I humbly accept

While I do not seek this grave responsibility, given the historical context of the current situation, if SFWA requires a POC President-for-Life in light of the horrific structural racism of the organization, I will humbly accept the position once the white racist Mary Robinette Kowal resigns her office:

Yesterday, SFWA announced a racist — and illegal via several Civil Rights statutes — action in which if you are a member of a certain race, you do not have to pay SFWA dues nor do you have to pay to attend their convention. Moreover, the California Incorporated SFWA announced they would be giving money from their coffers to causes which have nothing to do with club members nor science fiction.

As a corporation, SFWA has to abide by rules which do not discriminate via race, gender, religion, etc. And yet with their denying my entry when I duly qualify, and now these initiatives, they are showing that they do not respect minority authors at all, but view us as slaves who are too poor to be able to handle business as their “proper” white authors like Mary do, and also they believe we are too stupid to be able to handle our own charitable causes or have our own opinions on public matters which are different than what Mary or Cat (both white women) advocate for.

I recommend she step down from SFWA leadership and appoint a PoC in her stead who will guide SFWA in matters only someone who doesn’t try to culturally appropriate a cause would do. What Mary Robinette Kowal has done these last 24 hours and during her tenure of leadership of SFWA is deplorable and irredeemable and must be disavowed by any non-racists.

My program is straightforward.

  • Appoint an African editor of all SFWA publications. Preferably one who speaks an African language and does not speak the language of the oppressors.
  • Award the 2020 Nebula Best Novel Award to Octavia Butler (posthumous)
  • The 2021-2025 Nebula Best Novel Awards will be given to NK Jemisin, the greatest SF writer in the history of SF writing.
  • Award the 2020 SFWA Grand Master to NK Jemisin.
  • $5,000 annual reparations will be paid to all POC authors from a pool collected from the white membership of SFWA.
Anything less would be racist. #BlackLivesMatterMost

An excess of corporate cancer

This diversity somehow managed to be too converged for Netflix. That’s like being rejected by lung cancer for being too cancerous:

The strategy lead for L.G.B.T.Q. content at Netflix has parted ways with the company just a week after he was the subject of an ‘eyebrow raising’ profile piece in The New York Times.

Fran Tirado, 29, took to Twitter on May 21 to announce he had left the streaming service after 10 months and was on the lookout for a new job.

On May 13, The Times published a profile on Tirado titled ‘The Pandemic Work Diary of Netflix’s Queer Champion’. In the article, the strategist claimed he took edibles and skipped a Q&A with the company’s chief executive, while also boasting that his job included ‘talking about gay porn’.

Diversity is their death sentence.

Black science fiction matters

These are the actions that SFWA is taking as first steps to clean our own house and work towards making our community safer for Black writers.

  • For the month of June, 100{105b5945f2a7891a3dd860d3a09046b26c32f8a07d097b566642738deee8841e} of registrations for the Nebula Convention content will go directly to the Carl Brandon Society and the Black Speculative Fiction Society.
  • We are creating a matching program for the Nebula convention so that each registration purchased this month creates a seat for a Black writer.
  • For the next year, we are waiving fees for SFWA membership for Black writers.
  • We are waiving registration fees for next year’s Nebula conference attendance for Black writers.
  • We are creating a travel fund to help defer the costs of Black writers attending the Nebula conference
  • We are committing to reaching out to Black-led science fiction and fantasy organizations about applying for the additional grant money that we have available. 
And here I would have thought handing NK Jemisin the Best Novel Hugo for three straight years would have bought them a certain amount of protection. Apparently not. But wouldn’t it be more meaningful if Tor Books agreed to publish only black authors for the next ten years to make up for their past racism?

And, of course, it’s a given that they will name Ms Jemisin the 2020 SFWA Grandmaster. Anything less would be r-r-racist!

Mailvox: the USAF, converged

A soon-to-be ex-Airman shares his observations concerning the convergence of the USAF:

I listened to the audiobook of Corporate Cancer a couple of months ago, and at that time I categorized my own workplace, the USAF as Level 4, highly converged. But recent events have caused me to reevaluate, and I am convinced that the USAF has achieved Level 5 and has become fully converged. Attached is a copy of a recent post on Facebook by the highest ranking enlisted member in the force, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, Kaleth O. Wright. This post played a big role in my need to reevaluate. Here are the highlights:

“Who am I? I am a Black man who happens to be the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. I am George Floyd…I am Philando Castile, I am Michael Brown, I am Alton Sterling, I am Tamir Rice.”

“This, my friends, is my greatest fear, not that I will be killed by a white police officer (believe me my heart starts racing like most other Black men in America when I see those blue lights behind me)…but that I will wake up to a report that one of our Black Airmen has died at the hands of a white police officer.”

“So, I spent the last week, “plotting, planning, strategizing, organizing and mobilizing” just as Killer Mike, the popular Atlanta rapper and activist encouraged us to do.”

“I believe that we have not made much progress in this area of racial injustice and diversity among our ranks. This is why I’m working with General Goldfein, first and foremost to have a full and thorough independent review of our military justice system…We are also working to improve the diversity of our force, especially within the senior ranks.”

