SJW-converged comics

John C. Wright rightly excoriates the SJW demolition of the comics:

Logic and good storytelling are flung out the window by these Philistines.

Spiderman has been blotted out by Miles Morales, a half-hispanic half-black with no particular personality. The writers seem not to want to give him any personality, for fear of giving his troubles and woes, which in turn might open them to the witchhunter accusation of being racist.

Hawkeye has been  blotted out by female Hawkeye. He has an interesting backstory, and some dramatic personal problems. She is a nonentity who suddenly is the best archer in the Marvel Universe for no particular reason.

Iron Man has been  blotted out by Riri Williams, a teen-aged black girl who steals things and accidentally conquers eastern European nations. Instead of having problems like shrapnel lodged near the heart as Iron Man does, the girl version of Iron Man is both utterly incompetent, and utterly flattered, praised, and supported by one and all.

Wasp has been  blotted out by Wasp, a girl who never puts on her wasp suit, never shrinks down and never fights crime.

Hulk has been  blotted out by Amadeus Cho, and also by She-Hulk, both of whom now use the name Hulk. Unlike Bruce Branner, whose is cursed by a Jekyll/Hyde and Frankenstein’s Monster combo of infinite strength and brain-destroying rage, Cho and She-Hulk are possessed of perfect self control, and have no drama. She-Hulk has lost her John Byrne era good looks, her green skin, and her desire to fight crime, and instead looks ugly and gray skinned.

Sam Wilson, the Falcon, has replaced Steve Rogers as Captain America. This one is not as egregious as the others, and, if taken in isolation, might have seemed legitimate, not an attempt at blot out. But Sam Wilson now has the same problem any black student in an affirmative action college has, when people can no longer tell is his diploma was earned or merely granted.

Also, I like Falcon. Why is his black super identity being smothered?  Are blacks somehow not legitimate in SJW eyes until they put on the garb and take up the name of a white original?

Let me emphasize that these are not cases where, for example, Robin grows up into Nightwing and someone else puts on Robin’s outfit to replace him, or where Blue Beetle takes up the costume and legacy of the original Blue Beetle.

Neither is any one of these a case where Superman has a cousin or Commissioner Gordon has a daughter who is a female version of a previously established character. That kind of thing happens in comics all the time, and no one cares or minds. Those things are meant to honor the previous character, or provide an interesting variation on a theme.

This is different.

This is like Muslims dynamiting the giant statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. It is the destruction of the icons and symbols of infidels.

This is blotting out the old character. Anyone who is white, straight, heroic or male is being replaced by someone who is not…. Plots, writing, drama, and storytelling has been flushed away down the water closet with very few exceptions.

The fact of the matter is that SJWs cannot tell stories. We saw this same thing in the science fiction field among the Hugo nominees: the more SJW was in a story, the less drama. The reasons for this are complicated, but the basic problem is that SJWs have a worldview that is false to facts about nearly every aspect of human nature and human morality, and instead have a fake, flat, one-dimensional view which contains neither heroism nor personal responsibility.

You might think John is exaggerating. I mean, it can’t possibly be that bad, right? I knew SJWs in comics had gotten out of hand. That’s why, after nearly three years of people requesting one, Castalia House is creating an alternative to the converged mainstream comics. But, as it turns out, the convergence is even worse than I’d ever imagined!

So, Thor is now a woman, who villains (as women) won’t fight out of respect for what she’s doing (as a woman), because it isn’t easy for her (as a woman), but instead engage her in lengthy, boring chatter about their romantic relationships before voluntarily going to prison because girl-power. I”m only surprised the two new gal pals didn’t go on to break out the teapot and sit down to discuss their favorite quotes from Hillary Clinton’s new book over a nice cup of tea.

And doesn’t this all sound a little… familiar? SJWs write science fiction without science, fantasy without the fantastic, military science fiction without war, and superhero comics without heroics. They are dramatic poison, and they are this way by necessity, due to the intrinsic falsity of their worldview.

Next week we will launch the Alt⭐️Hero Freestartr campaign. I guarantee it will be absolutely nothing like this pallid, boring SJW nonsense into which DC and Marvel have devolved. Although I can’t promise we won’t make ruthless fun of it from time to time….

