Category: Uncategorized

RFK Endorses Trump

I’m not even paying attention to the fake horse race anymore. I largely stopped paying attention to what passes for US politics after the fake midterms of 2018 presaged the fake presidential election of 2020.

RFK Jr. endorses Trump as he suspends his campaign. The independent candidate’s exit will add yet another twist to the already chaotic 2024 race. Kennedy said that he’s suspending his campaign but remaining on the ballot in several states. He also said he was offered a role in a potential second Trump administration.

The independent candidate’s exit will add yet another twist to the already chaotic 2024 presidential race. Kennedy’s unorthodox views drew support from Democrats and Republicans. Both parties worried that he would be the biggest electoral spoiler in decades.

The presidential election remains incredibly close, and if even a fraction of Kennedy’s support moves to Trump, it could be decisive in swing states. “If you live in a blue state, you can vote for me without harming or helping President Trump or Vice President Harris, and red states the same will apply,” Kennedy said at the press conference. “But in about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name.”

I think there is considerable reason to doubt that any seemingly close election in the USA is genuine any longer. Democracy in the USA was always a strictly-limited illusion, but now it doesn’t appear to be anything more than pure theater.

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And the Diversity Celebrated

You have to say this for the Diversity in Germany. They do now how to celebrate the concept.

A large-scale search was underway Saturday in the western German city of Solingen after three people were killed and at least eight others wounded, five of them seriously, in a knife attack at a festival.

“The police are currently conducting a large-scale search for the perpetrator,” police said in a statement. They have assembled a large number of forces around Solingen city center, including special units. “Both victims and witnesses are currently being questioned,” they said.

People alerted police shortly after 9:30 p.m. Friday to an unknown attacker having wounded several people with a knife on a central square, the Fronhof. Police said that the perpetrator was on the run, and that they so far had only very thin information on the assailant. They said they believe the stabbings were carried out by a lone attacker and gave no information about the identities of the victims.

The “Festival of Diversity,” marking the city’s 650th anniversary, began Friday and was supposed to run through Sunday, with several stages in central streets offering attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics.

To quote the great Martin van Creveld: “immigration is war”. Things aren’t going to get any better, to the contrary, they’re going to get considerably worse. Diversity is nothing more than the prelude to the violent struggle for power over the other minorities.

The greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

Such measures of civic health as “not getting stabbed.”

UPDATE: no formal description or images of the perpetrator have been released yet by German police. 

And yet, I suspect literally everyone who is reading this could provide one that will turn out to be reasonably descriptive of the culprit.

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The Battle of Kursk, Round 1

As the second Battle of Kursk winds down, it seems appropriate to note the anniversary of the end of the first, much larger one.

The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle of the Second World War, was fought on the steppe of Kursk oblast between July 5 and August 23, 1943. It was initiated by the Germans who, in retreat after their spectacular defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, concentrated 50 divisions, two tank brigades, three tank battalions, and eight artillery assault divisions comprising 2,700 Tiger and Panther tanks, some two thousand aircraft, and 900,000 men in all. The Soviet forces, consisting of General K. K. Rokossovskii’s Army of the Center, General N. F. Vatutin’s Voronezh Army, and the reserve army of the Steppe Front under General I. S. Konev, numbered 1.3 million troops, 3,600 tanks, and 2,800 aircraft.

The German offensive, code named “Citadel,” involved two simultaneous thrusts against the Soviet-held northern and southern salients. Both were successfully repulsed, and by July 12, the Soviet forces had gone over to the offensive. On August 4, the city of Orel was liberated and by the 18th the German army took up defensive positions east of Bryansk. It had lost 30 of its 50 divisions and up to 500,000 men killed, wounded or missing in action. From its victory in the Battle of Kursk, the Soviet Red Army went on to liberate most of Ukraine in the autumn of 1943, marching into Kiev on November 6. Although Western historiography traditionally marks the beginning of the German downfall to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the crushing defeat of Kursk makes a more likely turning point for the war.

