Xi Knows

China’s President makes it clear that the Chinese know perfectly well who is behind the trouble in Ukraine and other unstable countries:

Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) must work with each other to prevent outside forces from organizing color revolutions in their countries, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned on Friday.

Speaking at the SCO summit in Samarkand, President Xi said that member states should “support each other’s efforts to protect security and development interests,” noting that the world is undergoing “accelerating changes unseen in a century,” and has entered a phase of uncertainty and transformation.

He added that it is paramount to “guard against attempts by external forces to provoke a color revolution, and jointly oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs under any pretext,” referring to Western-backed protests that have aimed to overthrow governments in post-Soviet countries.

Xi’s statement came as Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the growing influence of “new centers of power” that cooperate with each other and have the capacity to challenge the West’s global dominance.

Translation: give it up, George Soros and company. No one is taking any of that “open society” neocon nonsense seriously anymore.

It’s been fascinating to see how the rising nationalist leaders are openly and successfully taking on the rhetoric that was so effective in subverting Anglo-Saxon and European societies. It’s not enough to simply squawk “democracy, democracy” and “human rights” to rule over others anymore.

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Germany Doubles Down

I don’t think seizing Russian energy assets is going to convince Russia to turn on the gas and prevent Germans from freezing this winter.

Berlin is taking control of German subsidiaries of Russian oil major Rosneft, Rosneft Deutschland (RDG) and RN Refining & Marketing, putting them under trust management for six months, the German Ministry of Economics announced on Friday.

According to the ministry, control will be given to the grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency of Germany). The ministry explained that the step was taken to ensure the operation of three Rosneft oil refineries in Schwedt, Karlsruhe and Vohburg, which was jeopardized after critical service providers, insurers and banks allegedly refused to work with the Russian company.

“The legal basis for the order was Article 17 of the Energy Security Act. According to it, a company that operates critical infrastructure in the energy sector can be placed under management if there is a specific risk that without management the company will not be able to perform its tasks that ensure the functioning of society in the energy sector, as well as if there is a risk of disruption of security of supply,” the ministry said in a statement.

Rosneft enterprises account for about 20% of oil refinery capacities in Germany, making it one of the largest in the country.

At this point, I’d be surprised if the Russians don’t start hitting targets outside of Ukrainian territory before the end of the year. The neocons wanted this war and I expect they’re going to get it good and hard. It’s not as if Putin and his generals don’t know who has been pushing for this since before 2008.

Which is the reason I just doubled our wood supply. Just, you know, in case. But why would Germany ever do something this obviously stupid? Oh, that’s why.

Last Sunday, the US ambassador to Berlin, Amy Gutmann, told the German broadcaster ZDF that she expects Germany to “take on a greater leadership role.” She acknowledged Berlin’s military assistance to Kiev, but said her expectations are “even higher.”

“So far, Germany has done what we asked for,” a US official told Die Welt on Thursday, adding that Berlin could be moving “faster.” The paper reported that Washington has “doubts” about Germany’s fundamental loyalty to Kiev, questioning whether it wants Ukraine to “win” or just “not to lose.”

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How Did This Happen?

The Dark Herald explains how the Amazon Abomination came to be. It’s a long, detailed, and rather sordid story, so read the whole thing there.

This whole mess started as a vanity project. I mean it couldn’t be anything else, could it? Amazon Prime is at maximum saturation, it wouldn’t have mattered if they had produced something as big as Game of Thrones, there would not have been any new subscriptions from it. From a business perspective, this was pointless.

That said, the timing looked pretty good to take over the TV fantasy market. Game of Thrones was ending its legendary run. The market was going to be open.

Now here is the thing you have to remember about Amazon. They are always throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. It’s just how Bezos does business, he wants as many data points as possible. So, when he set out to have his own Game of Thrones, he didn’t put all his chips in one pile. There were going to be two major fantasy series. One geared for families and another for adult content.

The adult content show was going to be a Conan show and they had made the superb choice of Ryan Condal to be the showrunner.

Slightly before this, the Tolkien Estate had gone into arbitration with the Saul Zantz company and kind of got hurt. For labyrinthine legal reasons, the Tolkien Estate was required to put the Appendices at the back of Return of the King up for sale. And for other reasons it had to be a TV series. But the Tolkien Estate was NOT required to sell those TV rights to the Saul Zantz Company. Christopher apparently said, fine anybody but you, and it was announced that those rights were for sale.

After Amazon went through a lot of people with proven track records, they signed Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, (who have nearly non-existent IMDB credits) to be the showrunners. They do have a close association with JJ Abrams and he would be a close consultant. Their pitch was for (according to rumor) a series based on the Fall of Numenor. You have no idea how much I would like to see that.

Amazon bought the rights to the Appendices for $250 million in 2017 directly from the Tolkien estate and didn’t take a close look at the veto rights that Christopher Tolkien automatically had. Incidentally, grandson Simon Tolkien is claiming that this was his vision from the start but since Christopher was still alive at the time, I have serious doubts.

