The NATO-ISIS connection

Just happens to be Turkey:

A senior Western official familiar with a large cache of intelligence obtained this summer from a major raid on an ISIS safehouse told the Guardian that “direct dealings between Turkish officials and ranking ISIS members was now ‘undeniable.’”

The same official confirmed that Turkey, a longstanding member of NATO, is not just supporting ISIS, but also other jihadist groups, including Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. “The distinctions they draw [with other opposition groups] are thin indeed,” said the official. “There is no doubt at all that they militarily cooperate with both.”

In a rare insight into this brazen state-sponsorship of ISIS, a year ago Newsweek reported the testimony of a former ISIS communications technician, who had travelled to Syria to fight the regime of Bashir al-Assad.

The former ISIS fighter told Newsweek that Turkey was allowing ISIS trucks from Raqqa to cross the “border, through Turkey and then back across the border to attack Syrian Kurds in the city of Serekaniye in northern Syria in February.” ISIS militants would freely travel “through Turkey in a convoy of trucks,” and stop “at safehouses along the way.”

The former ISIS communication technician also admitted that he would routinely “connect ISIS field captains and commanders from Syria with people in Turkey on innumerable occasions,” adding that “the people they talked to were Turkish officials… ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks.”

In January, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military were leaked online, showing that Turkey’s intelligence services had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck “to the al-Qaeda terror organisation” in Syria.

According to other ISIS suspects facing trial in Turkey, the Turkish national military intelligence organization (MIT) had begun smuggling arms, including NATO weapons to jihadist groups in Syria as early as 2011.

The allegations have been corroborated by a prosecutor and court testimony of Turkish military police officers, who confirmed that Turkish intelligence was delivering arms to Syrian jihadists from 2013 to 2014.

Documents leaked in September 2014 showed that Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan had financed weapons shipments to ISIS through Turkey. A clandestine plane from Germany delivered arms in the Etimesgut airport in Turkey and split into three containers, two of which were dispatched to ISIS.

A report by the Turkish Statistics Institute confirmed that the government had provided at least $1 million in arms to Syrian rebels within that period, contradicting official denials. Weapons included grenades, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, firearms, ammunition, hunting rifles and other weapons?—?but the Institute declined to identify the specific groups receiving the shipments.

Information of that nature emerged separately. Just two months ago, Turkish police raided a news outlet that published revelations on how the local customs director had approved weapons shipments from Turkey to ISIS.

Turkey has also played a key role in facilitating the life-blood of ISIS’ expansion: black market oil sales. Senior political and intelligence sources in Turkey and Iraq confirm that Turkish authorities have actively facilitated ISIS oil sales through the country.

Last summer, Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, an MP from the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, estimated the quantity of ISIS oil sales in Turkey at about $800 million?—?that was over a year ago.

By now, this implies that Turkey has facilitated over $1 billion worth of black market ISIS oil sales to date.

Both NATO and the EU should probably rethink their strategy of building closer relationships with the Turk. No doubt the neocons are slavering at the thought of using Turkey as a means of furthering their desired conflict with Russia, but considering how far agley their plans tend to go, that will probably end with Russia in possession of the warm water seaport it has always wanted.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Turkey is taking the side of ISIS. In the end, it is always the Dar al-Islam against the Dar al-Harb.

SJWs always minimize

SN wondered when SJWs will stop trying to dismiss Castalia House:

How many No. 1s do you think Castalia will have to publish before the rabbits stop referring to it as “an obscure Finnish publisher”?

Well, we know the answer is “fiver”, since we’ve already published more than five #1 category bestsellers and rabbits can’t count past that. I’d have to look it up, but I believe we’re approaching ten by now. We happen to have three at the moment, and only narrowly missed having four at a time, as 4GW Handbook was #1 in Military Strategy last week, but has fallen to #10 now.

 In case you’re wondering, as I did, how Grow or Die and Compost Everything could both be #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, the answer is that whereas Grow or Die is #1 in Gardening & Horticulture, Compost Everything is #3 in that category, but #1 in the Gardening & Horticulture > Gardening Techniques category. So apparently it gets its own little orange ribbon too. Which is nice.

