Cernovich attacked at anti-Trump rally

Apparently they were incensed by the “alt-right leader’s” declaration that Bill Clinton is a rapist:

Controversial alt-right provocateur Mike Cernovich appears to have been punched in the face at an anti-Trump rally in Austin, TX on Saturday after repeatedly yelling “Bill Clinton is a rapist” at the crowd.

The right-wing vlogger livestreamed his protest of the rally calling for President Trump to release his tax returns, and the footage appears to show rally goers shouting obscenities, pushing and shoving protest signs in front of Cernovich’s face.

The livestream on Periscope then abruptly ends when Cernovich’s phone falls after seemingly taking a hit.

Mike, however, “took reasonable measures” to defend himself; read his account here, complete with video.

Cernovich caught the angry mob on film. Watch how feral they are. These are not normal people. They are in a cult. Mike Cernovich was sucker punched. Cernovich took reasonable measures to defend himself. 

As I mentioned after Richard Spencer was attacked, be sure to have a group of at least four with you if you’re going to confront the dyscivilizational. They’re herd animals and they work each other up to attacks on unaccompanied individuals. They’re not natural fighters; you can see the way they have to loom and posture, but they will eventually attack if they feel sufficiently confident.

That being said, people have to stop being stupid and learn the basic tricks and tactics utilized by Black Bloc. There is no excuse for managing to get yourself isolated and ambushed; the false retreat was old when the Parthians were using it against the Romans. 21 were arrested yesterday after the most recent Berkeley skirmish.

Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, said he came from Montana with about 50 others to protect Trump supporters. They were joined by bikers and others who vowed to fight members of an anti-fascist group if they crossed police barricades.

“I don’t mind hitting” the counter-demonstrators, Rhodes said. “In fact, I would kind of enjoy it.”

But Rhodes credited Berkeley police for new tactics that mostly kept the two sides apart and “our side chilled and relaxed,” though sporadic fights broke out among both groups throughout the morning and afternoon.

“It’s getting sporty,” said Oath Keeper John Karriman, 59, who is from Missouri and was among the group’s security leaders.

AJ Alegria, 31, of Sacramento said he also came to Berkeley to help defend Trump supporters. He said he pursued a counter-demonstrator down a side street and found himself surrounded by a dozen protesters in black masks who he said attacked him with sticks and pepper spray.

“These people create violence all the time… somebody has to stand up to them,” said Alegria, who was injured in the fight.

The problem, as usual, is that conservatives fail to grasp that they are in a war. You simply cannot place any trust in the SJW-amenable authorities. And you need to prepare for physical conflict, by wearing a mouthguard, multiple layers under a thick leather jacket, and safety glasses, at a bare minimum. There is probably a small business opportunity in putting metal reinforcement inside stocking caps and baseball hats to protect the head.

We were told by the city not to bring anything that could be used as a weapon. Our people, for the most part, complied. The antifa did not and brought mace, sticks, poles, and M80 fireworks. We were there to hear speakers. They were there to start a fight. 


Christ is risen

Early on Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”


Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.  He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed— for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home.


Mallorca attack

Car attack in Mallorca:

At least 5 people have been injured (some of them seriously) when a car mounted on the pavement and hit people that were waiting for the bus or walking along the commercial area. The incident occurred in one of the busiest streets of Palma de Mallorca.

 don’t know if it is connected to this earlier story, but there were concerns about attacks on British tourists on Mallorca and Costa del Sol.

Suspected Isis recruiter arrested on Spanish island of Mallorca accused of inciting terror attacks

Apparently the Moroccan driver is claiming that he just happened to lose control of the car.


Perspectives on law

John Derbyshire quotes George Orwell, and in doing so, explains why civic nationalism failed as a substitute for American nationalism.

The masses still more or less assume that “against the law” is a synonym for “wrong.” It is known that the criminal law is harsh and full of anomalies and that litigation is so expensive as always to favour the rich against the poor: but there is a general feeling that the law, such as it is, will be scrupulously administered … An Englishman does not believe in his bones, as a Spanish or Italian peasant does, that the law is simply a racket.

