Always trust your lying eyes

Modern art, including Abstract Expressionism, was never anything more than government-funded bullshit.

There’s little more divisive than modern art—most take a staunch “brilliance” or “bullshit” stance. So it should come as a surprise that the straight-laced feds at the CIA leaned toward the former camp—or at least saw it as brilliantly exploitable in the psychological war against the Soviets. Reports from former agents acknowledge what was always a tall tale in the art world—that CIA spooks floated pioneering artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell, to drop an aesthetic nuke on Communism. What seemed like natural popularity of certain artists was, in part, actually a deliberate attempt at psychological warfare, backed by the US government.

But why modern art? At the time period in question—the 1950s and 60s—the artistic style of the moment was Abstract Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism (or AbEx, if you want to impress people at your next snooty cocktail party) stood for, above all else, self expression. Radically so….

The CIA wanted this art to be global. So it dumped millions upon millions of dollars to be secret patrons of art world darlings like Pollock. Fake foundations, used as CIA slush funds, sponsored international exhibitions.

It’s not art. It’s propaganda, the so-called artists were government whores, and the high art cognoscenti were complete suckers.

You’re not a philistine for preferring Truth and Beauty to CIA propaganda and creative prostitution.


Russia warns USAF

No more “oops-sorry-we-bombed-your-allies” little “mistakes” will be permitted in Syria:

Russia’s Defense Ministry has cautioned the US-led coalition of carrying out airstrikes on Syrian army positions, adding in Syria there are numerous S-300 and S-400 air defense systems up and running.

Russia currently has S-400 and S-300 air-defense systems deployed to protect its troops stationed at the Tartus naval supply base and the Khmeimim airbase. The radius of the weapons reach may be “a surprise” to all unidentified flying objects, Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson General Igor Konashenkov said.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, any airstrike or missile hitting targets in territory controlled by the Syrian government would put Russian personnel in danger. The defense official said that members of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria are working “on the ground” delivering aid and communicating with a large number of communities in Syria.

“Therefore, any missile or air strikes on the territory controlled by the Syrian government will create a clear threat to Russian servicemen. Russian air defense system crews are unlikely to have time to determine in a ‘straight line’ the exact flight paths of missiles and then who the warheads belong to. And all the illusions of amateurs about the existence of ‘invisible’ jets will face a disappointing reality,”  Konashenkov added.

Translation: if the US pretends to mistakenly bomb Syrian ground troops, Russia will pretend to mistakenly shoot down US planes.

Interesting that all the drums beating about how the evil Rooskies bombed an aid convoy have fallen completely silent. Sometimes, the probable truth of a narrative can be discerned by how quickly it is abandoned.


Peak NFL

Was apparently the 2015 season:

The NFL has been sacked for a loss. Once considered immune to the audience erosion plaguing the television industry, ratings for the National Football League have tumbled through the first four weeks of the season.

TV networks have bet heavily on sports in general, and the NFL in particular, because of the must-see value of their content. While more viewers are watching commercial-free streaming services like Netflix or recording shows on DVRs and skipping the ads, sports is still primarily watched live, making it valuable to advertisers.

Combined, ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS are spending an average of $5 billion a year for football rights through 2021. The games not only score big ratings and ad sales, but are crucial platforms to promote other programming.

So far this season, viewership on those networks is down about 10% from last season, according to Nielsen, with steeper declines for prime-time games on Sunday, Monday and Thursday. The drop has caught advertisers and rights holders off guard and left them scrambling to find a cause.

All of the discussions about “a cause” for the NFL’s declining rating are somewhat missing the point. There is no single factor. It is undeniable that the quality of the product has declined, or that the relentless focus on making the passing game easier has imbalanced the level of competition between the QB-haves and the QB-have nots. It’s undeniable that the incessant politics, most of which is at least irritating to the core audience, has caused some people to stop watching. And it’s obvious that Hispanics are considerably less interested in the sport than the whites they have been demographically replacing while fantasy football has changed the way many fans watch the game. The fact that 8 years of economic depression means people have less average disposable income certainly hasn’t helped.

But the chief culprit, in my opinion, is overexposure. A Monday night game used to be a big deal. Adding Sunday night football and Thursday night football means there is insufficient recovery time to begin anticipating the next game. And the move from a 14-game season to a 17-game season means that there is too much football for too long a time, with too many injuries.

Here is my prescription for restoring football to its former glory.

