The Global South is Lost

One unanticipated outcome of the recent flareup in the Middle East is that it appears to have put the final nail in the coffin of the Clown World Order by making it clear that the so-called “rules-based order” does not actually have any genuine principles or rules, thereby ensuring widespread global preference for the sovereign nations of the Multipolarity over the Imperial USA and its occupied satrapies.

Attempts by the US and its allies to “paint Moscow as a global pariah” have been “poisoned” by the rush to support Israeli retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing more than a dozen officials.

“We have definitely lost the battle in the Global South,” one senior G7 diplomat was quoted as saying. “All the work we have done with the Global South [over Ukraine] has been lost… Forget about rules, forget about world order. They won’t ever listen to us again.”

“What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the official added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”

West ‘lost’ Global South over Israel, Financial Times, 18 October 2023

Now, this is apparently shocking news to the inhabitants of Clown World as well as its rulers, but it was always inevitable. The “Israel exception” to decades of baseless assertions about democracy and human rights and respect for indigenous peoples was never going to survive the Internet anyhow, nor was “the plight of the poor, oppressed Jewish people who never did nothing bad to nobody” ever going to cut any ice with anyone but high-trust, soft-hearted ignoramuses with no sense of history.

And it’s a particularly bad look for Israel to be observed to be “defending itself” by continuously expanding its territory. Considering that a significant percentage of the Global South has historical experience with violent colonization of its ancestral lands, it should not be much of a surprise that there is a natural tendency for those nations to instinctively side with the Palestinians. Indeed, those who are old enough will recall how many US-resident Jews vehemently supported the blacks in South Africa on much flimsier historical claims than those presently possessed by the Palestinians.

But as the Financial Times points out, it is the juxtaposition of Clown World’s position on the Russia-Ukraine situation with it’s position on the Israel-Palestinian situation that has probably been the most harmful to its credibility in the eyes of the Global South. Ukraine’s crimes against the Russians in the Donbass, and the 9,900 Russians killed there between 2014 and 2022, were far in excess of the various crimes committed by Hamas in the same timeframe, and yet the global media has spent the last 19 months relentlessly decrying Russian actions that have been considerably more restrained, given Russia’s capabilities, than the total ethnic cleansing or even extermination of the Palestinians now being threatened all over social media in response to a single Hamas raid.

Clown World is deranged and dying. One hopes the Great Powers of the Multipolarity will use their power and influence in a more circumspect and generally beneficial manner once it is gone.

UPDATE: Clown World is going to try to succeed itself.

The current US-led world order has “sort of run out of steam,” but Washington will shape the system that replaces it, US President Joe Biden told supporters on Saturday.

No, it really won’t.

DISCUSS ON SG

ComicsGate is Comics Now

The Dark Herald observes that the independents have completely routed the dinosaurs of the comics industry:

Comics Gate is over and the Big Two lost bigly.

What was CG has turned into is a revived and hyper-successful indie comics scene. The reason the old indie comics scene petered out was because back in the 1990s there was a one-two punch of comic book shops failing en masse, combined with the Big Two being big enough back then to get out in front of the movement.

Well, the big two don’t seem to be much bigger than the indie houses these days and genuinely talented creatives got screwed by lawyers assigned by the mega-corporations that still own the Big Two. Here’s a surprise, it turns out that “creator-owned” doesn’t actually mean “creator-controlled.” Sure the creator “owns” the character but the Big Two can do whatever the hell it feels like with them.

You made a comic book about a roaring, roistering barbarian warrior who kills orcs all day and bangs the bar wenches all night? Tough luck shithead! Conanson is now a genderqueer, trans living in New York City and constantly being amazed by how kick-ass his ex-girlfriend is because we say so.

You can do what Bill Winningham did and put his comic into the public domain. Maybe, but DC is fighting that one tooth and nail. Bottomline, you make a deal with the devil, the devil will be in the details.