UDPDATE: According to the SJWs, the declining sales of SJW-converged comics are totally not their fault. See, it’s actually the fault of evil right-wing GAMERGATE COMICGATE harassing all those legions of women who totally want to go to comic stores and buy Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Muslim Ms Marvel and Magic Negro Batman, but are frightened out of doing so by evil right-wing ComicGaters failing to make them feel welcome.

Like videogaming, comics culture is steeped in rightwing victim culture, where you convince yourself both that you and your hobby are horribly oppressed and bullied by the jocks, the popular clique, riajuu and that your particular brand of pop culture is superior to what the brainless masses consume because they don’t spent their Wednesday evenings waiting for the new issue of whatever The Avengers is called this week. So you get a culture and industry that bemoans the fact that nobody loves comics anymore, but resents any step made to make people feel welcome.

GRRM on Jerry Pournelle

Give credit to the man, unlike some of the younger SF-SJWs, he understands there is a time to criticize and there is a time to eulogize. His post is titled A Sadness:

Jerry Pournelle has passed away. He was 84.

It would seem that he attended Dragoncon in Atlanta, caught some kind of bug, and died in his sleep on September 8, after complaining of feeling unwell in his last blog post, on the 7th.

Pournelle has been a major figure in the field for as long as I have been a part of it. I first met him in 1973 at the worldcon in Toronto, where both of us were finalists for the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer (along with Lisa Tuttle, Ruth Berman, George Alec Effinger, and Robert Thurston). That was the very first year the award was given. To the surprise of no one, Pournelle won, though Geo. Alec Effinger finished so close behind the con gave him a special second place plaque, the only time THAT ever happened. (How close, you may ask? Ten votes, two votes, a single vote? No one knows. In those days, worldcons did not release vote totals).

The Hugos were given at a banquet in those days. I could not afford a ticket, so I came in after the meal for the awards. It was rather an unusual ceremony. The Hugo rockets had not arrived, so the winners received only empty bases… except for Jerry, since the Campbell sponsors (Conde Nast, in those days) HAD managed to come up with a plaque. There’s Jerry holding it, above.

The other weirdness about that night was that toastmaster Lester del Rey, for reasons only known to himself, chose to present the awards backwards. In other words, he started with Best Novel (the ‘Big One,’ then as now), working his way though short fiction and to the fan awards, and ended with the brand-new never-given-before Campbell. Thing is, people started leaving after each award was given, and by the end, there was hardly anyone left in the hall except me, Jerry Pournelle and his party, and the other nominees and their friends (I think Lisa Tuttle and Ruth Berman were there, but Thurston and Effinger were not, someone else accepted the plaque for Piglet).

I came out of the night all right. It was an honor, a huge honor, just to be nominated. And in the aftermath I came up with the idea of a Campbell Awards anthology. A couple editors told me it was an idea worth pursuing, but of course I needed to get all the nominees to sign on… and the key one was Jerry, the winner. So I bought him a drink and pitched him the notion, and he said yes (though, being the consummate pro, he made that contingent on me being able to pay competitive professional rates). Eventually that conversation led to my NEW VOICES anthology, and launched my career as an editor and anthologist… and I’m still going strong there, forty-four years later.

The Hugo voters knew what they were doing when they gave Pournelle that first Campbell; he went on to have an amazing career, both on his own and in collaboration with other writers, particularly Larry Niven. With INFERNO, LUCIFER’S HAMMER, FOOTFALL, and (especially) MOTE IN GOD’S EYE, the two of them helped transform the field in the 70s. They were among the very first SF writers ever to hit the big bestseller lists, and among the first to get six-figure advances at the time when most writers were still getting four figure advances… something that Jerry was never shy about mentioning. Though he was nominated for a number of Hugo Awards in the years that followed, he never won one… but if that bothered him, he did not show it. “Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money,” he said famously.

