Accountability is abuse

A female officer learns the hard way that holding women accountable is “hostile, unprofessional and abusive”:

A Marine officer who led the service’s only all-female recruit battalion was fired amid complaints of a toxic leadership environment — but her supporters say she was only trying to make the unit better by holding women to tougher standards.

Lt. Col. Kate Germano, the former commanding officer of 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, was found to be “hostile, unprofessional and abusive,” according to a command investigation obtained by Marine Corps Times. She was relieved for cause on June 30 by Brig. Gen. Terry Williams, Parris Island’s commanding general.

But officers who served with her say she was a blunt reformer who spearheaded efforts to improve recruit training regardless of gender, and that a vocal minority in the battalion undercut her achievements. Germano’s tactics, for example, dramatically improved range qualification rates for female recruits.

The ensuing controversy, some say, provides a glimpse into an ongoing struggle to establish equal standards for male and female Marines at the Corps’ East Coast recruit depot. Now Germano is petitioning lawmakers for redress, saying she was treated unjustly by base leadership. Germano declined to provide additional details about those efforts, due to concerns about protected communications to Congress.

Williams cited a poor command climate and the loss of trust and confidence in Germano’s ability to serve in command, according to a statement that was provided to Marine Corps Times. The command investigation, completed June 25 and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, states that Germano displayed “toxic leadership” by publicly berating and showing contempt for subordinates, bullying Marines and singling them out for under-performance.

On one occasion, the investigation found, she made comments during a sexual assault prevention brief that female Marines interpreted as victim-blaming, leading some to testify that it would make them feel less comfortable reporting a sexual assault within the command.

Germano also “reinforced gender bias and stereotypes” in the minds of her Marines by telling them on several occasions that male Marines would not take orders from them and would see them as inferior if they could not meet men’s physical standards, the investigation found.

Women seem to be very, very uncomfortable with the idea that if you are inferior, you will be regarded as inferior. Apparently the idea is that as long as no one actually refers to someone’s objective inferiority at something, as long as everyone pretends not to notice the inferiority, that magically makes the inferiority disappear.

It’s ridiculous. They’re fucking cargo cultists.

There shouldn’t be female Marines in the first place. But as long as there are, it sounds like Germano is the kind they should want. Unfortunately, it sounds like her expectations of accountability are too masculine for today’s emasculated Corps.

Prediction, the USA is going to be in for some serious military shocks in the relatively near future. Forget the logistical, equipment, and technological advantages, this is not how a first-class military force is maintained.

La Raza takes back California

I suppose I should be celebrating this news:

The demographers agreed: at some point in 2014, Latinos would pass whites as the largest ethnic group in California. Determining when exactly that milestone would occur was more of a tricky question. Counting people isn’t like counting movie ticket receipts.

The official confirmation had to wait until new population figures were released by the Census Bureau this summer. The new tally, released in late June, shows that as of July 1, 2014, about 14.99 million Latinos live in California, edging out the 14.92 million whites in the state.

But really, I doubt even my old California grandparents, one of whom was half-Mexican, would have celebrated this. There is nothing magic about geography, this is the simple and straightforward Mexification of California. And speaking as a great-grandson of a Mexican revolutionary, I can assure you, sooner or later, they will claim it for la raza cósmica.

“The concept of La Raza can be traced to the ideas and writings of Jose Vasconcelos, the Mexican theorist who developed the theory of la raza cosmica (the cosmic or super race) at least partially as a minority reaction to the Nordic notions of racial superiority. Vasconelos developed a systematic theory which argued that climatic and geographic conditions and mixture of Spanish and Indian races created a superior race. The concept of La Raza connotes that the mestizo is a distinct race and not Caucasian, as is technically the case.”

I look forward to hearing the complaints that I am a mestizo supremacist. And keep in mind that if there is one thing those of Spanish blood are good at, it is taking the long view towards Reconquista.

When politicians are too clever by half

Apparently Greek Prime Minister Tsipras planned to sell Greece out all along, but he failed to anticipate either the rapaciousness of the Euro-creditors or the national pride of the Greek people:

 Like a tragedy from Euripides, the long struggle between Greece and Europe’s creditor powers is reaching a cataclysmic end that nobody planned, nobody seems able to escape, and that threatens to shatter the greater European order in the process.

Greek premier Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday’s referendum on EMU bail-out terms, let alone to preside over a blazing national revolt against foreign control. He called the snap vote with the expectation – and intention – of losing it. The plan was to put up a good fight, accept honourable defeat, and hand over the keys of the Maximos Mansion, leaving it to others to implement the June 25 “ultimatum” and suffer the opprobrium.

