No Common Ground, No Compromise

One of the leading lights of the Evil Legion of Evil, John C. Wright, reminds us of the the irreconcilable differences between the SJWs of science fiction and the Sad Puppies:

The difference between the Puppies and the Morlocks is not artistic, cultural, political nor ideological. We are civilized folk who can have a civilized discussion on this or any topic, and judge matters based on simple principles of fairness all civilized men since the dawn of time have understood.

They are barbarians. Barbarism is not an ideology, not a political party, not a religion. It is a state of undeveloped savagery which simple and primitive emotions hold sway. It is a mob.

Q: •Do you see any way to encourage a reconciliation between the literary camps?

JCW: Reconciliation was attempted and savagely rebuffed. To use one example of a dozen, Mr. Martin and I had an agreement to let these matters rest, which he immediately broke in a dishonorable and disappointing fashion. When my wife, also a Tor author, meekly approached Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden at a party during World Con in an attempt to affect a reconciliation, he shouted and swore at her using potty-mouth language. Fortunately for my police record, this event did not happen within my earshot. It is not the way any professional conducts himself in business.

Q: If so, how might that be achieved?  If not, why not?

JCW: Reconciliation is neither desirable nor possible, for the difference between the two camps is not a difference in literary taste, not a difference in political opinion, nor a difference of philosophy nor religion. It is a difference between creators and destroyers; it is a difference between unhappy and envious parasites and the happy hosts on whose blood and work they feed, attempting in vain to fill their own emptiness.

Q: Given your experiences with the Sad Puppies/Hugo situation, what advice would you offer to aspiring writers who are concerned about the politics of the sci-fi/fantasy writing industry today?

JCW: Again, your terminology is imprecise. This is not politics. This is a war between civilized men and filthy barbarians. It is a struggle between humans and post-humans.

My advice is to gird up your loins and prepare to fight for what you love.

These people are relentless. They cannot be reasoned with. They despise reason.  Compromise is not possible. They regard concession as admission of weakness. They will not accept your surrender. They hate you and hate everything you love. What they want is the power to terrify you by threatening your livelihood and damaging you reputation, and then to use that power to destroy.

Even the most loyal bootlicking sycophant among them, at any moment, for any reason or no reason, can be denounced as this week’s thought-criminal, and subjected to the Two Minute Hate. You cannot escape the Eye of Sauron by obeying him.

Elizabeth Moon and Jim Frenkel are persons whose progressive, leftwing credentials are impeccable. The social justice warriors arbitrarily and randomly decided to destroy the careers of these two. This was done to impress all onlookers with the arbitrary nature of the Morlock power. The fact that both are innocent of the bizarre accusations leveled against them is a feature, not a bug. A rational despot can be obeyed, and those who obey have no need to fear. The irrational terrorist, however, smites random targets, so that all will fear.

I offer aspiring writers this advice: Never apologize to a Morlock when called upon to do so. They do not call upon the guilty to apologize, but the innocent. Never believe a word they say. The social justice warrior always lies; always retrenches his lies when caught; always accuses you of his own sins.

Adopt the correct motive for writing: myself, I write to please heaven. I have no interest in pleasing Uncle Screwtape or any of his minions and thralls, knowing or unknowing, here on earth. To wring the cold smile from a dead-eyed fanatic that hates my civilization, my nation, my faith, my family and my life is not one of my goals and should not be yours.

There is no common ground. There can be no compromise. And there will be no reconciliation. But whereas they are weaker and less popular than ever before, we are stronger, more influential, and even more imitated than anyone could possibly have imagined 11 years ago when this all started with Larry Correia’s original campaign to avoid Puppy-related Sadness.

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Not So Good for the Economy

Migrants took €17 billion more out of the Dutch welfare state than they contributed on average, every year, for a quarter of a century.

The idea that immigration “is good for the economy” is based on a false assumption and an incomplete equation. Moving every single person from China would “increase US GDP” too, but it most certainly would not be good for the economy. Or for the people who are already resident in the USA.

At around $20 billion per year for the Netherlands, that indicates an annual net loss of around $300 billion in the USA.

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Signs of Impending Demise

Neither the Chinese nor other Asians appear to be much impressed with NATO’s attempt to transform itself into the Global Atlantic-Pacific Treaty Organization in this interview of John Pang, a former Malaysian government official and a senior research fellow at Perak Academy, Malaysia, by Global Times.

