Category: Uncategorized

Clown World Incoherence

A longtime opinion-leading clown performs a 180 on Ukraine’s membership in NATO:

Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger has signalled a U-turn in his views on Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership. The veteran politician told The Economist that he now believes peace in Europe cannot be achieved without Ukraine joining the US-led military bloc.

Last fall, Kissinger insisted that “it was not a wise American policy to attempt to include Ukraine into NATO.” He said the bloc’s eastward expansion since the fall of Soviet Union in 1991 had essentially removed Russia’s historic “safety belt,” but insisted that was no justification for Russia’s “surprise attack” on Ukraine.

However, in his interview on Wednesday with the British outlet, the politician, who turns 100 on May 27, suggested that “for the safety of Europe, it is better to have Ukraine in NATO.” He acknowledged that he currently finds himself “in the weird position that people say, ‘Look at him, he’s changed his mind. Now he’s for membership of Ukraine in NATO.’”

The reason for such shift is “twofold,” Kissinger said. “One, Russia is no longer the conventional threat it used to be. And, secondly, we have now armed Ukraine to a point where it will be the best-armed, most modern country and with the least experienced leadership in Europe,” he explained.

Translation: Kissinger has gotten the message that Clown World has gone all-in on Ukraine. They believe their Clown World Order will fall anyhow if Russia defeats Ukraine, so they might as well take the risk of direct conflict and an open Russia-NATO war. Because NATO is no longer anything more than Globohomo’s Rainbou Army.

Clown intellectuals like Kissinger, Kagan, and Kristol never “change their minds” in response to changing circumstances. Notice that none of the negative points upon which Kissinger based his previous opinion have changed. What they do is their masters’ tea leaves and adjust their public narrative accordingly.

DISCUSS ON SG

Miles Mathis Responds

A reader at AC wanted to let the Miles Mathis Committee know we had recently been discussing the limits of the materialist perspective here, which discussion happened to touch upon some of the less-logical conclusions of Miles and a few other materialist commentators:

Regarding this: The Limits of The Materialist Perspective

I got a response from Miles Mathis.

ME: We are having a bit of a discussion about you over at voxday.net. I really enjoyed your essays here:

MILES: Fuck em. I’m busy writing new papers. They should try it instead of reading old Langley scripts on me. Calling me vain has been done and gone nowhere.

Doesn’t speak wonders for the reading comprehension there, does it? The thing is, Miles knows who I am. I’ve linked to a number of his papers and I’ve even bought a few of his books. So, to claim an observation that the utility of his analysis is limited by his materialist perspective and concomitant refusal to admit the possibility of a supramaterial element driving the historical activities of “the Phoenician Navy” rather than mere pecuniary interests is “an old Langley script” on him is more than a little bizarre.

Also, I don’t write papers. I write books.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Tale of Two Chinas

Taiwan island submits to the globohomo death cult:

Gay and lesbian couples will now be able to legally adopt children in Taiwan, after the island’s legislature voted in favor of the change on Tuesday. Taiwan became the first jurisdiction in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage four years ago.

The mainland supports future Chinese generations:

There has been a decline in births since 2017 as well as a falling marriage rate, independent demographer He Yafu told the Global Times on Sunday. The measures target important issues affecting the willingness to marry and have children, and they will help curb some of bad social customs through long-term efforts, observers noted. With economic and social development, the Chinese younger generations’ concept of marriage has undergone changes, He said, pointing out that the key to improve the culture of marriage and childbirth lies with young people.

“The society needs to guide young people more on the concept of marriage and childbirth, and encourage young people to get married and have children,” He said.

Indeed, efforts to improve society’s marriage culture and environment will hedge against the possible negative effects of some of the demographic downturn, analysts noted.

He pointed out that population problems are chronic and that population declines will have little impact on China’s economy and society in the short term. China is expected to introduce measures to reduce the cost of marriage and childbirth and vigorously create a childbearing-friendly social environment, he said.

The future belongs to those who show up for it. Clown World is desperately attempting to shore up its weakening position with technology and parasitical behavior. Russia and China, along with the European Christian remnant in the West, are taking actions that will inevitably assure their ascendance.

Build platforms. Build homesteads. Build families. And prepare to defend all of them from the increasingly desperate clowns and the NPCs they have programmed.

DISCUSS ON SG

A Tale of Two Conans

The Essential Malady compares Chuck Dixon’s Conan, which is based on Robert E. Howard’s public domain Conan, with Tor’s Conan, which is presumably licensed from the Swedes holding the rights to the later portrayals of Conan the Barbarian.

