This is an open thread to discuss the Pence-Kaine debate tonight.
Brings the Lightning audiobook
Castalia House is very happy to be able to announce that BRINGS THE LIGHTNING, a Western by Peter Grant, is now available in audiobook. Narrated by Bob Allen, the audiobook is 7 hours and 56 minutes long.
When the Civil War ends, where can a former Confederate soldier go to escape the long memories of neighbors who supported the winning side? Where can Johnny Reb go when he can’t go home? He can go out west, where the land is hard, where there is danger on every side, and where no one cares for whom you fought – only how well you can do it.
Walt Ames, a former cavalryman with the First Virginia, is headed west with little more than a rifle, a revolver, and a pocket full of looted Yankee gold. But in his way stand bushwhackers, bluecoats, con men, and the ever-restless Indians. And perhaps most dangerous of all, even more dangerous than the cruel and unforgiving land, is the temptation of the woman whose face he can’t forget.
When you can’t go home again – go west!
Ain’t equality grand?
On the plus side, no one calls them racists anymore:
The WHITE ghettos that blight South Africa: 20 years after the fall of apartheid, how it is now white people who live in squalid camps. There are 42,000 white South Africans living in poverty, a figure which has grown in last 20 years. Munsieville is a squatter camp west of Johannesburg which is home to 300 of them, many of them kids. Under apartheid white South Africans lorded it over blacks and ‘coloureds’ but now there is equality….
“I was mostly affected by the amount of children I saw, living in squalor. It saddens me to think they might never leave this level of poverty and will remain living in this situation for the rest of their lives. The children reminds me of any white kids I’ve met, even kids in affluent suburbs, playing outside spending their days in the sun. They don’t seem to understand they are poor, or are ignorant to what life is like outside Munsieville.”
Coming soon to an America near you.
Mailvox: why he must vote for Donald Trump
Someone with the propitious name of “Del Cid” sent me this today:
I am voting for Donald Trump this November 48, 2016.
Whether any of the innumerable slings and arrows directed at Trump’s person and politics recently have any basis in fact or not, in the end it matters quite little to me. This election, I am not so much voting for the individual as I am voting for what he inherently represents.
As so many wrongly assume, just because I vote for Trump does not necessarily require that I admire every aspect of him personally. Nor does it mean I condone every action he has committed, decision he has made, policy he has endorsed, or word he has spoken. As common sense as this may sound to some, it has tripped up enough people I have spoken to lately that sadly I feel I must make this clarification.
So why am I voting for Donald Trump?
In part I am voting for Trump because the only viable alternative, Hillary Clinton, is far worse than Trump on almost every conceivable level. At the very least, I will vote strategically for Trump in order to deny Hillary the Presidency and to prevent the catastrophe that such a result would undoubtedly bring upon our nation and possibly even the rest of the world.
However, ultimately I will vote for Trump because no matter the specifics of what actions he may take or what stances he may adopt as President, the one thing he is guaranteed to do is shake the Establishment currently embedded in our nation’s government to its very core. Given his track record so far as only just a Presidential nominee, one has to admit this to be true, just as one must equally admit that our government has fallen into a dangerous rut and must be shaken out of it.
Hillary could never do that, she is too much a part of said Establishment to bring any meaningful, productive change no matter how flowery and polished her scripts and talking points are. Best case scenario, Hillary as President would only carry on the current status quo and our government, and nation, will continue to devolve into chaos and eventual self-destruction.
In contrast, Trump as President will likely result in one of two situations:
- He breaks the mold adhered to by almost every newly made President for the last several generations and actually acts on his campaign promises; thus making some much needed positive changes to our government and our national/international policies. True, no one is perfect and he may and probably will make some bad decisions or changes to be sure. But overall, his Presidency will be a net positive and with his help our nation will thrive and flourish and begin to find its way back to the right track.
- He makes some truly terrible changes, declares himself God-Emperor of America, and drives us all to hell in a handcart. If this is the path his presidency takes, then he will undoubtedly gather so much hatred and opposition from enough of us true blooded Americans that We the People will finally be galvanized into performing our full civic duty and actually do something ourselves to fix our nation and “Make America Great Again.”
Obviously possibility 1 is best case scenario, and 2 is worst case scenario. Call me a flaming optimist, but I feel that possibility 1” is the most likely outcome. As with all relatively sane individuals, I generally prefer orderly, intellectual revolutions to chaotic, violent ones. However, history has repeatedly and unfailingly demonstrated that if the former is so continuously and brutally repressed, the latter will occur eventually.
Either way, change must happen. Change will happen. Real and fundamental change.
