Category: Uncategorized

The Revival of Swiss Neutrality

Switzerland’s futile attempt to host Ukrainian peace talks this summer is already dead prior to arrival thanks to the government’s foolish decision to try to take sides in the Russian-NATO war without being willing to admit that it is no longer a neutral party to the conflict.

Russia is unlikely to take part at the outset of a high-level Ukraine peace conference which neutral Switzerland plans to host in the coming months, Swiss President Viola Amherd was quoted as saying by a newspaper on Saturday. Amherd’s interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung daily was published a few hours after Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the United Nations that Bern aimed to hold the conference “by this summer” after the idea was floated in January.

When asked whether Switzerland had since received any more positive signals from Russia, Amherd told the newspaper: “Right now, it looks as though Russia will not take part in a first round of the conference.
“We’re in the process of starting off with a very broad alliance consisting of the BRICS countries, countries from the Arab world, as well as from the global south.”

China has already made it clear that it will not be participating either. And, if Switzerland is foolish enough to give into Clown World pressure and go along with the latest EU, UK, and US sanctions on China, it will soon find itself being regarded as a hostile nation by the two most important military powers on Earth, which would be an incredible achievement of total diplomatic incompetence given 500 years of successful neutrality that survived everything except living next door to Napoleon.

Fortunately, 91 percent of the Swiss citizenry favors a return to true and comprehensive neutrality, and signatures are being gathered for a constitutional referendum that would prevent the satanic globalists and corrupt would-be eurocrats in the government from further involving the nation in Clown World’s self-destructive schemes.

The current world situation dramatically demonstrates the need for a country like Switzerland to mediate between war and conflict parties and to provide a platform for negotiations. Nevertheless, certain domestic circles and also foreign diplomats are trying to put pressure on Switzerland to fully participate in sanctions against Russia and to allow arms deliveries, if not directly then at least indirectly. The narrative of these neutrality diluters is always the same: Switzerland’s neutrality is an outdated model and must be reconsidered or adapted or even ditched. In light of the emerging amalgamation of security policy and foreign policy of the EU and the European arm of NATO, the calls for a “relativization of neutrality“ in favor of a misconceived solidarity are getting louder and louder. These gravediggers of neutrality must be countered with the following:

  1. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality is absolute and geared towards emergencies. It cannot be modified easily and at will on the basis of a current event. Thus, there is no such thing as “Putin neutrality” or the like. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality guaranteed to us at the Congress of Vienna, also with Russia’s explicit approval, sends an unmistakable signal to other countries and our partners that we will reliably and fully adhere to our neutrality in the long – term and will – if necessary – defend it with our armed forces.
  2. The concept of neutrality is fundamentally directed towards wars. In a war, there are always attackers and defenders. It is therefore intellectually dishonest to relativize neutrality in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict or even to ditch it in order to position ourselves unilaterally against an aggressor. For a neutral state, the “good-evil” scheme is suspended, which enables it to offer its good offices. The fact that Putin claims Art. 51 of the UN Charter for himself in order to rush to help an ally is possibly covered by international law but certainly problematic, but nevertheless not unusual: China and the USA have also frequently drawn on this problematic article, the latter without there ever having been an outcry. In this context, especially in a neutral state like Switzerland, there should be careful consideration in order to avoid double standards.
  3. Our elites know well that neutrality is deeply rooted in the Swiss people. Therefore, they believe they have to operate in a hypocritical manner, propagating neutrality internally while acting in a partisan manner externally. For example, the Federal Council has recklessly offered hand to sanctions against Russia, such as the blocking of Russian bank accounts in Switzerland. This has done massive damage to both, our credibility and our business location: a large number of foreigners have withdrawn their capital from Switzerland and transferred it to other countries. It is certainly legitimate to discuss the value of neutrality. However, this should be done with the involvement of the sovereign, the Swiss people, namely at the ballot box.
  4. Our armed neutrality has effectively protected us from external aggressors, especially during World War II. It is not an outdated model, as some try to make us believe, but on the contrary an inspiring model for the future: based on credibility, continuity, predictability and reliability, we secure our prosperity and security, especially for our young generation. The Swiss People does not expect the Federal Council and our politicians to engage in power politics, but rather to protect our people and safeguard our prosperity. This is the very duty of the Federal Council: to integrate our neutrality policy into our foreign policy and to explain our neutrality in a comprehensible way in the foreign policy arena. In the area of good offices, in receiving a large number of refugees – as is currently the case from Ukraine – as well as comprehensive offers for negotiations, Switzerland is and will be able to make major contributions to global peacebuilding and peacekeeping. We must not easily give up this trump card!
Homage to Swiss Neutrality, PRO-SCHWEIZ

Pro-Schweiz has until May 8, 2024 to obtain the 100,000 signatures required to put the initiative on the ballot. (Note to the Bears: if you’re not a Swiss citizen, you can’t sign the petition, so don’t even think about it. Note to everyone else: yes, it is absolutely necessary to spell that out.) And although the media has been ludicrously describing the concept of constitutional neutrality as a “right-wing” objective, it has substantial support among the Left and Green parties as well.

