Tag: media

He hit send?

An incredulous Spacebunny asked the obvious question after Shaun King made the quixotic decision to email the indefatigable Milo about his attempt to bury the skeletons in his social media past:

Shaun King Just Sent Me The Greatest Email Any Journalist Has Ever Received

Here is a set of responses Shaun King just sent me after I asked why, following our report today, he was deleting thousands of tweets from his social media profile.

Shaun King, readers will recall, is a salaried employee of the New York Daily News, where he is employed as “senior justice writer.” In the email, he claims:

  • Volunteers from 150 countries are manually deleting every one of the 70,000 tweets King has sent
  • King has spoken to “legal counsel” at “several British media companies” all of whom told him I have “actual psychological challenges/difficulties”
  • I am “strangely obsessed with him” and that I “love, hate, worship and despise” him
  • “White supremacy” drives NRA gun policies
  • “Racial symbolism is present throughout the world” … including “depicting Jesus as an effeminate European”
  • The “game of pool” is another example of “racial symbolism”
  • I am “obsessed” with King’s children because I “want kids but know that you would be such a terrible father that you choose instead to be obsessed with Shaun’s kids”

Presented without further comment — because I am currently struggling to form words. Except to note that King’s latest strategy of responding in the third person, making vague allusions to an “administrative team” who apparently helps him out with his email, is almost as funny as his claim that people from 150 different countries are currently logged in to his Twitter account manually deleting every tweet he has ever sent…

I can’t say I’m not a little disappointed. But I hope that the photo montage I sent of my “Burt Reynolds on a bearskin rug” impression in honor of Milo 100k still managed to make the top ten.

Did I not say as much?

I have never claimed to be a conservative or a Republican. For some reason, a fair number of people seem to have trouble grasping this. But the real self-proclaimed conservatives don’t seem to have any trouble doing so, such as Mr. Marcus from yesterday’s post concerning his Federalist article.

David Marcus ‏@BlueBoxDave
So @voxday did a portrait of me, the good news is he disavows conservatism as there is no place in it for him.

Vox Day @voxday
You’re absolutely right. Unlike conservatives, I have principles beyond “don’t get called racist” and “incoming, surrender!”

David Marcus ‏@BlueBoxDave
Good luck with your American Nationalist movement. I can’t wait to see the outfits.

Vox Day @voxday
It’s fascinating to see conservatives devolve to imitating the left. You’ve got nothing they don’t do better. #cuckservative

David Marcus ‏@BlueBoxDave
Opposing racial discrimination is not a leftist position. It’s an American position.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
That’s absolute ahistorical bullshit. Anti-racism is anti-nationalism. Which, by definition, is anti-American. Your position is opposed to Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton, just for starters.

He didn’t read the book

SJWAL didn’t reach New Zealand in time to prevent one gentleman from cutting his company’s throat by apologizing:

On the company’s Facebook page Mr Garratt offered his apologies.

“We apologise to all those who have been offended by our sign. It was very poor judgment on our part.”

In an earlier post, he said there was no offence intended.

“It was not our intention to offend any people in the community … Cait is more then [sic] welcome to stay at my house with my family anytime. I will have a wine or a beer with her quite happily and it would be an honour.”

Rebecca Jones, the mother of a 9-year-old transgender boy, was not satisfied and wanted a “face-to-face apology”.

“He seems to think a donation is enough. It is not,” she said. “I want an apology to my 9-year-old son AND a donation, and the transgender community is behind me on this.”

Ms Jones said he was just trying to “save his reputation”.

Well, he’s not going to be able to do so. When you find yourself in a position of repeatedly apologizing to child abusers – and as Camille Paglia says, treating a child as if he is “transgender” is child abuse – that should be your first sign that your strategy is less than entirely effective.

What part of NEVER APOLOGIZE is hard to understand? When someone comes to you and demands an apology, there is only one correct response: “No, absolutely not.”

An apology to SJWs is no different than a confession to the police. It is not the end of the matter, it is something to be delivered to the prosecution.

Black Friday shooter

An active shooter at a Planned Parenthood Chase Bank in Colorado. 9 victims reported so far.

An active shooter was reported Friday near Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.

The office is at 3480 Centennial Blvd.

