MUST HAZ MOAR NEGROZE!

It doesn’t matter if it’s the Oscars, television advertising, NFL head coaching positions, or books about historians. The social justice prescription is always the same: MUST HAZ MOAR NEGROZE!

It has taken nearly a decade to research and write, and runs to more than 750 pages. But The History Makers, described as “an epic exploration of those who write about the past”, has itself been rewritten after its author failed to take into account enough black historians, academics and writers.

Richard Cohen was told by his publisher to produce new chapters and expand others after failing to sufficiently acknowledge the roles of black people and African Americans.

“It was to do with the publisher’s sensitivities,” says Cohen, who previously wrote the highly praised Chasing The Sun and How to Write Like Tolstoy. “I was then asked to write more, and have done about another 18,000 words.”

Now, despite the rewrite, publication of the book in the US has been cancelled, according to sources in New York. Cohen’s contract with Random House in America was signed some years ago and was said by sources to be for about $350,000. Yet, after seeking the changes on black history and historians, the publisher dramatically pulled out of the deal last Wednesday.

The crazy thing is that neither Booker T. Washington nor Frederick Douglass, for all their virtues, were historians! Why not throw in George Washington Carver, Michael Jordan, and Doctor Dre, while you’re at it? If this historians of the future learn anything, anything at all, from the decline and fall of the United States of America, it is this: 1) sink the ships, and, 2) always pick your own damn cotton.

It’s strange, but in all my days, I have never, ever, heard anyone ever say that what is required is more American Indians. It’s also strange how the one-drop rule is sufficient to make a man black, but not even a substantial amount of American Indian blood will prevent people from aggressively denying that a man is red.

UPDATE: NOT ENOUGH NEGROZE! MUST HAZ MOAR!

Producers of the much anticipated Friends comeback show are at the centre of a race row after failing to cast any black actors. While the one-off return of the much loved US sitcom will feature all six members of the original line-up, the list of celebrity guests stars announced by broadcaster HBO has been criticised for a lack of diversity. 

I think they have no choice but to go their critics one better and replace Ross and Monica with Rakeem and Monique. Diversity demands it!

The canceling of literature

Huckleberry Finn has long been the first book that Easton Press sells at a heavy discount to its Book-of-the-Month buyers. But given how Easton is mostly run by young women who have recently graduated from Ivy League universities, I expect it won’t be long before they stop publishing it at all in light of the bad odor in which Mark Twain is now held by the universities:

St. John’s University joins a list of woke universities, schools, and programs willing to reshape its curriculum to coddle students who feel challenged on a mental or emotional level.

During a reading of Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson, Professor Hannah Berliner Fischthal became another casualty in the way of a race-based movement that cost her a profession and livelihood – one built on years of garnering her students’ trust through thoughtful and open conversation.

During a read-through that prompted Berliner Fischthal to use the N-word directly from the text, one student exited the online session and sent an email detailing the emotional distress this cause.

The student’s email stated that the professor’s use of the term was “unnecessary and very painful to hear.” The message became a public ordeal and prompted the university to investigate the action, leading to the professor’s dismissal from St. John’s University.

This is just another reason why it’s not only desirable, but vital, to subscribe to Castalia Library. Regarding which, I have a few things to mention.

First, the first three leatherbound Junior Classics have been sent to the printer. We’ll order the leather this week, so the production is in process. We don’t know how long it will take, as that depends upon the bindery’s schedule. Below is the front endpapers, which will feature the appropriate names and sections of the specific volume. We’re also close to getting the regular volumes 4, 5, and 6 out the door.

Second, we’ll stop taking orders for the leatherbound Junior Classics on Monday at noon, since we have to finalize the number. We’re going to print a few extra interiors since it’s economical for us to do so, so there will probably be an opportunity to acquire a leather set at some point in the future, but this will be your last opportunity for some time.

Third, as I’ve already announced, the Castalia Library and Libraria Castalia editions of Summa Elvetica will NOT be signed. There have already been sufficient delays that Heidi will be shipped first, and it’s just going to take too long to print the special pages, ship them to Europe, ship them back, and have them tipped-in. It was a stupid notion and I’m sorry we won’t be able to deliver on the signed editions. Obviously, if anyone who bought the one-off on that notion wants a refund, we will certainly provide it. And for those who don’t care about the signature, the book is nearly sold out already so you might want to consider grabbing one while you can.

