Category: Uncategorized

Things for which I am thankful

  • My family. I am truly appreciative of them as well as the fact that I am able to spend so much time with them.
  • My blog readers. It is thanks to you that I am able to take so many risks and try so many new things. Both the material support and the substantive criticism are tremendously valuable.
  • The societal wealth and peace of the last 65 years. Yes, it has softened us. Yes, it has had consequences that will prove civilizationally damaging at best, fatal at worst. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are the most materially blessed generation in human history. We will only fully appreciate the innocence of that time when even the illusion of it is gone.
  • The grace and mercy of God. The older one grows, the more one sees and the more one becomes unwillingly aware of how totally and completely the world is corrupt and fallen. In time, every illusion, no matter how cherished, fades and the tawdry greed, lust, and depravity that lie beneath is revealed. But God remains eternal and His grace abounds.
  • The foolishness of our enemies. They are many. They are merciless. They are cunning. They are indefatigable. But they are blind to the truth, and that makes them reliably vulnerable.
  • History. Can you imagine what codswallop the media would be able to make us swallow were it not for the written record? No wonder it is always Year Zero for the Left.
  • The Vile Faceless Minions. There is something about having one’s own social media army that is strangely… comforting. They are so effective that I’ve not able to utilize even a tenth of their strength in order to accomplish my objectives. Apparently I need to begin thinking bigger.
  • The Castalia House authors. They are not only a talented group of writers, they are a fine collection of intelligent, high-quality individuals. It is a genuine privilege to be associated with them.
  • The Castalia House volunteers. Without them, we could not have accomplished half of what we have been able to do. They are the turbo boost to our engine.
  • Team Alpenwolf and allies. Other than Markku, you don’t know them yet. But they are going to make Castalia’s success look like a footnote.
  • The Brainstorm members. It started as a complete accident, but they have somehow transformed into the hard intellectual core of the Dread Ilk. It’s tremendously useful to be able to bounce ideas off them. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

    The media doubles down

    Expect to see a lot more of these headlines as the media sides with the Muslims against the nation… until they abruptly disappear as the media belatedly realizes they bet on the losing side.

    Texas gun nuts who terrorized mosque publish names and addresses of Muslim families

    The Bureau of American-Islamic Relations (BAIR) — an anti-Muslim group that used assault rifles and other weapons to intimidate and threaten members of an Irving, Texas mosque on Sunday — has stepped up its campaign of harassment by publishing the names and contact information of the city’s Muslim families and their so-called “sympathizers.”

    The Dallas Morning News reported that David Wright III — the man who organized Sunday’s armed demonstration at the Irving Islamic Center — published the names and addresses in a Facebook post.

    “THE NAME AND ADDRESS OF EVERY MUSLIM AND MUSLIM SYMPATHIZER THAT STOOD UP FOR SHARIA SHARIA TRIBUNALS IN IRVING TX. LISTED BELOW,” wrote Wright on BAIR’s Facebook page.

    Wright then published the names of every Irving resident and speaker who spoke out against a state law aimed at limiting the influence of Muslims on local law and customs.

    Of course, the “so-called sympathizers”, also known as “collaborators”, are the ones who are actually getting nervous. Because once the inevitable consequences of diversity+proximity come to pass, no one on either side is going to support or defend them.

    Isn’t it fascinating how the very people who spoke out publicly are upset about having the fact of their speaking out made part of the public record? We’ll know that the trend has switched when the media suddenly begins denouncing the Sharia advocates rather than those defending Western civilization.

    But the people should certainly keep track of all the Scalzis and Quislings who publicly supported the invasion. No matter what they try to claim in the future, the fact is that they are anti-American anti-nationalists who harbor genuine hatred for traditional white America.

     The last few days are a reminder that a large number of Americans are in fact shrieking, bigoted cowards, and that’s a sad thing, indeed.
        — John Scalzi (@scalzi) November 19, 2015

    It should be vastly amusing to see how Scalzi tries to change his tune once he finally grasps that a large number of Americans now see him and his treasonous kind as the enemy and that rich liberal Democrats like him are the only demographic that supports the Islamic migrants.

