Peaceful and tolerant people

So much for the idea that Donald Trump can’t beat Hillary Clinton:

An acid-tongued Hillary Clinton ripped into conservatives on Thursday for what she said was an ‘obsession in some quarters’ with the notion that the global spread of terrorism is a byproduct of the Muslim faith, denying that the two are connected in any way.

‘Islam itself is not our adversary,’ the former secretary of state said during a campaign speech outlining her foreign policy objectives.

‘Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.’

If Trump wins the Republican nomination, I would expect we’re going to be seeing those words frequently over the next 12 months.

Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.’
– Hillary Clinton

It’s rather astonishing. Hillary Clinton may actually be a worse presidential candidate than Bob Dole and John McCain. It must be the Democrats’ turn to throw the election.

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, ten or so peaceful and tolerant people who have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism have attacked a Radisson hotel in Mali and hold 170 hostages there.

UPDATE: Le Monde reports that the Malian security ministry has confirmed three deaths so far in the siege.

Social justice serves justice

It doesn’t happen often, so enjoy it when it does. Sooner or later, the revolution always eats its own:

Students staged a protest Wednesday inside the office of Princeton University’s president, demanding the school remove the name of former school president and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson from programs and buildings over what they said was his racist legacy.

Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber told the students he agreed with them that Wilson was racist and that the university needs to acknowledge that, according to a video posted to YouTube. But a school spokesman said the president also told students it is important to weigh Wilson’s racism, and how bad it was, with the contributions he made to the nation.

Hi-freaking-larious. Woodrow Wilson was one of the worst US presidents in history. He set the stage for many of the problems we presently face today and he should be a significant hero to SJWs.

But he was racist and therefore he has to go. I look forward to hearing about Mr. Eisgruber’s inevitable apology and resignation.

It’s going to be even more amusing when they eventually turn on Scalzi.

Europe Belongs to Us

“Europe’s anti-immigration and hard-right parties are on the warpath”:

It seems like everywhere you look in continental Europe, the hard right is gaining ground.

Today, it’s the turn of the Sweden Democrats.

In 2014, the hard-right party came in third place on 12.9% of the vote, shocking international commentators. By comparison, the party got just 5.7% of the vote in 2010, and 1.49% in 2006.

They’ve only been getting more popular since and on Thursday Yougov published a poll that puts the Sweden Democrats ahead on 26.7%, 5 points clear of any other party.

It’s one of 7 polls since August that have put the party in the lead in one of the world’s most open and liberal states. The Sweden Democrats have built support on the back of opposition to immigration in a country that has taken more refugees relative to the size of its population than any other European nation.

The Sweden Democrats are part of a group of European political figures and parties that don’t all want to be associated with each other, but all share at least two common tenets: opposition to immigration and scepticism about the European Union. Some even advocate leaving the single currency.

First, I would like to note, as an American Indian, that I feel very microaggressed by the headline. Warpath? Seriously? Wow just wow!

Second, I would like to note that the only ones actually engaging in acts of war in Europe at the moment are the Middle Eastern migrants. Everyone, including the migrants, had better hope that the anti-immigration hard right takes power soon, because if the nationalists don’t, the ultra-nationalists will.

Brainstorm: Urban survival tactics

There will be a closed Brainstorm event for Annual members only focused on urban survival tactics on Saturday; I’ve tentatively scheduled it for 7 PM EST. I am waiting to hear back from the two panelists I have invited, both of whom have extensive urban tactical training and military experience. We will be discussing the Paris attacks, the possibility of future attacks in the USA and likely targets, and what we in the West can realistically do about the reality of 4GW in our hometowns.

If you’re interested in signing up to be an Annual member, you can do so via the Castalia store. Benefits include a free pass to both the Game Dev and Business Startup courses.

The Current Refugee Crisis

A short story courtesy of Clarkhat:

1357 U.E. (i.e. 3328 C.E., i.e. 3328 AD), Oort Cloud Commensal

After a long shift at the atelier I returned home and turned on the polyseme to catch up on the emerge re the refugee crisis.

#general

“…then we as members of the Commensal have a duty, a moral duty, to help. We’ve all experienced the wholesales of the refugee family crawling from their burned lander near the shores of the Achelous Sea, the father cradling his dead son as he steps out onto Ganymede. The time to debate is over, and the time to act -“

“Madame Secretary!”

“-the time to act is now. We must -“

The emergent raised his voice. “Madame Secretary! I must object. Before we talk about importing potentially a hundred million refugees, we have to have a serious conversation about whether they can possibly integrate into our culture.”

