Cancelling Darwin

It doesn’t matter how well you’ve served the Black Rider. Sooner or later, you will be cast from his high horse, even if you are a secular saint as revered as Charles Darwin has been:

The UK’s Natural History Museum is reviewing options for its Charles Darwin exhibits, including possible removal, after an internal review ordered amid Black Lives Matter protests found that they could be deemed “offensive.”

The museum’s directors are scrutinizing collections that may be considered “problematic,” which could lead to removal or lesser remedies, such as renaming, The Telegraph reported, citing internal documents. Artifacts from the father of evolutionary theory are among the suspects because Darwin’s voyage to the Galapagos Islands on HMS ‘Beagle’ was one of the UK’s “colonialist scientific expeditions.”

“In light of Black Lives Matter and the recent anti-racist demonstrations around the world,” the museum is re-evaluating room names, collections and statues to root out any that “could potentially cause offense.” A large wing of the museum is named after Darwin, and a statue of the naturalist stands in the museum’s main hall.

As a Christian who has seen the way Darwin’s work has been used and abused to attack the Faith, I won’t mourn the man’s academic defenestration. As a philosopher who has logically and mathematically destroyed even the most remote possibility of his primary hypothesis, I’m not bothered by his scientific diminishment.

But as a student of history, I am deeply concerned about his historical erasure by the Year Zero barbarians. 

Fake reviews infesting Amazon

I warned about this more than a few years ago. But Amazon didn’t care when it was just SJWs weaponizing their fake reviews against right-wing authors, and apparently they were unaware of Broken Window policing theory and the inevitable consequences of failing to deal with problems when they are small:

Since Amazon’s early days, reviews are the one big metric customers have relied on to determine the quality and authenticity of a product. Amazon’s listings often have hundreds or thousands of reviews, instead of the handful found on competing marketplaces. But many of those reviews can’t be trusted. Thousands of fake reviews have flooded Amazon, Walmart, eBay and others, as sales have skyrocketed.

From Facebook groups where bad actors solicit paid positive reviews to bots and click farms that upvote negative reviews to take out the competition, fake reviews are getting harder to spot. In July, UCLA and USC released a study that found more than 20 fake review related Facebook groups with an average of 16,000 members. In more than 560 postings each day, sellers offered a refund or payment for a positive review, usually around $6.

The repercussions are getting more serious, too, as shoppers stay home and increasingly turn online for things they’d normally want to shop for in person. In recent months, fake reviews have boosted sales of unsafe products and hurt business for legitimate sellers, causing huge brands to sever ties with Amazon.

Amazon told CNBC it uses “powerful machine learning tools and skilled investigators to analyze over 10 million review submissions weekly, aiming to stop abusive reviews before they are ever published.” Still, the company recently removed 20,000 reviews after an investigation found that the top Amazon reviewers in the UK were engaging in fraud.

Simply requiring a confirmed purchase of the product at least two weeks prior to posting a review would eliminate the majority of fake reviews. As would simply responding to the sellers when obviously fake reviews are reported.

Analysis of an Assassination

Thomas Wiktor summarizes his detailed analysis of the murder of Trump supporter Jay Danielson:

Let’s consolidate the FACTS in the murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson.

These are only the things I know for sure.

No theorizing.

It was a planned, premeditated sectarian assassination carried out by a death squad of six active participants.

It’s not possible to know if there were more people in addition to the four males and two females.

Read the whole thing. And realize this is why it is very important to keep out of the cities, especially Democrat-controlled cities, and stay away from Antifa. They are being actively protected by sympathetic state and local authorities and their actions have been sanctioned; there is no point in mass public demonstrations and even passing confrontations could put you at risk of a similar operation.

You do not know your enemy, so don’t fail Sun Tzu 101 by putting yourself in a situation where you are as likely to lose as to win.

Antifa is playing for keeps. You are not. So don’t engage.

Busting the Boogaloos

It’s really rather remarkable that Team Soros and the media have actually managed to concoct a narrative that is less convincing than an oft-seen meme. After all, everyone even remotely familiar with the Alt-Right Revolutionary Movement knows that Sammy Hide is the real leader of the Boogaloo Bois.

The Boogaloo movement is a loosely organized network of anti-government extremists who advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, and predict and hope for an impending civil war, which they refer to as ‘Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo,’ a reference to the title of the 1984 sequel to the film Breakin’.