    The war in Sweden

    There are signs that it is already beginning:

    A tranquil Swedish village is being torn apart by bitter tensions after the arrival of 20 refugee families. Tärnsjö, 150km north of Stockholm, has become a hotbed of resentment where migrant children as young as five need a police escort to get to school. Residents and newcomers have exchanged insults, thrown rocks and set fire to cars, leaving many on both sides scared to leave the safety of their homes.

    In the last few months, with 10,000 asylum seekers arriving a week, the country has reintroduced border controls and the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats has become the second largest party in Sweden, opinion polls show.

    Instead Tärnsjö, a relatively small village with a population of 1,200, is a snapshot of those places where bubbling anger has spilled over into violence and arson.Protesters have set fire to 17 immigration centres in the past two months – and the authorities have warned it is only a matter of time before someone is killed in the race-hate arson attacks engulfing this once-peaceful nation.

    The problems are said to have begun in September when migrants started throwing stones at locals’ cars, and residents retaliated by throwing them back.

    The fires were further stoked on social media – and eventually locals, thought to be teenagers, began organising ‘events’ where a gang would gather to throw stones at the block of flats which has been turned into a makeshift migrant centre.

    I’ve been reading a book on the history of Carthage, which has been surprisingly relevant in this regard. One thing the historical events make very clear is that if a society is not willing to expel or kill the invaders, the invaders will conquer in the end.

    We in the West are the softest generation in human history. As a result of the merciless brutality of our forebears, we have enjoyed 60 years of peace, technological advancement, and wealth, and we are now at risk of losing 2,000 years of civilization due to the ideologies that have arisen as a result of that softness.

    The humane thing would have been to keep the invaders out and help them in their own lands. Now, thanks to the European multiculturalists and the rich liberal Democrats who are the only ones who support settling Muslim refugees in America it is going to be war, the brutal sort of war that not only slaughters women and children, but targets them.

    You can argue about the fairness and the theology of it all you like. History doesn’t care. That is exactly what is going to happen. And if you wish to be a martyr for multiculturalism, well and good, but don’t think that you will be rewarded in Heaven for it. We live in a fallen and evil world, and events will take their predictable course.

    Both Breivik and Lundin-Pettersson should be seen as a warning. I strongly suspect that it is the children of the invaders who will be targeted first by the militant nationalists.

    And before you start accusing me of being bloodthirsty or something, let me remind you that I have been WARNING everyone of it for at least ten years specifically because I did NOT want it to happen. It could have been avoided. But now it is too late.

    The nations rise

    Adios, EU. Or more accurately, to the dustbin of history where you belong with every other failed fascist empire:

    Just weeks into taking power, the new Polish government is making itself felt in making small but heavily symbolic changes to the daily order of business. Having already torn up the previous government’s commitment to take thousands of migrants from the European Union (EU) as part of the continent-wide resettlement programme, Poland is now making tentative steps to remove visible signs of EU influence from public life.

    Under the last government, flags displayed at government events including press conferences were equally split between the Polish national, and the European Union. It was all change at Tuesday’s press conference with new Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who appeared at her podium with Polish flags only.

    The new foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski has quickly become one of the most vocal elected politicians in Europe on the matter of mass migration in the few days he has held his post. Speaking to the BBC, he slammed migrants for masquerading as refugees while in Europe, which he said they were not and in doing so were violating international law. Mr. Waszczykowski also stood by the comments of a party colleague who said migrants brought diseases and parasites into Europe, when pressed by the BBC to condemn them. Citing his experience with Arab countries, Mr. Waszczykowski said: “Such a large, uncontrolled migration may cause problems for the life of Europe”.

    Between Russia, Hungary, and Poland, we are seeing the rise of Eastern Europe and the decline of the West. What this may serve to demonstrate over time is the signal importance of ethnic solidarity and how it is actually more powerful than the ideology of communism, capitalism, or “democratic liberalism”.

    The NATO-ISIS connection

    Just happens to be Turkey:

    A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’”

    The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”

    In a rare insight into this brazen state-sponsorship of ISIS, a year ago Newsweek reported the testimony of a former ISIS communications technician, who had travelled to Syria to fight the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

    The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the “border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.” ISIS militants would freely travel “through Turkey in a convoy of trucks,” and stop “at safehouses along the way.”

    The former ISIS communication technician also admitted that he would routinely “connect ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” adding that “the people they talked to were Turkish officials… ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks.”

