No one knows anything

Especially the so-called experts:

The idea for the most important study ever conducted of expert predictions was sparked in 1984, at a meeting of a National Research Council committee on American-Soviet relations. The psychologist and political scientist Philip E. Tetlock was 30 years old, by far the most junior committee member. He listened intently as other members discussed Soviet intentions and American policies. Renowned experts delivered authoritative predictions, and Tetlock was struck by how many perfectly contradicted one another and were impervious to counterarguments.

Tetlock decided to put expert political and economic predictions to the test. With the Cold War in full swing, he collected forecasts from 284 highly educated experts who averaged more than 12 years of experience in their specialties. To ensure that the predictions were concrete, experts had to give specific probabilities of future events. Tetlock had to collect enough predictions that he could separate lucky and unlucky streaks from true skill. The project lasted 20 years, and comprised 82,361 probability estimates about the future.

The result: The experts were, by and large, horrific forecasters. Their areas of specialty, years of experience, and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. They were bad at short-term forecasting and bad at long-term forecasting. They were bad at forecasting in every domain. When experts declared that future events were impossible or nearly impossible, 15 percent of them occurred nonetheless. When they declared events to be a sure thing, more than one-quarter of them failed to transpire. As the Danish proverb warns, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”

As it happens, I’ve occasionally taken part in the project as one of the forecasters, although I haven’t even logged in to the system for years. The one time I was moderately active, my team was in second place, although that was largely thanks to one guy who was easily the best in our group. If I recall correctly, I was better than the average forecaster, but not in the top ten percent. I still get emails from time to time asking me about the prospects for a Russian attack on Estonia before September and so forth, but I lost interest in it pretty quickly.

Anyhow, the article is right. Everyone is wrong about the future and most people are actually much more reliable as negative predictors, which I interpret as meaning that events proceed in a non-linear manner that is contrary to normal human expectations. That’s my best guess as to why the future is so hard for everyone to predict, or even anticipate.

Rule by immigrant

Tucker Carlson correctly identifies the fundamental failure of the US immigration system that was created by the confluence of immigration and excessive democracy:

For the left, whether the country benefits is not the point. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar––herself a symbol of America’s failed immigration system if there ever was one, someone who hates this country coming here at public expense––spent yesterday demanding the abolition of ICE, the decriminalization of illegal immigration itself, and an end to all deportation programs. She demands open borders, the unlimited arrival of anyone who wants to come to America, whether they have anything to contribute or not, and by the way you get to pay for it.

Tom Wolfe saw this coming at the turn of the century. I doubt it escaped his attention that the disastrous 1965 Naturalization Act that destroyed the USA was championed by immigrants and the children of immigrants.

Did anybody high or low look for a Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi to create a new tribute on the order of the Statue of Liberty for the nation that in the twentieth century, even more so than in the nineteenth, opened her arms to people from all over the globe—to Vietnamese, Thais, Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong, Ethiopians, Albanians, Senegalese, Guyanese, Eritreans, Cubans, as well as everybody else—and made sure they enjoyed full civil rights, including the means to take political power in a city the size of Miami if they could muster the votes?

And as soon as American immigration restrictions were relaxed in the 1960s, people of every land, every color, every religion, people from Africa, Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, began pouring into the United States.
– Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up

The Syrian false flag

Don’t believe any of the new stories about Iranian “attacks” that are now beginning to appear as the neocons continue banging their idiot war drums. All of these purported justifications for military action in the Middle East and the Gulf are fraudulent and they have been for decades. It has now been reported that the “poison gas attacks” supposedly conducted by Syrian government forces were no more real than Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

A huge international news story broke last week, but I doubt you will hear about it anywhere else. It seems very likely that the decision we, France and the USA made in April 2018 to bomb Syria was based on a mistake as big as the fictional weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international body which examines alleged incidents of the use of poison gas, has just confirmed to me that a devastating leaked document from its Dutch HQ is genuine.

The document, written by one of the OPCW’s most experienced investigators, shows that it is highly unlikely that gas canisters found at the scene of an alleged poison gas attack in Douma, Syria, were actually dropped from helicopters – as has been widely believed and claimed. The claim is crucial to the case for bombing Syria. A copy of the leaked document can be found on my blog on Mail Online.

Yet the OPCW’s official report on the event made no mention of any such doubts. What is going on? The OPCW is a valuable organisation, containing many fine people, with a noble purpose, but has it been placed under pressure, or even hijacked, by political forces which seek a justification for military intervention in Syria?

Given that a decision between war or peace, affecting the whole planet, could one day hang on its judgments, I think the world is entitled to an inquiry into what is happening behind its closed doors.

The treason committed by the FBI isn’t the only treason that has been committed in the last twenty years. There are a whole host of warmongers in Washington DC whose lies are directly responsible for tens of thousands of American dead and wounded. And the inevitable false flags directed at Iran are the one thing that have real potential to derail the 2020 Trumpslide, but only if President Trump is foolish enough to fall for them:

Asked this week if the U.S. was going to war with Iran, Trump said simply: “I hope not.” Aware of the potential backlash from within his party, the president is trying to play down the possibility of hostilities. He held the door open for negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and malign activities in the region amid reports that he was pushing back against his more hawkish advisers’ preference for a military solution.