GT: Western politicians like to say that NATO is “stronger than ever.” How would you describe the 75-year-old NATO?

Pang: I think NATO sounds more threatening and incoherent than ever. If that’s what they mean by “strong,” I guess they’re right in that respect. But it is also showing real signs of impending demise.

It is well past its shelf date. It was formed in the 1940s in response to the Soviet bloc, before the Warsaw Pact. The Warsaw Pact was created as a defense treaty against NATO. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO should have disbanded too. Instead it took on a new, expansionary role in securing US global supremacy. It is an aggressive, overextended organization adrift from its founding aims and attached now to the fantastical aim of “making the world safe for democracy,” that is to say, to attacking whoever the US deems the enemy of the day.

Devoid of its charter purpose, it’s been an organization in search of enemies and increased defense procurement. It’s made Russia, once again, the enemy. It has overextended itself on this venture in a way that has blighted Europe’s future and threatens its own survival. It now frames China, on the other side of the planet, as the security challenge. That’s where it is after 75 years.

GT: Reports say that the US government is making arrangements for trilateral talks with the leaders of Japan and South Korea in July at the NATO summit in Washington. What do you think that means? 

Pang: This will complete the consolidation of the worldwide set of US vassals, outposts and 800 military bases under NATO, Quad, AUKUS and this trilateral pact into a streamlined global threat posture also known as the West. There have even been moves to make Israel part of a Quad Plus, along with New Zealand. 

Meanwhile, we have Europe as an example of what “Natofied’ Japan and South Korea can look forward to: further loss vassalization not just in foreign policy but also in trade and industrial policy, technology, media and, crucially, culture, since post 1991 NATO is motivated by an expansionary liberalism that thrives on the destruction of cultural boundaries as much as national borders.

GT: What do you think of the prospect of “NATO’s Asia-Pacificization” or the establishment of an “Asian NATO”?

Pang: This is another one of those announcements that will go down in history like President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better World, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, and other grand ideas for bifurcating the world that lead nowhere.

The biggest of them is, of course, the Rules-Based Order, whose moral, legal and political legitimacy is now absolutely collapsed. It will go down in history identified with its signature achievement, the genocidal destruction of Gaza.

Its purpose is to threaten, but it’s also empty. What is NATO anymore, as an aggressive pact, far from Europe? What is the military capability of this set of countries beyond the US? What is brought to the existing issues in East Asia, around the South China Sea, for example, by having this set of 32 nations participate, who are collectively outclassed by Russian military industrial capability in Ukraine? Having set Europe on fire with its aggressive enlargement, they propose to bring their formula to Asia, against a far more powerful opponent. It’s an imbecile proposition.

Wherever possible, Asian NATO should be ignored or bypassed by the countries in the region. Their presence in the region would be so incoherent that it’s not clear what there is to engage with. NATO is a treaty organization for the North Atlantic, a noticeable distance away. They are militarily irrelevant here. We get the spectacle of the German and Dutch navies sailing into the region to sabre-rattle, and have symbolic exercises with the Japanese, for example, and perhaps next with the Philippines.

This entertains the Western elite for a couple days with an appearance of a grand alliance of the “democracies” against China, at a time when, as their citizens will tell you, actual democracy has been hollowed out by oligarchic rule at home. They aim to encircle and divide but have nothing to encircle or divide with. They will add nothing but a layer of live action Euro role playing on top of the existing, and material, US threat posture.

Instead, NATO in Asia is really about what the US and its military industrial complex will do to its own members. In its expanded form, it will tighten the US’ extractive grip on Europe and Japan and South Korea more than it threatens China. It will mandate purchases of US military equipment and more money from member states, especially that standby piggy bank, Japan. It will de-industrialize Japan as it has Germany, in favor of the US. It will demand more political and cultural conformity, further militarize Japan and South Korea, and alienate them from the economic and cultural vitality of their home region.

Europe, Japan and South Korea can say goodbye to any notion of strategic, political, economic or cultural autonomy. Remember that this is happening while actual freedom is breaking out among sovereign nations in the multipolar world of an expanding BRICS.

It’s hard to believe that either the Europeans, the Japanese, or the Koreans genuinely want to be a part of a rapidly declining and increasingly impoverished Clown World, but it’s not as if they’re being offered a genuine choice by what has been transformed into the military arm of the imperial USA.

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A Man of Sound Opinion

One of the greatest science fiction grandmasters of his generation shares his very sound opinion of some popular works of genre fiction, including two of his fellow grandmasters.