    In January, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military were leaked online, showing that Turkey’s intelligence services had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck “to the al-Qaeda terror organisation” in Syria.

    According to other ISIS suspects facing trial in Turkey, the Turkish national military intelligence organization (MIT) had begun smuggling arms, including NATO weapons to jihadist groups in Syria as early as 2011.

    The allegations have been corroborated by a prosecutor and court testimony of Turkish military police officers, who confirmed that Turkish intelligence was delivering arms to Syrian jihadists from 2013 to 2014.

    Documents leaked in September 2014 showed that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had financed weapons shipments to ISIS through Turkey. A clandestine plane from Germany delivered arms in the Etimesgut airport in Turkey and split into three containers, two of which were dispatched to ISIS.

    A report by the Turkish Statistics Institute confirmed that the government had provided at least $1 million in arms to Syrian rebels within that period, contradicting official denials. Weapons included grenades, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, firearms, ammunition, hunting rifles and other weapons?—?but the Institute declined to identify the specific groups receiving the shipments.

    Information of that nature emerged separately. Just two months ago, Turkish police raided a news outlet that published revelations on how the local customs director had approved weapons shipments from Turkey to ISIS.

    Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS’ expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country.

    Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million?—?that was over a year ago.

    By now, this implies that Turkey has facilitated over $1 billion worth of black market ISIS oil sales to date.

    Both NATO and the EU should probably rethink their strategy of building closer relationships with the Turk. No doubt the neocons are slavering at the thought of using Turkey as a means of furthering their desired conflict with Russia, but considering how far agley their plans tend to go, that will probably end with Russia in possession of the warm water seaport it has always wanted.

    It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Turkey is taking the side of ISIS. In the end, it is always the Dar al-Islam against the Dar al-Harb.

    SJWs always minimize

    SN wondered when SJWs will stop trying to dismiss Castalia House:

    How many No. 1s do you think Castalia will have to publish before the rabbits stop referring to it as “an obscure Finnish publisher”?

    Well, we know the answer is “fiver”, since we’ve already published more than five #1 category bestsellers and rabbits can’t count past that. I’d have to look it up, but I believe we’re approaching ten by now. We happen to have three at the moment, and only narrowly missed having four at a time, as 4GW Handbook was #1 in Military Strategy last week, but has fallen to #10 now.

     In case you’re wondering, as I did, how Grow or Die and Compost Everything could both be #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, the answer is that whereas Grow or Die is #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, Compost Everything is #3 in that category, but #1 in the Gardening & Horticulture > Gardening Techniques category. So apparently it gets its own little orange ribbon too. Which is nice.

    Anyhow, it really doesn’t matter what the rabbits say, think, or do. The fact is that we’ve barely gotten started. We just put out our first press release last week, our new Editor-at-large is just gearing up to get rolling, we will have a new announcement to make in the near future concerning audiobooks, and the retail channel that is the primary reason Castalia even exists is very close to launch at last.

    We haven’t made any noise in the science fiction and fantasy categories yet, but we will. We fully expect to become the leading publisher there in time, but we’re not in any particular hurry to get there. Our focus is excellence, and everything we do is with the aim to improve upon what we’ve done before. We have great authors, authors such as John C. Wright, Martin van Creveld, William S. Lind, and Jerry Pournelle, and we have some younger authors that we are in the process of developing, but our depth is still somewhat thinner than we would like. But we will not sign up new authors simply for the sake of putting out more books. Our goal is for me to represent the low bar for Castalia House.

    We know we have the best support any small publisher could hope for, and we are intent on proving worth of your trust. We aren’t going to publish any stinkers because we have to get X number of books out per quarter, and while we may make the occasional esoteric call from time to time, we have the luxury of simply refusing to release substandard works.

    History never ended

    If forced to choose between Muslims and Nazis, which would you choose? Thanks to the multiculturalists, abstaining is not an option. Those are the only two choices. The Germans are already clear about their preferences:

    Germany security guards at the main government office for refugees in Berlin have reportedly been caught on camera using openly Nazi language.

    Bild newspaper has released video footage in which it alleges the guards call for asylum-seekers to be put in concentration camps.

    One recording purports to show a uniformed security guard speaking of getting “swastikas in my eyes”.