  • Reduce the 17-week, 16-game season to 15 weeks, with 14 games.
  • Ban all politics by players and the league. No more flags on helmets, pink cleats, or protests. If the league can discipline a player for wearing the wrong color wristband, it can do so for failing to stand at attention, Bud Grant-style, for the anthem. Black helmet stickers for one game to honor a deceased player, coach, or owner are acceptable.
  • Cut down on the number of flags, particularly those that nullify a big play without having directly affected it. And get rid of instant replay. It’s only made matters worse, to the extent that no one even knows what a catch is anymore.
  • Stop emphasizing the pass. 500-yard passing games are flag football and BYU, not the NFL. Pass interference is 10 yards, automatic first down.
  • Encourage more white players by adopting standard, race-neutral 2-game bans for an arrest, 4 more games for a conviction. Teams will tend to prefer the more law-abiding marginal white players over the more athletic marginal black players because the former will be able to stay on the field.
  • No more wild card teams. Win the division, make the playoffs. Two rounds and the Super Bowl will end playoff fatigue.

Even the small wins count

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Always fight back. The only time you should not fight back is when you have chosen to engage in a strategic maneuver in order to fight from a more advantageous position in the future.


Mailvox: standing with atheists

An atheist explains his contempt for cuckservative Churchianity:

I am a man living in Alabama who has never believed in Santa Clause or God. My family and most of my peers are rabid evangelicals.

For 28 years I have been preached to in a desperate attempt to save me from hell. The only thing I have seen is a legion of cowards using soft rhetoric to make their ideas more palatable to the ignorant fools who begin throwing their money at the Church. The people who beg me to follow their creed are mocked by children with the most rudimentary logic as they abandon the commands of their God and whore themselves to anyone who will pay them.

I will never count myself among such feckless cowards.

This does not change my decision to stand by Christians and fight the filth this cesspool of a nation is surrendering itself to. I have one thing to offer my Christian brothers, I will die next to them inflicting this on this enemy: an animal hatred of of the trash you have allowed to undermine the country which has allowed me to live my life without repression.

If you do not succeed in your goal it will not only be me who perishes. You will cry out to your God as the evil you believed he would save you from brutally shows you what it is to be ruined.

I’d rather stand by an atheist like him than the Churchians who sell out their neighbors for worldly approbation in the name of a counterfeit Gospel. But he really should know better than to try to characterize Christian theology on our behalf. Jesus saves souls. He doesn’t save nations. If men want to save their nations, or their civilization, I expect they’ll have to do it on their own.

In such matters, God appears to be most inclined to help those who follow His laws and help themselves.


Clearing up the Gab drama

@a of Gab explains what was happening yesterday with regards to Gab:

I want to clear up the confusion about some baseless claims that have been made against myself, the company, @e, and our entire #GabFam earlier today. A few weeks ago we started vetting some potential early investors and senior-level technical employees to help us continue to grow Gab and promote free speech.

We exercised extreme vetting and slowly attempted to build trust, judge character, and team fit. Unfortunately our trust was broken after a toxic attack on our community and libelous falsehoods were sent to the press by certain people we were vetting.

I want to make a few things very clear:

  • The co-founders of Gab are myself and @e. Period.
  • @e and I have completely self-funded Gab by ourselves with no pay for months. 
  • We have not accepted one outside investor. 
  • Our donations Paypal account is a business account and attached to a business bank account. The email address used for the Paypal account is my business email address. I will be updating this to “donate@gab.ai” to clear up confusion. We will be adding much more transparency and value-adds for donors over the next several days. 

We have been attacked by the press. We have been attacked by anonymous trolls. We have been attacked by folks that we trusted and had high hopes for. Each time we have emerged a stronger, more unified community. Thank your for continuing to support us and our mission of putting people first and promoting free speech for all.

I can vouch for @a’s version of events. At the exact same time “certain people” were falsely claiming to have been co-founders of Gab on Gab, there was a concerted script attack on the login page, connected to the page about Gab, which I believe to have been an attempt to edit the page and repeat the same baseless claims there.

SJWs are not the only entryists. Startups, in particular, are often targeted by predatory investors and pseudo-entrepreneurs. And sometimes they are successful. See the history of Facebook for the most notorious example.


THE NINE LAWS by Ivan Throne

Castalia House is proud to announce its first mindset book, THE NINE LAWS, by Ivan Throne. Ivan, also known as Dark Triad Man on Gab and Twitter, is an impressive man who has overcome many difficulties and life-challenges through accepting the callous disregard of the world and ruthlessly imposing his own will upon it.