Pournelle was fond of talking about all the help Robert A. Heinlein (whom he always called “Mr. Heinlein,” at least in my hearing) gave him when he was starting out, and he was a passionate advocate of RAH’s “pay it forward” philosophy, and did much to help the generations of writers who came after him. He served a term in the thankless job of SFWA President, and remained an active part of SFWA ever after, as part of the advisory board of Past Presidents and (even more crucially) on GriefCom, the Grievance Committee. Jerry could be loud and acrimonious, yes, and when you were on the opposite side of a fight from him that was not pleasant… ahh, but when you were on the SAME side, there was no one better to have in your foxhole. I had need of SFWA’s Griefcom only once in my career, in the early 80s, and when we met at worldcon with the publisher I had Jerry with me representing Griefcom. He went through the publisher’s people like a buzzsaw, and got me everything I wanted, resolving my grievance satisfactorily (and confidentially, so no, no more details).

His politics were not my politics. He was a rock-ribbed conservative/ libertarian, and I’m your classic bleeding-heart liberal… but we were both fans, and professional writers, and ardent members of SFWA, and we loved SF and fantasy and fandom, and that was enough. You don’t need to agree with someone on everything to be able to respect them. And while MOTE IN GOD’S EYE may not have won the Hugo in its year, it remains one of the great classics of space opera, destined to be read and re-read for as long as people read science fiction (it IS an honor just to be nominated).

The last time I saw Jerry was at Keith Kato’s chili party at MidAmericon II. He loved Keith’s chili as much as I do, another point in his favor.

R.I.P. Jerry. You were one ornery so-and-so, but you were our ornery so-and-so. Hoist a pint for me at that Secret Pro Party in the sky, and say hello to Mr. Heinlein.

Yeah, so, about that….

Fornax has a great idea: BAN VOX DAY FROM FANDOM (pdf):

The Nerd & Tie blogger had an idea for handling the pretentious delArroz: Don’t invite him to a convention ever again. That sounds like a great idea. From now on, fandom needs to shut out those like del Arroz, Correia, Hoyt and their leader Vox Day. All those who wish to trash fandom for both fun and profit should be kept out of fandom functions, such as conventions, that can accord writers and others publicity and public standing in the world of science fiction. Either you are on the side of fandom or you are against it. No middle ground.

I think it is fairly apparent that I am very much against the decrepit collection of obese, sickly, and mentally ill individuals who collectively make up what passes for fandom in science fiction. I make no attempts to write for them, sell books to them, or appeal to them in any way, shape, or form.

My contempt for them is overt and unconcealed. Even the forthcoming Alt⭐️Hero  line of comics openly spits on them and their social justice values.

I have attended precisely one science fiction convention in my life. I was a panelist at the grotesque freakshow called Minicon once about twenty years ago and I have never attended another one since. I have participated in precisely one other fandom function, a book signing at Barnes & Noble with other writers such as Gordon R. Dickson, Dave Arneson, Joel Rosenberg, and David Feintuch.

While it was the most successful book signing in that bookstore’s history, the fact that none of those four writers are still alive should tell you how long ago it was. I have not done another book signing since, nor do I have any plans to ever do another one, because I don’t like signing books, I don’t like fandom, and I don’t like public events.

I acknowledge the possibility that some of the other writers the SF-SJWs propose banning from fandom might actually care about it. In my case, however, I can assure them that any such ban will meet with neither objection nor protest from me.

Your conscience is clear

You need not worry about the fate of Alt-Tech. Your departure is not hurting them in any way, as per Maximum Alpha Torba. I don’t know to whom he is referring here, but then, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

UPDATE: I have been informed that hearing for the petition we filed is scheduled in Travis County for the last week of October.

Why Japan will go nuclear

Peter Grant explains the logic. First, he cites George Friedman on why the Trump administration has been unable to do anything about North Korea despite its efforts to bring in China on the matter:

The US turned to China to negotiate a solution. The Chinese failed. In my view, the Chinese would not be terribly upset to see the US dragged into a war that would weaken Washington if it lost, and would cause massive casualties on all sides if it won. Leaving that question aside, the North Koreans felt they had to have nuclear weapons to deter American steps to destabilize Pyongyang. But the risk of an American attack, however difficult, had to have made them very nervous, even if they were going to go for broke in developing a nuclear capability.

But they didn’t seem very nervous. They seemed to be acting as if they had no fear of a war breaking out. It wasn’t just the many photos of Kim Jong Un smiling that gave this impression. It was that the North Koreans moved forward with their program regardless of American and possible Chinese pressure.