The Federal Constitution is amended as follows:

Article 54a Swiss Neutrality

1. Switzerland is neutral. Its neutrality is perpetual and armed.

2. Switzerland does not join any military or defense alliance. An exception is made for cooperation with such alliances in the event of a direct military attack on Switzerland or in the case of actions preparing for such an attack.

3. Switzerland does not participate in military conflicts between third states and does not take non-military coercive measures against belligerent states. Exceptions are Switzerland’s obligations to the United Nations (UN) and measures to prevent the circumvention of non-military coercive measures by other states.

4. Switzerland uses its perpetual neutrality for the prevention and resolution of conflicts and is available as a mediator.

Call from Left and Green Supporters: Yes to the Neutrality Initiative!, SWISS STANDPOINT, 24 January 2024

Anyhow, people all around the world should hope that the failure of the 2024 peace summit will serve to remind the Swiss people of the way in which their historic commitment to neutrality will much better serve the world than their becoming a small and voiceless cog in the Clown World machine.

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A Bold Move

Since crossing the previous red lines have gone so well for NATO, the USA, and Europe over the last two years, Clown World has now decided to further antagonize both Russia and China. It’s certainly a bold move, anyhow. It’s not a smart one and it smacks of desperation. We’ll see how it works out for them…

ATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukraine has a right to use its Western-supplied weapons to defend itself against Russia, even if that includes striking targets within Russia’s borders.

“This is Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine, which is a blatant violation of international law,” Stoltenberg told Radio Liberty during an interview on Tuesday. “And according to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defense. And it also includes strikes against legitimate military targets, Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. That’s international law, and of course, Ukraine has the right to do that to defend itself.”

A NATO official confirmed with Financial Times on Thursday that Stoltenberg meant that Kyiv’s right to self-defense included striking Russian military targets outside of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned against Ukraine using its Western-supplied equipment to launch attacks on Russian territory, saying that doing so could risk escalating the conflict. The warnings had originally made allies like the United States hold off on supplying Kyiv with long-range weapons capable of reaching Russia, but NATO allies have since given Ukraine such arms.

First, there is no “international law” and there never has been. It’s just a rhetorical phrase that is always applied to the enemies of Clown World and always ignored whenever it’s applied to the servants of Clown World.

Second, reality is reciprocal. Ukraine does have the right to defend itself. Ukraine does have the right to strike Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. But Russia has the right to defend itself too, and to defend itself by striking NATO military targets outside of Russia and Ukraine.

As we’ve repeatedly been shown since 2014, Russia is very, very patient and circumspect. It has no reason to strike back at NATO right away, because time, migration patterns, and economic pressure are on its side. This F-16 insanity is just a desperate attempt to bait Russia into giving the neoclowns in Washington an excuse to escalate from a losing proxy war to an all-out direct war that will permit it to declare martial law, mobilize the economy, and reinstitute the draft before China makes its move on Taiwan.

I doubt Putin and his generals will take the bait. Instead, they’ll just shoot down the F-16s and increase the pressure on Clown World in two or more fronts, beginning with Odessa.

Putin is reportedly on the brink of a new land grab to defy the West by possibly announcing soon that Russia is taking control of a breakaway Moldovan region. There is speculation that unofficial state Transnistria is poised to make an appeal to Putin to join Russia. The landlocked strip along the Dniester River is wedged between Moldova and Ukraine. Putin already has a ‘peacekeeping’ force of up to 2,000 troops in the territory which Russia says overwhelmingly wishes to be incorporated by Moscow. There are also likely thousands of Russian paramilitaries on the ground. A fear is Putin will use a speech at the Russian Federal Assembly on February 29 to green light annexation.

Hey, the USA is always supportive of democratic self-determination, right. But don’t be surprised if a new front is opened somewhere in Asia as well.

The European Union has placed tighter trade restrictions on Chinese companies that it claims are supporting Russia, the European Council said in a press release on Friday. The restrictions are part of a 13th round of sanctions imposed on Friday, a day before the second anniversary of Russia’s military operation against Ukraine.