Now it gets very murky. Amazon announces that it has these rights and there are words to the effect that they will be remaking the Lord of the Rings as a mini-series.

Here comes the guesswork on my part.

Bezos is a software billionaire who thinks like a software billionaire.

Ever since Microsoft infringed all over Intergalactic Digital Research to create MS-DOS, the model has been, infringe on your target, wait for them to sue you, then spend them into the ground in court and take over his whole business.

I suspect (but can’t prove) that Jeff Bezos decided to do that with the Saul Zantz Company. The rights were supposed to be reverting to the SZC soon, and they seemed willing to license those rights to Amazon but I suspect Bezos wanted to own them outright. So, during the series, they would infringe on the IP, Saul Zantz would have to sue, and Amazon would spend it to death in court until they owned the whole Saul Zantz company to include the Tolkien IP.

It was only after this strategy was embarked on that an entertainment lawyer was consulted. He informed Amazon that entertainment copyright legal precedents are different from software copyright precedents, and it won’t work. You won’t be getting sued by Saul Zantz, you’ll be getting sued by Warner Brothers and they are (at the time) owned by AT&T. They aren’t going to run out of court money, and you will end up paying somewhere around $500 million. If you’re lucky.

Then #MeToo swept through Hollywood like a typhoon. The head of Prime Video got caught up in it and had to be fired. Jennifer Salke was brought in to start making Woke content and one of her first decisions was to shitcan Conan on grounds of toxic masculinity. Put a gigantic pin in that one, we are circling back to it. She replaced it with Wheel of Time which is almost but not quite as big a disaster as The Rings of Power.

Reminding us, once more, that the Shadow cannot create, it can only twist, subvert, and mock.

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Retards Demand Respect

One guess as to where. It started when I posted this meme on Gab.

Naturally, the atheist gamma who’d appointed himself religion police couldn’t keep his retarded mouth shut despite the fact that he clearly knows nothing about any major religion or its teachings.

Many people are also attracted to their religion because they want to live eternally at a desirable location (i.e. heaven) and avoid a permanent death.

You’re literally retarded. Religion merely determines what happens next, it doesn’t “avoid a permanent death”.

And your labeling me “retarded” reveals what kind of religion you practice. By their fruits you shall know them.

No, it merely means that you are observably stupid and ignorant. Your statement was totally incoherent in light of what the major religions actually teach concerning death. Never attempt to “correct” your intellectual superiors, particularly on matters of which you know nothing.

“Being nice” is not the only alternative to being derogatory, which you were in labeling me “retarded”. Other alternatives exist, such as being respectful of the messenger while you critique his message. Try it sometime.

I’m not respectful of retards. There is nothing to respect. You spoke when you should have remained silent. You have nothing to add to the discussion. You merit zero respect.

At which point he ran away, thereby saving us from experiencing any more of his retardery. But notice how he utilizes the automatic gamma tactic of trying to change the subject to his interlocutor’s assumed flaws while attempting to seize the moral high ground.

The correct way to handle any gamma is to refuse to accept his inevitable attempts at reframing the discussion. If he won’t stick to the relevant dialectic, go directly to the burning rhetoric.

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Graceful to the End

Roger Federer announces his retirement:

To my tennis family and beyond, of all the gifts that tennis has given me over the years, the greatest, without a doubt, has been the people I’ve met along the way: my friends, my competitors, and most of all the fans who give the sport its life.

Today, I want to share some news with all of you. As many of you know, the past three years have presented me with challenges in the form of injuries and surgeries.

I’ve worked hard to return to full competitive form. But I also know my body’s capacity and limits, and its message to me lately has been clear.

I am 41 years old. I have played more than 1,500 matches over 24 years. Tennis has treated me more generously than I ever would have dreamt, and now I must recognise when it is time to end my competitive career.

Always know when it’s time to go. Even greatness must eventually bow before Father Time.

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BIC Digs Deeper

Bounding Into Comics contemplates whether my explanation of the reason the mainstream media is attacking Tolkien in the aftermath of the catastrophic debacle of the Amazon subversion is well-founded in light of the original Tolkien texts.

Arkhaven Comics publisher Vox Day recently explained why he believes numerous media outlets, so-called Tolkien academics, Tolkien influencers, and others are attacking J.R.R. Tolkien. There are numerous pieces of evidence of media outlets, so-called Tolkien academics, and others attacking J.R.R. Tolkien. Most recently, Deakin University Lecturer Helen Young accused Tolkien of racism, anti-Semitism, and orientalism in The Conversation.

“Fascinating, is it not, that a high fantasy writer could foresee today’s transhuman global technocrats in the 1940s? It’s because their goals are no different than they were back before the dawn of recorded human history: to be like God.”