This ultimatum came as a shock to the Greek cabinet. They thought they were on the cusp of a deal, bad though it was. Mr Tsipras had already made the decision to acquiesce to austerity demands, recognizing that Syriza had failed to bring about a debtors’ cartel of southern EMU states and had seriously misjudged the mood across the eurozone.

Instead they were confronted with a text from the creditors that upped the ante, demanding a rise in VAT on tourist hotels from 7pc (de facto) to 23pc at a single stroke. Creditors insisted on further pension cuts of 1pc of GDP by next year and a phase out of welfare assistance (EKAS) for poorer pensioners, even though pensions have already been cut by 44pc. They insisted on fiscal tightening equal to 2pc of GDP in an economy reeling from six years of depression and devastating hysteresis. They offered no debt relief. The Europeans intervened behind the scenes to suppress a report by the International Monetary Fund validating Greece’s claim that its debt is “unsustainable”. The IMF concluded that the country not only needs a 30pc haircut to restore viability, but also €52bn of fresh money to claw its way out of crisis.

They rejected Greek plans to work with the OECD on market reforms, and with the International Labour Organisation on collective bargaining laws. They stuck rigidly to their script, refusing to recognise in any way that their own Dickensian prescriptions have been discredited by economists from across the world.

“They just didn’t want us to sign. They had already decided to push us out,” said the now-departed finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

So Syriza called the referendum. To their consternation, they won, igniting the great Greek revolt of 2015, the moment when the people finally issued a primal scream, daubed their war paint, and formed the hoplite phalanx.

Mr Tsipras is now trapped by his success. “The referendum has its own dynamic. People will revolt if he comes back from Brussels with a shoddy compromise,” said Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP. “Tsipras doesn’t want to take the path of Grexit, but I think he realizes that this is now what lies straight ahead of him,” he said.

I was wondering why the Greek government seemed to be so paralyzed; they should already have the drachma ready to go. Instead, they’re just doing nothing, as far as anyone can tell.

This is why representative democracy is a complete failure. The elected representatives are less courageous and less decisive and less willing to act in the national interest than the people.

UPDATE: Zerohedge notes that IT HAS BEGUN. Businesses are listing prices in drachma.

A time of Romans

I guess we won’t be seeing the New Zealand library-troll around here again anytime soon.

Internet trolls face up to two years’ jail in New Zealand under a controversial new law which bans “harmful digital communications”. The law will help mitigate the harm caused by cyber-bullying and give victims a quick and effective means of redress, supporters said. Under the Harmful Digital Communications Act in effect from this week, anyone convicted of “causing harm by posting digital communication” faces two years in prison and a $50,000 (NZ) (£6,500) fine, while businesses face fines of up to $200,000. Harmful communications can include truthful as well as false information.

The Romans always win. In fairness to Phoenician, he had the sense to knock it off when I started going after Andrew Marston.

George Martin opposes the Tor boycott

George Rape Rape Martin takes time out of his daily fetish-writing to urge everyone  to oppose the Tor boycott, which is totally irrelevant and futile and doesn’t matter in the slightest, which is precisely why it must be denounced and opposed. It’s frankly a shame that he’s been distracted in this way, as old RapeSquared had been working on a smashing scene involving the violation of Arya Stark wearing the face of Cersei Lannister by two Sparrows, seven nuns, Ser Robert Strong, and King Tomas’s adopted kitten. It was really going to blow everyone’s socks off when West of Eros: The Epic Rapes of George R. R. Martin appears in 2017.

In one of the more recent developments, the Rabid Puppies and some of their allies and fellow travellers have declared a boycott of Tor Books. I say “Rabid” here because Beale is backing the boycott, while Larry Correia says the Sad Puppies are not boycotting anyone… though Correia and some of the other Sads certainly seem deeply sympathetic to the boycott.

I am not, needless to say. Neither is most of fandom.

Which makes this a perfect time to BUY SOME TOR BOOKS!!

So if you would like to strike a blow for free speech and decency, and support all the good people at Tor, go ye forth and buy a book today… from the Cocteau, or Amazon, or anywhere… and let your voice be heard.

[Martin adds in the comments:] “The Tor boycott is an ugly attempt to try and cost some good people their jobs. It needs to be denounced and opposed.”

Good people? On what planet can the likes of lying, libelous, Code of Conduct-violating individuals such as Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden be reasonably described as “good people”? Observably not this one. And as for the “free speech and decency” Martin claims to be defending, let’s recall the speech itself:

 “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad
Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end
of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are
unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve
been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate
of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”
– Irene Gallo, Creative Director of Tor Books and Associate Publisher of Tor.com

That is a clear and undeniable violation on several counts of the Macmillan Code of Conduct. It is a completely unprovoked, absolutely unprofessional attack on Tor’s customers as well as several of Tor’s own authors. If Irene Gallo was a fry cook at McDonalds or a minimum-wage greeter at Walmart, she’d be gone already, and it is as disingenuous as it is stupid to pretend otherwise.

