One year ago, Arkhaven Comics launched Project Asteroid, also known as Arktoons. I predicted that the new site would change the comics industry and eventually replace the dinosaurs known as the Big Two, Marvel Comics and DC Comics. And while that process is far from complete yet, the events of the last year have tended to suggest that this will be the case.
Sales of DC and Marvel comics continue to decline, while Manga dominates the print sales charts. DC gave up on its digital site, flirted with Tapas, and has been reduced to publishing digital comics on Webtoons as if it were a sad, lonely gay teenager with a crayon and a dream. DC has gone through two rounds of layoffs, while Marvel’s lone experiment on Webtoons featured episodes that couldn’t even attract 5,000 likes.
There are others who scent the weakness. Substack has invested what it claims is one of the biggest-ever investments into comics, but has barely produced 20 total episodes in six months. In the meantime, Arktoons presently features 1,962 episodes, and has introduced literally dozens of new original series, including Hypergamouse, Deus Vult, Midnight’s War, My Sister Suprema, and How To Succeed Like a Dark Lord. It has also attracted a number of excellent commentary cartoons, including Stonetoss, Savage Memes, Ben Garrison, and Bob. Every day, at least 6 series, and sometimes as many as 10, introduce new episodes.
After more than six million pageviews, we’re still just in the process of getting started. More about this on tonight’s Darkstream. In the meantime, the Thursday Arktoons are live:
It has always puzzled me why Mark Levin appeals to conservatives, particularly Boomercons. To me, he has never been more than an older, fatter Ben Shapiro, gatekeeping Americans on behalf of the Israel First party. But recently, he uncloaked and showed his true colors:
Fox News host Mark Levin went full neocon on Sunday night, attacking “so-called nationalist populists” as un-American isolationists and ordering viewers to “reject” both ideologies as “dangerous” and disconnected from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
“I have in front of me the pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the word nationalist cannot be found in either the Declaration or the Constitution, why is this?” Levin said. “Because the people who founded your country and the people, the Framers of your Constitution, were not nationalists — they were Americans.”
“So what am I saying, am I a globalist?” Levin said. “I don’t even know what that means. No, I’m a red-blooded American Constitutionalist who believes in Capitalism and representative government.”
“What does that mean?” he asked. “It’s simple, you don’t treat communist China the way you treat Great Britain when it comes to trade. You don’t send advanced technologies to Russia or to Iran technologies you might send to Israel.”
First, Levin is not an American. He is not descended from the people who founded the American nation, he is not part of the Posterity for whose benefit the U.S. Constitution was written, and, as he quite rightly admits, he is not an American nationalist. Second, Levin may or may not be a globalist, but he is an Israeli Firster, which is why he asserts, incorrectly and on the basis of absolutely nothing, that it is reasonable for Americans to send advanced technologies to Israel that is not in the American national interest to provide other countries.
The fact is that a substantial amount of the advanced US technology that was acquired by China over the last 30 years was provided to the Chinese by the Israeli government.
The head of defense exports for the Israeli Defense Ministry resigned after a U.S. investigation concluded that technology, including a miniature refrigeration system manufactured by Ricor and used for missiles and in electro-optic equipment, was sent to China, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Another Israeli news site, Aretz Sheva, reports the U.S. is concerned the technology could ultimately find its way to Iran, which last year sought to buy military equipment from China for its nuclear program.
The Maariv report identified the Israeli defense official as Meir Shalit, and said he apologized to U.S. officials on a recent visit.
Israel has a long record of getting U.S. military technology to China. In the early 1990s then-CIA Director James Woolsey told a Senate Government Affairs Committee that Israel had been selling U.S. secrets to China for about a decade.
Israel Passes U.S. Military Technology to China, 24 December 2013
This proposal floated by the Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom may be one of the most shortsighted, suicidal geopolitical visions ever articulated in the written history of Man, as the West is rapidly being replaced by the growing power of the NorthEast.