Speaking of sell-outs, beginning with Rhetoric, we’re increasing the number of Library editions to 850. This is because the books are nearly sold out on the basis of the subscriptions alone now. Libraria editions will remain at 100. The current subscription book is Discourses on Livy by Machiavelli.

We are aware that some people received doubles of Plutarch, and others still haven’t received their Divine Comedy – me included. Let us know at library -at- castaliahouse -dot- com in either case; the bindery is actively resolving each case one at a time. They have a new system in place which should prevent these problems in the future and we’ve reserved enough books to make certain that everyone who paid for one will receive one. In the meantime, don’t bother letting me know, as I can’t do anything about it and don’t even have my copy of Dante or Plutarch. 

And finally, the rear endpapers for the leather editions, which will be the same for every volume.

UPDATE:  If you have an issue, send it to the email address above and it will be directed to the responsible party, who will address it. Scores of issues have been successfully resolved this way. If you post it here in the comments, it will be deleted. If you email it to me, it will be deleted. If people want me to write anything at all in the future, then they will have to stop treating me like a call center based in India simply because I am accessible. And to think some people wonder why I absolutely refuse to do book tours, speeches, or any other public appearances….

Don’t believe Jerusalem Joe

If you weren’t inclined to believe everything that Baghdad Bob said about the great victories of the Iraqi military, you shouldn’t be stupid enough to take Jerusalem Joe at his word either. While more than a few philo-IDFites have swallowed the “we totally meant to do that” line of the announced ground invasion that wasn’t, and exulted in the “brilliance” of total destruction of Hamas’s elite forces though a press release, I was more than a little skeptical of US media Jews reporting on the astonishing cleverness of Israeli military Jews in outwitting a group of unsuspecting gentiles, who were totally defeated by little more than deceitful words.

Let’s just say the narrative struck me as a little bit… familiar. Also, the idea that enemy troops on the ground – indeed, underground – were completely destroyed by artillery and air strikes tends to be one that lasts right up until the moment that the ground troops actually go in. Let’s just say “no one could have survived that” is a concept that has been repeatedly disproven everywhere from Normandy to the South Pacific.

The Israeli military apparently used a brilliant deceptive maneuver to take out Hamas’s terrorist fighting force and underground tunnels — in a single blow.

In what could only be described as killing two birds with one stone, the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday night told news reporters that the Israeli ground forces were on their way to Hamas-held Gaza.

The news spread quickly through the mainstream media and affiliated social media accounts. Believing an Israeli ground invasion to be imminent, Hamas ordered its terrorist fighters to seek shelter in the tunnel network dug up under the Gaza city.

What followed the Hamas mobilization was a massive wave of Israeli airstrikes — comprising of 160 aircraft — on the Gaza tunnel network with the jihadi group’s top terror brass sitting underground, right where the IDF wanted them.

The fact that the failure of this “brilliant deceptive maneuver” was going to be apparent as soon as the next round of rockets were launched doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of the idiots who didn’t hesitate to celebrate Israel’s total victory through extreme cleverness by applied average 115 IQ. And indeed, while more sober and experienced Israeli sources dutifully stuck by the official “ruse” report, they were considerably less convinced about its results.

An IDF ruse was behind the “embarrassing leak” to world media on Thursday night, May 13, reporting the start of an IDF ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, It was denied early Friday morning and explained by an “internal communication problem.” DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that this false story was in fact planted deliberately to bring Hamas elite forces out of their bunkers to confront the “invaders” – whereupon they were to be clobbered by Israeli warplanes. How far this trick worked has not been disclosed. A similar subterfuge was tried 13 years ago – in reverse. On Dec. 27, 2008, IDF sources leaked to world media that the military had been ordered to refrain from responding with ground action to a past Hamas rocket barrage, Its commanders were taken in and staged a police school graduation parade in Gaza in the open. They were bombed by Israeli jets.

For now, the IDF has not given up on a ground operation inside Gaza. Whenever it goes forward, it is planned to be a fast in-and-out raid for well-defined targets before pulling back. Up until Friday, May 14, Hamas and Islamic Jihad had exhausted no more than a quarter of their rocket stocks, dozens dropping short inside the enclave. The bulk, however, remained out of reach of Israeli air strikes, tucked away deep inside underground stores. Destroying this stockpile would be the main target of any Israeli ground operation.