The English People, Collins, 1947

This is why it was never possible for the USA to survive as Constitutional nation respecting the Rights of Englishmen once non-English people were permitted to become citizens. No other people shared the Englishman’s view of the law. The Northern Europeans didn’t grasp the concept of its theoretical limits. The Southern Europeans saw it as a racket to benefit the powerful and the well-connected. The Jews and Irish saw it as a game to be exploited for the benefit of their tribes.

And once that respect for the law disappears, it cannot easily be restored. It’s infectious. I certainly take a much more lax, even disrespectful, approach to things like restricted parking than I ever did prior to our move to Italy. I can recall being in Spain, near a crowded market, waiting for my friend to pick up meat from the butcher. There were no parking spaces, but there were some places reserved for taxis.

At first, I started to drive past them, and then I thought, “wait a minute, I’m in Spain. As if anyone is going to care.” So, I drove into the taxi space and was able to wait there as long as I required without anyone paying even the slightest attention.


That might explain it

It was obvious that something with regards to North Korea had changed to concern the US, China, Japan, and Russia alike and convince President Trump to take action. It may have been North Korea’s successful development of sub-launched ballistic missiles, which presumably now give it the ability to nuke coastal US cities for the first time.

North Korea displayed its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) for the first time on Saturday ahead of a massive military parade in the capital, Pyongyang.

North Korea warned the United States on Saturday to end its “military hysteria” or face retaliation as a U.S. aircraft carrier group steamed towards the region and the reclusive state marked the 105th birth anniversary of its founding father.

State TV showed images of the Pukkuksong-2 SLBMs on trucks waiting to be paraded in front of leader Kim Jong Un.

Seeing as how North Korea is believed to be able to develop long-range ICBM that will reach the USA within four years, and SLBM that may be able to reach it now, this may be the last chance that the USA and China have to impose any changes on North Korea.


Strong female characters

It’s always interesting, and amusing, to listen to science fiction writers debate the topic of “strong female characters”, particularly in the modern context of Princess Kung-Fu. That, of course, is the unstoppable martial art practiced solely on film, by every kick-ass female character who appears on screen.

And everyone – everyone – does it. Even those who correctly criticize the Buffies and Emma Peels do it in their own way. Consider Declan Finn describing what he presumably considers to be more realistic versions of female fighters:

Five-feet tall (really 4’11”) Goldberg is a computer nerd. She used to work for the NSA, but went over to the Secret Service to audit security, since she’s not tall enough to jump in front of Presidents. Her fights included: punching someone in the balls, and dropping low and cutting their Achilles tendons.

This reveals the fundamental problem with science fiction writers: they don’t get into fights. Oh, they are more inclined than most to get into word spats and verbal scrums, and even to engage in the proverbial handbags at dawn, but virtually none of them, of either sex, have ever punched anyone in the face, or been punched in the face.

For example, any time anyone mentions “punching someone in the balls” as an effective fighting technique, you know they have never actually seen anyone get struck in that manner in a combat situation. You see, there is this useful little substance called adrenaline that tends to fire up when people are engaged in combat of one form or another. It is why someone who is shot five times in the chest can nevertheless stagger forward and bury a machete in a policeman’s head. It is why someone can have a black belt’s sidekick ride up his extended leg, crush his balls between the heel and the pubic bone, and nevertheless continue fighting at full speed for 90 seconds without even slowing down.

And then, after the round was over, grimace, sink to his knees, and ask those who’d been watching, “did he hit me below the belt or something?” I once got my nose broken in a ring fight and didn’t even notice it. You can’t write about potentially lethal combat and ignore the effects of adrenaline. Actual conversation from my fighting days:

Vox: Why’d they stop the fight?
Alex: It’s the rule. Have to stop the bleeding.
Vox: Who’s bleeding?
Alex: You are. Like a stuck pig.