The world order created after the Second World War and the Cold War isn’t working anymore, so the West needs “a global NATO” to pursue geopolitics anew, UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss argued, in a major foreign policy speech on Wednesday. Truss also urged the US-led bloc to send more “heavy weapons, tanks” and airplanes to Ukraine, and said China would face the same treatment as Russia if it doesn’t “play by the rules.”
“My vision is a world where free nations are assertive and in the ascendant. Where freedom and democracy are strengthened through a network of economic and security partnerships,” Truss said in a speech at a Mansion House banquet in London.
Dubbing this arrangement “the Network of Liberty,” Truss argued it was necessary because the economic and security structures developed after 1945 – such as the UN Security Council – “have been bent out of shape so far, they have enabled rather than contained aggression.”
“Geopolitics is back,” she announced.
The collective West and its allies need to supply Kiev with “heavy weapons, tanks, aeroplanes – digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production,” Truss said, because the objective is to “push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine” and rebuild the country along the lines of a new Marshall Plan.
“The war in Ukraine is our war – it is everyone’s war because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us. Beyond that, NATO must ensure that “the Western Balkans and countries like Moldova and Georgia have the resilience and the capabilities to maintain their sovereignty and freedom,” and uphold the “sacrosanct” open-door policy, Truss said.
Her ambitions went beyond Europe, though, as Truss denounced the “false choice between Euro-Atlantic security and Indo-Pacific security. In the modern world we need both. We need a global NATO,” she said. “And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.” Pointing to London’s unprecedented effort to embargo Russia, Truss insisted that “economic access is no longer a given. It has to be earned,” and that countries who wish to earn it “must play by the rules. And that includes China.”
In other worlds, the New World Order aka the neo-liberal rules-based world order aka Globohomo has failed, so naturally what is needed is more of that which has failed. This response isn’t even remotely surprising in the abstract, as doubling down is what idiots and fools always do instead of examining the reasons for their failure and rethinking both their assumptions and their approach.
But it is surprising in the particular, as Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and now Algeria have made it clear that they will not submit to the globalists’ demands that they deliver natural resources to their Western customers on demand while simultaneously being subject to having their economic access to those same customers controlled by the globalists.
Indeed, if they are given a choice, many in the West will choose the growing economic system of the NorthEast over the collapsing system of the West. But they will not be given a choice if the globalists have anything to say about it.
This tends to strongly support something I have repeatedly pointed out, the Russian Special Military Operation has very little to do with Ukraine per se; it is merely the opening battle in the NorthEast’s war with the globalists who rule over the West. This will be confirmed when the second battle begins, though whether that will be in Taiwan, Western Europe, Russia, or somewhere in the Middle East is yet to be seen.
In response to Russia refusing to ship natural gas to countries that refuse to pay in a currency deemed acceptable to Russia, European leaders are threatening to utilize even harsher rhetoric in response.
Russian energy giant Gazprom today halted gas supplies to Bulgaria and Poland for failing to pay for its gas in roubles, as Vladimir Putin ordered last month, pushing European gas prices up by 24 percent.
The decision is the Kremlin’s toughest response yet to crippling Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s brutal on-going invasion of Ukraine, that have sent the Russian economy and the value of the rouble into a nosedive.
In response, the UK warned President Putin that Russia’s move will only add to its status as an economic and political pariah, while Poland and Bulgaria both accused Moscow of blackmailing them, and said they will end their dependencies on Russian gas.
European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also called the move ‘yet another attempt by Russia to use gas as an instrument of blackmail. This is unjustified and unacceptable.’
The European Union could impose a crude oil embargo on Russia, with the two having been locked in a stand-off for weeks after the EU rejected Putin’s demands for payment in roubles from so-called ‘unfriendly’ buyers.
The market reacted quickly to the decision by state-owned Gazprom. Benchmark European gas prices jumped by up to 24 per cent to €121 (£102) per megawatt-hour today, to hit their highest level this month and almost seven times higher than they were a year ago. The UK equivalent increased by 14 per cent to 180 pence per therm.
The two EU countries are the first to have their gas cut off by Europe’s main supplier since the Kremlin launched what it calls a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine on February 24, and after it threatened to turn off the taps to the West in response to mounting sanctions.