Heinlein didn’t foresee the half of it when he wrote about the Crazy Years.

Reality check

 Four armed veterans, including a decorated Marine, were shocked to find themselves tactically outmaneuvered by Antifa in Portland:

In hindsight it was stupid on our part, I had no idea that they were like that. If it had been a full-blown riot we would not have gone. Bottom line, man, if you had ever given me a scenario like this and said hey, you’re sober, and you have a gun, and somebody is hitting you with a bat and throwing rocks at you that could kill you or put you in a coma, you try to get away but they cut you off with a convoy of vehicles and the assault starts again. They impede your movement and beat you with bats…

Would you shoot?

I’d be like, yeah what fucking planet are you from?

But in all the training that I’ve been through my life, I’ve never been in one where in the first five seconds of the scenario you’re blinded with a strobe light and sprayed with pepper spray…. That changes everything. They were throwing these rocks from 15 feet back in the crowd, you couldn’t see who the fuck through it, etc. things like that…. It’s just a good talking point for guys that carry concealed, but you need to think through all these different scenarios.

It got way worse after that video ended, they chased us for 11 city blocks. They had a convoy of about 25 vehicles that cut us off at the next intersection, They had scouts on the corner with radios, they had a drone following us, they had a bull horn calling us Nazis, and the crowd was following a red strobe light that was up in the air on a stick, so they would announce Nazis and then people would follow the red strobe light, That video is just the beginning, I’ve got a fucking fractured hand from a baton, everyone of us has black and blue bruises up and down their legs and back, I had a guy spit in my face from 6 inches away, call me a pussy and a coward for not doing anything about it, and then tell me that he was going to find where I live, rape my mother, rape my children in front of me and then kill me.

First, the operational level of war is about logistics, not tactics. Second, the enemy always gets a vote. Neither the Boomers confident in their tacticool AR-15 rifles nor the self-reliant GenXers with their concealed 5-shot .357 revolvers have any idea what they’re actually likely to find themselves up against.

Note that these Patriots were sufficiently experienced to run rather than fight when they found themselves facing more than they could handle. Note as well that the police believe themselves to be in over their heads.

Not your father’s Dow Jones

This sort of regular reshuffling is why there is no point tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or any other stock market index, over time:

Exxon is being kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, where it has had a place since 1928. The reason: the Dow needed to make space for other, more valuable companies – and Apple’s stock split, CBS News reports.

The change will be effective on August 31.

Exxon, which was the oldest member of the index for the last two years after Dow removed GE, has been one of the most valuable companies in the US and the world for decades. That is until Big Tech showed up and began changing the world, its stock reflecting this change by swelling market caps.

Energy, which featured solidly on the index and in people’s lives a few decades ago, is being booted out by technology – Exxon’s replacement on the DJIA is a software company, Salesforce.

It was the realization that stock market numbers simply were not what I had been taught they were that first set me upon the path of becoming a stock market contrarian. The annual turnover in the NASDAQ is often on the order of five percent, which renders comparisons from one year to the next, let alone to previous decades, entirely meaningless.

Bet at the casino if you like, so long as you understand that it is no more “investing” than playing the slots at Caesar’s Palace.

Lessons learned

 A security professional shares some observations of his surveillance of Antifa-organized “protests” and their security and counter-surveillance teams:

SOME LESSONS LEARNED

So what are the lessons for patriots?

  • The protests are organized by a central organization.
  • They have trained and professional security teams.
  • They actively conduct counter-surveillance.
  • Park sufficiently far enough distance away to discourage anyone following, and walk in.
  • They are completely willing to use arms and force.
  • The presence of body armor indicates a willingness to use violence.
  • Blending in is far better than direct confrontation.
  • Have a fully stocked and ready first aid kit, such as a BearFAK.
  • Do I believe there will be a time when confrontation is needed? Absolutely.

However, let’s be smart and gather intelligence slowly and carefully first.

CONTRIVED ESCALATION

As a follow-up, after I observed one protest in Detroit, my friend Ethan came out of the shadows and made a Twitter post that the Detroit Police had tried to run him over, complete with video.   I was there. They surrounded the police cars and began beating on them, trying to force the police to use deadly force or hit them with the cars. The entire situation was a set-up designed to produce a new incident to create more tension and protests.

Be prepared for many more of these protests as the election nears.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they had overwatch via drones and spotters going before long, if they don’t already.  