As for “dropping low” to attack someone’s Achilles tendons – plural, no less – that sounds like a wonderful way to get kicked in the face. There is a good reason wrestlers go for the waist, not directly for the legs, after all.

Seriously, no writer should even think about writing a hand-to-hand scene until he – or she – has been punched full-force in the face by a strong man and by a weak woman. Nor should he do it until he has punched both a strong man and a weak woman in the face. Better yet, exchange blows with a strong woman and a weak man too. The experience will absolutely prove educational and should suffice to illustrate how utterly absurd 99 percent of all hand-to-hand combat in film and fiction is. I mean, one might more reasonably, more convincingly, just give the woman wings and a devil’s tail, with which combination she defeats bigger, faster, stronger men by flying out of their reach, wrapping her tail around their neck, and strangling them.

Of course, even then, a sufficiently strong and alert man would simply grab her tail and bounce her face off the ground. All right, strike that, all the succubi don’t know kung fu.

Anyhow, if you would like to read a much more realistic depiction of how hand-to-hand combat in science fiction would work in any universe where F still equals MA, I suggest reading “The Amazon Gambit” from Forbidden Thoughts, set in the Quantum Mortis universe. I wrote it, in part, to illustrate the one way the women can be effectively used in combat.

However, comic readers need not worry. Alt-Hero will certainly contain female superheroines such as Dynamique, Kosmik Girl, Vespra, and La Fille Furie. And they will be lethal superhumans who kick prodigious ass, they simply will not necessarily be able to match fists with the likes of Capitán Europa, the head of the European Commission’s Global Justice Initiative, or Michael Martel, better known as Hammer.


Amazon cuts affiliate income

By reducing affiliate compensation by more than 50 percent. Independent publishers need to be aware that this is eventually going to happen to them too. KU was the original warning. Note that even a relatively small affiliate used to be able to count on making 8.5 percent on its affiliate sales, with a minimum of 6 percent. Now the standard compensation is less than half that. The publishing equivalent would be reducing ebook royalties from 70 percent to 30 percent. Peter Grant has more about this at the Mad Genius Club.


The Hitler that wasn’t

It’s rather fascinating that despite the media’s ritual anointing of a Hitler du jour, the one world leader who has thus far escaped being granted the title is the one most aggressively engaged in the pursuit of foreign expansionism, imperialism, and the pursuit of Lebensraum, and has now utilized the Hitlerian practice of expanding his personal power through plebiscites.

A narrow majority of Turks will vote “Yes” in Sunday’s referendum on changing the constitution to grant President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping new powers, two opinion polls showed on Thursday.

The April 16 vote will decide on the biggest change in Turkey’s system of governance since the modern republic’s foundation almost a century ago, potentially replacing its parliamentary system with an executive presidency.

Polling company Konda said the number of “yes” voters stood at 51.5 percent, but said its survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percent.

“When this forecast is considered within the survey’s margin of error, a final judgement might be misleading,” Konda said in a statement.

Its survey, carried out face-to-face with 3,462 people in 30 provinces on April 7-9, showed turnout for the vote would be around 90 percent. It said the level of undecided voters had fallen to 9 percent from more than 20 percent in January and there was no evidence to indicate their preference.


On vulgarity

I am getting more than a little tired of the unending stream of vulgarity pouring out of a) some of the newer commenters and b) the usual suspects. First, my occasional use of the same does not constitute permission for you. Second, it is particularly unacceptable when directed at fellow commenters. Third, it makes me want to stop paying attention to the blog, so I can only imagine how it affects the casual readers. There is a reason I and many of the long-time commenters have increasingly disengaged from the comments; I have no interest in attempting to communicate with people who emote rather than think before they speak.

Seriously, get a grip. “TRUMP HAS CUCKED AND BETRAYED US ALL, THE END IS NIGH AND REICHSFUHRER KRISTOL REIGSN UBER ALLES!” doesn’t make you look clever, or smart, or even sane. There is not only no need for you to announce your opinion of every zig and zag of foreign policy, but the unpredictability of the God-Emperor all but guarantees that you’re going to look like a complete buffooon within days, if not hours, regardless of what you say.