A couple of weeks ago, the reason for their confidence became evident. First, US President Donald Trump tweeted a message to the South Koreans accusing them of appeasement. In response, the South Koreans released a statement saying South Korea’s top interest was to ensure that it would never again experience the devastation it endured during the Korean War. From South Korea’s perspective, artillery fire exchanges that might hit Seoul had to be avoided. Given the choice between a major war to end the North’s nuclear program and accepting a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons, South Korea would choose the latter.

With that policy made public, and Trump’s criticism of it on the table, the entire game changed its form. The situation had been viewed as a two-player game, with North Korea rushing to build a deterrent, and the US looking for the right moment to attack. But it was actually a three-player game, in which the major dispute was between South Korea and the United States.

It doesn’t matter if China is on board if South Korea is not. Hence Peter’s conclusion:

This explains, to my mind, why the US response to North Korea’s undoubtedly aggressive moves has been so muted.  There is no doubt that the USA could turn the whole of North Korea into a radioactive desert – but that would poison parts of China and most of South Korea with fallout, which neither country will accept.  Short of such an all-out nuclear attack, any US military intervention in North Korea must inevitably involve South Korea.  If South Korea is not willing to permit its territory, or its airspace, or its waters, to be used for that purpose, the USA is effectively stymied.

I see only one way to break the logjam, and force the issue.  That would be for the USA to announce that, in view of North Korea’s aggressive actions and stated intentions to become a nuclear power, it is willing to sell nuclear weapons to Japan and South Korea.  Note that I said “sell” – in other words, not station US nuclear weapons in those countries under US control, but give each country its own nuclear warheads and delivery systems, under its own sovereign control.  China would instantly have kittens – a nuclear-armed Japan must be close to its worst nightmare, and a nuclear South Korea wouldn’t be far behind that.  If anything could force China to rein in the North Korean regime, that might do it.

And the reality is that now it is clear North Korea cannot be reined in by the USA, Japan is going to need its own nuclear deterrent, which it probably required anyhow given the growth of China’s global power. SJWs and Republicans may believe Asians are all a single political bloc, but anyone familiar with Asian history knows otherwise.

That would be why

Some people asked me why I didn’t choose CounterFund for Voxiversity and Alt⭐️Hero. The truth is that I never considered using Counterfund at all. Remember what I said about Andrew Torba not being ready for prime time? Well, in my opinion, neither is Pax Dickinson. He had been directing his attacks at Charles Johnson, not me, but I was aware that anyone who behaved that way in public towards a former business partner is likely to do the same to others in the future.

I’ve had the occasional problem with people and companies with whom I’ve worked in the past. Not many over the years, but a few. And aside from GT Interactive, which was a matter of public record, you probably couldn’t name any of them because I don’t ever talk about them in public. Among the necessary skills for a professional is the ability to keep your mouth shut, even when you have been wronged.

Pax Dickinson · @pax
I think Vox Day’s “minions” are so bad at bantz and trolling because they’re only used to soft SJW resistance, they don’t know how to handle seasoned veterans of the meme wars. They exist in their secure little blog bubble where Vox’s moderation keeps them weak and flaccid, like shitposting veal.

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
I asked Vox Day to help me move, so he sued my couch.

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
You can tell which #AltRight people are sincere & not just e-book selling charlatans because the good ones quit in disgust and never return.

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
the e-book merchants take their e-fame very very seriously because they work at it but I became e-famous by accident so I think it’s a joke

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
Everyone: “Nazi LARPers are the Right’s most autistic lolcows”
Vox Day: “Hold my beer”

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
“hey #AltRight look what I built for you”
*called a shill*
*accused of grubbing for shekels*
*sued by Vox Day*
“on 2nd thought never mind”

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
Calling for people to take back their investments in Gab is lower than shit. Fuck you @voxday you’re fucking dead to me.

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
Vox called me up back when I was ripping Chuck to advise that infighting was a bad look. I wonder when he changed his mind about that.

Counter.Fund‏ @CounterFund
I had a discussion with @VoxDay. It didn’t go that well.  He blocked me. ?