An ambush in Portland

This picture makes it perfectly clear that Jay Danielson, the Trump supporter shot and killed in Portland, was not only murdered, he was targeted by a group of people working in concert to kill him. The picture shows how the spotter directly behind Pappas is giving direction to the shooter, Michael Reinoehl, who is already drawing his gun and stepping out from his hiding place despite not having a line-of-sight to his target.

AC has considerably more on the subject, which may explain why the Portland police are looking for information concerning the man with his arm around the woman with the striped dress behind and to the right of Pappas. This tends to raise the question, why was Danielson targeted in the first place? The level of preparation involved suggests that it wasn’t merely because he was wearing MAGA gear that night.

The observable fact is that Antifa is a highly organized and well-funded terrorist organization, which is why the MAGA patriots have been reliably outmaneuvered despite being better armed and having better individual combat capabilities. See: The Hero Kyle Rittenhouse. Antifa is engaging in active 4GW while the MAGA forces are occupied in failing Sun Tzu 101 and failing it badly. That being said, Antifa doesn’t actually understand 4GW, which is why they keep failing on the moral level and thereby losing despite their tactical and operational successes.
Antifa tactical units are organized into standard ‘company sturctrure’ of up to 20 individual soldiers under the immediate control of a comany commander. While there are ‘special units’, most notable the ‘reconnaissance & coordination’ teams of bicyclists, the base of the C&C structure for Antifa is the company.
Company commanders are ‘first lieutenants’ and may be identified in the field by their actions within the group, and frequently by possession of DX SDR units of some form. These ‘duplex (send/receive) software-defined radio’ units will be small, and most probably attached to a smart phone. It is through the SDRs that the encrypted commands are passed to operational units. On arrest, 1st Lieutenants have been observed discarding their identifying equipment as well as destroying their phones.First Lieutenants can also be identified as being the local hub for bicycle traffic. In observations of rioting/looting activity, particularly with long-distance videos of quality, bicyclists can clearly be seen reporting to 1st Lieutenants and even seeking them out in the mob. For this activity, bicyclists have been noted to employ ‘proximate apps’ to locate their units & commanders.
The Anitfa field orgnaization has up to 4 companies reporting to a ‘captain (coordinator)’. Antifa Captains may be identified by common actions & equipment. Captains are ‘free floating’ within the mob movement, but will always be associated with increased bicycle traffic as well as ’emblems’ of authority/command. These emblems include sepcific types & shapes of video camera gear. Antifa soldiers are trained to center on the emblems of both 1st Lieutentant as well as Captains. Some of the Captains have been observed pulling their command together by holding up the long lens video camera overhead while running a pattern of flashes from the light bars. These are swept around the mob & new organization results.
Captains control and coordinate their company commanders by use of the SDR devides & will be observed in the field speaking into throat microphones while receiving by ear plugs or in-built headphones in their helmets. So far, all identified captains have been observed to be wearing some form of short coverage helmets. These appear to be adapted from the forms used by rock climbers. Captains will also be indentified by the apps loaded on their phones, the SDR units,
In field actions, captains can be most frequently spotted by their movements coordinating 1st lieutenants. Their most often observed task is enforcing discipline during the riots. In video footage of the day time looting in CA, the captains can be observed running up to enforce movement of specific companies that had been bogged down in looting, rather than attending to the mission being directed by the captain. In such incidents the first action of the captain is to force the soldiers attention on the video camera being waved around. Once recognition of rank is obtained, the captains can be seen pushing & forcing Antifa soldiers to specific actions, including pointing out their 1st Lieutenants. Captains have also been observed directing companies to attack specific locations they were identifying from maps on their phones. Looting has been preplanned for specific strategic and tactical goals as has been observed with the complex Antifa C&C actions at the looting of the Melrose high end Art store in CA.
In the field, Antifa C&C structure can be observed to include a ‘Colonel’ rank. These Colonel Antifa commanders are identified by being always accompanied by a ‘squad’ of up to half company strength used to control and protect the Colonel within the mob movements. Colonels have been identified as their supporting soldiers created paths for them through active riot areas. Other identifiers include near constant attendance by bicyclists, many of whom have ‘rolling command centers’ of digital & other equipment on racks on the bikes. As with Captains, the Colonels will also most frequently be seen wearing helmets, many with antenna off the back. These are part of the encrypted SDR systems that have been found to be hotspots of radio activity during riots. Antifa relies heavily on digital equipment, but other than minor levels of encryption, appears to be unsophisticated in wider applications, nor do they appear to be aware of their vulnerability to location by EMF triangulation.
The Antifa command and control structure, as so far observed, does not expose any levels higher than Colonel to visibility. All the ‘General’ level field officers have so far only been observed in vehicles being used as coordination centers. These have been noted to be extensively modified with electronic support systems.
The structure of Antifa in the field most closely resembles the ‘color’ revolutions created by the CIA. The tactics employed so far in these Antifa field actions have very simiular targets & tactics as was observed as far back in time as the Viet Nam conflict, and in other arenas in which the CIA created wars and destabilized regimes.

