Get the story straight, guys

Newsflash: “THE US said tonight that Iran was behind the “torpedo attack” on an American-linked oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman. Both the Front Altair and the Panama-flagged Kokuka Courageous – which was reportedly bombed – burst into flames and were forced to evacuate in the troubled region this morning.”

Newsflash: ” An unexploded device, believed to be a limpet mine, was spotted on the side of one of two oil tankers attacked on Thursday in the Gulf of Oman, a U.S. official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.”

It’s going to be a little awkward if that limpet mine turns out to be of US or Israeli manufacture.

UPDATE: Even the Pentagon and the US Navy don’t buy it.

“We have no interest in engaging in a new conflict in the Middle East,” CENTCOM added. “We will defend our interests, but a war with Iran is not in our strategic interest, nor in the best interest of the international community.”

The literature we have lost

I was comparing the 1918 and 1958 editions of the first volume of the Collier Junior Classics, and one of the first things I noted was that the Introduction by Harvard University President Charles Eliot had been replaced with one by William Neilson, the former President of Smith College. I strongly suspect the following two paragraphs will suffice to explain why it was replaced:

The right selection of reading matter for children is obviously of high importance.  Some of the mythologies, Old Testament stories, fairy tales, and historical romances, on which earlier generations were accustomed to feed the childish mind, contain a great deal that is barbarous, perverse, or cruel; and to this infiltration into children’s minds, generation after generation, of immoral, cruel, or foolish ideas is probably to be attributed in part the slow ethical progress of the race.  The commonest justification of this thoughtless practice is that children do not apprehend the evil in the bad mental pictures with which we foolishly supply them; but what should we think of a mother who gave her children dirty milk or porridge, on the theory that the children would not assimilate the dirt?  Should we be less careful about mental and moral food materials?  The Junior Classics have been selected with this principle in mind, without losing sight of the fact that every developing human being needs to have a vision of the rough and thorny road over which the human race has been slowly advancing during thousands of years.

Whoever has committed to memory in childhood such Bible extracts as Genesis i, the Ten Commandments, Psalm xxiii, Matthew v, 8-12, The Lord’s Prayer, and I Corinthians xiii, such English prose as Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, Bacon’s “Essay on Truth,” and such poems as Bryant’s “Waterfowl,” Addison’s “Divine Ode,” Milton’s Sonnet on his Blindness, Wotton’s “How happy is he born or taught,” Emerson’s “Rhodora,” Holmes’s “Chambered Nautilus,” and Gray’s Elegy, and has stamped them on his brain by frequent repetition, will have set up in his mind high standards of noble thought and feeling, true patriotism, and pure religion.  He will also have laid in an invaluable store of good English.

What has happened to the former “Junior Classics” in the last 100 years is both a prelude and a microcosm of what has happened to the West as a whole. It’s something that can be seen in everything from the transition of blasphemy laws to hate speech laws and the musical descent from “The Hallelujah Chorus” to “Christmas in Hollis”. First, the Christian influence was pushed to the side, then it was removed and replaced with a focus on secular aesthetics, then the aesthetics were abandoned and the original purpose of the institution was entirely lost.

Losing the next war

The US military establishment is gradually waking up to the uncomfortable realization that victory over its primary enemies is no longer guaranteed:

For the first time in decades, it is possible to imagine the United States fighting—and possibly losing—a large-scale war with a great power. For generations of Americans accustomed to U.S. military superiority and its ability to deter major wars, the idea of armed conflict between great powers may seem highly improbable. The idea that the United States—with the most expensive armed forces in the world by a wide margin—might lose such a war would seem absolutely preposterous. Nevertheless, the possibility of war and U.S. defeat are real and growing.

Given that U.S. armed forces’ last major conventional combat operations were the massively lopsided victories against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and 2003, many Americans might be wondering how this could come to pass. This report makes the case that one salient issue is that the American way of war—the implicit and explicit mental framework for U.S. military strategy and operations—that coalesced after the Gulf War is no longer valid.