I most certainly did block him. I don’t discuss things with individuals who refuse to address the relevant points and instead elect to call me “a fucking moron” in lieu of argument. I see that as a reliable indicator that there is absolutely no benefit to having anything to do with them, now or in the future. One can readily observe a pattern here: both Pax and Andrew Torba are volatile individuals who are temperamentally unsuited for what they are trying to do. That is why the probabilities of success are not in their favor.

Can you imagine me attacking an author that I was trying to recruit for Castalia House this way? Can you imagine ANY successful publisher doing so?

As for Gab, the LLoE and I will be continuing to proceed as before, albeit in a rather more unsympathetic manner than we began. As one reader noted in response to the following Gab posts: “Gab is a useless, irredeemable sewer. Let it burn.”

Folk · @Folk
Deus Vulters can never be real nationalists, because they MUST believe in Oneness under Christ. A Christian Syrian is worth more to them than a secular or pagan White. All Deus Vulters should be Vox fans, as Vox’s platform says you must be a Christian and support all races to be Alt-Right.

Goyim Revolution · @GoyimRevolution
Koanic you are such a loser. In fact it’s obvious you’re just a @VoxDay sock. What the hell is a “Nazi” anyway? Do you have a definition? And what’s so vile about these Nazis? Is it because they won’t shutup about jews like Soros?

Tyron T. White · @TightyWhitey
Being a “Christian” and “supporting all races” is exactly how all-white countries have been flooded with parasitic mud people. If someone shot Vox in the head on a sidewalk, do you think his followers would tilt right, or back toward center?

Charming. Now, one never knows what the future will bring, but based on what I have been hearing in various development circles, I expect that within 18 months Gab will be, at best, the third-place Alt-Tech alternative to Twitter.

Hotel Catalonia

In Spain, you can vote out, but you can never leave. It seems only fair to give the Spanish government’s side to the question of Catalonian secession and its recent actions in response to the Catalonians.

After learning about the searches and arrests made on Wednesday morning by the Civil Guard at various Catalan government agencies, regional premier Carles Puigdemont called a news conference to convey his position to the public opinion and the media. The gravity, but above all the falseness of the accusations that he made, now force us to debunk them one by one, for the sake of rigor and freedom of information. We believe it to be a basic tenet of democracy that public authorities cannot lie to citizens with impunity.

1. “The government of the Generalitat has today been the target of a coordinated aggression by the Interior Ministry’s police forces.”

False: the searches and arrests conducted on Wednesday inside various government agencies were carried out by the Civil Guard, not on the orders of the Interior Ministry or of the Prosecutor’s Office – rather, it was on the order of the judge at Barcelona’s 13th investigative court, as a result of legal proceedings that began a long time ago. As such, the Civil Guard acted in its role of “judicial police.”

2. The goal of the operation was to “suspend the activities of the (Catalan) government,” a government that holds “democratic legitimacy.” 

False. The Catalan government’s activities in all areas where it has devolved powers by virtue of the regional charter, the Estatut (education, health and so on), have not been suspended. The Catalan government has no power to organize a secessionist referendum and it knows this; the Constitutional Court has informed it of this fact. So there has been no suspension of the Catalan government’s activities. On the other hand, while it is true that the Catalan government was appointed by a majority of the deputies who were elected at the regional election of September 27, 2015, this kind of legitimacy (which does not even represent a majority of the people who voted that day) does not give them a mandate to repeal the Estatut or to organize activities that violate the law, as the Constitutional Court has also reminded the Govern. What defines a democracy is not the existence of majorities – all political regimes have them – but rather the fact that democracies cannot disobey the law with impunity. The Catalan government has no power to organize a secessionist referendum and it knows this

3. “This aggression lacks legal backing,” it “violates the rule of law” and the European Charter of Rights, and is “a de facto suspension of self-government and a de facto application of a state of exception.”

It is all false. The police intervention not only took place under the aegis of the judiciary, it was in fact ordered by the latter and has the backing of the Constitutional Court. It therefore falls within the boundaries of the rule of law, of which the independence of the judiciary is a basic pillar (in contrast with the aim of the breakaway laws that were dictated by the secessionist bloc and later suspended by the courts). Nor can one say that Catalan home rule has been suspended, since nobody has invoked Section 155 of the Constitution, which would allow central authorities to temporarily intervene in Catalonia’s affairs. What’s not been applied either is the National Security Law, which would allow the government to take over all law enforcement agencies. There is no state of exception, because not a single civil right has been suspended, as shown by the freely exercised freedom of demonstration on the streets of Barcelona to protest acts ordered by the judiciary.