    “In two years, there will be a revolution here and there will be no more of all this s***. We’ll clean it all out,” the guard, who has not been named, appears to say.

    “We have plenty of summer camps, and I swear to you they can be used again. On the gate: work makes you free,” he says.

    There used to be Muslims in Spain too. For 700 years. And then there weren’t. So it’s rather amusing for the historically literate to hear the multiculturalists insisting that diversity is forever. I mean, how do they think those ethnically homogeneous nations came about in the first place, evolution?

    The amount of blood that is going to be on the hands of the multiculturalists is going to be absolutely astonishing. The anti-fascists and multiculturalists and diversity advocates are creating more Nazis around the world than Hitler ever did.

    And no amount of name-calling is going to dissuade them. If the deportations do not begin soon, the death camps will become inevitable. That’s how it works. That is how it has always worked, going back to Assyria, Carthage, and Rome. There are now two options: elect the nationalists or deal with the revolutionary ultranationalists.

    History never ended.

    Gloating Milo is Best Milo

    Nero reaches 100,000 followers on Twitter and is characteristically humble and modest about it in an article entitled “Why I’m Winning”:

    Earlier today, a student newspaper called Nouse published an op-ed titled, “We Need To Talk About Milo.” It’s a long explanation of why I’m so popular, influential and successful.

    I’m mortified by its appearance, obviously. That said, it’s worth reflecting on….

    My career is evidence not just that free speech is effective, but that free speech combined with a lack of snobbery and class war always wins in the end. There’s no defence against the truth – especially when it’s wrapped up in a joke and has great hair.

    Progressivism and social justice threw everyone out one by one, until the number of people who weren’t permitted to talk was greater than the group allowed to. I’m a direct casualty of that exclusionary attitude: a gay, matrilinearly Jewish conservative Catholic who, according to your worldview, shouldn’t exist.

    Is it any wonder I found common cause with the irreverent hordes of GamerGate? It’s the gamers, of course, I have to thank for giving me a leg-up a year ago. We might not look much alike, the average gamer and me. But, when you think about it, we’re natural ideological bedfellows – and we’ve both been cast out by the people who ought to have been our defenders. So we made our own family together, as dysfunctional as it can sometimes appear.

    There are few things I like better than breathtaking arrogance that is based on genuine self-confidence and ability.

    WWIII: the second shot

    The Paris attacks was the first shot being fired. The downing of a Russian SU-24 by NATO is the second. I have no doubt that the USA will frantically protest that Turkey, not NATO, is responsible, but when Putin responds, the USA will be treaty-bound to defend Turkey. This is why the Founding Fathers warned against “entangling alliances”, as they tend to outsource one’s diplomatic and wartime decision-making at the very worst possible times.

    A Russian Su-24 fighter has been shot down in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry said, adding the plane hadn’t violated Turkish airspace and was at an altitude of 6,000 meters.

    If you haven’t read much about the leadup to past world wars, what you should understand is that they never look like anything out of the ordinary at first. However, unlike the previous world wars, this looks like one that will genuinely span the globe, as the jihadists have been permitted to infiltrate every country and nation, from China to Iceland, while China is poised to not only invade Taiwan, but claim the entire South China Sea and spread out across Africa.

    About the only place we can expect to escape the global conflict is South America, as La Raza Cósmica is more vicious and more capable than the mujahideen while simultaneously being devoid of any semblance of white guilt or mercy. The jihadists wouldn’t last five minutes against the cartels.

    As Nicolas Taleb has observed, the one place the immigrants have failed to find any footing in Italy is where the mafias rule.

    This doesn’t mean that Russia and the USA are going to start shooting at each other immediately, it merely means that another domino has fallen.

    UPDATE: All right, this may be more than just another domino falling. I doubt that Putin will fail to respond to this sort of behavior by the Turks:

    Turkmen forces in Syria shot dead the two pilots of a Russian jet downed by Turkish warplanes near the border with Turkey on Tuesday as they descended with parachutes, a deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters.

    “Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air,” Alpaslan Celik, a deputy commander in a Syrian Turkmen brigade said near the Syrian village of Yamadi as he held what he said was a piece of a pilot’s parachute. 

    UPDATE II: The news just keeps getting worse. It looks like we know who is supporting ISIS and who is not.