Which of our two candidates this election season are more suited to acting as a catalyst for positive change, short or long term? The old bureaucrat so highly experienced in the game of political corruption that even her scandals have scandals? The woman so inextricably tied to the rot at the core of our political machinery that she is the veritable posterchild (postergranny?) of all things wrong with our government today? Or the loud, brash, polarizing man who drives the chattel of PC media elites, SJW thought police, cuckservatives, et all before him like so many helpless leaves before the hurricane? The one candidate who has already begun the breaking of the Present World Order without even yet having stepped foot in the White House?
I look at it all like this: It is a cold, hard fact that you will never in your life be given the choice of a Presidential candidate who will completely satisfy all of your moral and political standards. Yet at the same time neither you nor your nation can afford for you to stand by, shun your civic duty, and remove yourself from the decision for the purpose of virtue signaling your moral superiority. Other than arguably making you look good, what real good does this accomplish for the world? You must choose the best you can out of what options you have been given, and make the most you can out of the reality with which you are faced.
I have studied my options carefully this election season. Given the choices reality has set out before me, I can only conscientiously fulfill my civic duty as an American citizen by choosing Donald Trump for my next President.
Massive Russian civil defense drill
Russia is apparently taking the banging of the war drums seriously:
As relations between Russia and the US disintegrate as a result of the escalating proxy war in Syria, which today culminated with Putin halting a Plutonium cleanup effort with the US, shortly before the US State Department announced it would end negotiations with Russia over Syria, tomorrow an unprecedented 40 million Russian citizens, as well as 200,000 specialists from “emergency rescue divisions” and 50,000 units of equipment are set to take part in a four day-long civil defense, emergency evacuation and disaster preparedness drill, the Russian Ministry for Civil Defense reported on its website.
According to the ministry, an all-Russian civil defense drill involving federal and regional executive authorities and local governments dubbed “Organization of civil defense during large natural and man-caused disasters in the Russian Federation” will start tomorrow morning in all constituent territories of Russia and last until October 7. While the ministry does not specify what kind of “man-caused disaster” it envisions, it would have to be a substantial one for 40 million Russians to take part in the emergency preparedness drill. Furthermore, be reading the guidelines of the drill, we can get a rather good idea of just what it is that Russia is “preparing” for.
The website adds that “the main goal of the drill is to practice organization of management during civil defense events and emergency and fire management, to check preparedness of management bodies and forces of civil defense on all levels to respond to natural and man-made disasters and to take civil defense measures.” Oleg Manuilov, director of the Civil Defence Ministry explained that the exercise will be a test of how the population would respond to a “disaster” under an “emergency” situation.
Americans, meanwhile, are fretting over whether or not Kim Kardashian is going to need therapy or not after her recent trip to Paris.
This should go well.
The price of badthink
Scott Adams said that he used to be scheduled to do at least two speaking engagements per month. Since he’s been talking about Trump, he has not received one request. And one scheduled for next year, was canceled as “they are going in a different direction”.
It’s no wonder the Left has been winning the cultural war. The Left is very good about supporting its cultural leaders. Castalia readers aside – they have been reliably great in this regard – far too much of the Right would rather back a Left-approved winner than support any of its own. Of course, I’m guessing that very little of that speaking engagement money came from anyone who was spending his own money, and most of it came from SJWs who managed to put themselves in position to spend someone else’s.
If you were at the Big Fork meeting last night, please note that this is the right time to get involved and start supporting it. You’ve got the Paypal address already; we’ll get a button on the relevant page by Monday. We will continue to do it on a shoestring; we’re comfortable with that. But the more people who start using it, the more server resources we’ll require.
And for those ready to start making some noise next Monday, there is more than one way to do that. (These are not the OG shirts, they’re being prepared, so hold off on those as you’ll all be emailed about them. And it’s not the only Crypto-Fashion now available.
Interview with an economic hit man
John Perkins is interviewed by Sarah van Gelder:
Sarah van Gelder: What’s changed in our world since you wrote the first Confessions of an Economic Hit Man?
John Perkins: Things have just gotten so much worse in the last 12 years since the first Confessions was written. Economic hit men and jackals have expanded tremendously, including the United States and Europe.
Back in my day we were pretty much limited to what we called the third world, or economically developing countries, but now it’s everywhere.
And in fact, the cancer of the corporate empire has metastasized into what I would call a failed global death economy. This is an economy that’s based on destroying the very resources upon which it depends, and upon the military. It’s become totally global, and it’s a failure.
van Gelder: So how has this switched from us being the beneficiaries of this hit-man economy, perhaps in the past, to us now being more of the victims of it?