Hamas has also kept its elite Izz e-din Al Qassam battalion safe and whole by dispersing its members among well-fortified bunkers, designed to withstand both aerial and ground assaults. In contrast, around half of the 15 ordinary units, split into four regional brigades, have been knocked out of action.

So, neither the leadership nor the elite were knocked out by the stunning ruse after all? What’s the real story? We don’t know yet, but we do know that the pace of the rocket launches by Hamas doesn’t appear to have slowed considerably, which tends to indicate that the Jerusalem Joe narrative was a false one.

For the fifth night running, Hamas and Islamic Jihad spread a barrage of some 190 rockets over large parts of Israel. 

Personally, I think it’s much more likely that someone in the IDF media department screwed up in the erroneous belief that the planned ground invasion had begun, but rather than simply admit the embarrassing mistake to the world press, they decided to sell it as intentional in order to support the increasingly creaky narrative of the invincible IDF, which took a serious hit in the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

In any event, remember that the only thing we can be absolutely sure did NOT happen is whatever the mainstream media is reporting.

UPDATE: Ahem….

Israel Defense Forces say false Gaza invasion report to foreign media was ‘mistake’ and not manipulation to lure Hamas into trap.

Convergence Complete: BSA

 It’s official. The Boy Scouts of America are dead.

The Boy Scouts Of America released a statement in support of Black Lives Matter and now say they’ll require Eagle Scouts to earn a diversity and inclusion badge. According to the rest of their statement, they “haven’t been as brave as they should have been” following the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

This organization turned into a joke when they made it sexist to keep women out of the Boy Scouts, but now they’re a laughing stock.

This is why it is utterly and absolutely futile to continue participating in any organization that refuses to police itself. There were many people right here on this blog who continued to make excuses for their continued involvement with the Boy Scouts, and any number of various rationalizations and justifications for it.

But once an SJW-infested organization begins to converge, it’s over. Because if you didn’t have the sense to keep them out in the first place, you’re not going to be able to do a damn thing once they’ve established their strongholds and feel secure enough to begin actively tranforming the organization.

Keep this in mind the next time you’re warned about an organization with which you’re involved. Because if you don’t care enough to protect it, you will not keep it.

Weekly BIC Roundup

 Bounding Into Comics publishes its weekly Arktoons roundup:

Arkhaven Comics offers a wide variety of the very best in new comics from superheroes to YA to urban fantasy. It publishes gritty, adult adventure, and humor.  But this company goes a step further, Arkhaven also honors the rich history of the American comic book.

Harlen Ellison once said, “…there are five native American art forms that we’ve given to the world: Jazz, of course. Musical comedy as we know it today. The detective story as crafted by Poe. The banjo. And comic books.”  

In today’s Arktoons roundup we’ll look at just a few of the Arktoons celebrating the rich history of that American-created artform, the comic book.

They had some interesting things to say about ATOB, among other things. Anyhow, read the whole thing there. Also, we only have one Saturday PM Arktoon today due to some technical difficulties with Chuck Dixon Presents: Comedy.

CLOCKWORK DANCER Episode 3: Attacking Automata

 

The CDC isn’t getting vaxxed

 Let’s face it, if they’re publicly admitting that half the employees at the CDC and the FDA aren’t getting vaccinated, the actual number is almost certainly north of two-thirds:

When pressed by Sen. Richard Burr about the percentage of CDC and FDA employees who have elected to receive the COVID vaccine, Biden medical adviser Anthony Fauci and the FDA’s Peter Marks admitted that the number who have chosen not take the vaccine is close to half. CDC director Rochelle Walensky dodged the question.

“Okay, this question I’m gonna go to Dr. Fauci, Dr. Marks, and Dr. Walensky,” Burr said. “What percentage of employees in [Fauci’s] institute, [Walensky’s] Center, or [Mars’] agency, of your employees, has been vaccinated.”

“You know, I’m not a hundred percent sure, senator, but I think it’s probably a little bit more than half, probably around sixty percent,” Fauci said.

“I can’t tell you the exact number, but it’s probably in the same range, some people vaccinated at our facility, and others at, uh, outside of the facility,” Marks said.

When the same question was posed to Walensky, she replied, “We’re encouraging, um, our employees to get vaccinated, we’ve been doing town halls and education seminars, um, we have, our staff have the option to report their vaccination status but it’s you, un-understand [sic] the federal government is not requiring it so we do not know.”