Europe is being taught a hard, but necessary lesson in the difference between hard power and soft power, which is the difference between actual power and empty words. And it is paying a steep price for being the lapdog’s lapdog, which is another word for chew toy.
Russia’s move raised wider concerns that other countries could be targeted next.
COULD BE? Without question WILL BE is the much more certain bet. Many of these countries, including Germany, France, and the UK, are fortunate that they aren’t already being actively bombed for their overt belligerence in supplying Ukraine with military weapons. And their leaders appear to have no idea just how bad the collapse of the neo-liberal world order will be for them, even as the first domino is falling.
The broader, negative political impact of the war, should it rage on indefinitely, is almost incalculable. The UN’s future as an authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper is in jeopardy, as more than 200 former officials warned Guterres last week. At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice, whose injunction to withdraw was scorned by Putin, and the entire system of war crimes prosecutions. In terms of democratic norms and human rights, the full or partial subjugation of Ukraine would spell disaster for the international rules-based order.
Exactly. Amen and hallelujah. This is about as close to a good war as it gets.
A friend who correctly called fake news on Jack Maxey of the false Hunter Biden laptop leak also offered me his take on Elon Musk and his recent actions, including the acquisition of Twitter.
Musk is a premier mechanism by which a certain faction of USG routes around the scleroticism of fedgov.
Most obviously with SpaceX contra United Launch Alliance, but also Tesla to counter Chinese electrotech dominance, Boring Company for post-drone swarm underground warfare, Neuralink for 1) controlling said drone swarms 2) AGI via human brain activity cloning.
His entire portfolio of companies is dual use for military purposes. Twitter is the public infowar arena for the Deep State.
Now Musk and by extension this faction own it.
Difficult to tell if this faction is friendly, neutral or hostile. They appear to me to be at the least not obviously friendly. This will be a public, reasonably sensitive test as to whether they are useful, depending on how they handle banned anti-prog accounts and ongoing anti-prog (note the distinction from rightist) speech.
Considering that Ivan Throne has already managed to get himself banned from the New and Improved Twitter (Musk edition), I am confident that all of Musk’s blatherings about FREE SPEECH are nothing more than empty rhetoric and advertising to bring all the basic conservatives and their gatekeepers back into the conservative sheepfold.
As far as I’m concerned, literally nothing has changed.
Furthermore, I note that the Enlightenment value of consequence-free freedoms of speech and expression is neither a Christian moral value nor a societal virtue. Societal virtue is determined by qualititative measures, not quantitative ones.
A society or an institution that permits everything is better described as licentious, not free, while a society or an institution that bans blasphemy, obscenity, and vulgarity is fundamentally different than one that bans the existence of opinions about historical events, sexual behaviors, and certain nations.
Musk’s faction is almost certainly more libertarian and licentious than the social justice faction, but it’s entirely possible that, given his predilection for dabbling with women enamored of spiritual darkness, that it is even more deeply wicked.
RHETORIC by Aristlotle is now available from Castalia Library in both Castalia Library and Libraria Castalia editions. It’s one of our fastest-selling books, as we’d already be sold out if we hadn’t boosted the print run to 850. There are currently just 937953 30 copies left in stock. In addition to featuring our most Franklinesque spine – which you can see above in between SUMMA ELVETICA and HEIDI on the left – it also features a preface by yours truly.
Preface to Rhetoric
Aristotle’s Rhetoric is one of the most useful and important analyses of human communication ever written. It is also one of the great philosopher’s least appreciated works, as it is easily mistaken for a mere technical breakdown of the various forms of persuasion rather than what it truly is, a brilliant conceptual guide to understanding and anticipating human behavior.
While a considerable portion of the text is devoted to the mechanics of the syllogism and the enthymeme, as well as the presentation of the inevitable lists which Aristotle characteristically constructs, by far the most important element of this little book is the philosopher’s division of humanity into two fundamental classes: those who are capable of learning through information and those who are not.