Anyhow, it really doesn’t matter what the rabbits say, think, or do. The fact is that we’ve barely gotten started. We just put out our first press release last week, our new Editor-at-large is just gearing up to get rolling, we will have a new announcement to make in the near future concerning audiobooks, and the retail channel that is the primary reason Castalia even exists is very close to launch at last.

We haven’t made any noise in the science fiction and fantasy categories yet, but we will. We fully expect to become the leading publisher there in time, but we’re not in any particular hurry to get there. Our focus is excellence, and everything we do is with the aim to improve upon what we’ve done before. We have great authors, authors such as John C. Wright, Martin van Creveld, William S. Lind, and Jerry Pournelle, and we have some younger authors that we are in the process of developing, but our depth is still somewhat thinner than we would like. But we will not sign up new authors simply for the sake of putting out more books. Our goal is for me to represent the low bar for Castalia House.

We know we have the best support any small publisher could hope for, and we are intent on proving worth of your trust. We aren’t going to publish any stinkers because we have to get X number of books out per quarter, and while we may make the occasional esoteric call from time to time, we have the luxury of simply refusing to release substandard works.

History never ended

If forced to choose between Muslims and Nazis, which would you choose? Thanks to the multiculturalists, abstaining is not an option. Those are the only two choices. The Germans are already clear about their preferences:

Germany security guards at the main government office for refugees in Berlin have reportedly been caught on camera using openly Nazi language.

Bild newspaper has released video footage in which it alleges the guards call for asylum-seekers to be put in concentration camps.

One recording purports to show a uniformed security guard speaking of getting “swastikas in my eyes”.

“In two years, there will be a revolution here and there will be no more of all this s***. We’ll clean it all out,” the guard, who has not been named, appears to say.

“We have plenty of summer camps, and I swear to you they can be used again. On the gate: work makes you free,” he says.

There used to be Muslims in Spain too. For 700 years. And then there weren’t. So it’s rather amusing for the historically literate to hear the multiculturalists insisting that diversity is forever. I mean, how do they think those ethnically homogeneous nations came about in the first place, evolution?

The amount of blood that is going to be on the hands of the multiculturalists is going to be absolutely astonishing. The anti-fascists and multiculturalists and diversity advocates are creating more Nazis around the world than Hitler ever did.

And no amount of name-calling is going to dissuade them. If the deportations do not begin soon, the death camps will become inevitable. That’s how it works. That is how it has always worked, going back to Assyria, Carthage, and Rome. There are now two options: elect the nationalists or deal with the revolutionary ultranationalists.

History never ended.

Gloating Milo is Best Milo

Nero reaches 100,000 followers on Twitter and is characteristically humble and modest about it in an article entitled “Why I’m Winning”:

Earlier today, a student newspaper called Nouse published an op-ed titled, “We Need To Talk About Milo.” It’s a long explanation of why I’m so popular, influential and successful.

I’m mortified by its appearance, obviously. That said, it’s worth reflecting on….

My career is evidence not just that free speech is effective, but that free speech combined with a lack of snobbery and class war always wins in the end. There’s no defence against the truth – especially when it’s wrapped up in a joke and has great hair.

Progressivism and social justice threw everyone out one by one, until the number of people who weren’t permitted to talk was greater than the group allowed to. I’m a direct casualty of that exclusionary attitude: a gay, matrilinearly Jewish conservative Catholic who, according to your worldview, shouldn’t exist.

Is it any wonder I found common cause with the irreverent hordes of GamerGate? It’s the gamers, of course, I have to thank for giving me a leg-up a year ago. We might not look much alike, the average gamer and me. But, when you think about it, we’re natural ideological bedfellows – and we’ve both been cast out by the people who ought to have been our defenders. So we made our own family together, as dysfunctional as it can sometimes appear.