For anyone who knows anything all about military history, or just WWII, the idea that a single, solitary Ukrainian division was going to accomplish anything of note on Russian territory was always absurd on its face. And remember, the Russian population today is 34 percent larger than it was in 1943.

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LEAVE NEIL ALONE!

Given what is already known and confirmed by Neil Gaiman himself, you wouldn’t think anyone would be dumb enough to step forward, at this point, and seriously try to argue that he never did nothing wrong to nobody. Apparently he just writes six-figure checks to middle-aged women out of the goodness of his heart or something. In any event, a publicist – seriously, a publicist – tries to argue that Neil Gaiman simply could not have done what seven-and-counting women have alleged that he did to them.

Of this I assure you with all certainty: as night follows day and day follows night, Neil Gaiman respects women. He loves women to which his daughters can attest and has supported women his entire life.

Now I’m not saying that this demonstrated respect discredits the standing allegations. What I am saying is that knowing Neil, having been around Neil, I find it highly suspect that he would commit acts of aggression, sexual or otherwise to women, regardless the circumstance.

Neil just isn’t made that way…

Most if not all the women accusing Neil of improprieties concede that their relationship were not just consensual but mutually initiated… He’s no saint, but he’s no demon either and his demonization is not only injust and unfair but does nothing to help the lives of his accusers.

What I am saying is that personally, I am skeptical because I am a very good judge of character and I find it highly unlikely that Neil would be capable of the letter of these allegations.

Yeah, I suspect one of the many lessons to be learned from this comedy of misdeeds is that Igor Goldkind is not, in the end, a very good judge of character. And to say that people are unimpressed with this inept attempt at restoring Neil Gaiman’s shredded reputation would be to put it mildly.

  • Your blog post and comments are a masterclass in how to do rape apologia. You should worry about that instead of speculating about hypotheticals.
  • Someone should ask him how many times he’s had sex with Gaiman since he’s so sure about what Gaiman would or wouldn’t do sexually.
  • “I respect women so much that I’m going to listen to my buddy instead of them.”
  • That’s gonna reflect so badly on him when the storm will reach the mainstream. Which it will. Buckle up, Igor and Co.
  • Neil’s lawyers aren’t sending their best cause they can’t find the best.
  • I read this yesterday, and didn’t have words for how fucking irritating and disgusting it was.

Anyhow, there’s no need to read it. This pretty much sums up the entire wall of text.

UPDATE: Oh… my… days. This guy is about enough to convict Gaimain via guilt by association. Consider the source.

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History Notes

A few notes for History subscribers as we’re rolling a more books into the final stages of the production process.

  1. The new Spanish cowhide leather will make its Castalia debut with the CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM volumes 1 & 2. There will be no additional charge. We’re not sold out quite yet, but there won’t be very many extras, so keep that in mind if you’re contemplating a History subscription.
  2. We have improved the quality of our paper. Previously we were using the same paper that Folio Society does, but starting with DRACULA for Library and BYZANTIUM for History, we’re moving up to the highest quality offered by the same manufacturer. Neither Easton nor Folio will be competitive with the quality of the materials Castalia is offering by this winter.
  3. The first high-quality bonded leather has arrived at the bindery. We’re still sorting out how our lower-cost line of Signature Society books will be presented, but if you’ve got a book you’d like to see offered in that line, let us know at SG.
  4. Many Annual History subscribers need to renew their subscriptions. Since we changed payment processors, we cannot automatically renew your subscription. If you’re not sure if your subscription has lapsed or not, please email library AT castaliahouse DOT com. Since the History subscription has grown to the point that it is approaching Library print runs, we seldom have any extra books.
  5. NAPOLEONIC WARS is scheduled to be bound on October 1st.
  6. BYZANTIUM Vols 1 & 2 are expected to be bound in November. As is Dracula.
  7. We MAY offer a few goatskin BYZANTIUMs if we have any extras from the sets we are binding for Cambridge.
  8. SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON may – MAY – be out in time for Christmas.
The front endpapers for NAPOLEONIC WARS

