BRICS to Expand by 13

13 countries received the status of BRICS partner country at the 2024 BRICS summit. They are Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda and Vietnam. BRICS partner country status is a mandatory step before full membership.

The 13 new partner countries, at least 10 of which will become full BRICS members in a year or so, effectively add 840,276,082 people to the economic alliance, which alone is more than the USA, the UK, the EU, and Israel combined. Their coming addition will also make BRICS the global majority. The key additions are current NATO member Türkiye, Southeast Asian giant Indonesia, African giant Nigeria, and Asian military power Vietnam. Clown World has been desperate to keep both Türkiye and Vietnam on its side, but it now appears to have lost both.

At this point, it should be clear that Russia has comprehensively defeated Clown World, not only militarily and economically, but diplomatically as well. To paraphrase Rorshach, Clown World hasn’t locked Russia in solitary, but Clown World is locked in with itself.

Note to the Finnish, Swedish, and Swiss governments: You all chose poorly in selecting this particular moment in time to abandon your historic neutralities. Very, very poorly indeed. There isn’t a single BRICS nation, or even BRICS partner country, that is as small as any of you. Not only is the USA totally incapable of “protecting” you from Russia or any other military threat, but you’re actively doing harm to your ability to engage economically with more than half of the globe and counting.

You would do well to re-establish your neutrality, and do it fast.

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An Irrelevant Ex-Empire

The UK military is totally incapable of war:

The UK military is unprepared to fight in a major conflict and would not be able to deter the enemy if a war breaks out now, British Defense Secretary John Healey has acknowledged. The British army, navy and air force have been “hollowed out” and “underfunded” during the 14 years of the Conservative Party’s rule, Healey said in his appearance on Politico’s Power Play podcast on Thursday. When the UK Labour Party came to power in July, “we expected things to be in a poor state – but the state of the finances, the state of the forces, was far worse than we thought,” he added.

The UK military failed to stop the invasion by millions of foreigners. It has no air defenses worth speaking of. It isn’t capable of stopping a violent insurrection by its resident invaders, much less anything that Russia should elect to do in response to the UK government’s fanning the flames of war in Ukraine.

Those who believed nuclear weapons meant an end to war never considered the inevitable development of anti-missile technology; the small size of the UK’s “nuclear deterrent force” means that if the Russians can’t already shoot it down with lasers and hypersonic missile defense systems – both of which are already in development – they will be able to do so soon.

The UK never had much in the war of ground forces, which were always intended to provide the balance of power on the continent. But now, with both the French and the German militaries but a shadow of their former selves, there is literally nothing to prevent Russia from accomplishing whatever it decides is in its national interest. Fortunately, and contra the neocon warmongering, none of the BRICS powers are showing any interest in following the self-destructive leads of the UK and the USA into empire.

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Smells Like BRICSX

It appears the maintainers of Linux are dumb enough to embrace the Grand Bifurcation and write off the majority of the human population:

Following yesterday’s news first featured on Phoronix of several Linux driver maintainers being de-listed from their maintainer positions within the mainline Linux kernel over their connections to Russia, Linus Torvalds has today commented on the matter.

Since yesterday there’s been a lot of concern and mixed views over a number of Linux kernel maintainers being de-listed from the kernel’s MAINTAINERS file seemingly over being Russian or using Russian email addresses. In response to the patch posting from last week has also been proposals to revert that prior patch, some of the affected maintainers voicing their surprise over this sudden move, and some being upset over the lack of public clarity into the seemingly new “compliance requirements” imposed on the Linux kernel.

Greg Kroah-Hartman who authored the patch dropping the various maintainers has yet to comment on the mailing list thread, but a few minutes ago Linus Torvalds chimed in with his opinion. Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote:

“Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about. It’s entirely clear why the change was done, it’s not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to “grass root” it by Russian troll factories isn’t going to change anything.

And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren’t troll farm accounts – the “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.

If you haven’t heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by “news”, I don’t mean Russian state-sponsored spam.

As to sending me a revert patch – please use whatever mush you call brains. I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently it’s not just lack of real news, it’s lack of history knowledge too.”

It’s not as if the Russians are simply going to throw up their hands and start using Windows 11. This promises to be the Mother of All Forks, and given the recently expressed position of BRICS on the illegality of Western sanctions, I doubt any of the BRICS countries are going to stick with the original Linux version.