Indeed Tolkien saw that evil because he also wrote in The Silmarillion, “Sauron with many arguments gainsaid all that the Valar had taught; and he bade men think that in the world, in the east and even in the west, there lay yet many seas and many lands for their winning, wherein was wealth uncounted. And still, if they should at the last come to the end of those lands and seas, beyond all lay the Ancient Darkness. ‘And out of it the world was made. For Darkness alone is worshipful, and the Lord thereof may yet make other worlds to be gifts to those that serve him, so that the increase of their power shall find no end.’”

He continued, “And Ar-Pharazôn said: ‘Who is the Lord of the Darkness?’ Then behind locked doors Sauron spoke to the King, and he lied, saying: ‘It is he whose name is not now spoken; for the Valar have deceived you concerning him, putting forward the name of Eru, a phantom devised in the folly of their hearts, seeking to enchain Men in servitude to themselves. For they are the oracle of this Eru, which speaks only what they will. But he that is their master shall yet prevail, and he will deliver you from this phantom; and his name is Melkor, Lord of All, Giver of Freedom, and he shall make you stronger than they.’”

The reason Tolkien is being subverted and attacked today is because he clearly saw the nature of evil and its objectives, which have not changed since men began building the Tower of Babel. The entire course of human history is one of repetitive waves of would-be immortals desparing at the Law of Nature, rebelling against their Creator, and sacrificing massive quantities of innocent mortals to evil supernatural beings in inevitably futile attempts to transform themselves into gods and thereby escape death.

Everything evil that is not driven by hedonism, greed, and attention-seeking is driven by fear of death. And the more one satiated one is of the first three, the more completely one succumbs to the fourth. Tolkien knew this, he wrote about this, and that is why the evil would-be immortals of today want him to be forgotten.

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The Original Mary Sue

The 1973 Star Trek fan fiction by Paula Smith that introduced the now-inescapable Hellmouth trope, most notoriously exhibited by Not-Galadrial in Dem Rangz o’ Powah.

A Trekkie’s Tale
“Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky,” thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. “Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet – only fifteen and a half years old.” Captain Kirk came up to her.

“Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?”

“Captain! I am not that kind of girl!”

“You’re right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us.”

Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. “What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?”

“The Captain told me to.”

“Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind.”

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Scott beamed down with Lt. Mary Sue to Rigel XXXVII. They were attacked by green androids and thrown into prison. In a moment of weakness Lt. Mary Sue revealed to Mr. Spock that she too was half Vulcan. Recovering quickly, she sprung the lock with her hairpin and they all got away back to the ship.

But back on board, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Mary Sue found out that the men who had beamed down were seriously stricken by the jumping cold robbies, Mary Sue less so. While the four officers languished in Sick Bay, Lt. Mary Sue ran the ship, and ran it so well she received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Vulcan Order of Gallantry and the Tralfamadorian Order of Good Guyhood.

However the disease finally got to her and she fell fatally ill. In the Sick Bay as she breathed her last, she was surrounded by Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Mr. Scott, all weeping unashamedly at the loss of her beautiful youth and youthful beauty, intelligence, capability and all around niceness. Even to this day her birthday is a national holiday of the Enterprise.

Ironically, the original Mary Sue is a more developed character than most despite the short length of the piece; at least she has a moment of weakness. Sadly, she lacks purple eyes; that was a later development. As was a particular facility for sexual performance, that, too, was a later development.

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Stupid Think Tanks

A Russian leader points out that the continued escalation of NATO involvement will result in a transition from proxy war to direct war:

Western “half-wits” from “stupid think tanks” are leading their countries down the road of nuclear armageddon with their hybrid war against Moscow, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday. Endlessly funneling weapons and support to Ukraine while pretending not to be directly involved in the conflict will not work, added the deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

The “security guarantees” proposal unveiled by Kiev on Tuesday was “really a prologue to the Third World War,” said Medvedev, calling it a “hysterical appeal” to Western countries engaged in a proxy war against Russia.

If the West continues its “unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons,” Russia’s military campaign will move to the next level, where “visible boundaries and potential predictability of actions by the parties to the conflict” will be erased and the conflict will take on a life of its own, as wars always do, Medvedev argued.

“And then the Western nations will not be able to sit in their clean homes, laughing at how they carefully weaken Russia by proxy. Everything will be on fire around them. Their people will harvest their grief in full. The land will be on fire and the concrete will melt,” Medvedev wrote, before citing a Bible verse from Revelations 9:18.

“Yet still the narrow-minded politicians and their stupid think tanks, thoughtfully twirling a glass of wine in their hands, talk about how they can deal with us without entering into a direct war.

Think tanks are, by and large, pretty stupid. My belief is that the neocons driving the war with Russia have always wanted a direct war. They simply utilized war-by-proxy and hybrid war because they couldn’t get the politicians to sign on to a direct war. So unless the people or the politicians bring it to an end, they will get the war they wanted.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the war will end the way they assumed it would….

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