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30 and Counting

The Anti-Clown World Alliance is growing rapidly:

BRICS—originally made up of just Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—is going to need a new name. After not adding any new members for 13 years, the non-Western international group welcomed Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates last August. The floodgates have since been opened: In February, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor claimed that over 30 nations now want to join the international group.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has been vocal about wanting to join the bloc, lobbying Russian, Chinese, and just this week, Indian officials about Malaysia’s application. Thailand also submitted a formal application to join the bloc last June, and officials hope that the Southeast Asian country will be able to join the BRICS summit in Russia this October.

BRICS, which traces its name to a Goldman Sachs report in 2001, has long struggled to find an economic or geopolitical purpose, as its member countries have little in common besides being large and non-Western. But in recent years, the bloc is increasingly trying to position itself as the voice of the so-called Global South, a term used to describe postcolonial developing economies. It’s an argument that’s picked up steam since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which brought geopolitics back to the fore and highlighted the power of the U.S. in the global economic system.

“For some countries, BRICS can be a counterweight against U.S. economic hegemony,” Rahman Yaacob, a research fellow in the Southeast Asia program at the Lowy Institute, says. Joining the bloc could also be a way to hedge politically, as the intensifying rivalry between Washington and Beijing risks splitting the world into two opposing groups.

Think about how awful the neo-liberal world order has obviously become, that dozens of nations around the globe are finding mutual purpose in helping each other resist its influence and control. The promises of “freedom” and “democracy” and “open societies” have turned out to be shamelessly satanic lies.

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He Knew It Was Coming

Neil Gaiman appears to have engaged a damage-control firm and begun an extensive social media campaign TWO MONTHS BEFORE the podcast that broke the news of the alleged sexual assaults, based on what the members of the Neil Gaiman Facebook group have observed.

In the past few weeks, there have been reports that a reputation management firm has been hired by Neil or on his behalf, and their activities may include astroturfing X with positive comments about his work. Messages take the form of paragraph of Chat-GPT-style text praising a Gaiman project, or describing it as if readers will never have heard of it before (which is not appropriate for the intended audience, who have already been discussing it for years). There is then a bunch of replies to the post expressing delight about the work. I assumed that couldn’t happen on Facebook.

A few days ago I was concerned by a post that was shared to this group from the Neil Gaiman group. Now, we’re all positive folks and we’re here because we like Neil’s stuff (or did until recently), so it’s not unusual for the mood to be on the enthusiastic side. It’s possible I’m seeing more than is there. But…
You can check how long somebody has been a member of a group, so I had a quick look for each of the posters. Tortoise Media’s podcast was published on 3rd July so there would have been an awareness of their initial investigations in the months running up to then. A remarkable number of commenters only joined the Neil Gaiman group in May, June, and July.

A Reddit commenter points out that Gaiman’s claims to have been diagnosed with autism – at the age of 62 – appear to be rather dubious. He first made the claims on March 8, 2023. That would appear to have been before the podcast production was underway, but well after Gaiman was aware that he was going to be facing public accusations of sexual assault.

If I remember correctly, didn’t he also talk about having autism for the first time a few months before the podcast was released? I think he confirmed it for the first time on Tumblr earlier this year, (and surprise, that was one of the defenses used by a friend of his who talked to Tortoise). Seems like he and his team were already long prepared for the podcast episodes to drop and had a plan in place.

It’s certainly interesting that while Gaiman is more than willing to tell people that he’s autistic – which apparently has not impressed anyone as an even remotely legitimate diagnosis – while continuing to conceal what appears to be his continued involvement with Scientology. Personally, I think he should have gone with sociopathy, although perhaps that would have struck just a little bit too close to home.