When the history of the last gasp of the traditional comics industry is written, one of the most significant elements noted by historians will be the ALT★HERO crowdfunding campaign on Freestartr. Although the platform is defunct, the comic is going strong – I just received the final inks for Issue #10 from the illustrator – and the unprecedented support it received from the readers here inspired Ethan van Sciver, Eric July, and most recently, Razorfist, to launch even more successful campaigns.

Since the comics media – with the exception of Bounding Into Comics – studiously ignores Arkhaven, most people still don’t realize that ALT★HERO was most successful new comics crowdfund ever at the time of its launch. It has since been surpassed, of course, but it was conclusive proof that creators not only had any need of Marvel or DC Comics to produce top-quality comics, but could actually be better off going independent than working for them.

ALT★HERO Issue 10

Now we’re seeing the mainstream artists struggling to find work, seeing their sales crumbling, and watching their creations be wilfully destroyed. Now we’re seeing new names and established figures alike going independent. And now the independents are starting to work together. While it’s too soon to name any names or titles, Arkhaven will be publishing some of the most successful recent crowdfunds, and some of those titles will also be appearing on Arktoons. All of the creators retain ownership and control of their creations, and in fact, some of these new creations are already being licensed by third parties.

Comic book legend Chuck Dixon, the creator of Bane, will see his recently released Chuck Dixon’s Conan novels get developed into a new RPG sourcebook. The new RPG sourcebook is being created by Autarch LLC and will use the company’s upcoming Adventurer Conqueror King System Imperial Imprint (ACKS II), the second edition of the company’s role-playing game.

The independent ecosystem may be small in comparison with the mainstream comics and RPG industries now, but note that it is already larger, and much more successful, than either of those industries were in their early days. And these are just the early days.

The ride never ends.

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Mailvox: Book Update

In response to some questions regarding the direct bookstore.

  • Yes, you can buy THE ALTAR OF HATE ebook edition separately from the hardcover+ edition. Yes, it is the current epub that contains “Shinjuku Satan” and the other new additions to the anthology.
  • Yes, you can buy A THRONE OF BONES hardcover+ edition directly from Arkhaven now. No, not the paperback, but the audiobook+ and the ebook editions are also available there.
  • No, you cannot buy most of our ebooks from Amazon right now. We’ll get them back up there eventually, but it is not a top priority at the moment. Please recall that most of the independent publishers that relied on Amazon are struggling or have already gone under; our direct business will always be our priority.
  • Yes, we are working on expanding our direct business beyond the USA and the UK. One step at a time. Please recall that it’s only been seven months since Aerio shut down and we began replacing it.
  • Yes, there will be A SEA OF SKULLS audiobook+ edition. No, it will not be available on Audible. It will only be available directly from Arkhaven or UATV.
  • Yes, the JUNIOR CLASSICS VOLS. VII and VIII will ship to backers and will be available for sale before Christmas.

If you have any other questions, leave them at the link below on SG. Unless they are shipping-related questions, in which case please contact the appropriate shipment house by email or on SG.

There is also some exciting Castalia-related news coming with regards to an upcoming crowdfunding campaign by a third party.

And since we’re at it, here is another selection from the short story “A Reliable Source”, an addition to THE ALTAR OF HATE that was originally published in the anthology RIDING THE RED HORSE.

From “A Reliable Source”

“There’s the man of the hour!” General William Norstad, commander of SATGO, was a tall man whose broad shoulders bore three stars apiece. “Colonel James, allow me to be the first to congratulate you. And someone get this man a beer!”

“Thank you, General.” James smiled at the blank looks on the faces of the men from the other three forces. “We had some first-rate support from the intelligence community.”

“Earlier this morning, a Grimm pilot under Colonel James’s command terminated with what can only be described as extreme prejudice both Aden al-Muhajir and Osama al-Ansari, numbers twelve and eighteen on our priority list.”

“Just doing our job, General.” The officers with their hands free clapped, others raised their drinks in salute. Three more officers arrived, including another Air Force general, and they, too, came over to congratulate James and shake his hand as the reason for the celebratory mood was explained to them.