There are few things I like better than breathtaking arrogance that is based on genuine self-confidence and ability.

WWIII: the second shot

The Paris attacks was the first shot being fired. The downing of a Russian SU-24 by NATO is the second. I have no doubt that the USA will frantically protest that Turkey, not NATO, is responsible, but when Putin responds, the USA will be treaty-bound to defend Turkey. This is why the Founding Fathers warned against “entangling alliances”, as they tend to outsource one’s diplomatic and wartime decision-making at the very worst possible times.

A Russian Su-24 fighter has been shot down in Syria, Russian Defense Ministry said, adding the plane hadn’t violated Turkish airspace and was at an altitude of 6,000 meters.

If you haven’t read much about the leadup to past world wars, what you should understand is that they never look like anything out of the ordinary at first. However, unlike the previous world wars, this looks like one that will genuinely span the globe, as the jihadists have been permitted to infiltrate every country and nation, from China to Iceland, while China is poised to not only invade Taiwan, but claim the entire South China Sea and spread out across Africa.

About the only place we can expect to escape the global conflict is South America, as La Raza Cósmica is more vicious and more capable than the mujahideen while simultaneously being devoid of any semblance of white guilt or mercy. The jihadists wouldn’t last five minutes against the cartels.

As Nicolas Taleb has observed, the one place the immigrants have failed to find any footing in Italy is where the mafias rule.

This doesn’t mean that Russia and the USA are going to start shooting at each other immediately, it merely means that another domino has fallen.

UPDATE: All right, this may be more than just another domino falling. I doubt that Putin will fail to respond to this sort of behavior by the Turks:

Turkmen forces in Syria shot dead the two pilots of a Russian jet downed by Turkish warplanes near the border with Turkey on Tuesday as they descended with parachutes, a deputy commander of a Turkmen brigade told reporters.

“Both of the pilots were retrieved dead. Our comrades opened fire into the air and they died in the air,” Alpaslan Celik, a deputy commander in a Syrian Turkmen brigade said near the Syrian village of Yamadi as he held what he said was a piece of a pilot’s parachute. 

UPDATE II: The news just keeps getting worse. It looks like we know who is supporting ISIS and who is not.

Russian helicopter SHOT DOWN while searching for downed jet

UPDATE III: Putin’s response: “A stab in the back by the accomplices of terrorism.”

    “The loss today is a stab in the back, carried out by the accomplices of terrorists. I can’t describe it in any other way.”

    “Our aircraft was downed over the territory of Syria, using air-to-air missile from a Turkish F-16. It fell on the Syrian territory 4km from Turkey.”

    “Neither our pilots nor our jet threatened the territory of Turkey.”

    “Today’s tragic event will have significant consequences, including for Russia-Turkish relations … Instead of immediately getting in contact with us, as far as we know, the Turkish side immediately turned to their partners from Nato to discuss this incident, as if we shot down their plane and not they ours.”

    “Do they want to make Nato serve ISIS? … We hope that the international community will find the strength to come together and fight against the common evil.”

UPDATE IV: Yeah, I’ll bet Erdogan called an emergency meeting.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has called an emergency security meeting involving his top generals, heads of intelligence, Prime Minister Davutoğlu and other senior ministers.

When I say it, it’s funny

But when YOU say it, it is mean and it is not funny and you should stop:

It turns out that saying “the train is fine” has turned into a rhetorical tool by assholes to needle people they disagree with, so much so that just the other day I received almost a thousand hits on the video because of another author’s invocation of the catchphrase.

Being a parent of a child with autism is not a great experience. You get all the hardships of just being a parent, plus the additional burden of dealing with a child who does not have full control of his or her emotions or cognitive state. It can be frustrating, even heartbreaking, and because of that it’s good to be able to step back and laugh a little. But one thing we should not do is turn autism itself into the joke, or accuse people who are not autistic of being disabled themselves….