Prominent Trump supporters offered a pointed warning on Friday about the prospect of a new war, which they view as a direct violation of his “America First” pledge.

“It would be a disaster for him and for the country getting into another military engagement in the Middle East,” said Corey Stewart, who led Trump’s 2016 campaign in Virginia. “It does concern me that the president has (national security adviser John) Bolton and a lot of these neocons advising him. That’s clearly not what he ran on and what most Americans want.”

No more war in the Middle East. It is neither America’s concern nor America’s business. If the New Palestinians want war with Iran, then they can go and fight it themselves. It would certainly be entertaining to see Ben Shapiro, Bill Kristol, and Max Boot go up against the Revolutionary Guard.

Hey, it worked for Wakanda

The US Army’s officer class is more vibrant than ever:

Thirty-four black women are expected to graduate from West Point next week.

That will be the largest class of African-American women to graduate together in the military academy’s lengthy history, West Point spokesman Frank Demaro said.

“Last year’s graduating class had 27,” said Demaro. “And the expectation is next year’s class will be even larger than this year’s.”

Last year, the school appointed Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams as its first black superintendent. In 2017, the academy for the first time selected an African-American woman, Simone Askew, to serve at the top of the chain of command for cadets.

As Steve Sailer noted, “the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians must be quaking in their boots.” Meanwhile, women are improving the U.S. Navy’s submarine service:

Sailors aboard a US submarine created a “rape list,” ranking female crewmembers and detailing sexual acts they wanted to perform on them, a report says. The boat’s commander was sacked following a probe into the case.

Just two year after the USS Florida became the second navy submarine to integrate enlisted women, a “rape list” was shared among its crew, news outlet Military.com wrote, citing an investigation report, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

The probe is said to have discovered that “lewd and sexist comment and jokes were tolerated” on board, while trust among the crewmembers and senior officers “was nonexistent.”

Well, who needs that boat commander anyhow. If there is anything that is a dime-a-dozen and easily replaced, it is a nuclear-missile armed submarine captain. I cannot wait to see the US Navy put a black woman in command of one of its nuclear submarines. The only question is whether she will a) accidentally nuke a foreign country, b) sink the sub, or c) accidentally nuke a foreign country while the sub is sinking, before d) the crew mutinies.

Catholicism is not paganism

I have no idea who this “Red Pill Religion” moron is or what he is smoking with regards to my theological opinions:

Red Pill Religion
Vox Day, Rockin MrE, and others these days suggest Catholic Christianity is “Pagan.” Or even that the Trinity is “pagan.” Do those who make this suggestion know what they’re saying, especially when they try to defend “Western Civilization?”

All we know at this point is that he is both a) an acquaintance of John C. Wright and b) a shameless liar who is observably bearing false witness against me. At no point have I ever stated, suggested, or even implied that either Catholic Christianity or the concept of the Trinity is pagan. To the contrary, note that even the link provided to my blog contains a quote from Isaac Newton which states that the concept of the Trinity dates back to Athanasius, a 4th-century Christian.

Now to be clear, the Trinity is NOT a theological concept that appears explicitly in either the Nicene Creed or the Bible. Like the Rapture and the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity is non-Scriptural theological dogma that is historical conjecture based on what appears to me to be incorrect logic applied to Scripture. And I have made my position on these extra-Biblical traditions very clear:

I have no religious regard whatsoever for the various extra-Biblical traditions of the various Christian churches, although I do respect them in the same manner I respect many of the non-religious traditions of Man. But I consider Churchian dogma such as the Trinity, the Rapture, infant baptism, transubstantiation, purgatory, female pastors, bans on alchohol and dancing, Papal infallibility, and Bishop Ussher’s historical chronology to be no more theologically legitimate or Biblically supported than I do the sale of indulgences, Dante’s geography of Hell, or Milton’s history of Lucifer’s Fall.

The fact that I believe these various traditions to be erroneous does not mean that I believe them to be pagan or even materially detrimental to the faith. After all, are we not told that every Christian, beginning with the Apostle Paul, sees the truth as though through a glass, darkly? Furthermore, as I have noted previously, what most people incorrectly believe to be the Nicene Creed is not the Nicene Creed at all, but rather, a later declaration more accurately known as the Niceno-Constanopolitan Creed, which was adopted 56 years later by a council that did not even meet in Nicaea.

In fact, it’s even possible that the later Trinitarian creed is fictitious and was produced more than a century after the original Nicene Creed. “A local council of Constantinople in 382 and the third ecumenical council (Ephesus, 431) made no mention of it, with the latter affirming the 325 creed of Nicaea as a valid statement of the faith… No extant document gives its text or makes explicit mention of it earlier than the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon in 451.”