Do you dare to discover what you’re truly capable of? 


THE NINE LAWS is your living manual of power, distilled for you by the man who was forced to build it to survive. The author forged this system over decades of cruel experience. It began with profound trauma in early childhood, shaped itself during long training in the eastern warrior arts, and was polished amidst financial industry competition and family crisis. Master this content, and deliver yourself to a place that few men ever reach: joyous mastery of your own fate. 


This book is not for the uncertain or the timid. THE NINE LAWS is designed for men who are acutely aware that one lifetime is all they have to pursue and achieve their sacred purpose. Far more than a mere self-help book, or a simple collection of advice and ideas, THE NINE LAWS is a gravely serious operating system for success in a dark world.


Read it. Train it. Live it. Survive the dark world with momentous ferocity, and triumph.


THE NINE LAWS is 371 pages, DRM-Free, and retails for $9.99 on Amazon.


PREFACE: THE DYING CHILD

The man sat across the sterile room and watched his child dying.


He had stood calmly under the hostile machine guns of the Soviets within the charred and shattered rubble of Berlin in service to his Crown and country. He had then crossed the world to America where he built and lived, loved and raised his family.


Now this former reporter could do nothing but watch, and wait, and take notes in a sad and tired hand on a yellow legal pad, recording details with the practiced habit of a journalist as fever migraines prodded his youngest son into crying, wakeful pain. The boy would writhe, then subside into exhausted silence on the bed once more.


Bruises covered him where intravenous lines had been run for weeks into his hands and arms, his feet and ankles. With each passing day there were fewer places to insert fresh ones, fewer issuances of hope from doctors and nurses who were reduced to mere attendants of pain and no longer able to act as healers.


Days and nights were a blur, for sleep and waking were run not by play and rest, by meals and repose, but by the fits and starts of fever and the incomprehension of the innocent who woke in the dark hours before dawn and cried and cried with pain at the soft light that glowed from the nurse’s station.


As the weeks went by the man documented the progression of meningitis that writhed in the skull of his child, burning the boy’s mind away and murdering his senses.


“His hearing is going,” the man wrote.


“Even in the pain, he can tell something is happening to him, and complains that he cannot hear.”


The love and helplessness inscribed into those pages shone from the written words.


The documentation stopped near the end, when against all odds the fevers broke and the doctor took the man aside and said to him, “It’s happened. We saved him.”


The grave illness had lost. The pain was gone, and the gift of calm and sleep had replaced the tossing and turning of agony and pressure within the golden head of the young child.


Soon enough the boy went home to his family, and entered into a world where nothing made sense any longer. The world had been turned upside down, and everything had been severed.


He was deaf. Birds, laughter, music, human connection through voices had all been stolen by the disease and the fevers and the drugs pumped into him with desperate hope and quantity.


The boy could no longer walk, for the nerves that connected his inner ears to his brain had been burned away. There was no longer an up or down to perceive, and even a simple attempt to stand on his own made the world tumble and turn and the floor would leap up and slam into him without sympathy.


The voice of his mother, which used to sing to him and lull him to sleep as one of the sweetest sounds of the universe, was now silent. There was only the great effort of slowly mouthing words, beginning the long and exhausting process of teaching the boy to lip read as if his life depended on it… and it did.


The living feeling of connection with friends and family was severed forever. No longer could the boy simply listen and be an integral and accepted partner of humor and discussion, of sharing and whispers. He was now a permanent outsider, cut off and reduced to an observer rather than an equal participant.


Gone were the dreams of a little boy to be an astronaut, a firefighter, a policeman, a soldier. Never again would a future be possible that relied upon the ability to hear, to listen, and act.


And so the boy was dependent, and hurting, and terrified, and did not understand. And finally the day came when the family sat down to dinner, and he laid on the floor and cried for help, because he could not walk. And not one person came, and he laid there alone in miserable despondency.


Until he started to scream in rage.


Then his older sister came down, and stood over him. And when she spoke, she made certain he could read her lips and understand.


“Get up and walk,” she said. “Quit wailing.” Her face was harsh and neutral. “The world isn’t going to help you.”


And she turned away, and went back up the short flight of stairs to the kitchen and the family.


The boy laid there for a moment, stunned, and rebelliously enraged at reality.


Then something contracted inside him, and he sat up. He looked at the stairs, then silently wiped his face.