This is such an important distinction that it is remarkable for its complete absence from the schools and universities today. The distinction calls into question everything from modern pedagogical systems to personal conversations while simultaneously explaining the mystery that has confounded every intelligent individual who has ever tried, and failed, to explain the obvious to another person.
Indeed, it is comforting to have one’s long-held suspicions about the intrinsic limitations of one’s fellow man confirmed so comprehensively. More importantly, Aristotle’s rhetorical framework provides those who understand and apply it the ability to effectively communicate to the full spectrum of humanity, in effect permitting the reader to transcend his natural psycho-linguistic instincts and attain true intellectual polylingualism.
It must be admitted that Rhetoric would be considerably more accessible if the terminology utilized was a little more expansive and a little less imitated. Even though his definition makes sense when the relevant terms are analyzed in detail, it is not exactly conducive to comprehension for Aristotle to define the two subsets of rhetoric to be dialectic and rhetoric, therein requiring a casual distinction between rhetoric and rhetoric-rhetoric, or capital-R Rhetoric and lowercase-r rhetoric. Adding to the confusion is the fact that both Hegel and Marx subsequently attempted to redefine the term dialectic, although there is precious little in common between Aristotelian dialectic, Hegelian dialectic, Marxian dialectic, and the current dictionary term.
However, once the reader grasps that in this context, Rhetoric simply means persuasion, which is divided into a) fact-and-reason based persuasion, or dialectic, and b) emotion-based persuasion, or rhetoric, the basic framework becomes clear. The philosopher explains that while some people can be persuaded by information and logical demonstrations, people are most readily persuaded by emotional manipulation. Moreover, some people can only be persuaded by emotional manipulation, as Aristotle observes in what may be the most important sentence in the book.
Before some audiences not even the possession of the exactest knowledge will make it easy for what we say to produce conviction. For argument based on knowledge implies instruction, and there are people whom one cannot instruct.
What Aristotle is observing is that some of those who are limited to rhetoric are immune to dialectic. Such individuals cannot be swayed by facts or reason, no matter how exact the knowledge provided, no matter how impeccable the logic presented. Those who are immune to dialectic can only be reached through rhetoric, which is to say by manipulation that plays upon their emotions more effectively than whatever feelings inspired them to be convicted of their current beliefs.
While this manipulation may strike some readers as unethical, it is justified by necessity, as the duty of rhetoric requires addressing those “who cannot take in at a glance a complicated argument, or follow a long chain of reasoning.” While the enthymeme resembles the logical syllogism, it is not, in fact, logic, and the truths that it proves are only apparent truths.
Which, of course, is another way of saying that they are literal untruths.
This is why people whose natural preferences incline toward dialectic have a strong tendency to regard rhetoric as being fundamentally dishonest, and to consider the emotional manipulation involved in utilizing rhetoric to be intrinsically wrong. This distaste for rhetoric among those capable of utilizing dialectic is common, but it is nevertheless false. First, because even the most logically correct dialectic can be entirely false if the premises upon which the syllogisms are constructed are false. Second, because the more that the rhetoric incorporates and points toward the truth, the more effective it tends to be.
Neither dialectic nor rhetoric are inherently true or false; the very attempt to distinguish them in this manner is to make a category error. It might help to think of them as languages; just as one could not reasonably describe English as honest while insisting that German is deceptive and morally wrong, one should not assign morality to either of the two subsets of Rhetoric.
It is more correct, more practical, and more effective to apply the principle of utilizing the form of communication best understood by the listener. Just as one would not speak Chinese to an individual who only understands English, one should not rely upon rhetoric when speaking to a dialectic-speaker, or expect a rhetoric-speaker to be persuaded by dialectical arguments.
Aristotle himself believed it was vital for a man to be able to employ both arts, not so much for the purposes of persuasion, but rather, to avoid being deceived.
We must be able to employ persuasion, just as strict reasoning can be employed, on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him. No other of the arts draws opposite conclusions: dialectic and rhetoric alone do this. Both these arts draw opposite conclusions impartially. Nevertheless, the underlying facts do not lend themselves equally well to the contrary views. No; things that are true and things that are better are, by their nature, practically always easier to prove and easier to believe in.
