Rule By Ontology

William S. Lind considers the nominalism and magical thinking of the Washington elite in the wake of the imperial debacle in Afghanistan.

How could the whole Washington defense and foreign policy establishment get it so wrong? One answer is that, if you want to become and remain a member of the establishment, you must never make waves. Since almost all the people in question want to be something, not do something, they follow that rule regardless of where it leads. A defeat in war is but a small matter when compared to a risk to their careers.

Another answer is that members of the establishment are almost all nominalists. That is to say, if they give something a name, it takes on real existence in their minds. The Afghan National Army offers a perfect example. Because we called it an army, gave it lots of American money, equipment and training, and knew its order of battle, it was an army. But it wasn’t. Apart from a few commando units, it was a ragtag collection of men who needed jobs and had little or no interest in fighting. Those men seldom saw their pay, because it was stolen before it reached them. Rations and ammunition often suffered the same fate. That army collapsed overnight because it never really existed outside the minds of establishment nominalists.

That same nominalism applied to the entire Afghan government. Washington nominalists thought it was real; Afghans knew it was not. A Marine battalion commander just back from Afghanistan put it best. He said, “Talking to a 14th century Afghan villager about the government in Kabul is like talking to your cat about the dark side of the moon. You don’t know what it’s like and he doesn’t care.”

We see nominalism running all through American policy-making. Washington nominalists think Iraq is a state. It isn’t, because real power is in the hands of ethnic and religious militias. The state is merely a facade, but since it has a parliament, elections, cabinet ministers, etc. it is real to nominalists. Not surprisingly, our policy there has been a series of disasters ever since the initial disaster of invading the place.

The Washington elite’s nominalism is not restricted to foreign policy. It looks at the U.S. military the same way. If you call something an army, it must be able to fight, even though you have filled its ranks with women, made promotion depend on Political Correctness rather than military ability and given it bureaucrats for generals. When it loses a war, as it just did in Afghanistan, it must be a matter of bad luck. The fact that it ceased to be a real army decades ago is not recognized.

The Washington establishment’s civilians have been soaking in nominalism ever since they began their “education” at various elite institutions. Woe to any who pointed out that the U.N. has proven worthless in one crisis after another, that our “democratic” allies are all really oligarchies or that “human rights” vary enormously in their definition from one culture and people to another. To call an entity a state or an army or a democracy means it magically becomes one. And the magical thinking that dominates the establishment’s picture of the world leads to repeated debacles from which it learns nothing.

Ontology is bad enough when it passes for philosophy, it’s downright ludicrous as political ideology and government policy. But it’s worth questioning from whence it comes, as it ultimately derives from the “as above, so below” occultism of the pharisatanics who presently dominate the imperial capital. This belief in word spells not only describing, but defining and dictating reality is not magical thinking, it is the sort of magickal thinking utilized by those who worship the god of this world.

UPDATE: If you still had any doubts about the nature of the god that is worshipped by the judeochristians, consider the following tweet.

“Just a friendly reminder that banning abortion violates Jewish women’s ability to practice our religion.

Sarah Marian Seltzer, 31 August, 2021

Indeed.

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Bindtaria Begins

Total: 140.5 percent of goal

The Iliad Library edition: 483/500

The Iliad Libraria edition: 49

The Odyssey: 471/500

The Odyssey Libraria edition: 50

Heidi German edition: 62

Homer Ebook sets: 88

Thanks very much to everyone who took part. We will be signing the lease for the building and starting to acquire the machines very soon, and we expect to officially begin initial setup and training operations in January. Our objective – and I cannot stress this enough, it is an objective – is to produce our first sample products in March. Rest assured that we’ll be taking lots of pictures of the process and posting them along the way.

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Not All Employers are Idiots

Even some hospitals are beginning to recognize that not requiring the vaxx – which as soon as October will require THREE shots in the USA to maintain “fully vaccinated” status -will give them a competitive advantage in acquiring and retaining employees in a difficult labor environment:

I was visiting with a couple board members of local hospitals recently. One asked the other if they were going to require their employees to get vaccinated. The hospital is ~70% vaccinated, and the board member said they discussed it but decided at this time, they would not because 1) they were worried about losing even a small portion of the remaining 30% and creating issues with hospital staffing, and 2) as most hospitals around us are requiring it, they felt they may have a hiring advantage if they are in the minority of hospitals that do not require employees to be vaccinated.

So don’t be afraid to tell your employer that a) you are willing to get fired over any requirement to inject foreign substances into your body and b) that if employees with less than three shots are not also fired before the end of the year, you will sue them for discrimination.