He crawled to those stairs and dragged himself upwards, furious, finally reaching the chair next to his father. Then he gasped and clambered until he had pulled himself onto it. Not one person at the table glanced at him or offered assistance. When he was seated, his father looked over and calmly offered him a serving of dinner. But in that Englishman’s eyes was the glint of the most powerful approbation that an officer of the Royal Horse Guards can give another man.


It was respect, and the boy never forgot that look.


I was four years old.


Immigration trumps law

How is it possible to argue that immigration is beneficial to a society when the mere presence of immigrants involves rendering that society’s laws moot?

Child brides as young as 14 are being reunited with their older, migrant husbands in Denmark after authorities decided that upholding Danish law breached their “human rights”. The legal minimum age for marriage is 18 in the Nordic nation, yet the exemptions are being made for migrants because separating the couples is said to violate the right to family life guaranteed in the European convention on human rights.

There are 27 migrants under 18 who were known to be married Denmark, and among the influx arriving in the past year were two 14-year-old girls, wed to 24 and 28-year-old men. One 14-year-old was expecting a baby. The age of consent in Denmark is 15 for the rest of the population, and those found guilty of sexual acts with minors are liable for 8 years in jail.

One simply cannot take ANY of the Left’s claims seriously anymore. The leftists strain at gnats and swallow mammoths. They are not fit for Western civilization.


Celebrities tell you how to vote

Nick Cole, who has no small amount of experience with Hollywood celebrities as an actor on shows like Scrubs and The West Wing, explains why you shouldn’t listen to them.

Most celebrities, especially the actors, are literally professional liars. And when you begin to look at their lifestyle, from the unrealistic wealth you and I will never see, to the amount of divorces, drug and alcohol problems and lawsuits they accumulate, they’re not actually savory people. Not even really nice people in fact, unless they’re making videos about how they’re donating to some charity. They are literally bragging on social media about what a giver they are conveniently timed around some theatrical release for their next filth laden flop you shouldn’t actually be watching with your kids.

(Wow what a coincidence! That drug addict rageaholic actor Everyman who parties with the House of Saud and Russian hookers and whose wife fears for her and her kid’s life, shows up at the cancer ward to pretend to be something he’s actually not). And what makes it occasionally creepier than it really is, happens during elections when a celebrity team of Social Avengers gets together to push a flailing political candidate known for her legendary amounts of corruption, avarice, greed and general failings as a human being in order to tell you the other guy is literally Hitler. Disregarding the fact that Hitler was Hitler because he killed millions of people.

Celebrities are lying scum.

I have to admit, I don’t pay celebrities any mind whatsoever, on the sound principle that I don’t listen to anything that anyone with an IQ less than half of mine says. I can honestly say that I am more inclined to pay heed to the opinion of my wife’s Ridgeback than I am to any opinion expressed by a Hollywood celebrity.

Celebrities are, by and large, a collection of shallow, low-IQ little people who spend their lives playing make-believe and pretending to be things that they are not. It’s nice that they can make a living that way, but one would do better to seek guidance by consulting the opinions of cosplayers.


If only there was a solution

Whatever are we going to do about this army of Volunteer Auxiliary Thought Police who are occupied with memory-holing history?

Last week, you could still find on Wikipedia two of Ms. Machado’s more recent misadventures:

In 2005, Machado was engaged to baseball star Bobby Abreu. During their engagement she was on the Spanish reality show ‘La Granja’ where she was filmed on camera having sex with another member of the show. Shortly after the video surfaced Abreu ended their engagement.

On June 25, 2008, Machado gave birth to her daughter, Dinorah Valentina. She issued a statement that the father of Dinorah was her best friend Mexican businessman Rafael Hernandez Linares after Mexican news sources, quoting the Attorney General, reported that the father was Gerardo Álvarez Vázquez, a drug lord.

But mentions of these imbroglios have since been memory holed on Wikipedia. Editors have offered bizarre excuses for deleting the most interesting information about Hillary’s heroine, such as that the diva is not a “public figure,” an assertion that would surely wound the actress more deeply than allegations that she’s a gangster’s moll.

That points out an answer to one of the more obvious questions about the plausibility of Orwell’s 1984: How can they afford that? Is it really fiscally feasible even for a totalitarian government to employ an army of salaried Winston Smiths to alter history?

Yet it’s naive to imagine that a government would have to pay people to do this kind of thing. In the current year, we now know that plenty of people would join the Volunteer Auxiliary Thought Police for free.

How very unfortunate. Now, thanks to Wikipedia’s ever-efficient thought police, no one will ever know the truth about Ms Machado. It’s not as if there is anything we can do about it, right?