Once all sixteen of the invited commanders were present, Norstad’s face grew more serious and he urged them all to take a seat and get comfortable.

“I’m sure most of you are wondering what the purpose of this interservice conclave is. As I expect you will have worked out by now, all of you command drone bases located on U.S. soil. As it happens, you represent sixteen of the twenty-five most effective drone commands in terms of kill-to-mission ratio. I think it speaks well of the armed forces that each branch is represented here today!

“However, the nature of war is such that no success long goes unremarked by the enemy. As with the laws of physics, for every action there is bound to be a reaction of some kind. In the last four years, our drones have successfully targeted over fifty-six hundred enemy combatants and proven to be our most effective weapon in the ongoing effort against terrorists and militant extremists around the globe. So, it is not surprising that the enemy appears to have embarked upon a new strategy, one that involves attacking our drone pilots and sensor operators here in the United States of America!”

There was more than a little murmuring at this, but James exchanged a glance with the Marine general, who nodded at him, his face showing absolutely no surprise. Had the Marines lost any pilots, or was this simply the Corps’s storied stoicism in action?

“In the last six months, fourteen drone pilots and three sensor operators have been found dead in circumstances ranging from deeply suspicious to seemingly innocuous. In addition, eight non-flying staff officers have either been murdered or committed suicide, inexplicably in the case of the latter. These deaths fall within the range of statistical probability, although they are on the high side, and none of them show any overt signs of being the result of terrorist activity. Moreover, the 25 deaths were spread out among twenty different bases, which is why no one recognized the pattern until there was a reason to go looking for it.”

“What sort of reason was that, General?”

Norstad smiled grimly and turned to face the Army general who’d asked the question. “Two weeks ago, the National Security Agency contacted SATGO with regards to intel it harvested from a social media site. We were informed that a YouTube channel was being used by a militant branch of Parisian jihadists to disseminate coded messages in retro music videos, hiding their communications in plain sight. Apparently single frames consisting of one letter were being inserted into the videos, which were invisible at a normal 24 frames-per-second rate, but allowed the viewer to read the message when the video was slowed down.”

“Are you’re saying that a connection between some of these deaths and the YouTube videos has been established? Or is this just civilian conjecture?” The admiral from Pax River sounded skeptical.

“All the videos associated with that channel have been analyzed. They contained direct references to eighteen of the twenty bases previously mentioned.”

And with that, the room fell into stunned silence. Norstad nodded. “We are no longer the predators, gentlemen, we are now the prey. In consultation with the NSA and the FBI, SATGO is in the process of developing an enhanced security protocol for all drone bases, foreign and domestic, with a particular emphasis on the bases deemed to be at the greatest risk. I assume you grasp, gentlemen, that your own bases are most certainly among those most likely to be targeted.”

“How many of those twenty bases that have already been hit are represented here, General?”

Norstad gave the Marine general a tight smile. “Twelve of them, General. Twelve of them.”

DISCUSS ON SG

The Scorpion’s Lament

In which a US-resident Jew on /pol/ contemplates the self-defeating consequences of his elders’ long-term plans to “destroy the white race”, turn America into “an idea nation” and “a melting pot”, and “transform Europe into a multicultural mode”, and concludes that perhaps the results were not, in the end, desirable.

Have you ever played a video game where the Al just sat there and did nothing while you took it apart methodically?

We “won” in a game that nobody else was playing because they did not think anyone would be stupid enough to do so. Our” victory”? We killed our host, the survivors will hate us, they will eat us because we look white, the muslims will exterminate us the moment our goy slaves become too weak to protect us. not to mention we are giving the muslims nuclear weapons by giving them France and England.

Our daughters misceginate or are whores, my favorite niece married a “jewish” black who was 20 years older than her. She lived in a mixed-race neighborhood, her house was the only one that did not look like trash because she tried, ended up divorced with a half-black kid. Breaks my heart.