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The End of Free Trade

What is being described as “the heist of the century” is striking fear into every banker and parasite bloating himself on the financial flows of the failing neoliberal world order and the so-called global economy:

Arm is widely regarded as the most important semiconductor IP firm. Their IP ships in billions of new chips every year from phones, cars, microcontrollers, Amazon servers, and even Intel’s latest IPU. Originally it was a British owned and headquartered company, but SoftBank acquired the firm in 2016. They proceeded to plow money into Arm Limited to develop deep pushes into the internet of things, automotive, and server. Part of their push was also to go hard into China and become the dominant CPU supplier in all segments of the market.

As part of the emphasis on the Chinese market, SoftBank succumbed to pressure and formed a joint venture. In the new joint venture, Arm Limited, the SoftBank subsidiary sold a 51% stake of the company to a consortium of Chinese investors for paltry $775M. This venture has the exclusive right to distribute Arm’s IP within China. Within 2 years, the venture went rogue. Technically it has always been legally independent, but Arm still maintained control. Recently, Arm China gave a presentation to the industry about rebranding their own IP, extending it by developing more, and emphasizing that they are striking their own independently operated path.

This firm is called “安谋科技”, but it is not part of Arm Limited.

This is the tech heist of the century….

Despite formally being fired, Allen Wu has remained in power. He ousted executives that were loyal to Arm. He has even hired security paid for by Arm China that reports to him. This security has kept Arm out of the Arm China offices. Allen Wu has aggressively taken over the firm and is operating it how he sees fit. One interesting tidbit is that Allen Wu sued Arm China in order to declare his dismissal illegal. He essentially sued himself as he represented both sides in that specific court case.

Arm has halted the transfer of any IP to entities on export control list. According to Arm, no IP has been stolen. Simultaneously, Arm has also tried to appeal to the government stating that this is bad for the Chinese semiconductor industry.

This leads us to the present day, where Arm China held an event at which they formally declared their independence. They proclaimed that 安谋科技 is China’s largest CPU IP supplier. It was born from Arm, but is an independently operate, Chinese owned company.

This is a fascinating situation, because the gunboat diplomacy to which the multinational corporations have appealed for the last 120 years is simply not an option in this case. There is absolutely nothing that the ARM investors or Softbank or its bankers can do if China decides that it wants to keep ARM China in the hands of the Chinese individuals who presently control it.

Demonstrating, once more, the profound difference between influence and power.

Bindery Campaign Final Update

Days Left: LAST DAY

Status: 127.7 percent of goal

The Iliad: 438/500

The Odyssey: 425/500 

This is the last day of the Castalia Bindery Campaign. Please note that we will not be producing more of these limited collector’s editions once the Special Bindery Editions are completed, so if you’re on the fence about whether to dive in or not, this is your last opportunity. They will be removed from the site at approximately 9 AM Eastern tomorrow morning.

Thanks very much to everyone who helped make this a successful campaign from Day One.

How Google Bought National Review

One can’t really say that National Review was corrupted by Google’s money, because National Review was a neoclown psyop from the start. But as Emerald Robinson documents, Google became the primary policy influence over the conservative flagship organ starting sometime after Donald Trump was elected in 2016:

There were rumors in the summer of 2018 that an audiotape was circulating that would send shockwaves through the think tanks of Washington and the conservative intellectual movement in particular. A top Google executive had been recorded telling his fellow employees that Google generously donated to conservative think tanks and magazines to dampen criticism of their anti-conservative bias. In essence, Google was buying off Conservatism Inc. and the GOP establishment to stay silent while Google monitored, harassed, and excluded Trump supporters. If true, the tape sounded like a smoking gun: incontrovertible evidence of the corruption and double-dealing of Conservatism Inc. that would permanently discredit it with Republican voters.

I was told that the tape had been offered as an exclusive to the Wall Street Journal. Months went by, and nothing happened. (There were rumors during that time that Big Tech lobbyists were trying very hard to get the Wall Street Journal to kill the story.) Then I began to get a series of messages from various anonymous sources that the organizations that were guilty of taking Google money to stay silent included: the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Cato Institute, CPAC, the Weekly Standard and the National Review. (A weak article appeared on September 27th by John McKinnon in the Wall Street Journal but it hardly mentioned the tape or its implications.) This was, needless to say, a huge story: was it possible that the entire conservative intellectual movement was being bought off by Big Tech companies?

Finally, I was approached by an insider at one of the think tanks who confirmed the main details. You could say I broke the story (since the Wall Street Journal piece had really buried it) on Twitter on October 30th, by saying:

BREAKING: Source tells me that NeverTrumper mags took cash from top Internet company to suppress stories of bias against conservatives & Trump supporters. Audio recording of top tech executive explaining strategy has leaked to major newspaper.