On a tangential note, I note that, as I anticipated, virtually no one has acknowledged that I correctly observed, from the very start, the way in which the Syrian cruise missile attack was primarily about China and North Korea. So, next time, don’t ask me to make my predictions on this sort of thing public if I have chosen to withhold them for one reason or another. There is literally no reason for me to do so. When I get it wrong like everyone else, I hear about it for years. And when I am very nearly the only one to get it more or less right, everyone either ignores it or simply pretends it was obvious in retrospect.  Now, I’m not annoyed, I expected this, and I’m simply taking the opportunity to remind those of you who asked me to share my interpretation on the day of the missile attacks that I will not pay any heed to such requests in the future.

Anyhow, the moderators and I are going to start deleting comments containing vulgarity on sight and spamming those who refuse to moderate their language. Nor am I interested in any discussion of what words are acceptable and what are not. If you’re going to play the childish game of “let’s see how close to the line I can dance”, I’m just going to delete your comment for being tedious and immature. If your comment is nothing but an insult directed at me or someone else, it’s instant spam. And remember, these are Google comments and any spamming will affect your account across all Google products.

I don’t blog for the comments. I don’t get a rush out of seeing lots of comments. I’d much rather have five intelligent comments than 400 comments when most of them consist of idiots escalating rhetorical hostilities and talking past each other. While it’s fine to criticize, disagree, and utilize rhetoric, you’re going to have to learn how to do so without resorting to the insults and vulgarities that many of you have been using in the recent past.

There is no point in asking for clarification or trying to argue for the benefits of free speech here. The comments exist as a courtesy I extended in response to requests from my readers. If they annoy me sufficiently, I will simply turn them off and continue to blog as before. So, if you happen to want to have this particular microphone available to you, please treat it with more care and respect.

And for God’s sake, stop touching the poop! It’s not that hard. You’re not the poop police. And you’re not helping. Unless you have deletion powers, you are not part of the cleanup process, you’re part of the problem.

UPDATE: From a longtime reader:

I appreciate the vulgarity crackdown.  I had indeed been spending less
time on your site, and, especially, less time reading the comments,
because of the language used.

I had sensed as much. I probably should have done it right after the election, but better late than never.


Nationalism intensifies

As if yet another indicator were necessary, overseas adoptions are at a 35-year low:

Overseas adoptions by Americans have dipped to the lowest level in 35 years, data released on Wednesday showed. The State Department reported that it issued 5,372 visas to children who were adopted abroad or were coming to the United States to be adopted by American parents in 2016, down from 5,648 in 2015 — and a fraction of the 22,884 overseas adoptions in 2004, the peak.

There are, of course, a variety of factors involved. The economy is bad, fewer people are getting married, and married women who are not inclined to bear and raise their own children are even less inclined to raise someone else’s children.

That being said, the decline of international adoption in America is interesting in light of the celebrity fad for virtue signaling by adopting Africans; those religiously reading People magazine would almost certainly have assumed the complete opposite. First, it is a sign of rising national consciousness by other nations who don’t want their children to be taken away and raised as pseudo-Americans. And second, it is a sign that Americans are beginning to realize that many of their friends and neighbors don’t admire their cuckish virtue or generosity for giving a home to yet another invader.

About ten years ago, a straniera we knew was shocked by how she was not infrequently met with sneers and disdainful glares by Italians when she was out and about with her adopted African daughter. She found it hard to understand that they did not, on the whole, view her decision as a good thing or consider her to be a good person as a consequence. It would be understandable if this European nationalist perspective is becoming increasingly common in the USA as Americans find it harder and harder to recognize the society in which they live.

Besides, what need is there to go to Somalia to adopt Somalians anymore? You can find tens of thousands of them in Minneapolis now.

The money quote: “No children were adopted from Russia, once a major source; it shut out prospective American parents for political reasons three years ago.”