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At Least They’ll Warn Us

Simplicius analyzes the recent release of secret Russian nuclear doctrine dating back to 2014:

The first truly eye-opening detail is the claim that these secret internal Russian documents include plans for a potential nuclear “demonstration” strike, if things really begin escalating:

The presentation also references the option of a so-called demonstration strike — detonating a nuclear weapon in a remote area “in a period of immediate threat of aggression” before an actual conflict to scare western countries. Russia has never acknowledged such strikes are in its doctrine.

Such a strike, the files say, would show “the availability and readiness for use of precision non-strategic nuclear weapons” and the “intention to use nuclear weapons”.

To clarify: we’ve often talked about Russia doing a demonstrative nuclear test in order to get NATO’s attention in the Ukrainian conflict. That is something entirely different. A nuclear test would be something run by scientists for measuring purposes, conducted in a safe and controlled way, with a nuclear device usually detonated in a stationary mode somewhere on or near the ground.

That is why this is particularly eye-opening because it is something far more aggressive and threatening. It would entail Russia not setting up a test, but actually live-firing a real tactical nuke from one of their many systems into a remote area. The simple acknowledgment that Russia even has such contingencies drawn up is fairly startling and clearly draws a heavy shadow over the now-escalating Ukrainian conflict, where NATO’s involvement continues to grow more out of control each day.

I don’t view this as a bad thing at all. The threat of tactical nuke strikes to eliminate Europe’s already limited war-making capacity has existed all along, whether we think about it or not. So to know that the official doctrine incorporates a demonstration strike and a warning period is actually rather comforting, as it provides time for people to get away from any obvious military targets.

The risk of tactical strikes is much higher than strategic strikes, because the USA is not going to put itself on the line for Europe, not even if its own military bases are hit there. That’s the whole point of “foreign adventures”; keep them foreign and keep the bloodshed well away from the homeland. Even the foreign elite that runs the US empire is unlikely to react to tactical strikes on Europe for the same reason; they don’t want their homeland turned into a glass desert either.

It’s informative to observe how the USA, Germany, and the UK are all disavowing any knowledge of, much less involvement with, the Ukrainian Kursk offensive now that it has proven to be a tactical defeat and a strategic disaster.

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One Arrest, Two Deaths

Richard Medhurst was arrested at Heathrow just two days before one man he was supposed to interview was killed in a car accident and five days before the other man was killed in a boating accident.

“On Thursday, as I landed in London’s Heathrow airport, I was immediately escorted off the plane by six police officers who were waiting for me at the entrance of the aircraft. They arrested me – not detained – they arrested me under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 and accused me of allegedly ‘expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization’ but wouldn’t explain what this meant,” Medhurst says in the video.

Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has a clause that was added in 2019 that made it illegal to “expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization” if “in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organization.”

I have very little doubt that neither of those two deaths were genuinely accidents. As for the idea that a waterspout could be a man-made weapon, I remind you of my introversion of the famous Holmsian aphorism: due to the finite bounds of human knowledge, the impossible is always far more likely than the improbable.

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DWFC: 25 for 25

Dorking Wanderers Football Club – of whom Castalia Library is a sponsor – has announced a new ownership program called 25 for 25, which involves the sale of 25 shares of the club plus a special limited edition retro jersey. Here’s a video of Marc White himself announcing the program and here is the link if you’d like to join the ownership club and join what I can attest is truly an absolutely fascinating ride.

I can also announce something that will not yet be apparent, since it was only settled this morning, but the limited edition 25th Anniversary retro jerseys will, like the three 2024-25 season jerseys, sport the Castalia Library logo on the back. It’s a smaller logo above the number, since there is no need to leave that space for the players names.

It would certainly make for a very cool and unusual Christmas gift, even if you’re not into English soccer. The price of the shares and shirt is around $460 at current exchange rates, which is a very good price for being able to genuinely tell people that you own a real English football team with short, but already legendary history.

Forget Wrexham. Imagine when DWFC makes it to the Premiership in 15 years or so…

UPDATE: Here is the retro jersey. The logo on the back signifies that it is truly elite.

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