This is where the fatal flaw of having a weak central figure like Torvalds in charge inevitably comes into play. Succession plans are difficult enough for strong Alphas to accomplish successfully, but when a mild-mannered Delta is the man in charge, some sort of future debacle is all but guaranteed.

Linus, it’s not that anyone thinks you’re supporting Russian aggression. It’s just that we assumed you wouldn’t be retarded enough to publicly endorse the division of the global Linux community and the creation of a Sino-Russian alternative operating system. But we were wrong.

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When Science is Silent

JK Rowling summarizes the scientific philosophy of the wicked:

‘We must not publish a study that says we’re harming children because people who say we’re harming children will use the study as evidence that we’re harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.’

One of the many reasons that the science can never be trusted is because scientists will actively avoid publishing any results that contradict the current Narrative they call “the scientific consensus”.

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Booster Patrol Goes Pro

If you’re a backer of Booster Patrol, we’ve completed the necessary permissions to get the 10-song e-album out to you. As part of that process, we put some of those songs on Spotify, so if you happen to use that app, you can now fire up some proper boosting on demand now. The available songs are:

  • Possession
  • Don’t You Want Me
  • More Human Than Human
  • God’s Gonna Cut You Down
  • Thought Contagion
  • Wow

That’s pretty much more guitar solos than were recorded in the 1980s, so it should keep you a while. I understand our first original effort may be done soon, which features Rachel on vocals, so you’ve got that to look forward to as well. In case you missed it, there’s now a video for Wow, which is a very boosted cover of the Kylie Minogue song.

In other music news, here’s the first live performance of Babymetal and the two guys from Polyphia playing Brand New Day, which is a really nice and well-written song in the From Dusk Til Dawn vein.

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France Shuts the Borders

At this point, Schengen is essentially dead. The EU and its “free movement of peoples” will eventually follow:

France is set to ramp up the intensity of border controls with European neighbours amid fears of uncontrolled migration and terror threats just weeks after Germany announced a similar policy. French authorities informed the European Commission last week that its borders with six of its neighbouring Schengen members – namely Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and Switzerland – will be reinforced with increased checks as of November 1 for at least six months.

We’ve definitely passed the peak of the pendulum. And given how far it reached, it’s going to snap back with a historical vengeance.

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Please Don’t Go!

NATO is begging Türkiye to stay in NATO even if it joins BRICS:

Türkiye has the right to cooperate with the BRICS economic group without undermining its status as a NATO member, the secretary-general of the US-led military bloc, Mark Rutte, has said.

The NATO chief’s remarks came at a press conference in Estonia on Tuesday. He was asked by the Estonian Public Broadcaster whether Ankara’s desire to become a member of BRICS, which the outlet described as a “Russia-dominated organization,” should be a cause for concern.

Rutte stressed that Türkiye remains “a very important ally in the alliance” as it is “one of the best equipped military forces in NATO” and plays a “vital role in its part of the NATO geography.”

“Obviously within the alliance, being a democracy, 32 countries, there will always be debates on this and that,” the secretary-general admitted. However, he insisted that Ankara has “the sovereign right” to work towards a BRICS membership and cooperate with its members.

The real question is if BRICS will permit the Turks to join if they remain in NATO. And the jury is still out on that one.

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The Strangest Tools

Although I believe President Trump to have been the greatest US president since Andrew Jackson, his many failures and his various retarderies on an irritatingly broad range of topics have certainly diminished my enthusiasm for the prospects of his eventual return to the White House. Nevertheless, and despite the obvious electoral frauds past and future, there is some reason to retain at least an amount of hope in the man. Because, for some reason that is hard to explain, the truly wicked fear him.

Want proof that God is with Trump?

Literal Witches are complaining on Reddit that they are trying to launch demonic attacks against Trump, but “he seems to have some kind of protection around him.”

Trump is even winning against witches!

“A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look, And see the reward of the wicked.” – Psalm 91:7-8

God is using Trump to help set the world straight. Only Christians with a sanctimonious attitude refuse to understand this. God doesn’t choose the qualified. He qualifies the chosen.

I’m sure more than a few Christians were highly skeptical of the Apostle Paul. And there are people who were so shocked by the fact that a certain author wrote a certain book that they regarded it as genuine evidence of the existence of God.

Hope is a virtue, not a weakness. Never forget that. The actual weakness is fearing to hope due to past disappointments.