My hope was that it would shake the Wall Street Journal out of its lethargy: either publish the contents of the tape or let someone else use it. It would also sow panic among the guilty — who would want to get out ahead of the story in order to spin it. So it was not surprising that one of the first people to attack my story was Jonah Goldberg, one of the chief editors of the National Review. (It’s important to note that my tweet had not named his magazine as one of the guilty parties.) Goldberg was dismissive of my reporting on Twitter: “LOL. Love the idea you have sources.”

Jonah Goldberg had, once again, given himself up at the first sign of shooting….

Meanwhile the funding of the magazine now relies even more heavily on Big Tech money: the back page of the June 1, 2021 issue was a full-page Facebook ad. Inside the same issue, in case you missed the point, there was a two-page ad from Google. The National Review didn’t bother trying to win back its old subscribers by becoming more conservative. Instead, it flipped them a giant middle finger. This final insult might lead us to think the unthinkable about the soy boys who sank Buckley’s flagship. The same feeble metrosexuals who attacked the Covington Catholic boys, and printed pro-Jeffrey Epstein articles, and tried to discredit Carter Page, and pushed the Russia Hoax might not actually be conservatives after all. Their role does not seem to be halting the Left. Their role seems to be: pretending to be conservative in order to persuade actual conservatives to lose gracefully to the Left.

Conservatives must finally recognize something that’s very depressing and very important: the conservative intellectual movement in America didn’t just fail. It aided and abetted the Left for money. The Left bought off the Right’s leading conservative intellectuals. And its think tanks. And its “flagship” magazines. This is not hyperbole or conjecture. I’ve got the receipts. Until conservatives understand the depth and breadth of that betrayal, they won’t have any chance of rebuilding that movement out of the ashes any time soon.

How The National Review Sold Its Soul to Google, Emerald Robinson

Read the whole thing. It’s a fascinating demonstration of what treacherous little cuck-weasels Jonah Goldberg and David French are, which isn’t exactly a surprise. But it’s still useful to have conclusive evidence convicting them of what we’d already figured out.

Don’t EVER call yourself a conservative. A conservative, ironically enough, is nothing more than a beer-swilling surrender monkey whose primary objective is to avoid anyone calling him racist or anti-semitic. Conservatism is neither a political ideology nor a viable philosophy for any self-respecting man or woman of the West.

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The Imperial USA Retreats

Although the way it was done was a humiliating shambles, the retreat of the USA from its occupation of Afghanistan is not a bad thing; the US military should also be withdrawn from Iraq, Africa, Europe, and most of its military bases around the world. But the question is, does this retreat spell the end of the empire?

Wise men in Washington have claimed for years that defeat in Afghanistan is what pushed the Soviet Union to collapse. Now that the US has done much worse, the world is about to see whether their theories hold water.
The last US military flight out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) took off on Monday, a minute before the clocks struck midnight in Kabul. The 20-year war had come to an end, and the Taliban lit up the night skies with celebratory gunfire.

To hear President Joe Biden tell it, “the largest airlift in US history” was an “unparalleled” success, executed by the US military, diplomats, veterans and volunteers “with unmatched courage, professionalism, and resolve.”

In the minds of just about everyone else who could watch the events unfold over the past two weeks, it was a mad scramble to evacuate over 100,000 Afghans eager to emigrate, with fewer than 6,000 Americans making the flights – and several hundred being left behind for diplomats to try and save.

In fact, while 82nd Airborne Division commander General Christopher Donahue and US ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson were the last two people to step on the last plane, no American civilians were on board the last five flights out of Kabul. This was the startling admission by General Kenneth McKenzie of CENTCOM to Pentagon reporters on Monday evening.

“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” McKenzie said.

Compare that to the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan, which ended in February 1989. The USSR took nine months to draw down over 100,000 troops. The last man across the Bridge of Friendship into present-day Uzbekistan was General Boris V. Gromov, who turned to a TV crew and said, “There is not a single Soviet soldier or officer left behind me.”

The government of Dr. Najibullah, whom the Soviets intervened to support against the US-backed Islamists a decade earlier, fought on for three more years – collapsing only after the USSR itself imploded and stopped sending aid. By contrast, the US-backed government in Kabul vanished into thin air before the US withdrawal was even complete.

Russia Today, 31 August 2021

What this comparison tells us is that the neoclown world order, aka “the open society”, aka Globohomo, is even less ideologically appealing to the people it oppresses around the world than Soviet-style communism. The riots and protests against the vaccine regimes around the world, from Australia to France, testify to the same thing.

This is precisely what the Learned Elders of Wye feared back in 2006 when they began to make their initial plans to leave the sinking ship of the USA, but if the shambolic retreat of their servants from Afghanistan is a true harbinger, it suggests their planned retreat from the USA will be even more disastrous.

UPDATE: George Soros on China:

2010: China has ‘better-functioning government’ than the USA.

2021: Xi Jinping is “the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world.”

I wonder what could possibly have changed Mr. Soros’s opinion in the interim?

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