Finally, anyone who is stupid enough to claim that my opinion has anything whatsoever to do with Arianism is either a liar or very, very stupid indeed, as the original Nicene Creed, the actual and only Nicene Creed, the Nicene Creed to which I subscribe, was adopted specifically in order to reject Arianism.

The Nicene Creed was adopted to resolve the Arian controversy, whose leader, Arius, a clergyman of Alexandria, “objected to Alexander’s (the bishop of the time) apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation”. In reply, Alexander accused Arius of denying the divinity of the Son and also of being too “Jewish” and “Greek” in his thought. Alexander and his supporters created the Nicene Creed to clarify the key tenets of the Christian faith in response to the widespread adoption of Arius’ doctrine, which was henceforth marked as heresy.

Whoever runs the Red Pill Religion channel may or may not be a Christian, but he is obviously both ignorant and untruthful. As for defending Western civilization, it should be obvious that I know considerably more about its history than he does.

Urban combat: the battle of Marawi

I remember hearing a little about this Islamic uprising in the Philippines two years ago, but I had no idea that the combat was so intense, or that it took place on such a large scale:

Marawi: a vicious urban siege

On 23 May 2017, security forces from the Philippines conducted a raid in the city of Marawi to capture an insurgent named Isnilon Hapilon—the former leader of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and self-proclaimed Emir of Islamic State in East Asia. The forces who conducted the raid reported much tougher resistance than expected. The insurgents were rapidly reinforced and quickly revealed extensive preparations throughout the city—well constructed defensive positions, concealed routes, hidden ammunition and arms caches, and an almost doctrinal urban defensive plan. The raid was repulsed, and by the end of the day the so-called Islamic State in the Philippines (IS-P) had triggered their long-laid plans to dominate the city.

Martial law was declared by President Rodrigo Duterte and a five month urban siege to regain the city commenced. The battle was pitched against a well-resourced, sophisticated enemy who had the ‘home ground advantage’. Extensive preparations had been conducted throughout the city and an intense, protracted and close-quarters battle – the likes of which has not been seen in the region in decades – became the only way to destroy the enemy and recapture the City. On 23 October, following 153 days of war, this gruelling mission was achieved.

The costs of the Battle of Marawi were high. Opinions on infrastructure damage vary but aerial imagery indicates that huge swathes of the city have been devastated by the fighting – the mass destruction flattening entire city blocks. The World Bank estimates it may take two decades to restore Marawi to its original condition. However, the true price of the battle is that paid by the people of Marawi and the lives of those fighting. 165 members of the AFoP were killed in action, with over 1,000 injured. Some reports indicate over 1,000 insurgents were killed in the siege, which also took the lives of 47 civilians. The fighting drove over 400, 000 people from their homes.

This article would make for a magnificent piece in the next volume of THERE WILL BE WAR, as it is a detailed review of the tactics utilized by the armed forces of the Philippines as well as the insurgents.

The Legend on Bane

The Legend Chuck Dixon talks about the creation of Bane, the famous Batman villain, in the second episode of Chuck Dixon on Comics. For Unauthorized subscribers only. Sadly, rumor has it that Kellen Lutz will be playing Bane in the next round of DC films, in opposition to Robert Patterson’s Batman.

Not a man of the Right

The American Right is finally beginning to grasp that Ben Shapiro is not, and never was, one of them… and he is not helping them either.

Suffice to say, Ben Shapiro was long overdue for his opportunity to be the one who gets “destroyed” in a debate. And who would’ve guessed that the occasion for his destruction would be in an interview with the septuagenarian Andrew Neil of the BBC?

And here’s the real twist: It was not even Neil who destroyed Shapiro. Rather, Shapiro “destroyed” Shapiro. And that was quite a feat.

From his ridiculous suggestion that Neil—a longtime member of the Conservative Party—is on the Left, to his pompous declaration that he is somehow superior because he is “more popular” than Neil, there is enough in the arrogance he displayed to undo him.

But rather than belabor the question of Shapiro’s childish behavior and what it says about his temper, his inability to debate anyone who’s not a blue-haired college feminist, and his unjustly inflated ego, it would be more useful to to examine what Shapiro revealed about his actual ideas, such as they are.

For even in that brief interchange before Shapiro stormed off in a rage, quite a lot was revealed about his political ideas. These are ripe for more careful examination, and that examination will demonstrate the inconsistencies within his own beliefs. In this case, his arrogance—though difficult to miss—should not overshadow how objectively wrong he is on the substance. Nor should it obscure how—in more ways than the damage that comes from such petulant displays—he is not helping the American Right.

One by one, the charlatans are being exposed. And it’s particularly interesting to observe that this well-deserved dismissal of Ben Shapiro is being delivered by one of the young college Republican men who are supposed to be his primary supporters.

It WAS treason

The President is not fooling around with the criminals in the FBI:

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!

Then again, treason can be a capital crime….