I’m not going to tell people how to comport themselves online. As I said above, I don’t even expect this entry is going to change anyone’s mind about anything. What’s more, I figure at least some of these assholes will come around and leave hateful comments because I’m daring to point out their thoughtlessness. That’s pretty much par for the course for people who think disabilities are a joke. At the same time, I’m not going to simply watch my blog stats tick upward based on the assholish behavior of others and say nothing. I try to be inoffensive here, but come on.

You will note I’m not naming names. I’m not into the shame game. If someone chooses to out themselves on their own blog or in the comments below, that’s their business, but I’m not going to gather up a bunch of villagers, arm them with torches and pitchforks, and send them en masse toward the castle. That’s not my way, and while it may have been in the past, it isn’t any longer. I’m content simply to say my peace and be done with it.

All I ask of those of you reading this is: stop it. You think you’re being clever and funny, but you’re not. You are being an awful person, and while you might believe it’s for a good cause, whatever point you’re trying to make is lost. Sure, your friends might have a hearty chuckle at how you called someone autistic and isn’t that hilarious, but those of us who live the struggle are not laughing. Our kids aren’t laughing. Our brothers and sisters and cousins and nieces and nephews who suffer with ASD aren’t laughing. It’s not a joke.

I’m so glad he’s not going to tell people how to comport themselves on line. Because if he had, I might have been inclined to observe that it’s not hard to see how the acorn doesn’t fall all that far from the tree. Fortunately, he didn’t, so I won’t.

It clearly escaped Mr. Speech Policeman there that “the train is fine” is not utilized simply as a means of needling those with whom one disagrees. It is utilized as a rhetorical means of demonstrating that the person with whom one disagrees is focused on the wrong thing, often to the point of seeming obsession. In other words, the behavior is observably similar to that of an autistic person, which is why the application of the phrase is funny. Humor is contextual, after all.

As it happens, I find this attempt to take offense at an unapproved use of the phrase to be ironic because it has effectively replaced something most people would tend to find rather more offensive, namely, the demand that the interlocutor “stop sperging”.

Which just goes to show that there is absolutely no point in paying any attention whatsoever to these idiot speech police. Considering the lengths to which they go to find offense, I would think they should be abasing themselves before me and expressing their heartfelt gratitude, not whining and crying… except of course that seeking attention by whining and crying is the whole point of the exercise.

The train is still fine.

UPDATE: Our own Autistic Commenter, ER, comments.

I happen to be autistic so I feel qualified to respond to Sam: Shut the fuck up you attention-seeking virtue-signaling hypocritical speech-policing pussified retard! The train is fine!

UPDATE II: And Azimus makes an apt observation:

The most fascinating aspect of all this is the guy Sam Hawken somehow manages to contort himself into a position where the original material mocking autistic people is funny, but a simple reference to it is offensive. I would love to give the man a piece of paper and a pencil and ask him to map out how this makes sense to him.

Immigration is anti-semitic

There is a useful meme, courtesy of the Central Council of Jews:

The Central Council of Jews in Germany called Monday for a limit to the Syrian migrant influx, citing concerns that the mainly Muslim newcomers bring with them a culture steeped in anti-Semitism.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government has opened the doors to Syrian migrants, and arrivals from the war-torn country and other  regions in the Middle East are expected to reach one million this year.

“Sooner or later we won’t have a choice but to set an upper limit,” the council’s president Josef Schuster told Die Welt daily.

“Many of the refugees are fleeing the terror of the Islamic State and want to live in peace and freedom, but at the same time they come from cultures where hatred of Jews and intolerance are an integral part.”

“Don’t just think about the Jews, think about the equality between men and women, or dealing with homosexuals,” he added.

Forget the details and focus on the rhetoric. Immigration is anti-semitism. And as a bonus, it will put the cuckservatives into complete brainlock.

Garden, lest ye die

We are happy to announce that David the Good has followed up his #1 bestselling gardening book, Compost Everything, with the second book in the Good Guide series from Castalia House.