The secretary didn’t bother to keep the annoyance from her face. [ translator’s note: all references to physical gestures are, at best, illustrative, and – at worst – ficitive ] “You’re going to say ‘a flood of refugees’, aren’t you? I, for one find that phrasing offensive. May I remind you that exact sort of language was used just three hundred years ago when the Martian Diaspora brought so many people to us here in the OCC. Are you going to tell the many proud citizens who trace their ancestry to the M.D. that you don’t like their kind?”

The emergent shook his virtual head. “It’s inane to compare the citizens of the Martian Diaspora to the current refugee crisis. On the Barnes scale the people of the M.D. were almost all type 1 and type 2 ideologues: Nationalists, Trade Unionists, Libertarians, Atheists, Catholics. Non-totalizers, all. The Hitlerite diaspora that threatens to swamp us now -“

“Sir, I find that offensive. This is not a Hitlerite issue. This is an inner system issue. These people aren’t coming here to attack us, they’re coming here because they’re fleeing war.”

“Madame secretary I agree, they’re fleeing war – a war that the Hitlerites themselves have caused”.

The Secretary took a long breath. “I utterly reject that sort of bigotry. To call this a Hitlerite issue is to blame the victims. The problem is not Hitlerism – it’s a small evil group of people who are twisting the words – the beautiful words of an ancient faith – to their own destructive ends.”

Read the rest of the story at Popehat.

A silver lining

Suddenly, tens of millions of Americans paused to reflect upon the thought that perhaps there is something good to be found in everyone, even the most wicked:

ISIS has threatened to bomb New York City in a newly released video, just days after vowing to attack Washington, D.C.

The slick clip features shots of yellow taxis and crowds in Times Square and Herald Square in Manhattan, with vibrant French music playing in the background – a nod to the Paris terror attacks on Friday.

It then cuts to a man wrapping a bomb around his waist before walking into the crowds and pulling the trigger.

New York police have issued a statement to say they are aware of the footage.

Throw in Los Angeles and ISIS will soon have as much support in the USA as in the UK.

Here’s one thing people should keep in mind: the Bataclan concert hall was, until very recently, Jewish-owned. So there is a reasonable chance that if ISIS strikes the USA, it is going to do so at the symbols of Jewish power in America.

If I were in counter-terror, I would look carefully at the NFL and NBA teams that are Jewish-owned, such as the Vikings, as potential targets. Especially the Vikings since the newly imported Somali community in Minnesota has already produced jihadists, and specifically, suicide bombers.

It should be interesting to see how all the good liberals who have been rambling on and on about how Islam isn’t to blame for the lethal jihadist attacks react to being directly targeted themselves. In the meantime, everyone across the West should carry, practice situational awareness, and stay out of soft target areas as much as possible.

This isn’t going to end until Reconquista 2.0 is complete, so don’t think it’s going to end anytime soon. No amount of bombs dropping in the Middle East is going to deal with the threat to the West. “Fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” has proven to be the complete failure I said it would be back in 2001.

‘Once ISIS is eliminated as a governing entity in Syria and Iraq, the threat from ISIS will persist, said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. ‘There is a continuing aspiration to strike in the West. It’s a real and present danger to the United States and our allies.’

This is why: “13% Of Syrian Refugees Support IS.” And to think we thought californication was bad….

The shadow spreads

They will never give credit where credit is due. But it truly doesn’t matter. The viral ideas spread. Even into enemy territory like the New York Times. And we know from whence they came:

It’s easy to think that ISIS is some sort of evil, medieval cancer that somehow has resurfaced in the modern world. The rest of us are pursuing happiness, and here comes this fundamentalist anachronism, spreading death.

But in his book “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence,” the brilliant Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that ISIS is in fact typical of what we will see in the decades ahead.

The 21st century will not be a century of secularism, he writes. It will be an age of desecularization and religious conflicts….

Sacks emphasizes that it is not religion itself that causes violence. In
their book Encyclopedia of Wars, Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod
surveyed 1,800 conflicts and found that less than 10 percent had any
religious component at all.

Actually, the correct numbers are 1,763 wars and 6.98 percent, half of which involved Islam. And, of course, Phillips and Axelrod didn’t actually do any such calculation….

Urban tactics: survival

Like many guys, I found myself wondering what I would have done if I was so unfortunate as to find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time if people who belong to no particular religion and totally aren’t refugees or immigrants happen to decide to express their grievances in one lethal manner or another.