Last month I reviewed The Siege of the Black Citadel by “The Legend” Chuck Dixon. I mentioned in the review that it was the first I had read that wasn’t written by Robert E. Howard (excepting comics). I expressed that I was reluctant to read stories by other authors because I didn’t believe they could live up to Howard’s work but that Dixon came very close which is high praise.

Late last year, the first new Conan novel since 2011 was published by Titan Books some months before Dixon’s new story was out. This is written by S.M. Stirling who has been a published author since the 1980s though I hadn’t heard of him until now. Blood of the Serpent is written as a prequel to what is probably Howard’s most recognised story, “Red Nails” and indeed, the events are so closely tied that it is included at the back. When I noticed my library had a copy, I thought it would be worth reading to compare with both Howard and Dixon.

It wasn’t but read on as I elaborate.

S.M. Stirling is a competent enough writer and he has made use of plot details provided in “Red Nails” to construct his narrative. What is wrong with this has little to do with his writing and more to do with what is revealed in the Afterword:

“Red Nails” is pure Howard… Raw and powerful, it’s also very much of its time— written almost a century ago, when our culture could be less socially aware and genre fiction in particular often exhibited rough edges some of today’s readers may find jarring.

From this alone we can establish that both the publisher and the author are embarrassed by (or dislike) the source material. It is not clear who wrote the Afterword so I will assume this is a shared opinion. It would have been more honest to put this in the Foreword so a potential reader could have saved themselves the hassle of finding out. As opposed to “some” of today’s readers, the main reason Howard is seeing a resurgence in popularity is because readers are looking for exactly what they find within Howard. Far from “jarring”, they find his stories refreshing and exciting.

The other problem is if you think Howard had “rough edges”, then why write a new story so closely related instead of one that can stand on its own? Blood of the Serpent is completely dependent on “Red Nails”. The ending is the beginning of the latter and so the ending to Blood of the Serpent isn’t really an ending at all without knowledge of what it is leading up to. What makes this even worse is that it is over three times the length and establishes nothing that wasn’t done more efficiently and eloquently in the opening pages of “Red Nails”. So on these points alone it is pointless but it gets worse still.

Read the whole thing. Apparently it does get worse, and the comparison is considerably in The Legend’s favor. And this explains why Castalia is beginning to delve into revivals of public domain icons, because if we don’t provide correct continuations that respect and hold true to those icons, the Zero History crowd will provide false continuations that invert and betray them.

DISCUSS ON SG

Even, I Can’t

It would be difficult for me to disagree more strongly with anyone than I do with this literary heretic spewing textual heresy on SocialGalactic:

One book I’ve really come to hate is Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Doesn’t get more reddit than that. The author thinks he is much more clever than he is. I read it in high school, and was underwhelmed. Based on the hype, I was expecting something epic, but all I got was nonsense humor that wasn’t even funny.

First, Douglas Adams is one of the funniest authors to ever write a novel. I place the top five in this order:

  • PG Wodehouse
  • Douglas Adams
  • Owen Stanley
  • Bruce Bethke
  • Terry Pratchett

Wodehouse remains the greatest of the humor writers, not merely due to the very high standard he set, but the size of his ouevre and its reliability across a broad spectrum of topics and characters. Whether he was utilizing Hollywood actresses or agriculturally-inclined aristocrats and pigs, he could always find the humor in the situation.

Stanley is one of the funniest novelists ever and the fact that I convinced him to write The Promethean is my single greatest literary triumph. With regards to his first novel, The Missionaries, an SJW reporter once asked me what was the best book Castalia House had published, read it, and later told me: “It’s the most racist and offensive book I have ever read, and I just couldn’t stop laughing. Now I hate myself.”

The fact that Bruce Bethke essentially stopped writing fiction after Head Crash is one of the great literary tragedies of our age.

And while Terry Pratchett’s earliest work and later work can be forgotten, his middle period, when he matured as a writer, brought in an element of social commentary, and learned how to actually write humor instead of telling the reader what he was supposed to find funny, was very, very good.

Adams had more than a few tricks at his disposal, but his patented subdued punch line never ceased to be effective. My two favorites:

  • “Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled “My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles” when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth.
  • The bathroom was not large. The walls were panelled in old oak linenfold which, given the age and nature of the building, was quite probably priceless, but otherwise the fittings were stark and institutional. There was old, scuffed, black-and-white checked linoleum on the floor, a small basic bath, well cleaned but with very elderly stains and chips in the enamel, and also a small basic basin with a toothbrush and toothpaste in a Duralex beaker standing next to the taps. Screwed into the probably priceless panelling above the basin was a tin mirror-fronted bathroom cabinet. It looked as if it had been repainted many times, and the mirror was stained round the edges with condensation. The lavatory had an old-fashioned cast-iron chain-pull cistern. There was an old cream-painted wooden cupboard standing in the corner, with an old brown bentwood chair next to it, on which lay some neatly folded but threadbare small towels. There was also a large horse in the room, taking up most of it.