RapeSquared was promptly called on his little omissions by a few of his readers and didn’t hesitate to take some liberties with the facts. Because, after all, George Martin is an SJW, and SJWs always lie.

lordevaco
Jul. 7th, 2015 09:00 pm (UTC)
I just thought it was weird to leave out why there is a boycott in the first place, so I googled it. I didn’t even know about it, but apparently it’s because someone at Tor denounced all of them as “neo-Nazis” and “unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic” and Tor didn’t do anything about it.

That’s not cool at all either.

grrm
Jul. 7th, 2015 10:45 pm (UTC)
If you googled it, you should also have read that not one but TWO apologies were issued for that tweet, one by the person who posted it, one by the publisher of Tor. That should have closed the book on the affair. Instead we have a boycott and calls for firings.

And I have yet to see anyone on the Puppy side apologize for anything, though their name-calling has far exceeded that coming from the fans.

lumbridge
Jul. 8th, 2015 12:43 am (UTC)
Why are the sad puppies boycotting Tor books? By the way which fantasy titles would you recommend that Tor publishes?

grrm
Jul. 8th, 2015 01:27 am (UTC)
It’s the Rabid Puppies boycotting Tor, not the Sads. Plus some unaffiliated or semi-affiliated allies.

I will not attempt to explain the whole thing. In a nutshell, a Tor employee categorized the Puppies in a nasty way, some of them got outraged and demanded an apology, an apology was issued, but the Rabids decided that was not enough and now want resignations and firings. (Which they are never going to get, by the way).

We’ll see. Corporate actions tend to move along very slowly and then happen all at once. Macmillan’s CEO just returned from his sabbatical this week and I have been directly informed by a Macmillan executive that no decision on how to address the situation has yet been made. And while I suppose it is possible that Mr. Sargent could simply throw out the company Code of Conduct in order to retain the services of an arrogant, entitled employee who believes she can treat his company’s customers and authors with total contempt and still retain her job, I tend to doubt it.

I will not be even remotely surprised if both Ms Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden leave Tor Books in the near future. Macmillan quite clearly had no idea what sort of inmate-run asylum it has on its hands, and it’s not surprising that it would take a little time for them to figure out what needs to be done in order to set it straight.

If it were my problem, I would clean house. After all, how many of the big SF/F franchises of the last 20 years has the biggest publisher in SF/F published? If one considers how hit SF/F franchises Tor Books has missed on, including Martin’s ASOIAF, it’s not as if their management team can considered irreplaceable. But it’s not my problem and not my decision. I’m simply not going to buy any Tor Books, not even those written by the excellent Mr. Wright, while Irene Gallo and Patrick Nielsen Hayden are still employed there.

Yes, polygamy is next

Remember when all the pro-homogamy SJWs claimed that it totally would NEVER lead to polygamy and you were a homophobic bigot if you expected that it would? Yeah, guess what. I know you’ll be shocked to hear this, but they appear to have lied.

NOW that the dust is settling from the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which recognized a right to same-sex marriage, there are new questions. In particular, could the decision presage a constitutional right to plural marriage? If there is no magic power in opposite sexes when it comes to marriage, is there any magic power in the number two?

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s dissent in Obergefell raised this very question, intending to show how radical the majority’s decision could become. But the issue was hard to discuss candidly while same-sex marriage was still pending, because both sides knew that association with plural marriage, a more unpopular cause, could have stymied progress for gay rights. (Opponents of same-sex marriage had reasons to emphasize the association, while supporters had reasons to play it down.) With same-sex marriage on the books, we can now ask whether polyamorous relationships should be next.

There is a very good argument that they should. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell did not focus primarily on the issue of sexual orientation. Instead, its main focus was on a “fundamental right to marry” — a right that he said could not be limited to rigid historical definitions or left to the legislative process. That right was about autonomy and fulfillment, about child rearing and the social order. By those lights, groups of adults who have profound polyamorous attachments and wish to build families and join the community have a strong claim to a right to marry.

And while Justice Kennedy’s opinion does not explicitly discuss this possibility, it is easy to see how future generations could read his language to include polyamory or plural marriage. Earlier court decisions about marriage, Justice Kennedy wrote, had “presumed a relationship involving opposite-sex partners,” but now we understand that the presumption was wrong. Similarly, while Justice Kennedy’s opinion repeatedly presumes that marriage involves two people, it is not hard to imagine another justice in 20 or 40 years saying that the assumption is similarly unenlightened.