Now, it should be understood that sometimes there is simply nothing you can do. It doesn’t matter if you are a physical specimen with black belts in five different disciplines, including Ninja and Navy SEAL, who can shoot the testicles off a fly at 100 meters, if a 15-year-old Muslim wearing a vest made of plastic explosive happens to be standing next to you in the elevator when he decides to collect his 72 virgins.

But setting aside pure bad luck, there has to be SOMETHING you can do to improve your odds and avoid being the subject of a pavement garden or candlelight vigil after yet another epic magic dirt fail.

A few basic thoughts:

  • Carry a gun if you can. Carry a knife and some legal projectiles if you can’t.
  • Always wear a belt that you can slip through your keychain. It can serve as an effective submission noose or a fairly nasty ad hoc flail.
  • After you shoot, don’t forget to scoot. Unless you’re Nate, you’re probably going to be outgunned. If you saw the clip of the French police exchanging fire with the Batalan attackers, you can see why it’s a bad idea to go pistol against combat rifle directly.
  • Face to the door. Always sit facing the door and maintain situational awareness.
  • Don’t just hit the deck. Hit the deck and move immediately to the side.
  • There are weapons everywhere. Be aware of where they are in case you need them. Someone once asked me what I would do if attacked RIGHT NOW. I picked up a stone and threw it at him, then scooped up another handful. He was already cringing and loudly expressing his opinion that he understood my point by the time I raised my hand again.
  • The police are not going to come in fast and hard. Their first concern is protecting themselves. Their second concern is preventing the bad guys from getting away. Don’t think about waiting for the police, think about how you’re going to win. Focus on attack and neutralization, not on simply running away, assuming you can’t simply walk out another door and be safe.
  • Movement and distraction are key. Think triangles. Flank and then hit from both sides, ideally with someone serving as a distraction in the middle.
  • Think predator, not helpless prey.

The essential problem is one of game theory. The safest thing for the group to do is mass rush the gunman/gunmen. But the immediately safest thing for each individual to do is to remain motionless and hope someone else gets shot.

Reading the account of the concert hall shooting, the striking thing was the way in which everyone just lay there doing nothing while the gunmen were reloading. Now, it sounds like they were trained well enough to have one cover while the other was reloading, but there were well over 300 people in there; an AK-47 magazine holds 30 rounds. It reminded me a little of the scene in Band of Brothers when Easy Company is attacking Foy and Lt. Dike loses his nerve.

Despite the major and the other officers repeatedly bellowing “keep moving, keep moving”, he can’t find the courage to do it with the Germans shooting at them, and the rest of the troops are pinned down as well. Not until Lt. Speirs relieved Dike and took command of Easy Company were they able to get moving again.

So, the assumption has to be that most people won’t do anything unless they think it is reasonably safe for them to act.

I did wonder about the balcony, though. Had the men on the balcony started hurling chairs down at the gunmen below, that would have presumably served as a sufficient distraction for the people pinned down on the floor to act. Of course, they had no reason to be thinking in such terms at the time, but now that we know what can reasonably be expected, we should think about how one might be able to do better and save some lives in the event we find ourselves put to the test.

I’m very interested in publishing an article in Riding the Red Horse V2 on this subject, so if you’ve got SWAT or urban combat experience in Iraq and you’re interested in putting together a piece on the subject, let me know. If you’re just an interested civilian, however, please do NOT contact me. I’m looking for someone with actual experience of these things.

I am dangerous, Ice…man

The SF-SJWs are still spinning, spinning, spinning the Narrative in a desperate attempt to reclaim it:

On that note, what are your thoughts on the controversy around the Sad Puppies, the group who tried to rig the reader-voted Hugo Awards to favor “traditional” sci-fi works. It was clearly a powerful, angry, and organized reaction against the steady diversification of storytelling in sci-fi and spec-fic. What exactly is happening to this genre that’s so explosive and dangerous?

CP: White straight cis men are getting very upset because they feel they’re losing something when a more diverse set of stories is represented. On the one hand, they don’t have to worry—the share of representation of white straight cis male characters in sci-fi is maybe dropping from 98 percent to 95. But on the other hand, they’re right—they are losing some measure of dominance, and they should lose this. And I think acknowledging that challenges a fluffy teddy-bear idea of what an ally is—the idea that no one is going to lose anything. Being an ally requires giving shit up, which is what these people are not prepared to do.