    Russian helicopter SHOT DOWN while searching for downed jet

    UPDATE III: Putin’s response: “A stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorism.”

        “The loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way.”

        “Our aircraft was downed over the territory of Syria, using air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16. It fell on the Syrian territory 4km from Turkey.”

        “Neither our pilots nor our jet threatened the territory of Turkey.”

        “Today’s tragic event will have significant consequences, including for Russia-Turkish relations … Instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours.”

        “Do they want to make Nato serve ISIS? … We hope that the international community will find the strength to come together and fight against the common evil.”

    UPDATE IV: Yeah, I’ll bet Erdogan called an emergency meeting.

    Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called an emergency security meeting involving his top generals, heads of intelligence, Prime Minister Davutoğlu and other senior ministers.

    When I say it, it’s funny

    But when YOU say it, it is mean and it is not funny and you should stop:

    It turns out that saying “the train is fine” has turned into a rhetorical tool by assholes to needle people they disagree with, so much so that just the other day I received almost a thousand hits on the video because of another author’s invocation of the catchphrase.

    Being a parent of a child with autism is not a great experience. You get all the hardships of just being a parent, plus the additional burden of dealing with a child who does not have full control of his or her emotions or cognitive state. It can be frustrating, even heartbreaking, and because of that it’s good to be able to step back and laugh a little. But one thing we should not do is turn autism itself into the joke, or accuse people who are not autistic of being disabled themselves….

    I’m not going to tell people how to comport themselves online. As I said above, I don’t even expect this entry is going to change anyone’s mind about anything. What’s more, I figure at least some of these assholes will come around and leave hateful comments because I’m daring to point out their thoughtlessness. That’s pretty much par for the course for people who think disabilities are a joke. At the same time, I’m not going to simply watch my blog stats tick upward based on the assholish behavior of others and say nothing. I try to be inoffensive here, but come on.

    You will note I’m not naming names. I’m not into the shame game. If someone chooses to out themselves on their own blog or in the comments below, that’s their business, but I’m not going to gather up a bunch of villagers, arm them with torches and pitchforks, and send them en masse toward the castle. That’s not my way, and while it may have been in the past, it isn’t any longer. I’m content simply to say my peace and be done with it.

    All I ask of those of you reading this is: stop it. You think you’re being clever and funny, but you’re not. You are being an awful person, and while you might believe it’s for a good cause, whatever point you’re trying to make is lost. Sure, your friends might have a hearty chuckle at how you called someone autistic and isn’t that hilarious, but those of us who live the struggle are not laughing. Our kids aren’t laughing. Our brothers and sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews who suffer with ASD aren’t laughing. It’s not a joke.

    I’m so glad he’s not going to tell people how to comport themselves on line. Because if he had, I might have been inclined to observe that it’s not hard to see how the acorn doesn’t fall all that far from the tree. Fortunately, he didn’t, so I won’t.

    It clearly escaped Mr. Speech Policeman there that “the train is fine” is not utilized simply as a means of needling those with whom one disagrees. It is utilized as a rhetorical means of demonstrating that the person with whom one disagrees is focused on the wrong thing, often to the point of seeming obsession. In other words, the behavior is observably similar to that of an autistic person, which is why the application of the phrase is funny. Humor is contextual, after all.

    As it happens, I find this attempt to take offense at an unapproved use of the phrase to be ironic because it has effectively replaced something most people would tend to find rather more offensive, namely, the demand that the interlocutor “stop sperging”.

    Which just goes to show that there is absolutely no point in paying any attention whatsoever to these idiot speech police. Considering the lengths to which they go to find offense, I would think they should be abasing themselves before me and expressing their heartfelt gratitude, not whining and crying… except of course that seeking attention by whining and crying is the whole point of the exercise.

    The train is still fine.

    UPDATE: Our own Autistic Commenter, ER, comments.

    I happen to be autistic so I feel qualified to respond to Sam: Shut the fuck up you attention-seeking virtue-signaling hypocritical speech-policing pussified retard! The train is fine!

    UPDATE II: And Azimus makes an apt observation:

    The most fascinating aspect of all this is the guy Sam Hawken somehow manages to contort himself into a position where the original material mocking autistic people is funny, but a simple reference to it is offensive. I would love to give the man a piece of paper and a pencil and ask him to map out how this makes sense to him.