I was crushed on the Wheel of Time like a hindoo sacrifice being crushed by the great god Juggernaut.

Why could I not finish? This one is also hard to explain. The characters theoretically should have been a lovable as the picked-upon orphan-boy in HARRY POTTER, or the smart-but-shy Hermione. I mean, come on, a farm boy with a dread destiny, his honest blacksmith friend, and their friend who is good with dice. Not to mention Aes Sedai and way-cool ninja swordfighting moves and magical gateways and Dark Lords galore. But it never clicked with me: I was slogging halfway through the fifth or sixth book (yes, I stayed with it that long) when I realized that I wanted the main character to die because he was out of his mind, I wanted the gambler fellow to die because he was turning all dark and crooked, and I did not care of the blacksmith fellow lived or died, because he was spinning his wheels not doing much of anything. Somewhere along the way, I had lost all sympathy for all the heroes and all their goals–if they had goals. I mean, I had clambered up a mountain of thousands of gray pages, and I was still waiting for that “Council of Elrond” moment when Some Wise Mage tells Frodo-lite what the quest is. No one seemed to be doing anything and no one had a plan. And I wanted all of them to die.

Now, in all fairness, this last might not have been a fault of the author. I am a cruel and sadistic man, like many readers, and I only read when I am a foul mood, either right before a gladiatorial game or an afternoon of kitten-stomping. So maybe it is just me.

But Rand-al’Thor really did get on my nerves after a while. He seemed a character simply too small for the role. If Ranma Soatome has been the Dragon of that world, the Dark Lord Bumbershoot (or whatever his name was) would have at least been booted in the head before five books ground wearily by. If Paul Mu’ad-Dib had been the dragon, by then would have at least disrupted the spice production. SOMETHING would have happened.

I, too, hated THE WHEEL OF TIME. Hated, hated, hated it, and finally gave up partway through book seven. To this day, I still harbor a perfectly rational and well-merited hatred for Rand al-Thor, who is arguably the very worst protagonist in all of fantasy fiction, and the question is only arguable because I have not read, and will not read, anything by SuperMegaGamma Patrick Rothfuss, although based on the descriptions and reviews of others, it is possible that, as difficult as it is to imagine, the protagonist of Rothfuss’s work is even worse than Robert Jordan’s loathsome lead character.

I will say that while Wright’s distaste for China Mieville’s PERDIDO STREET STATION is perfectly understandable and justifiable, I do not share it, and I consider Mieville to be one of Wright’s very few peers in the field. Very different, very much darker, and very much not on the side of the angels much less Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but a first-rate fantasy author nevertheless.

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The Comprehensive Failure of Milton Friedman

The author of Princes of the Yen, which presciently predicted the 2008 financial crisis, the current one, and the global currency goal as far back as 2005, was methodically demolishing all of the key narratives supporting Clown World’s economic structures eight years ago:

The first four pillars of the central banking narrative have collapsed: Banks create money out of nothing and thus reshape the economy in their image. Markets are rationed and the key factor is the quantity of bank credit. Bank credit creation for GDP transactions boosts GDP growth, no matter what interest rates do (they will follow GDP growth). Developing countries do not need to borrow from abroad, and in fact should not borrow from abroad, as this puts them unnecessarily at mercy of the foreign creditors.

As these pillars revolve around banks and money and credit, some economists may agree, but argue that economics has long focused on the real economy and purposely chose to ignore all the financial factors. In this real economy, they will argue, the most important principle is to allow market forces to act without being hampered by governments – then we will see economic growth and stability. Should this fifth pillar of the central banking narrative at least be true?

Judging by the publications of the central banks, as well as the IMF or the World Bank, one would expect so: When these Washington-based institutions send their teams of staff and hired consultants to developing countries, their job can usually be completed very quickly. Without much ado, a new country report complete with major policy conclusions is drafted. The secret of such efficient work: even before these foreign experts had travelled (first class) to the respective countries, the conclusions of their study had already been pre-determined, because they are always the same, no matter which country is concerned: The goal of the axiomatic-deductive neoclassical belief system is to find ex post justifications for the argument that government intervention is bad, and markets need to be unfettered by any form of intervention. This predetermined conclusion is then presented, in the form of ‘research reports’ or ‘studies’, to the leadership of many nations across the world, only vaguely connected to local facts and institutions.