CF: I think the throwing-the-toys-out-of-the-pram thing totally describes Brad Torgersen [sci-fi author and ringleader of the Sad Puppies]. I think Vox Day [another author, who organized an extreme offshoot of the Sad Puppies called the Rabid Puppies] is altogether a more sinister person, with really far-right politics and a desire to upset people to get attention. He’s a serious reactionary, traditionalist, religious, pseudofascist type—he even called leading spec-fic writer N.K. Jemisin an “uneducated half-savage” because she’s Black. And I think he saw Torgersen’s toy-throwing and said, “Here is a tool I can use to hurt people.”

It’s amazing to me how many SJWs simply cannot get the quote correct. Even when they’re attempting to kill-quote me in an article, they don’t quote it!

“Being an educated, but ignorant half-savage, with little more
understanding of what it took to build a new literature by “a bunch of
beardy old middle-class middle-American guys” than an illiterate Igbotu
tribesman has of how to build a jet engine, Jemisin clearly does not
understand that her dishonest call for “reconciliation” and even more
diversity within SF/F is tantamount to a call for its decline into
irrelevance.”

Granted, I understand the average SJW is not capable of following a sentence that long and complex, but how they go from “educated but ignorant” to “uneducated” is really quite remarkable.

But more importantly, SJWs always project. I don’t have any desire to upset people, and I certainly don’t seek attention. SF-SJWs always gloss over the fact that I was writing my political columns and participating as a member of SFWA for seven years without incident or undue attention until John Scalzi and Teresa Nielsen-Hayden saw fit to start publicly attacking me. Even after that, it was another eight years before I finally got around to taking the offensive and striking back.

Nor are those the only factual errors. But never mind those. It is more interesting to see how they have progressed from declaring me a complete nonentity to portraying me in much the way they are portraying Brad Torgersen now, to seeing me as a “sinister person”. To which I can only wonder, “what part of Supreme Dark Lord” did they not understand?

I suppose they find the fact that my minions are vile, faceless, and many, as well as the fact that I am the author of the book that has been #1 Political Philosophy for 14 straight weeks to be as ominous as it is problematic. It would be amusing indeed if SJWAL stays on top long enough to be dethroned by Cuckservative.

But if they are concerned now, well, just wait until next year.

Paris attackers under siege

Some of them didn’t escape back to Syria; SWAT siege in Saint-Denis:

BREAKING NEWS: One jihadi is shot dead and a woman suicide bomber blows herself up in dramatic gunfight at Paris apartment where mastermind of terror attacks is surrounded by 100 officers

  •     French police and special forces launch operation to storm Saint-Denis flat believed to contain up to six terrorists
  •     Mastermind behind Friday’s massacres, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, believed to be inside the Paris apartment
  •     Female suicide bomber detonated explosive vest after firing on police while one suspect killed by rooftop sniper
  •     Wanted man Salah Abdeslam, 26, who has been spotted in Belgium and Germany,  may also be inside rented flat
  •     Three people have been taken alive from flat and arrested as well as two others ‘nearby’ but stand-off is ongoing

Feel free to update in the comments. And so much for Saladin Taqiyya’s attempt to spin the innocence of the Syrian migrants:

Riot police were clearing the streets early Wednesday, pointing guns at curious residents to move them off the roads and telling them to go home.

Mr Marie said the officers seemed nervous – ‘you could see it in their eyes, ‘ he said.

Resident Amin Guizani, 21, said: ‘There were grenades. It was going, stopping. Kalashnikovs. Starting again’.

Residents have been told to stay in their homes and away from windows and some have been moved to a temporary shelter in the town hall. Police have confirmed that several officers have been hurt.

Caroline Chomienne, who runs a film school, Altermedia, in St Denis, was trapped in the building next to where the assault took place.

‘We’d been working all night on a film and my staff had been gone for some time when around 4.20am I heard shooting. Then they became louder and for on an hour it went on – bursts of fire from all sides but also sounds like bombs going off.

‘The walls were shaking it was horrific. It was like war. It was Beirut.’

Now the director is thinking of quitting Paris.

‘Something like this doesn’t surprise me,’ she told Le Parisien, ‘that terrorists have hidden here. In this district the cellars are full of weapons. Outside there is a dealer every 100mtrs. It’s common knowledge around here that people go and come back from Syria with ease.

UPDATE: Police gun battle at Paris apartment ‘where ISIS mastermind was holed up’ ends with his ‘wife’ blowing herself up with a suicide vest, one jihadi shot dead and seven arrested.

Five police wounded and one police dog KIA.

UPDATE II: Suspected Islamist militants uncovered in a Paris suburb by police were
planning an attack on the French capital’s La Defense business district,
a source close to the investigation and two police sources said on
Wednesday.