4. Various acts including “indiscriminate raids, even inside private homes” and other measures such as “the closure and blocking of websites” represent “an assault on democracy.” 

False: the searches on Wednesday were not indiscriminate, they were individualized as part of the judicial police’s operation. And it was the prosecutor’s office, following the Constitutional Court’s resolutions, that ordered the closure of a website that aimed to apply a law (passed on September 6 to facilitate the referendum) that had already been suspended by the Constitutional Court; the website provided details about the illegal ballot and instructions on how to carry it out.

5. “We condemn and reject the totalitarian and antidemocratic attitude of the Spanish State” and after its actions “we consider that the (central) government has crossed the red line separating it from authoritarian and repressive regimes” and that “it doesn’t respect the chief elements of democracy.”

This accusation is not new. Carles Puigdemont has previously argued that, politically speaking, Spain is like Turkey. But the reverse is the case: Puigdemont is, like Erdogan, the one who is shielding himself behind the majority, ignoring the separation of powers and breaking the law, violating the Constitution and the Estatut and using the institutions to push forward an illegal referendum without guarantees. Spain, a member of the European Union, is recognized as a democracy by all the relevant international organizations. The announcement of the ballot is the culmination of a project to repeal constitutional democracy

6. “We citizens have been called to the polls on October 1 to defend democracy in the face of a repressive and intimidating regime.” 

False: the announcement of the ballot is not about defending democracy, but rather about the culmination of a project to repeal constitutional democracy, to repeal the charter of self-government; and to cause the fragmentation of the Spanish rule of law, as embodied in the suspended breakaway laws paving the way for a referendum and for the transition to an independent republic, which were approved in the regional Catalan parliament on September 6 and September 8, 2017 inside a chamber that was half empty as most opposition deputies walked out in protest against the fact that their parliamentary rights were being denied. Intimidation has been carried out by secessionist groups, among them the radical left-wing CUP party, which has put up posters with photos of Catalan mayors and councilors who are in favor of compliance with democratic law.

7. “We are defending the right of Catalans to freely decide their future” 

The assumption that Catalans currently cannot decide their future in free elections is false: they have participated in 35 fully democratic elections since 1977 (at the local, regional, national and European levels) and in three referendums (the ratification of the Spanish Constitution and, on two occasions, of the Catalan Estatut); they enjoy self-government; and the region’s parties are fully present inside the Spanish Congress and Senate (and in the European Parliament, as Spaniards), as well as in many other public institutions.

8. “What is happening in Catalonia isn’t happening anywhere else in the European Union” 

This is the only assertion by Puigdemont that is actually accurate. Unfortunately, in the European Union we have nationalist leaders in both Hungary and Poland who want to put an end to the separation of powers and revoke the systems of laws and liberties currently in force. Luckily, as is also the case with Catalonia, this type of behavior has no place in the EU.

I can’t say I find this to be a convincing refutation of the Catalonian people’s right to self-determination, but I will note that by the Spanish government’s standard, it is very clear that neither the USA nor the EU subscribe to the basic tenets of democracy.

Alt⭐️Hero incoming

In tonight’s Darkstream, I discussed the upcoming Alt⭐️Hero comics campaign on Freestartr. We expect to launch it in the next two weeks, as we need to finish the launch video and Freestartr needs to add a feature that will allow us to display a selection of the art and finished pages we’ve created.

And yes, Alt⭐️Hero is going to trigger SJWs like you will not believe. The reeeeeeeees are going to be audible in orbit. Here are two of the superheroes of the European Union’s Global Justice Initiative, Rainbow and Redshift.

Crackdown and resistance in Catalonia

Spain is cracking down on the Catalonian secessionists, causing more neutrals to support secession:

I just got of the phone with Josep Maria Sole Sabaté, my friend and a leading Catalan historian and public intellectual. He was nothing short of breathless as he described the helicopters  flying overhead stated flatly that he was in the the midst of a coup being carried out by the Spanish State.