China and Russia have spent almost two decades studying the current American way of war. While the Department of Defense (DoD) has taken its military superiority for granted and focused on defeating nonstate adversaries, China and Russia have been devising strategies and developing new concepts and weapons to defeat the United States in a war should the need arise. They have offset their relative weakness versus the United States by using time and geography to their advantage and by focusing their weapons- and concept-development efforts on finding ways to attack vulnerable nodes in U.S. military operations. The goal of these strategies and concepts is to create a plausible theory of victory whereby China or Russia avoid a “fair fight” with the Joint Force and could therefore defeat the United States and its allies and partners in a regional war. These Chinese and Russian strategies, which once seemed implausible or far in the future, are beginning to pay off. They are shifting military balances in key regions and pushing allies and partners to reconsider U.S. security guarantees.

I’ve been commenting on this for the last few years, and both Martin van Creveld and William S. Lind have been doing so for much longer, so it’s interesting to see the way in which the establishment is finally beginning to admit the obvious.

If you look at the various elements that went into the US victory in the two World Wars and the Cold War, the most striking observation is that virtually none of those elements apply anymore. Whether one considers the potential industrial base, the national demographics, or the geography, it is readily apparent that a) the United States is in the position of WWII-era Germany and b) China is in the position of the WWII-era USA.

Forget paying for Fake News

CNN can’t even get people to watch it for free:

The far-left CNN’s ratings death spiral marched into last week as the fake news network lost one-third of its primetime audience and a breathtaking 55 percent of its demo viewers. When compared to this same week last year,  CNN also lost 21 percent of its total day viewers.

How bad is this?

Well, you can’t blame a slow news week because not only was President Trump on an overseas trip, but as you will see, CNN stands completely alone with this massive audience implosion.

By comparison, in primetime, MSNBC and Fox News only lost four percent of their viewers compared to last year and seven and five percent of their total day viewers, respectively.

What’s the answer to this death spiral? No doubt it will be MORE FAKE NEWS!

False flag, take two

There is literally zero chance that Iran was involved in any of the six recent attacks in the Gulf of Oman:

The Middle East is on high alert today after two oil tankers were hit by explosions in the Gulf of Oman. One of the ships, the MT Front Altair, caught fire after a suspected torpedo attack and Iran says it has sunk – although the ship’s Norwegian owner has denied the claim.

The Altair and the Kokuka Courageous were evacuated after sending distress signals – picked up by the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet – with 44 sailors rescued.

Britain has urged ‘extreme caution’ amid high tensions in the Middle East, just weeks after four tankers were attacked in a mysterious act of sabotage off the UAE coast which Washington believes was the work of Iran…. Iran said its search and rescue teams had picked up the 44 sailors from the two ships and taken them to the port of Jask. Norway has advised its ships to keep out of Iranian waters while Tehran has called the explosions ‘suspicious’.

It is considerably more likely that the US Navy or the Israeli Navy were involved, although the most likely explanation is bombs planted by independent contractors. The weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were fake. The poison gas bombings in Syria were fake. These attacks in the Gulf are fake too.

If Iran decides to attack shipping in the Gulf, there will be dozens of ships sinking, including warships. These little acts of sabotage are obvious false flags conducted by those trying to provoke war between the US and Iran.

UPDATE: It doesn’t appear either Iran or Japan are buying it:

Iran’s foreign minister has labeled the reported attack on two “Japan-related” oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman as “suspicious,” occurring just as Japanese Prime Minister Abe came to Tehran for major talks. Expressing his misgivings on Twitter, Javad Zarif noted that the incidents on the two vessels on Thursday, one of which had been reportedly struck by a torpedo, had occurred as Abe sat down for “extensive and friendly” discussions with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

This may have actually been more of a warning to Japan than an attempt to bang the war drum.

Unauthorized documentaries

On tonight’s Darkstream, I had the privilege of announcing that Unauthorized.TV is now presenting documentaries, beginning with Reclaiming the Blade, an intriguing documentary from Galatia Films about the history of the sword. It’s available for all subscribers and we plan to add one new documentary a month. We’re also producing the first Unauthorized documentary, which we plan to release on Unauthorized this fall.

If you’re a subscriber you can watch Reclaiming the Blade by clicking on the image below or by selecting Catalog/Books, Films & Comics/Documentaries.

The lawless Parliament

The desperate Remain Speaker is demonstrating that there is no law in the current British Parliament:

Remainer MPs will mount an all-out bid to block No Deal today after Speaker John Bercow bent parliamentary rules to help them.