But no worries. We are assured that in the event of war with China, Ukraine stands with the USA, and “Ukraine ready for war with China if US asks.” So the neoclowns have got that going for them, anyway, which is nice.

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Fake Success, Real Failure

Vice has filed for bankruptcy and its content management system was shut down yesterday:

Vice.com has stopped publishing new content and laid off several hundred employees, its CEO announced late on Thursday. The outlet once valued at billions of dollars had to be rescued from bankruptcy last year, by a consortium including George Soros.

The website is still available, but its content management system was shut down minutes before midnight, according to one employee. The VICE company will “transition to a studio model,” CEO Bruce Dixon said in a message sent to the staff, as part of “fundamental changes to our strategic vision.”

“We create and produce outstanding original content true to the Vice brand. However, it is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously,” Dixon wrote. Going forward, Vice will partner with “established media companies” to distribute its digital content on their platforms instead.

Funded by major corporations and venture capital throughout the 2010s, Vice was valued at $5.7 billion in 2017.

It’s fascinating to compare the fragility of a large, massively-well funded operation like Vice with the antifragility of small, independent operations like UATV. While UATV can survive multiple hits that reduce its revenue to zero for as long as it takes to build the subscriber base back again… and again, the use of debt means that not even a bailout from George Soros is sufficient to keep a Clown World institution like Vice afloat.

Everything about Clown World is fake, pride, and short-lived.

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Their World Stopped

While ours kept going, which is why it’s virtually impossible to talk to a Boomer about anything anymore.

All through the 80’s and well into the 90’s, it used to drive me crazy when KQ92 would play its annual list of most-requested songs, which would inevitably end with “And number one, for the twenty-third straight year, is Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin!”

This is KQ’s top-ten most-requested songs as of 2017:

  1. Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who
  2. You Shook Me All Night Long by AC/DC
  3. Money by Pink Floyd
  4. Kashmir by Led Zeppelin
  5. You Wreck Me by Tom Petty
  6. Turn the Page by Bob Seger
  7. Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd
  8. Baba O’Riley by The Who
  9. Hotel California by Eagles
  10. Layla by Derek and the Dominos

I’m pretty well-versed in music, but I’ve never even heard of the Tom Petty song, and I didn’t know the name of either the Led Zeppelin song or the correct name of the “teenage wasteland” song by The Who. The newest song on there was recorded 44 years ago. The only surprise is that the Boomers finally got tired of listening to Stairway to Heaven, which fell from its perennial top-spot down to number 30.

Keep in mind that this is a radio station located in the home town of Prince Rogers Nelson. And there isn’t one single Prince song in the top 500 most-requested.

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He is Now

Fred Reed explains how the Gazacaust is manufacturing anti-semites around the world.

What kind of human will intentionally bomb a hospital? Or a refugee camp? Is there nothing so foul that an Israeli pilot will not do it? What could be more cowardly? What would it take to get you, the reader, to bomb a hospital?

Of course it is not the scale of what Israel is doing, but the dogged, unrelenting coldbloodedness of it, its shamelessness. It would never occur to a military man, Israeli or otherwise, to say, “No, I won’t do that.” In my decades of covering the armed forces I found officers often to be long on physical courage but almost always to lack moral courage. Soldiers pride themselves on following orders and if the orders are to bomb a refugee camp, well, the pilot was just following orders. This is what Eichmann said, though he wasn’t a soldier. The cult of obedience removes all moral responsibility.

Note that Washington is as culpable as Israel for the slaughter in Gaza. Israel depends utterly for its survival on American support. If Washington told the Israelis to stand on their heads buck naked and sing Yankee Doodle in three-part harmony, or lose all American support, in two minutes they would be upside down and wailing. The killing continues because Washington wants it to continue.

The historically literate will note that the mass deliberate bombing of civilians is not particularly Israeli, but an invention largely made and certainly perfected by the United States. The British-American air war against Germany targeted civilians. Everyone knows about the firestorms in Hamburg and Dresden, and for that matter Hiroshima and Nagasaki, though countless other German cities were so targeted, with Tokyo being firebombed to burn thousands to death. Germans who lived through this tell of exactly the results seen in Gaza, rubble, fire, dead and dying children. Plus ca change, plus ca doesn’t.

The eternal cry of the Jew: “The whole world hates me. What’s wrong with the whole world?” Well, here is an answer that will serve for a few decades. Before Gaza, there was around the web the usual low-key hostility to Jews, like the 4K background radiation. Now nice liberals make venomous comments about how Hitler should have finished, etc. For all I know, ninety percent of American Jews may oppose the killing, and certainly many do, but this doesn’t seem to matter. Selling the Holocaust will be harder for a few years. It will make no practical difference.