In my opinion, only a complete and confirmed idiot would permit himself to be injected with an untested substance that is intended to interfere with the human immune system in order to protect himself against a disease with a very low mortality rate, especially when those who are selling it and urging people to get injected are a) immune to legal liability, and, b) are not being injected themselves.

And if you did, well, what can I say? There is no nice way to put this. You failed the stupid test. Congratulations? If you’re fortunate, there won’t be any significant long-term repercussions and you won’t fail the Darwin test too. We shall follow your future endeavors with interest.

I am genuinely curious, though. What sort of individual reads here regularly and still somehow manages to take ANYTHING the US government or the mainstream media asserts at face value?

The unmitigated retardery of modernism

The more one learns about the foundations of modern post-Christian postcivilization, the more intellectually flimsy one sees them to be. And the more one learns about the formulators of those foundations, the more retarded one learns they were. From the incest fantasies of Freudian psychology to free trade economics, free speech, free movement of peoples, and free love, every pillar of modernism is not only a complete fraud, it is an obvious fraud dreamed up by a lunatic failure.

Consider, for example, the pathetic background of the novelist D.H. Lawrence, whose work is the basis for both sexual freedom and pretty much all modern pornography. 

Lawrence had first set eyes on Frieda in 1912. Already a published novelist, he’d decided on a whim to find work as a teacher in Germany and approached his former university professor for a recommendation.

Professor Weekley, who lived near Nottingham with his 31-year-old wife and their three children, invited him for Sunday lunch. But Weekley was finishing something in his study when Lawrence arrived, which meant Mrs Weekley had to entertain him alone for half an hour.

In those crucial 30 minutes, the novelist decided that the professor’s wife — with her blonde hair, green eyes and large bosom — was his destiny.

What did they talk about? Lawrence told Frieda that after a few sexual misadventures, he was finished with women; she laughed, and was soon chatting merrily about her favourite subject.

As she later encapsulated the philosophy that drove her: ‘Fanatically, I believed that if only sex were “free”, the world would straightaway turn into a paradise.’

Whether Frieda’s husband shared that view is unlikely. He’d met her on a walking holiday in Germany and married her in 1899. On their return from honeymoon, he told her parents: ‘I am married to an earthquake.’

Within a few years, Frieda had her first affair — with a lace-maker who’d drive her to Sherwood Forest so she could run naked through the trees. Another lover was a cocaine-addicted schizophrenic. A third was an anarchist railway worker.

And now she’d landed an intense 27-year-old novelist who appeared to worship her. They met again — just twice — before agreeing to travel together to Germany.

It hardly mattered that Lawrence had no money, no job and no home. As far as Frieda was concerned, she was having just another affair while she paid a visit to her parents.

But Lawrence was in earnest: he wrote to Professor Weekley to tell him they loved each other.

‘Mrs Weekley,’ he declared, ‘is afraid of being stunted and not allowed to grow and so she must live her own life.’

From Germany, they travelled on to Italy, where he worked on a novel Frieda named The Rainbow — because rainbows, composed from fire and water, symbolised their union: she was a full-flowing stream and he was a burning flame.

All very elemental and romantic, but Frieda was all too often drawn to other flames. One chance came on their honeymoon when they were walking in the mountains with bisexual novelist David Garnett and his good-looking pal Harold Hobson, a drama critic. Later, Frieda told Lawrence that Hobson had ‘taken’ her in a hay hut one day. It was the second time she’d strayed that summer; back in Germany, she’d slept with an officer in Metz. Lawrence shrugged — who was he to stunt her growth?

Yet even her sexual antics couldn’t mitigate Frieda’s genuine distress at being separated from her children, then aged 12, ten and eight. Lawrence, she recalled, ‘hated me for being miserable… In revenge I did not care about his writing.’

In fact, he was jealous of her children, wanting all of Frieda’s attention for himself. Mothers, he told her in all seriousness, must relinquish their spawn, and the sooner the better.

She couldn’t agree, but the decision was taken out of her hands: when her marriage ended, Professor Weekley was granted full custody.

The Rainbow was published a year after the Lawrences married, by which time they were living in London. Now widely viewed as a masterpiece, it charted the sexual awakening of three generations of women.

Any society that bases its sexual mores on the cuckish fantasies of a sickly, sterile gamma male obsessed with a fat, stupid adulteress deserves its inevitable demise. It’s not an accident that Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals is such a repetitive recounting of one disastrous human failure after another.