Aristotle’s Rhetoric is every bit as useful and valid today as it was when it was first written more than 2,300 years ago. It is less a work of philosophy than a treasure chest of practical information for the individual who seeks to pursue the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.
The forced vaccination of airline pilots hasn’t caused any crashes of passenger airliners yet, but on April 9th, an American Airlines plane flying into Dallas was just six minutes away from crashing when its vaccinated pilot had a heart attack:
“My name is Bob Snow. I am an American Airlines Captain and have been a Captain for a number of years. My total service with the company is over 31 years. On Nov. 7, I was mandated to receive a vaccine. Quite literally, I was told if I did not receive the vaccination, I would be fired. This order was from our director of flight. So, under duress, I received the vaccine.
“Now just a few days ago, after landing in Dallas, six minutes after we landed, I passed out. I coded. I required three shocks. I had to be intubated. I’m now in ICU in Dallas. This is what the vaccine has done for me. I will probably never fly again, based upon the criteria the FAA establishes for pilots. I was hoping to teach my daughter to fly; she wants to be a pilot. Now that will probably never happen, all courtesy of the vaccine. This is unacceptable, and I’m one of the victims.
“You can see that this is an actual result of the vaccine for some of us. Mandatory, no questions asked, get the shot, or you’re fired. This is not the American way.”
Perhaps the most tragic thing is that when Captain Snow sues American Airlines, he will probably be informed that it was his choice to be vaccinated and that no one actually forced him to submit to genetic therapy. Therefore, the consequences are all on him.
He was merely coerced, threatened, browbeaten, and ordered to submit to it.
Remember this – REMEMBER THIS – the next time someone is attempting to “force” you into something. Evil always seeks your deceived consent.
The Foreign Minister of Russia points out the obvious by stating that NATO is already at war with Russia in Ukraine and correctly warns the member states that supplying weapons to Ukraine makes them belligerent parties and legitimate military targets:
Russia’s top diplomat has warned that NATO is now fighting a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and there is a ‘very serious’ risk the conflict could turn nuclear.
Sergei Lavrov, speaking on Russian state TV last night, accused western leaders of risking a third world war by supplying Ukraine with weapons with the goal of ‘wearing down the Russian army’ – an aim he described as an ‘illusion’.
Accusing NATO and its allies of attempting to bully Russia on the international stage, Lavrov warned that tensions between east and west are now worse than during the Cuban missile crisis at the height of the Cold War.
Unfortunately, the Western leaders and diplomats appear to believe that Russia’s warnings are as baseless and irrelevant as their own rhetorical posturing as they dutifully demonstrate their suicidal, and literally proverbial, stupidity.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin travelled to Kyiv on Sunday for a face-to-face meeting with President Zelensky to discuss supplies, before pledging another multi-million dollar shipment.
Austin will also chair a meeting of more than 40 defence ministers at Ramstein air base in Germany today, aimed at securing additional supplies and coordinating efforts between allies to ensure Ukraine has everything it needs.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Monday night that he regards Russia’s scaremongering as a sign of weakness.
Russia had lost its ‘last hope to scare the world off supporting Ukraine,’ Kuleba wrote on Twitter after Lavrov’s interview. ‘This only means Moscow senses defeat.’
British armed forces minister James Heappey agreed with that assessment today, saying he does not see an imminent threat of escalation in Ukraine and dismissing Lavrov’s comments as ‘bravado’.
‘Lavrov’s trademark over the course of 15 years or so that he has been the Russian foreign secretary has been that sort of bravado. I don’t think that right now there is an imminent threat of escalation,’ Heappey told BBC Television.
‘What the West is doing to support its allies in Ukraine is very well calibrated … Everything we do is calibrated to avoid direct confrontation with Russia.’
Thinking that playing cute and coy with your public statements is somehow going to permit you to simultaneously engage in clear acts of war while avoiding being targeted by a hypersonic missile barrage is the sort of thing that only fat, soft and very stupid people can believe. Unfortunately, the last two years of The War on Covid have proven that most people across the so-called Democratic West are fat, soft, and very, very stupid.