It is easy to see why. A friend, conservative, by no means a milquetoast, for a while watched video from Gaza. He saw a little girl, horribly hurt, legs gone but still alive, with adults, apparently her family, going stark bugfuck crazy. The child would not live for more than a minute or two, massive femoral bleeding being of short duration. My friend began sobbing, not his style.

Never an antisemite, he is now.

Here We Go Again, FRED REED, 24 January 2024

Being historically literate, I’ve never given a fragment of an airborne rodent’s posterior for the so-called “Holocaust” or bought into the endless pity party of things that happened eight decades ago. I even pointed out, correctly, that no one under the age of 40 is emotionally moved by appeals to the Holocaust, the endless Boomerism of the mainstream media narrative notwithstanding, in a public debate with a former British Member of Parliament.

But the Gazacaust is happening right now. The pointless sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives on the altar of Clown World by the Kiev regime is happening right now. The foreign invasion of the United States has been happening right now. These are the events that will shape the future, not a shameless, outdated appeal to victimhood that somehow still dominates the political scene and dictates the laws in the USA, the UK, and the rest of Clown World.

No matter how one wants to believe oneself to be a good person, subscribing to all the right beliefs and approved narratives, sooner or later, everyone will be forced to make the decision whether they are going to recognize evil to be evil, or if they are going to declare it to be good.

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Collections and Cancellations

First, if you’re a Library/Libraria/History subscriber and you have not yet restarted your subscription, please read this in order to know if you need to do so now or not, and if you do need to do so, when to do it.

Second, we have a rather esoteric announcement that will be of limited interest to most people, but will be of tremendous interest to the serious book collectors and those interested in Asian history.

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF JAPAN is the first major collaborative synthesis to present the current state of knowledge of Japanese history for the English-reading world. The series draws on the expertise and research of leading Japanese specialists as well as the foremost Western historians of Japan. From prehistory to the present day, the series encompasses the events and developments in Japanese polity, economy, culture, religion and foreign affairs. In the distinguished tradition of Cambridge histories, the completed series provides an indispensable reference tool for all students and scholars of Japan and the Far East.

The massive historical set, which is published by Cambridge University Press in 4,740 pages divided into six books, is very highly regarded as the definitive work on the subject of Japanese history.

Also on Castalia Library today is the daily serialization of Sir Charles Oman’s STUDIES ON THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, which is the current History subscription book. We’ve reached the third chapter, which concerns a largely forgotten battle of the Peninsular War that didn’t even take place in Spain, but in the south of Italy, and yet is deemed to be of tactical significance to the insightful student of military history.

The Battle of Maida is essentially of tactical and not of strategical importance. It was the forerunner of all the great battles of the Peninsular War so far as tactics go; it only differed from them in results because the British Army was commanded by Sir John Stuart and not Sir Arthur Wellesley. The troops and the tactics were the same if the generalship was different. The first clash of Kempt’s British light brigade and Compere’s heavy battalion columns, of which I have to tell in this screed, gives the key to the whole tactical superiority of the British infantry which lay at the base of Wellington’s victorious schemes during the years 1808–15. The battle passed without much notice at the time, because the Neapolitan campaign of 1806 forms a piece of by-play between the campaign of Austerlitz and the campaign of Jena; which few British and hardly a single continental commentator have cared to investigate. Its strategical and political results were nil; its moral results passed unperceived at the time, save among the handful of British officers of ready intelligence who laid to heart what they had seen and stored up its teaching for future use.

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Brothel vs Burqah: 2024

It may be worth revisiting what I wrote back in 2006 concerning the choice facing the increasingly secular post-Christian civilization:

The human spirit, like nature, abhors a vacuum. It is looking increasingly likely that the spiritual vacuum of the 21st century will offer women a choice between the brothel and the burqah as their equalitarian dream shatters around them.

And then again in 2010 on this blog:

All of the airy secular notions about multicultural societies, sexual equality, universal suffrage, and premarital sex are finally running into the hard brick wall of historical reality. The various hypothetical coulds and shoulds are rapidly transforming into can’ts and don’ts. Now that Christian morality has been abandoned in favor of empty moral relevance, there isn’t any means of rationally arguing with the immigrant pimps who are cheefully turning out Albion’s sluttish daughters while guarding their own with all the primitive paternalism of a dragon guarding his treasure.

Now, set aside your instinctive emotional reactions for a moment and think about which of the two cultures a) truly values its daughters more, and b) is likely to demographically outperform the other. Is it the one that forcibly protects young women from their own behavior or the one that aborts them, deprives them of fathers, and generally abandons them to their momentary impulses? And is there any evidence that the positive aspects of the liberation of Western women, to use the rhetorical phrase, outweigh the negative aspects when viewed from a historical perspective?