“You might think you know what it’s like to grow up, exist, survive and even thrive in this country as a Black person…but let me tell you, regardless of how many Black friends you have, or how Black your neighborhood was, or if your spouse or in-laws are Black…you don’t know. You don’t know the anxiety, the despair, the heartache, the fear, the rage and the disappointment that comes with living in this country, OUR country every single day.”

The evidence of the full convergence is everywhere. When deployed, there is a TV service that we are provided which is not nearly as cool as UATV. It is called the Armed Forces Network and it is so packed with anti-American propaganda that sometimes I can’t help but laugh. There are constant commercials proclaiming “Diversity is Our Strength.” As well as those touting American citizenship for those who serve. So we are openly training and running logistics for our own invaders. We get constant diversity centered e-mails, and my home base acknowledges cultural appreciation months throughout the year. Even Pacific Islander month!

That same base also has a giant recruiting billboard which can be seen from the highway. On it is the picture of a woman security forces member holding a gun. And in big letters it reads “I swear to defend…” It seriously has the … and just leaves it at that. I’ve never seen a better piece of grabbler propaganda in my life.

I am deployed to one of the grabbler wars right now, but I should be returning to the states before long. I am a young Airman without much rank and the USAF has proven through it’s convergence that it is not the place to go for those who wish to defend America. For that reason, I’m out.

This convergence is why I am predicting that the US military is going to shock the world by unexpectedly losing an important battle one of these days. The Chinese and Russians already know that the US empire is fading, even if those who rule it from the Potomac haven’t realized it yet.

What a complete surprise

A former Obama official bails out a criminal rioter:

A former high-level Obama administration intelligence official has guaranteed the $250,000 bail for the New York City lawyer who allegedly firebombed an unoccupied NYPD police cruiser early Saturday, calling the suspect her “best friend,” Fox News has confirmed.

The Washington Free Beacon first reported that Salmah Rizvi, who served in the Defense Department and State Department during the Obama administration, went to bat for Urooj Rahman, who was arrested this weekend alongside Pryor Cashman associate Colinford Mattis.

It’s all a movie and we’re beginning to see exactly who the various actors are.

Patreon ups the ante

Because it is being methodically and systematically trounced in arbitration, Patreon has resorted to the unusual – if not to say entirely insane – tactic of threatening to file lawsuits against its users who have done nothing more than follow the rules imposed upon them unilaterally by Patreon.

This appears to be a desperation move that was inspired by the complete failure of their lawyers to consolidate, coordinate, or otherwise group the parties in order to avoid the inevitable expenses of scores of simultaneous arbitrations by the users they had wronged.

Of course, as I’ve previously pointed out, every attack creates an opening, and the opening they’ve created here can only be described as comprehensive. For you see, in addition to the deceptive practices they’ve already committed, and in addition to their attempts to remove the consumer protection laws from their creators, Patreon is now attempting to strip consumer protections from all of their users, creators and patrons alike. At this point, every move they make only serves to create new vulnerabilities.

In this case, if they actually follow through on their current posturing and start serving their users, what this will do is allow the Legal Legion to move any lawsuit filed in a state court to Federal court, then file counterclaims that include one or more class actions on behalf of a) all of Patreon’s creators as well as b) all of Patreon’s users.

If necessary, we will also be setting up a legal defense fund, not to pay for the Legion’s services, but to demonstrate that the Patreon users being attacked by Patreon will be protected in the extremely unlikely event that a lunatic Federal judge decides that Patreon has somehow been damaged by its users legitimately exercising the rights imposed upon them by Patreon.

Of course, literally all of the relevant law and case law, both state and Federal, points to this being either a) Patreon attempting to commit suicide by law, or b) Patreon’s lawyers desperately trying to convince Patreon to keep writing them the checks that it shouldn’t have written in the first place. This legal “strategy”, to the extent that one can call it that, is so obviously futile that if you’re financially dependent upon Patreon in any way, I would not count on it being around in 12 months.

#crushing #delendaest

Grand Boogaloo busted

I received word from sources in law enforcement today that the FBI has identified the leader of the Boogaloo Movement, known as the Grand Boogaloo, as one Samuel L. Hyde of Minnetonka, Minnesota.

Taking a page from the Shining Path

Antifa is stalking police and their families at home:

In a number of different communities in states ranging from California and Texas to Florida – reports have come in that small groups of individuals appear to be canvassing neighborhoods and taking pictures of homes that have police cruisers in the driveways.

“I can absolutely confirm this,” told us one police spokesman, who asked that his department be kept anonymous because of the threats.  “We’ve received multiple reports throughout the weekend both in terms of phone calls and alerts that neighborhood residents are putting out on community watch apps.”

It comes as police are receiving direct, personal threats through social media, calls and emails.

“We and our children are receiving threats,” one police lieutenant told Law Enforcement Today.

The departments we spoke with said that they’re currently making policy changes so that take-home police cruisers are either garaged or – for now – left at the police departments.

“We expect danger when on the job,” said one sergeant.  “But this is different.  They are threatening to burn down our homes and kill our families.”

This is why handling the “protestors” with kid gloves is a tremendous mistake.