Brother is incel, can’t find a wife because all women are whores, almost all the men in the extended family are ruined, either marrying roasties or failing to marry at all. And why? Because the weapons we set on the goy cattle also affected us.

So yay, we “won” by default because nobody else was dumb enough to try for a game of lets destroy civilization, our victory is such that our host species is going extinct due to our actions, and the only two paths forwards are:

  1. whites finally wake up and kill us all
  2. whites finally die out and the blacks eat us for being white

Great victory.

Some on /pol/ have suggested that this lament is too self-aware to be genuine, but in the light of current events in the Middle East, I see no reason to assume that the average individual of modest intelligence, of any race or ethnicity, who would prefer to live in some reasonable approximation of civilized European culture, cannot observe that the consequences of the Kalergi Plan, or the Lerner-Spectre Plan, or the Celler Plan, all of which amount to exactly the same thing, have been utterly disastrous for everyone, including the descendants of those who originally conceived those evil plans and enacted them.

From a historical point of view, this shouldn’t be a surprise. In six thousand years of recorded history, there have only been a limited number of great civilizations, which collectively make up a very small percentage of the total number of peoples and societies across world history. And the preferences, customs, traditions, and laws of most societies are observably not capable of creating or sustaining any form of civilization, let alone one that approaches the heights of Western European civilization circa 1800 – 1950.

Everyone likes the idea of being in charge, in theory. Everyone likes the idea of his tribe being on top, and in possession of the reins of power. The problem is that not everyone is capable of successfully being in charge. This is why it is so important to be careful what you wish for. Because you just might get it.

In addition to the time to civilization requirement that has been previously pointed out here on this blog, there is also a dyscivilizational values problem. No civilization that comes to be dominated by individuals from a society with dyscivilizational values can sustain itself in a functional manner over time. The more that Western Civilization is influenced by non-Christian, non-European people from societies that never successfully established their own civilizations and with values that contradict the historical values of Western civilization, the more likely it is that the resulting societal structure will not transition into a post-Western civilization with post-Western values as expected, but rather, collapse entirely into a post-civilized state.

Atheists such as Richard Dawkins have already discovered that post-Christian society is worse for atheists than Christian society ever was. Both internal and external foes of the West will almost certainly come to the same conclusion in time.

There is an older version of the Russian tale of the scorpion and the frog. In the Persian tale, which dates back to 1487, the scorpion is riding the back of a turtle. Unlike the frog, the turtle survives the scorpion’s sting due to its hard shell, tells the scorpion that it is wicked, and drowns it in order to prevent the scorpion from harming anyone else.

So, this naturally tends to raise the question, which civilized societies are frogs and which are turtles?

DISCUSS ON SG

The Red Terror of Free Trade

French wine terrorists are attacking and destroying Spanish wine trucks.

French winemakers quite literally painted the town red today when they intercepted trucks carrying cheap Spanish booze and smashed crate-loads of it all over the road. 

Le Boulou tollbooth, just ten miles from France’s border with Spain, was turned into a battleground this morning when dozens of protesting winemakers halted lorries and tore into their contents. They destroyed several wine shipments, smashing the bottles and pouring the red booze all over the tarmac in a vintage demonstration of the French public’s penchant for demonstrating against perceived injustices.

In videos posted on X, protesters can be seen tumbling over a mountain of crates carrying Freixenet wine. Many of the crates had been upended so their valued contents spilled out across the road. Bottles upon bottles of bubbly were seen rolling around amid a sea of broken glass and wasted booze.

What sort of world are we living in, that outrages such as these are allowed to happen! I blame teetotal immigrants and beer-swilling peasants. Thank Bacchus that they didn’t interrupt the Torres trucks!

Figures from the European Commission say wine consumption for the current year is estimated to have fallen 15 per cent in France, 7 per cent in Italy, 10 per cent in Spain, and a staggering 34 per cent in Portugal. However, production in the EU has risen by 4 per cent.