I find it hard to get worked up about these things now that the die is so clearly cast. The civilizational foundations have already been sufficiently undermined, so all they’re quibbling about now is the exact shape that the wreckage will eventually take.

Don’t worry about the politics anymore. At this point, you should be preparing for the inevitable politics by other means that are on the way.

I used to wonder what the historians meant when they wrote that “all Europe was waiting for war” in the years leading up to WWI. Now, I finally get it. The good news, to the extent that one can consider it good news, is that the financial elite has proved they can kick a can that looked to be unkickable, so we should be able to make it to 2033 or thereabouts as I’ve repeatedly predicted.

C’est la même chose

I find it rather amusing that there are SJWs in science fiction who insist that I should not be on the shortlist for the Hugo Awards because there is NO PLACE in science fiction for any editor who believes female science fiction writers are different in any way, shape, or form than male science fiction writers.

“As a rule, women do not make good
scientifiction writers, because their education and general tendencies
on scientific matters are usually limited.”
– Hugo Gernsback

“Women do not write hard science fiction today because so few can hack
the physics, so they either write romance novels in space about strong,
beautiful, independent and intelligent but lonely women who finally fall
in love with rugged men who love them just as they are, or stick to
fantasy where they can make things up without getting hammered by
critics holding triple Ph.D.s in molecular engineering, astrophysics and
Chaucer.”
– Vox Day

In case the irony escapes you, the Hugo Awards are named for Mr. Gernsback, a science fiction editor who knew very well whereof he wrote. I very much doubt that the various excesses and absurdities of the Pink SF age would be any surprise to him.

Meanwhile, an actual female physicist adds:
“Instead of getting educated in science and writing harder sci-fi, women major in squishy subjects, write romance-in-space, and complain about how misogynistic it is to point out that women major in squishy subjects and write romance-in-space.”

It is apparent the Rabid Puppies have a battle cry: Hugo lo vult!

Puppypalooza!

Puppypalooza
6 PM Friday, July 10th
The Mean Eyed Cat
Austin, Texas

Booze and barbecue. All Rabid Puppies, Dread Ilk, Ilk, and Vile Faceless Minions welcome. VFM: don’t forget your number… and check your email tonight.

The historical Pink SF/Blue SF divide

At Castalia House, Morgan demonstrates that the divide has been around a lot longer than most of us realized, it’s just that the relative positions have been reversed thanks to the post-1980s gatekeepers:

A backlash against Conan began in the October 1933 issue. Sylvia Bennett of Detroit wrote in to say,

    “Will Robert E. Howard ever cease writing his infernal stories of ‘red battles’ and ‘fierce warfare’? I am becoming weary of his continuous butchery and slaughter. After I finish reading one of his gory stories I feel as if I am soaked with blood.”

Weird Tales contributor Jack Williamson, who would survive as one of the most long-lived writers from the pulp era, wrote to “The Eyrie” for the December 1933 issue defending “Black Colossus”:

    “I was rather surprised at the brickbat aimed by Miss Sylvia Bennett at Howard’s Black Colossus, which struck me as a splendid thing, darkly vivid, with a living primitive power.”

Sylvia Bennett would return to “The Eyrie” in the June 1934 issue:

    “Northwest Smith has become my idol in WEIRD TALES. Believe it or not, I’ve fallen passionately in love with him. There is a character for you! Warm, human, lovable and incredibly realistic. No barbarian baboon hot-head, this one, who slices off human and unhuman heads on the slightest pretext; nor snarls and growls at his girl-friends; nor socks his dames with such manly toughness as would make Clark Gable and Jimmy Cagney look like sissies in comparison. It is certain C. L. Moore is destined to become a popular Weird Tales author. Although Black Thirst did not reach the high standard of Shambleau, still it was an excellent job, weirdly and thrillingly beautiful.”

In other words, women have been trying to turn SF/F into romance novels long before Catherine Asaro or Stephanie Meyers were even born. The difference, of course, is that people didn’t pretend that what is essentially an SF/F-Romance hybrid was the True and Proper SF/F, much less give it awards claiming it to be best of breed.

However, notice the proto-SJW declaration of the inevitability of C.L. Moore’s success. Some things simply do not change.

Mailvox: Wallpaper request

Because the THERE WILL BE WAR covers by Lars – with a typology assist from JartStar and Chris – are awesome, we’ve had several requests for wallpapers based on them. So, without further ado, here they are at 1600×1000 resolution; just click on the smaller image to load the full one. I have to confess that while Vol. II is my favorite of the four anthologies we’ve released so far, Vol. IV is my favorite cover.

And, of course, you’ll no doubt want to pick up copies of the newly released Volume III and Volume IV too.