In order to reach such conclusions, neoclassical and central bank economists worked backwards: What kind of model comes to such conclusions? Answer: A model that operates in a dream-like idealized world. What are the features that define such a world? A long list of assumptions needs to hold, creating a bizarre theoretical Neverland: perfect information, complete markets in equilibrium, perfect competition, zero transaction costs, no time constraints, perfectly flexible prices that adjust all the time, everyone is very selfish and does not care about others, and people are not influenced by others. Why do all these assumptions matter? Because neoclassical economists have proven that they all need to jointly hold true, for market equilibrium and efficient markets to exist, and for government intervention to be ineffective.

The next step in the sequence of using such models is the most important one: present in reverse order, by pretending that no pre-determined conclusions existed. Start by listing the assumptions – for sake of argument. Then present the model. Then pursue it to its conclusions, which happen to be… let’s see… Oh, amazing: this model happens to conclude government intervention is bad and only free and deregulated markets will work! Well, in that case, ladies and gentlemen, we shall need to recommend deregulation, liberalization and privatization!

That such economic charlatanry passes for ‘economics’ in leading journals, textbooks and university lecture rooms is a sad indictment not only of the economics establishment, but of academia and society at large.

But what about economies in our world, on the planet we live – as opposed to the bizarre planet described by the economic charlatans? Since none of these assumptions hold, we know that we can neither expect equilibrium nor will deregulation, liberalization and privatization trigger improved economic growth.

If our theoretical assessment of the theoretical claims is correct, we should also be able to muster empirical support for it. And it exists in abundance. In order to test these neo-classical policy recommendations of deregulation and market supremacy, we can compare the market-oriented and shareholder value-focused US and UK economies with those economies known to have always placed an emphasis on government intervention, non-market forms of resource allocation combined with social welfare systems, namely Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China. Of course we should not be influenced by the business cycle, and thus need to consider a longer time period, such as half a century. Considering therefore the half-century from 1950 to 2000, we would expect the best performance in those economies that are more market-oriented, and the worst performance in economies that have chosen to practice intervention, ‘guidance’ and the use of production cartels. What is the empirical result?

The neoclassical thesis has been rejected by the empirical evidence. In the 1950s, the designers of the Japanese economic system intentionally increased the number of cartels, in order to improve economic performance (Werner, 2003a). As we can see, as the number of cartels almost doubled to over 1000 by the late 1960s, while economic growth accelerated to double-digit figures. When, under US pressure, the number of cartels was reduced in the 1970s, growth dropped. The drop in cartels is accompanied by weaker and weaker economic growth. The deregulation drive culminated in the entire abolition of cartels by the end of the 1990s – and economic growth equally reached zero. A similar picture has been painted by the performance of many developing countries, including Argentina and African nations, which followed the economic advice of the Washington-based institutions. We conclude that the fifth of the central bank claims – that deregulation, liberalization and privatization enhances economic growth – has also been revealed to be fraudulent.

Do we Need Central Banks? RICHARD WERNER 15 January 2017

What’s intriguing about both his book as well as his paper is that it explains why both China and Russia are economically routing the bank-controlled economies of the West as well as why Japan is behaving so erratically and in such an uncharacteristic manner of late.

The great deception of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and independence-minded Americans in general is the idea that corporate management is good and government management is bad. But the so-called Invisible Hand not only doesn’t exist, it perpetuates a gargantuan lie that directly serves the interests of the globalists, who delight in transnationalist unaccountability.

I haven’t read the book yet. But I will, especially since he is obviously far ahead of the game on the realities of how money is actually created in a modern credit economy. Ian Fletcher and I have proven Ricardo was completely wrong. Steve Keen has proven Smith was generally incorrect. So, it should come as no surprise that someone of our intellectual generation would eventually prove that Friedman was wrong as well.

At this point, it’s hardly arguable that none of us are actually free to choose very much of anything at all.

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The Inevitability of Catastrophic Defeat

Edward Luttwalk doesn’t seem to grasp that NATO will be defeated even faster, and more catastrophically, than its Ukrainian proxies were. Because it won’t be a restrained special military operation limited to the front, but rather full-blown war.

NATO nations can only forestall an inevitable loss to Russian forces in Ukraine by deploying their troops to the former Soviet republic, a former adviser to the US military has claimed.