A cross-party motion being voted on this afternoon would effectively seize control from the government – and pave the way for a ban on the UK leaving without an agreement.

The Labour-backed move is seemingly timed to coincide with Boris Johnson’s Tory leadership campaign launch – after he vowed to force through Brexit by the end of October at all costs.

Mr Bercow has been accused of ‘constitutional vandalism’ for allowing the Opposition to table a business motion – which can usually only be done by the government.

If it is passed, a Bill will be brought forward within weeks that could make it illegal to suspend parliament to force a No Deal – a proposal mooted by some Tory hopefuls. Rebels say they could broaden the legislation to ban crashing out altogether.

The move to wrest control of Parliamentary business from the Government has the support of former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin, as well as all the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Greens.

One would have thought that the Members of Parliament would have learned the importance of working within the confines of the law from the assassination of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016. If the politicians refuse to follow the law, why on Earth would they expect the people to do so?

Boris Johnson should put a stop to this Parliamentary lawlessness as soon as he becomes the Conservative Party leader by forging a Leave alliance with Nigel Farage, then calling for a General Election that would be followed by a Brexit-Conservative parliament.

UPDATE: the unlawful Remainer gambit to block No Deal Brexit failed anyhow, 309-298.

No one wants Fake News

The media appears to have finally converged itself into a corner:

The mass migration of advertising to U.S. technology giants such as Facebook, Google and Amazon has hammered revenues while more than half the world’s population now has access to news via an internet connection.

But will people actually pay for news?

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report that most people would not pay for online news and that there had been only a small increase in the proportion of people willing to do so in the last six years.

Even among those who do pay, there is “subscription fatigue” – many are tired of being asked to pay for so many different subscriptions. Many will opt for films or music rather than pay for news. So some media companies will fail.

“Much of the population is perfectly happy with the news that they can access for free and even amongst those who are willing to pay, the majority are only willing to sign up for one subscription,” Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, director of the Reuters Institute, said by telephone.

“A lot of the public is really alienated from a lot of the journalism that they see – they don’t find it particularly trustworthy, they don’t find it particularly relevant and they don’t find it leaves them in a better place.”

Why would anyone pay to be told what isn’t true? The advertising model propped up the mainstream media and allowed it to fold, spindle, and otherwise mutilate the truth because there was no direct link between the news consumer and the news provider. Now that Google and Facebook have broken the advertising model, and Amazon has taught people to go direct to the source, the ABCNNBCBS cabal is discovering that they don’t actually have any real fans.

People will pay for quality content. People will pay for truthful content. Unauthorized is proof of that. But they won’t pay to be insulted, mocked, despised, and deceived.

“If they want to convince people to pay for their journalism then they must convince people that the journalism they publish has value for them, for the public.”

Good luck with that.

They left their Ebola in San Francisco

It goes nicely with the sewage on the streets:

U.S. Cities Overwhelmed With Numbers of Illegal Migrants Arriving From Ebola-Stricken Countries
Some U.S. cities are becoming overwhelmed with the number of illegal African migrants arriving from Ebola-stricken countries, with Portland Maine complaining that they are beyond capacity.

Large groups of migrants are arriving from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which has been hit by one of the biggest ebola outbreaks in history, with 2,000 recorded cases in the last 10 months.

Border Patrol officials said that 500 people from African countries had been arrested by Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector in Texas alone in the six days after May 30. Hundreds of the migrants are being sent to a city-owned shelter in San Francisco.

Congress should pass a federal law saying all immigrants, legal and illegal, must be divided between New York City, Washington DC, and San Francisco. Imagine how much their local economies will benefit!

Bringing back the old books

As part of our mission to save the remnants of Western Civilization, we are seriously considering having Castalia publish print editions of certain public domain books. The idea is to crowdfund each project, thus making sure we don’t waste any time, effort, and expense on books that no one wants.

Unless, of course, I just really want to do that particular series….

Anyhow, the first candidate is the Collier Junior Classics, as it’s something I consider a must for every homeschooling family. We’d probably also look very hard at a Great Books series, as well as some of the more important military history works.

Let me know if this concept is of genuine interest to you, and what books would be of sufficient interest to you to back the crowdfunding of them.