As for one common argument to which those who admit the reality of the demographic problem often resort, the idea that the West’s scientific lead will somehow allow it to win any long-term intercultural struggle doesn’t hold water; intelligence agencies wouldn’t be assassinating Iranian scientists if sufficient military science didn’t translate across cultures and the same cultural forces that prevent Western fathers from controlling access to their daughters prevent Western universities from controlling access to their scientific technologies.

Needless to say, women voted en masse for The Brothel. The Brothel – which is to say the satanic values of Clown World – has clearly triumphed over the last two decades, as can be seen by the present human hellscape that extends from one end of the dying civilization of the former West to the other. Even those of us who were openly predicting collapse had no idea that things could get this bad this quickly and comprehensively.

But Clown World’s victory is a pyrrhic and probably short-lived one, because its dyscivicism has rapidly progressed from open immorality to outright insanity before our very eyes. What cannot sustain itself will not maintain itself. The Brothel is intrinsically parasitical, and no parasite can survive on its own once its host departs.

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Destroying Democracy to Save Democracy

Ukraine cancels its elections indefinitely:

President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of the war-torn country, just received approval from his parliament to extend Martial Law another 90 days. There have been many parliamentary extensions of the wartime mandate, but this one carried special significance because the 2024 presidential elections in Ukraine were scheduled for March 31, 2024, coinciding with the end of Zelensky’s five year term. Now that Martial Law is in place to cover that time period, Ukraine’s presidential elections have been cancelled indefinitely.

So, a government that was installed by a foreign-backed coup, led by a foreign national, and with a military commanded by a foreign national and directed by foreigners, is cancelling its presidential election because the fate of all the Western democracies depends upon it.

Who finds this Clown World inversion persuasive? Who finds it even remotely convincing?

Pick a card… any card. He’ll tell you what your card is.

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SF Freaks Gonna Freak

Dave McCarty, the head of the Hugo Awards, has been accused of sexual assault by several women in the literary ghetto formerly known as the science fiction community. The only real surprise is that children are not, as yet, reported to be involved:

There’s been a months-long campaign to discredit the Hugo Awards and Chengdu Worldcon from the establishment elites including cross-dresser John Scalzi, former SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal, and Neil Gaiman again, which has caused many who have been disillusioned with Worldcon and the Hugo Awards to laugh at how inept this group in charge of science fiction publishing has become.

It was revealed through a chain of emails that several participants were disqualified from the Hugo Awards for the very woke identity politics that were championed by this group, including orders to spy on the social media and political activities of the people involved. This led to mass apologies and several people stepping down from convention activities because of their corruption.

Now, Dave McCarty, who headed this Hugo Awards committee, is being accused of multiple instances of sexual assault.

Posting to the left-wing echo chamber BlueSky, artist Meg Frank said, “Dave McCarty is emotionally abusive, generally manipulative, and has sexually harassed myself and numerous others. I’ve spoken openly about this and made CoC complaints when possible. He is not a missing stair, he is a creepy handyman who has been using his previous community service as a shield. The hugo shit is awful, and I feel terrible for many people but he is worse than all that.”

Not to be outdone in the victim Olympics, Jesi Lipp quoted the post and said, “I’ve never made it a secret that he groped me at a Smofcon in 2011 and it has always been largely treated as a non-issue.”

Fandom Pulse seems skeptical. I simply note that longtime Hugo-centric SF fandom site File 770 is named, by the owner’s own admission, after what was either an orgy of sorts, or even more tragically, just the first party that the sort of losers whose social lives revolve around an annual science fiction event ever attended.

File 770 is named for the party in Room 770 at the 1951 Worldcon that upstaged the convention.

ROOM 770

— This was a St. Charles Hotel room registered to fans Max Keasler, Roger Sims, Rich Elsberry and Ed Kuss at the 9th Worldcon — nicknamed NOLacon — held in New Orleans in 1951. Frank Dietz had been hosting a room party which was asked to quiet down by a hotel detective, and Dietz resolved the matter by taking eveyone to room 770 circa 11:00 PM Saturday night, whereupon a massive party developed which lasted till 11:00 AM the next morning. Numerous fans drifted in and out, including the legendary Sam Moskowitz, and just possibly, Canada’s Norman G. Browne for whom this was his first convention.

Ain’t no party like a Hugo Party. And thank God for that!

Anyhow, I’m sure it’s no problem that giving another Best Novel award to an angry black woman devoid of any vestige of literary talent won’t solve.

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