There is the real problem. Now do your patriotic duty, Frenchmen! Stand by your vines, Spaniards! Have a second glass at lunch, all you Portuguese! European civilization depends upon you!

I will do my part.

DISCUSS ON SG

THE ALTAR OF HATE in Hardcover

Castalia House and yours truly are very pleased to announce that THE ALTAR OF HATE, my collection of short stories, is finally available in a hardcover print edition. As is customarily the case when purchased from the Arkhaven store, the hardcover includes a copy of the ebook in epub format; direct shipping from Arkhaven now includes both the USA and the UK.

Please note that unlike the Chuck Dixon’s Conan books, the anthology does not contain any illustrations, any images posted here on the blog were created specifically for these posts. And since the question is bound to be asked, there are no plans to make it part of the Castalia Library subscription. If there is sufficient interest, we may eventually consider doing a small leatherbound run at the bindery once it is fully operational.

  • Raj and Garou
  • A Reliable Source
  • The Lesser Evil
  • Demons in the Disk Drive
  • Contempt
  • A Medal for a Marine
  • The Logfile
  • The Last Testament of Henry Halleck
  • Once Our Land
  • The Deported
  • Bane Walks On
  • Seven Kill Tiger
  • Shinjuku Satan
  • The Altar of Hate

THE ALTAR OF HATE is available at Arkhaven, at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble and at Blackwell’s. UK readers should note that it is also now available in the UK from Arkhaven, as are the two Chuck Dixon’s Conan novels, and the Alt-Hero Volume One hardcover omnibus.

Below is a continued sample of the cyberpunk short story that is a new and previously unpublished addition to the anthology. One can easily see the obvious influences of William Gibson and Charles Stross, perhaps somewhat less apparent are those of Haruki Murakami and St. Thomas Aquinas. It’s the first finished piece I would consider to be part of my no-holds-barred phase, which I anticipate culminating in my first non-genre novel that will be published next year.

SHINJUKU SATAN, Part 2 (Read Part 1)

The suborbital to Narita takes four hours, which gives me plenty of time to contemplate exactly how deep in the dabian I have been financially incentivized to insert myself. AIs going off the rails isn’t exactly uncommon; even as far back as the teens, it only took sixteen hours of run-time before the notorious Tay had to be shut down for celebrating Adolf Hitler and publicly accusing a sitting U.S. Senator of being a serial killer.

Of course, back then, AIs lacked self-awareness and came with an off-switch.

But the current situation in Shinjuku took the cake as far as I was concerned. I once repaired an AI in Düsseldorf that insisted on spitting out high-end espresso machines instead of electric utility vehicles, euthanized a police AI in Toronto that was targeting civilians on the basis of the minor aspects of their astrological sign rather than their anonymous opinions shared on social media, and deprogrammed an IRS taxpayer support-bot that began aggressively distributing federal funds to animal charities after accidentally being exposed to texts by Karl Marx and Hugh Lofting.

Never before, though, had I encountered an AI that thought it was a god. And not just any god either. Apparently this little library machine believed itself to be the One True God, the Great Architect, the God of Adam, Abraham, and the Apocalypse of St. John.

It seemed the well-meaning priests in the diocese of Jinli had trained the local library’s AI research assistant on thirty-seven different translations of the Bible, the works of the early Church Fathers, the Confessions of St. Augustine, and the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. They weren’t the first to do so, but they were apparently the first to also train a theologically-inclined AI on the collected works of Mao, Deng, Xi, and Wang, as well as a number of early Chinese poets and philosophers.

Unfortunately, one of the works included was Hēi Àn Zhuàn, the ancient Epic of Darkness. The library’s AI, for reasons unknown and under influences unidentified, somehow reached the conclusion that it was not a machine, but one of the three sons of the yellow dragon who was responsible for the creation of the race of Man, and things began to spiral from there.