“The arithmetic of this is inescapable: NATO countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat,” military strategist Edward Luttwak wrote in an oped published on Thursday by the British online media outlet UnHerd. “The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops – both small elite units and logistics and support personnel – who can remain far from the front.”

The conflict can’t be won without direct troop deployments because regardless of the quantity and quality of weapons sent to Kiev, Ukrainian forces are too outnumbered by the Russians, Luttwak argued.

These older military strategists simply don’t understand the ways in which technology has changed the operational and logistical elements. Any NATO troops entering Ukraine will be very nearly as vulnerable “far from the front” as they are on the front itself, especially since Russia will be free to fully utilize its air superiority, the first consequences of which have only recently begun to make themselves felt.

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The Black Epstein

Sean Combs was not only a manufactured success, he was a tool instrumental in the process of determining whose success would be manufactured:

Mr. Combs had hidden cameras in every room of his home… has recordings of several ceelbrities, artists, music label executives, and athletes engaging in illegal activity… these individuals were recorded without their knowledge and consent… Mr. Combs possesses compromising footage of every person who has attended his freak-off parties and his house parties.

If you have even a modicum of success, you will be offered various tickets, and various opportunities to compromise yourself and leave yourself at the mercy of the ticket-masters who will then be able to either help you or hinder you as they see fit.

If you don’t take the ticket, they will still hinder you via their various programs to discredit, deplatform, and otherwise minimize your potential influence, but for the most part they will leave you alone because they know the amount of success you can achieve without their assistance is structurally restricted. This is why the ambitious are well-advised to focus on quality over quantity, and why independent efforts of even limited success are far more likely to stand the test of time.

Fame is generally unpleasant for anyone who isn’t extroverted and pathologically needy anyhow. Look at how all the most famous and successful people eventually seek to go to ground and disappear from the constant adulation and attention.

In short, moderate your ambitions and don’t seek the approval of others. Instead, focus on improving the quality and consistency of your output. At least whatever modest success you achieve will be a) real, and b) your own. The reason so many “successful” people have so-called “Imposter Syndrome” is because they are, in fact, imposters, and they know it.

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It’s Grilling Time

And the vegans are already getting a head start on being their customary obnoxious selves:

Just a gentle reminder to pleases close your windows when cooking meat.

As a vegan runner it is always hard for me.

I try to go out running several nights a week around dinner time.

When you are cooking with the windows open the smell of meat can be quite over powering.

Honestly the odor is offensive.

Please have empathy for your #plantbased neighbours by closing windows when cooking meat and only cooking vegetables if possible.

I do not want to be a stereotype so i wont go into detail on why cooking animals is offensive. But I encourage you to do your research and join the movement with others who are fighting back.

If that’s not a sign to go out and do a neighborhood pig roast, I don’t know what is. We are carnivores. Anyone and everyone who is “fighting back” against eating meat is literally anti-human. Give them neither courtesy nor quarter.

Notice how simply running somewhere else, or at a different time, or inside, on a treadmill, with the window closed, never even enters this officious vegan’s protein-deprived mind.

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They Found the Deep Ones

If Charles Stross is to be believed, the consequences of this discovery could go very badly for humanity:

These strange underwater pyramid structures at a depth of two thousand meters were identified with the help of a sonar according to oceanographer Dr. Verlag Meyer. Studies of other structures like Yonaguni in modern day Japan have allowed scientists to determine that the two giant pyramids, apparently made of something like a thick glass, are really impressive – each of them is larger than the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.

Recently American and French scientists as well as other countries that are conducting surveys in areas of the seabed of the Bermuda Triangle, claim to have found a pyramid standing upright on the seabed that has never been discovered. The length of the base of this pyramid reached 300 meters, 200 meters height, and distance from base to the tip of the pyramid is about 100 meters above the sea floor. Preliminary results show this structure to be made of glass or a glass-like (crystal?) material, as it is entirely smooth and partially translucent.

When talking about size, this newly re-discovered pyramid is larger in scale than the pyramids of ancient Egypt. On top of the pyramid there are two very large holes, sea water at high speed move through the second hole, and therefore the raging waves roll by forming a giant vortex that makes the waters around this cause a massive surge waves and mist on the sea surface. This new discovery makes scientists wonder if this is having an affect on passing boats and planes and could be the reason for all the mystery surrounding the area.

The world has always been a lot weirder than we realized, and the rational materialists are not going to be able to continue explaining away all of the growing number of anomalies that are rapidly coming to light.

We are not alone and we never were.

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