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening is different than most books for preppers and other survivalists, because it’s not concerned with surviving the first few months of a post-apocalypse, but the next few years. It contains a wealth of data on what sort of things you will need to provide food for your family, instructions on how to use them, and a small encyclopedia of vegetables with instructions on how to grow them as well as a summary of their characteristics… although if you’re a fan of zucchini, it appears you will be out of luck should the world go the way of Fallout 4. There will be no zucchini in the post-apocalypse.

The good news is that between this book and the aforementioned game, you will surely be able to put yourself in the “survival mindset” that our military experts informed us is so vital at the Brainstorm event this weekend. The book is written in the same easy, amusing style as its predecessor, and even those who have no interest in gardening and believe Paul Krugman’s assertion that the federal government will be able to avert all ills by further inflating the currency will find it both informative and enjoyable.

The book has apparently struck a nerve of some sort, as even prior to this announcement, it had already hit #1 bestseller in Gardening, marking Castalia House’s third straight #1 category bestseller.

 Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening is 142 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $2.99 at Amazon and at Castalia House.

So, congratulations to David the Good for his second category bestseller; with three of the top 30 books, he practically owns the Gardening & Horticulture Vegetables category. I’d also like to thank Brian Niemeier, who graciously offered his science fiction novel, Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1), as a bonus offer to the Castalia New Release subscribers who bought Grow or Die. Have a look at it, particularly if you’re a John C. Wright fan.

As always, we are absolutely fine with whatever retail option you happen to prefer. Whether you buy Castalia books from Amazon, from the CH store, or get them “free” via Kindle Unlimited, we are just happy that you have decided to support Castalia House and we hope you find our books to be good values.

Christmas is Christ’s Mass

Atheists, seculars, and anti-Christian Jews can try to take the Christ out of Christmas, but they will always fail. And since they’re going to try, we should simply stop recognizing their parasitical celebration of the hollowed-out, lifeless “festival of lights” with which they wish to replace it.

Cinemas should ban all Christmas adverts after refusing to screen a commercial featuring the Lord’s Prayer because of its religious content, the Church of England has said.

The Church is threatening to take legal action against Digital Cinema Media (DCM), which handles adverts for cinema giants Odeon, Vue and Cineworld, after it barred an advert featuring the Archbishop of Canterbury encouraging prayer.

DCM told the Church the advert risked “upsetting or offending audiences” and pointed to its policy document barring commercials that advertised “any religion, faith or equivalent systems of belief” or “any part” of any such religion or faith.

Rev Arun Arora, the Church of England’s director of communications, told the Telegraph: “If they want to be consistent on not carrying any ads that have any connection with religious belief, I’d like them to cancel all ads linked to Christmas as a Christian festival.

“If they’d like to apply it consistently, ban every ad that mentions Christmas.” 

What most Christians haven’t realized, much less accepted, yet is that religious multiculturalism doesn’t work any better than the ethnic version. Freedom of religion only works so long as there is a tolerant religion that is sufficiently dominant; it ceases to function as soon as the minority religions become influential enough to challenge its cultural dominance and impose their own, less tolerant perspective.

Since the First Amendment has been dishonestly interpreted in a broadly expansive manner that does little more than attack Christianity, it is now time for Christians to cease respecting the concept of freedom of religion and become every bit as intolerant of other religions and anti-religious philosophies as those religions are of Christianity.

In this regard, perhaps a list should be created of all corporations that refuse to respect the Christian aspect of Christmas, so that Christians can refuse to do business with them during the Christmas season.

Magic Dirt vs Tragic Dirt

Magic Dirt: Political geography possessed of culturally transformative qualities capable of turning the most primitive barbarians of any ethnicity or religion into productive, law-abiding First World citizens whose beliefs, values, traditions, customs, and behavior are indistinguishable from 1950s-era whites of European descent within a single generation.

Tragic Dirt: Political geography possessed by the evil curses of ancient demons that condemn the inhabitants to cultural, moral, civil, and technological backwardness through no fault of their own or their native cultures, traditions, religions, behaviors, philosophies, or DNA. (NB: coined by Steve Sailer.)