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The End of Bioware

Mark Kern reports on an interview with a tester that appears to spell doom for Dragon Age Veilguard, and possibly, Bioware itself:

@nuhre_ gets the scoop in her interview with a game tester who reveals all. Alleged rumors from testing in 2023 build highlights:

  • Game is super woke. Pronouns in your face.
  • Qunari companion literally introduces themselves with immersion breaking modern language “I identify myself as non-binary.”
  • Romances were, and still may be gender locked UNLESS you choose a pronoun other than he/him, you MUST be pansexual or you were/are restricted to TWO romance options (Neve and Harding) while other choices may romance anyone. (this might have changed due to BG3 success and influence).
  • Solas is SIDELINED HARD. Made into a minor character with little importance or development until suddenly important at end of game, and that ending is “Baffling” and not in a good way, (but no spoilers revealed.)
  • The story is “disappointment after disappointment.”
  • Facial animation is “Andromeda all over again” and “plastic” which I assume is a lot of “my face is tired” quality.
  • Inquisitor and Inquisition is corrupt and may not be of any help even if you didn’t disband it. Choices don’t matter “It’s Mass Effect 3 again.”
  • Rook SIDELINED, backstory wasted. Just a guy in a bar, very much diminished.
  • Tester feedback IGNORED. Boss said “It’s very good feedback, but I can’t send it to them (the devs). It’s very good but …” Basically you can’t talk about how the woke stuff is making the game worse. It’s not something you can talk about, even if it is ruining the game.
  • Grey Warden Davrin, a newcomer who never finished his training, gets to influence and make important decisions for the Grey Wardens solely because he is a PoC. “Gets to decide everything.”
  • The segment of gameplay in The Fade is a boring “walking simulator” with just some fetch quests. Completely wasted opportunity.
  • Other major characters like Varric, turned into mere “advisors” and pushed to the back of the story.
  • “It’s so far removed from Origins, that it’s crazy that it’s in the same universe.”

“THIS IS THE END OF BIOWARE” the interview concludes. Final nail in the coffin of a once great studio and franchise.

I liked Baldur’s Gate, and the investment company for which I worked helped fund Neverwinter Nights, but I generally considered their games to be overrated and more than a little derivative. The fact that they went full SJW and embraced the Diversity Initiative didn’t surprise me in the slightest. If the failure of DAV causes the studio to go down, I wouldn’t care at all. It’s not like losing Origin Systems to the graveyard of developers.

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The Intellectual Limits of Thomas Sowell

I like Thomas Sowell and his work. It was a minor influence on my intellectual development in my youth. But he has always been limited in his willingness to depart from conservative orthodoxy, as evidenced by his unwillingness to accept the relevant aspects of human genetics as they relate to societal development, or the lack thereof.

Sowell is the leading conservative proponent of the cultural explanation. In regard to race differences in the US, his idea is that black Americans adopted a dysfunctional culture from white rednecks in the South. A different culture would have, and in the future could, set blacks (as well as southern whites) on a different path. While he mostly avoids ad hominem attacks against hereditarians, he portrays most of them as bumbling half-wits with a history of making baseless and contradictory claims.

I was recently interviewed for “The Genius of Thomas Sowell” podcast to talk about hereditarianism vs. culturalism, and the host, Alan Wolan, persuaded me that it would be worth spelling out my objections to Sowell in more detail. Here I respond, in turn, to Sowell’s arguments for the cultural theory of race differences and his critique of hereditarianism. I contend that hereditarianism remains by far the most plausible explanation for persistent gaps among groups living under comparable conditions, including American blacks and whites.

Some hereditarians believe that, even if Sowellism is false, it would be politically expedient to promote it as a means of countering leftist narratives about race and racism. I will explain why this is a mistake. Even if (counterfactually) we could convince large numbers of people to accept Sowell’s scientifically incorrect theory of race differences, this would not stop wokism.

While he is a generally admirable man, one unfortunate characteristic of Sowell is his refusal to follow the observable, and even undeniable, truth, at the cost of his personal preferences. Given his identity complications, it is not even remotely surprising that he would prove willing to sacrifice his intellectual integrity on the altars of both race and personal relations.

Sowell is without doubt an effective starting point for conservatives, but at some point, anyone who is geniunely devoted to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True will find they have to move beyond him if their intellectual journey is going to proceed.

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