He wanted to get in touch with me and others “out there”  because he was not sure how much longer free communication would be available to him and other out in the street protesting against he Spanish central government’s arrest of members of the Catalan Autonomous government.

As of this writing at least six agencies of the Catalan Government have been the object of forced police searches and thirteen, mostly mid-level members of the Catalan government have been arrested.

The homes of two the leading architects of the incipient Catalan state,  Carles Viver Pi i Sunyer and ex Spanish judge Santi Vidal, have been searched by police.  The headquarters of the far-left CUP, part of the pro-vote coalition in the Catalan Parliament, has been surrounded by police.

The leader of the Catalan National Congress Jordi Sanchez and the head of Omnium, a major Catalan cultural organization, Jordi Cuixart, has called Catalans to come into the streets and they have responded with a massive presence.

The mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau, who has been  highly ambivalent regarding the referendum that is scheduled too take place on October 1st, has now come out firmly for the referendum and against the crackdown taking place.

This response would appear to increase the chances of what looked to be another failed vote for secession into violent separatism. It all feels a bit unreal, however, considering that the real struggle appears to be over which government has the right to collect subsidies from the European Union, the Spanish central government or the Catalonian regional government.

Alt-Tech overview

One year on, Cheah Kai Wai reviews the current state of Alt-Tech:

Last year, the Alt-Tech promised a revolution. These platforms aimed to disrupt and replace the legacy platforms, placing the rights and freedoms of users first. One year on, how well did they fare?

Infogalactic

Infogalactic is an unqualified success story. Beginning as a dynamic hard fork of Wikipedia, it strives to be more objective and informative than its predecessor. In line with its Seven Canons, Infogalactic maintains a strict non-ideological position for all facts — but in the future, it will introduce Context and Opinion levels to its pages, allowing greater depth of content.

Every time I compared an Infogalactic page to Wikipedia, I found the former to be more informative and accurate. The only major knock against Infogalactic is its load time, and even that is improving by the day. In the beginning, it took long minutes to load a single page. Today, it is only slightly slower than Wikipedia.

I use Infogalactic exclusively these days. Wikipedia’s explicit left-wing bias means it is no longer a neutral source of information. Infogalactic has demonstrated itself to be a viable and sustainable alternative to Wikipedia, and in the long term I suspect the disruption and replacement of Wikipedia is inevitable.

Gab

Gab was supposed to be the Twitter killer. A platform dedicated to free speech, it has survived allegations and lies about it being the haven of the Alt-Right and Neo-Nazis. Apple and Google have repeatedly prevented Gab from publishing its app on the iTunes Store and Google Play Store respectively for spurious reasons. Gab brands itself as a proponent of free speech — but that is also its undoing.

Gab’s key weakness is its inability or unwillingness to moderate posts. While it is unwaveringly committed to free speech, freedom is not and cannot be unlimited. As the old adage goes, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. Harmful speech — speech that incites violence or compromises the privacy and safety of individuals — is not protected speech. Gab must be able to moderate harmful content to preserve the continued health and safety of its users, and it has failed the test….

These controversies expose Gab’s core weakness. As Gab refused to moderate harmful speech, Gab users have no choice but to lodge complaints with the domain registrar, who will inevitably respond by ordering Gab off its platform. Like the Daily Stormer, I foresee Gab migrating from registrar to registrar, virtually guaranteeing disruption of services. Alternatively, these users may turn to the police and the courts instead, which will invite another round of troubles.

Free speech ends where harm begins. Incitement to violence, exposure of confidential information, and lying about someone to smear his reputation counts as harm. If Gab will not handle harmful speech in-house, other parties will. To Gab’s detriment. I, for one, cannot in good conscience continue to recommend anyone to use Gab until they fix this oversight, if ever.

Ironically, the fevered assaults by the Daily Stormpoopers and other Gab enthusiasts on me appear to have borne some unexpected fruit. After I reported about 20 or 30 attack tweets to Twitter, in addition to banning and suspending a few of the responsible accounts, Twitter has restored full link access to Vox Popoli using the .com extension after more than 18 months of blocking it.

Enemy of my enemy and all that, I suppose. Go figure.

I will also say that my experience of Brave has been considerably more positive than Cheah’s. But regardless, I am very pleased to know that Infogalactic is working so well for its users, even in Phase One.