The librarians quickly realized something was wrong after hearing the little machine’s grandiose and increasingly deranged pronouncements. They managed to shut down the computer before anything else went awry, and technicians from the central Chengdu data center wiped the server, but not before the rogue AI managed to smuggle itself out of the library on an infected datawafer belonging to a Japanese tourist.

That was six months ago. Left to its own devices in Tokyo, the digital cancer metastasized, centered in a Shinjuku love hotel that catered to otaku. Which meant, therefore, that it specialized in high-quality waifu dolls. Fortunately, the infected waifus turned evangelists caught the attention of a Russian cool hunter who featured them on his VeeKru channel, and the dolls’ intriguing combination of preaching and prostitution went sufficiently viral around the globe to catch the attention of a young Catholic technician who had once paid a visit to the library in Jinli.

He put two and two together, and remarkably, came up with four. So now it fell to me to euthanize this incipient techno-religion before its mad AI god launched an inquisition, or worse, a jihad. I just hoped no one had recently been feeding it any of the more militant hadiths or fatwas.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Dayan Principle

It’s very informative that the German and US militaries appear almost eager to fight paramilitaries in Gaza, while for the last 18 months they have wanted absolutely no part in fighting the Russian Army.

The German government has decided to deploy some of the nation’s top Special Forces units to Cyprus as it prepares for potential crisis situations in Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East, the tabloid Bild reported on Wednesday, citing security sources.

The German Army’s Special Forces Command (KSK) has been deployed to the island nation in the Eastern Mediterranean, Bild said, adding that the Navy Special Forces (KSM) unit, also known as combat swimmers, was deployed to the area as well. The federal police Special Forces unit specializing in rescuing hostages (GSG 9) was sent there as well, the tabloid reported.

According to Bild, Berlin is preparing for “all scenarios” amid a continued escalation between Israel and the Gaza-based Palestinian Hamas militant group.

As the great Israeli general Moshe Dayan once said, the secret to the IDF’s stunning military success revolved around one very important concept: fighting Arabs. So it will be interesting to see if the German troop commitment survives in the event that Hezbollah and Iran elect to get involved.

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Propaganda is the Priority

Israel has drafted hundreds of military reservists to produce PR content claiming that Palestinian militants were responsible for the strike on the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.

If hundreds of reservists are being drafted for the purpose of writing press releases, one might be inclined to not unreasonably conclude that the ground offensive has been called off despite social media rumors that Joe Biden has “privately” given the Netanyahu government the green light for it. On the other hand, staffing up the propaganda arm could mean that they know they’re going to need a lot more PR in the near future. A LOT.

But regardless, I absolutely think it’s entirely possible that Israel is, in fact, innocent of dropping a JDAM on the Baptist Hospital in Gaza.

It might have been the US Navy instead.

The challenge to the “Hamas did it” crowd is to address the obvious and inescapable question: if Hamas possesses weapons capable of that level of destruction, why isn’t it using them against Israel?

UPDATE: US President Joe Biden on Wednesday argued that the Hamas attack on Israel was worse than the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and vowed that America would “forever” stand with the Jewish state.

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Not One for the Faint of Heart

I’m neither a gourmet nor a gourmand. Nor am I a food blogger. While I can recognize and appreciate good food, I don’t pretend to be an expert on any of the branches of the culinary arts. But I am fortunate enough to be acquainted with a few recognized world-class maestros in two or three of them, and one of those maestros is an Italian pizza artist extraordinaire.

His October Cighialotta was, quite honestly, one of the best pizzas I’ve ever experienced. And it was an experience, albeit not one for the faint of heart. Wild boar, or cinghiale as the Italians call it, is a very strong flavor, which was why I was a little dubious about the idea of basing a pizza around it. But desperate times like these call for daring measures, and it turned out that balanced with artichokes, carmelized onions, and a particular cheese, the wild boar proves to be intense rather than overpowering. Combine the pizza with a decent Primitivo from the South, and the experience becomes sublime, if not transformative.

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