Anti-American propaganda

 The Trump administration is targeting the anti-American academic propaganda that has metastasized in the Federal bureaucracy:

The president has been asked numerous times if he believes that systemic racism is a problem in America. His answer has been no, and a clearer picture of his thinking comes in the form of a memo authored by OMB Director Russ Vought.

“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” Vought writes in the memo, obtained first by RCP.

“For example, according to press reports, employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism,’” he continued.

As the country grapples with questions of race and equality in policing, Trump has ordered that any programing relating to “white privilege” end immediately. According to the White House, such ideas are “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”

The crossover between academic theory and federal work training programs, Vought writes, is “counter to the fundamental beliefs for which our nation has stood since its inception” and also “engenders division and resentment within the federal workforce.”

“We cannot accept our employees receiving training that seeks to undercut our core values as Americans and drive division within our workforce,” the memo to all federal agencies reads.

Agencies are instructed to identify any contracts or agency spending that funds programs teaching federal employees about critical race theory and/or white privilege. This includes, RCP has learned, any effort to teach or suggest that either “the United States is an inherently racist or evil country” or that “any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.”

When it comes to cutting out the corporate cancer, the President wields a very big blade. It’s good to see that he intends to use it. 

Salvaging Fukuyama

No, Virginia, Fukuyama was most certainly not right all along.

Liberalism, for Fukuyama, if severed from its pre-liberal roots, is destined to fail. “Stable democracy re­quires a sometimes irrational democratic culture,” he cautions, “and a spontaneous civil society growing out of pre-liberal traditions.” Indeed, there is in The Last Man, a striking distaste for the blandness of liberalism, an aesthetic and moral disgust with the world liberal principles has brought into being that goes beyond conservatism into reaction.

“Liberal economic princi­ples provide no support for traditional communities; quite the contrary, they tend to atomize and separate people,” Fukuyama warns. Contrary to the assertions of absolute equality which, at least rhetorically, govern the liberal order, Fukuyama argues that if liberalism attempts “to outlaw differences between the ugly and beautiful, or pretend that a person with no legs is not just the spiritual but the physical equal of someone whole in body, then the argument will in the fullness of time become self-refuting, just as communism was.”

Like any 21st century internet reactionary, Fukuyama pronounces that “a civilization devoid of anyone who wanted to be recognized as better than others, and which did not affirm in some way the essential health and goodness of such a desire, would have little art or literature, music or intellectual life. It would be incompe­tently governed, for few people of quality would choose a life of public service. It would not have much in the way of economic dynamism; its crafts and industries would be pedestrian and un­changing, and its technology second-rate.”

Furthermore, Fukuyama predicts, in a startlingly prescient passage foreshadowing the rise of the 21st century civilisation-state, “perhaps most crit­ically, it would be unable to defend itself from civilizations that were infused with a greater spirit of megalothymia, whose citizens were ready to forsake comfort and safety and who were not afraid to risk their lives for the sake of dominion”.

To Fukuyama’s credit, he belatedly realized that he was incorrect. To his demerit, instead of honestly and openly admitting his errors, he simply tried to quietly correct them. His most recent book, an attempt to get out in front of the nationalist trend, is virtually unreadable because he clearly does not wish to give up on the neo-liberal order whose triumph he proclaimed and whose interests he defends.

Fukuyama is still warning about “threats to liberal democracy”. He is still trying to breathe life into a corpse. He is still selling civic nationalism as a replacement for authentic nationalism. He still isn’t admitting that liberal democracy is dead because liberal democracy was always a collection of pretty rhetorical lies constructed upon the foundation of a false philosophy.