Perkins: It’s been interesting because, in the past, the economic hit man economy was being propagated in order to make America wealthier and presumably to make people here better off, but as this whole process has expanded in the U.S. and Europe, what we’ve seen is a tremendous growth in the very wealthy at the expense of everybody else.
On a global basis we now know that 62 individuals have as many assets as half the world’s population.
We of course in the U.S. have seen how our government is frozen, it’s just not working. It’s controlled by the big corporations and they’ve really taken over. They’ve understood that the new market, the new resource, is the U.S. and Europe, and the incredibly awful things that have happened to Greece and Ireland and Iceland, are now happening here in the U.S.
We’re seeing this situation where we can have what statistically shows economic growth, and at the same time increased foreclosures on homes and unemployment.
van Gelder: Is this the same kind of dynamic about debt that leads to emergency managers who then turn over the reins of the economy to private enterprises? The same thing that you are seeing in third-world countries?
Perkins: Yes, when I was an economic hit man, one of the things that we did, we raised these huge loans for these countries, but the money never actually went to the countries, it went to our own corporations to build infrastructure in those countries. And when the countries could not pay off their debt, we insisted that they privatize their water systems, their sewage systems, their electric systems.
Now we’re seeing that same thing happen in the United States. Flint, Michigan, is a very good example of that. This is not a U.S. empire, it’s a corporate empire protected and supported by the U.S. military and the CIA. But it is not an American empire, it’s not helping Americans. It’s exploiting us in the same way that we used to exploit all these other countries around the world.
It’s all about the debt. And debt that can’t be repaid has to be written off, somehow.
Nationalists continue to rise
- THE French presidential race has been rocked after a opinion poll showed leader of the National Front party, Marine Le Pen, is by far the most popular political figure among right-wing supporters, and also gaining ground among left-wing circles. According to the poll carried out by Odoxa for French television station France 2, 74 per cent of those who consider themselves ‘conservative’ and who claim to support right-wing politics want the head of the country’s leading anti-immigrant party to play a more influential role in French politics, both now and in the future.
- Hungary referendum: 98 per cent of voters say ‘no’ to EU migrant quotas. Hungary has voted emphatically against accepting EU migrant quotas, exit polls suggest, in a cry of defiance against Brussels that is likely to cement the country’s status as the leader of a “counter-revolution” against the bloc’s central powers.
Brave leads The Disconvergence
An article about Brendan Eich and Brave:
The former CEO of Mozilla has released a new Internet browser called Brave. Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript, continues to lead the technological revolution with Brave, an innovative concept in Internet browsers.
After blowing away the competition (read: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer) with the Internet browser Firefox, Eich has come up with Brave, a nearly ad-free, lightning-fast browser that eliminates intrusive ads as well as common but unwanted tracking tack-ons.
A tech legend for his JavaScript and Firefox contributions, Eich was betrayed by his contemporaries and forced out of business as CEO of Mozilla, the company behind Firefox, because he supported natural marriage.
When it was revealed in 2014 that Eich donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 ballot proposal, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman, he was blackballed, even though Proposition 8 was supported by the majority of Californians and easily passed in 2008.
Eich was publicly shamed because he believed in natural marriage and family. He was openly called a racist, Nazi, and inhumane.
But the tenacious techie didn’t give up. Without apology, Eich continued to innovate and ultimately came up with a whole new concept in web browsers: the ad-free, tracking-free, fast internet browser Brave.
In November 2015, Eich raised $2.5 million to create an advanced super-technical team. By August 2016, the company had raised $4.5 million in seed money to launch the browser.
Brave is called an entirely new way to browse the web without being intrusively tracked, and without time-consuming download ads.
If you’re tired of your every online move being overseen and policed by the SJWs in social media, you should seriously consider joining The Disconvergence. Brendan Eich and Brave have led the way, but they’re not alone.
I’ve been on Brave since July and I use it every day. It’s very nearly my sole browser; I only have to use Pale Moon for a few minor tasks here and there. It’s still pre-release, so it’s very much a work-in-progress, but it’s already faster and less annoying than either Firebird or Chrome and it has far fewer pauses and crashes than Mozilla Thunderbird.
(A Thunderbird replacement would be my personal vote for the next Alt-Tech target, although I’m sure there are more pressing needs out there.)
So, if you’re not on Brave yet, give it a try on your desktop. I don’t think the mobile version is quite ready for prime time yet, so I’m still using Pale Moon on Android.
Project Big Fork and the Disconvergence
If you’d like to take part in the Open Brainstorm session tonight in which I’ll be announcing Project Big Fork to the Ilk and discuss the Disconvergence with two other pioneers in the Alt-Tech movement, you can register here. There are 1,000 seats, but they are filling up fast.
The event will take place at 7 PM Eastern tonight.
