in the 70s. They were among the very first SF writers ever to hit the big bestseller lists, and among the first to get six-figure advances at the time when most writers were still getting four figure advances… something that Jerry was never shy about mentioning. Though he was nominated for a number of Hugo Awards in the years that followed, he never won one… but if that bothered him, he did not show it. “Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money,” he said famously.
Pournelle was fond of talking about all the help Robert A. Heinlein (whom he always called “Mr. Heinlein,” at least in my hearing) gave him when he was starting out, and he was a passionate advocate of RAH’s “pay it forward” philosophy, and did much to help the generations of writers who came after him. He served a term in the thankless job of SFWA President, and remained an active part of SFWA ever after, as part of the advisory board of Past Presidents and (even more crucially) on GriefCom, the Grievance Committee. Jerry could be loud and acrimonious, yes, and when you were on the opposite side of a fight from him that was not pleasant… ahh, but when you were on the SAME side, there was no one better to have in your foxhole. I had need of SFWA’s Griefcom only once in my career, in the early 80s, and when we met at worldcon with the publisher I had Jerry with me representing Griefcom. He went through the publisher’s people like a buzzsaw, and got me everything I wanted, resolving my grievance satisfactorily (and confidentially, so no, no more details).
His politics were not my politics. He was a rock-ribbed conservative/ libertarian, and I’m your classic bleeding-heart liberal… but we were both fans, and professional writers, and ardent members of SFWA, and we loved SF and fantasy and fandom, and that was enough. You don’t need to agree with someone on everything to be able to respect them. And while MOTE IN GOD’S EYE may not have won the Hugo in its year, it remains one of the great classics of space opera, destined to be read and re-read for as long as people read science fiction (it IS an honor just to be nominated).
The last time I saw Jerry was at Keith Kato’s chili party at MidAmericon II. He loved Keith’s chili as much as I do, another point in his favor.
R.I.P. Jerry. You were one ornery so-and-so, but you were our ornery so-and-so. Hoist a pint for me at that Secret Pro Party in the sky, and say hello to Mr. Heinlein.