DISCUSS ON SG

No Jets for Ukraine

AC contemplates the military utility of nonexistent weapons systems:

The UK will not give Ukraine any jets since it does not have jets to spare, but it will help Ukraine get F16s from other countries if they can find any, and then train them on them, although one problem there is the UK does not actually have any F16s to train them on. It sounds like we are at the point where we are now offering Ukraine imaginary weapons we are sure we will find someday.

Of course, not being a military historian / geomilitary strategist like myself, AC has clearly missed the salient issue here, which is the way those nonexistent weapons now being allocated to Ukraine were already been committed for non-use in a war with China over Taiwan island by RAND and the US military wargamers.

DISCUSS ON SG

Arktoons Wants You

We now have over 4,000 episodes live on Arktoons, and for the next 4,000, we could use some additional volunteers to help us continue creating comics for Project Asteroid.

If you have Photoshop, or GIMP, you can help us create episodes, clean up artwork, and bring new life to old comics. We need you to be able to help us for approximately five hours a week. No experience is necessary as we can teach you the relevant skills and techniques.

We are also looking for people to contact other publishers to tell them about Arktoons and encourage them to come on board. If you would like to join the production team or be an Arktoons Ambassador, please email ArkhavenComics(AT)outlook(DOT)com.

Hide Mode Activated

It’s not only the neoclowns who are in retreat now. If this 2020 article from Commentary is to be believed, it appears that Jews are increasingly concerned with scrubbing their early lives from Wikipedia.

My new best Wikifriend’s user name was “Coffee,” and he’s a conscientious editor. He politely informed me that it was appropriate to introduce my faith into my entry because it was “covered in a reliable source,” a Wikipedia standard for inclusion. That turned out to be the Times Book Review’s “ham-eating Jew” reference. Other Jewish professionals may not have had their religion listed because there was no such source for the citation. I had been kept from editing the insertion because Wikipedia protocols blocked removing properly sourced material. “I know that’s not the answer you were looking for,” he conceded.

He was right. It’s possible, I wrote back, that the “editor” who introduced Jewish identity into my and many other entries was so proud of the Jewish contribution to journalism and literature that he wanted the world to know about all these accomplished Jews. But, given the recent spate of overt anti-Semitism here and in Europe, it was certainly plausible that the intruder was trying to stigmatize Jewish “notables,” in the Wikipedia term of art. It seemed to me possible that Wikipedia was naively invoking a valid standard—reliable citation—to enable its material to be doctored by a stealth anti-Semite.

Ten days later, Coffee replied: “I have taken the description off…your article and am now in the process of combing through the thousands of edits made by this user to remove other violations. We determined that even though a reliable source covered your upbringing it was not enough to support the claim in your article. This was based on it not being of due weight to your notability, and because there is not a consensus of sources covering you in such a way. I’m applying this standard to every article…that this person edited and will likely have to look at others than just [those that] this editor has added as well (as this seems to be a rather big issue”).

In two weeks, he’d found more than 250 intrusions he considered inappropriate in entries of not-previously-identified Jewish “notables” and 1,142 in Wikipedia’s lists of Jews in 32 fields. These lists include everyone from cartoonists (43, including Jules Feiffer, Rube Goldberg, and Al Hirschfeld) to poets (28, including Allen Ginsberg, Emma Lazarus, and Delmore Schwartz). And there were hundreds more articles to vet. Most of the “Jew-tagging” had been in articles about notables in media and writing, but Jews in finance and retail were involved, too. Reviewing “tens of thousands” of interventions by one “editor,” Coffee found that he or she had added religious descriptors almost exclusively for Jews.

Jew-Tagging @Wikipedia, Commentary, May 2020

How, one wonders, is the identity of Emma Lazarus and Allen Ginsberg deemed unworthy of note, given the way in which it served as the foundation of the work that made them notable? Not that the retroactive scrubbing will serve to hide anything at all. Because, as has been the case for most of written history, it’s not their identity that is the issue, but rather their evil, observable, and societally-devastating actions.

Even a ticket-taker like Elon Musk knows: “Soros hates humanity. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization.”

DISCUSS ON SG