Colorado Springs police, El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado State Patrol officers are responding to the scene.

3:17 p.m. UPDATE

Police confirm that officers and the suspect have exchanged gunfire inside the Planned Parenthood building.

The president of Planned Parenthood Vicki Cowart issues a statement: “At this time, our concern is for the safety of our patients, staff and law enforcement.”

One would assume it is abortion-related, but the fact that the shooter engaged with the police makes me wonder if it might be something else.

UPDATE: It looks like I was correct to be skeptical of the narrative.

So once again, the media sets the narrative and get exposed for the frauds they are. The original target of this shooter wasn’t Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, it was a Chase Bank. 

You can just hear all the network executives telling everyone to stand down, there’s no need to send any talking heads out to Colorado Springs.

UPDATE II: Now the police are saying that while the shooter was in the Planned Parenthood building, “the connection between the shooting and Planned Parenthood was not clear.” Also, none of the victims appear to be Planned Parenthood staff.

Counter-Currents interview

A transcript of my interview with Greg Johnson of Counter-Currents:

GJ: How would you describe your political philosophy and who are some of the intellectual influences on its formation?

VD: I would describe myself as a Christian Western Civilizationist. I’ve been a libertarian for a long time. I was briefly even a card-carrying libertarian. But I was always more of a small L libertarian rather than a capital L one. Mostly because there were certain amounts of libertarian dogma that didn’t quite work out in the real world. Then as time went on it became readily apparent to me as I traveled around the world, as I lived in different countries, as I learned different languages, it became apparent to me that the abstract ideals that we often tend to follow in America in particular are not really relevant to most of the world.

I was being interviewed by a reporter from Le Monde in Paris about two months ago and he had absolutely no idea how to even describe the concept of libertarian to his readers. That’s in France, which is at least Western civilization and so forth. Trying to have a conversation about that sort of concept in Japan or China is just totally meaningless. So, that’s when I really became more cognizant of the importance of the nationalist element.

I think that just as Stalin found it necessary to modify international socialism for the Russians and just as Mao found it necessary to modify international socialism for the Chinese, it’s necessary for every other ideology to also understand that there are nationalistic, tribalistic limits to the abstract application of those ideologies.

GJ: That’s interesting. I’m an ex-libertarian myself. I was not a card-carrying libertarian, but I subscribed to Reason magazine and read lots of Ayn Rand and Hayek and Mises mostly when I was an undergraduate. There were things that led me away from that.

Two books in particular. First, I read Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions and the other was Céline’s Journey to the End of the Night, which basically destroyed my liberal optimism about humanity.

What are some of the things that you think don’t work about libertarianism? You said that some of the abstract libertarian dogmas just don’t work, so specifically what are those?

VD: Well, the most important one, as we are now seeing, is the free movement of peoples. What really changed my thinking and it was a process, you know, it wasn’t an immediate thing, although it was a fairly quick process now that I think about it . . . I grew up on Milton Friedman. My father had me reading Free to Choose when I was fairly young, and so I was a big free trade dogmatist and around the time of NAFTA and all that sort of thing I could recognize some of the problems but I bought into the line that the problem is that it’s not real free trade. It’s a free trade agreement, but it’s not real free trade.

Then I read a really good book by Ian Fletcher, and he directly addressed the concept of Ricardo’s comparative advantage, and he really destroyed it. I think he had something like seven major problems with it, and that got me interested, so I started looking into it. I’m very fortunate in that I have a pretty active and intelligent blog readership and they really like to engage and they have absolutely no respect for me so they’re quite happy to argue with me.

Most of them were free-traders as well so we ended up having an on-going two or three week debate about free trade, and it got pretty detailed to the extent that I went through Henry Hazlitt’s entire chapter on free trade just to look at it critically rather than just reading through it and accepting it. Just looking at the arguments. I found that the free trade arguments were just full of holes. Not just Ricardo’s, but also Hazlitt’s. That’s what got me realizing that Ricardo’s argument was totally dependent on the idea that capital could move but labor couldn’t and so what that got me thinking about was the fact that a libertarian society – even if we could convince everyone in the United States that libertarianism was the correct way to approach things – would rapidly be eliminated by the free movement of peoples as people from non-libertarian societies, people from cultures where they have absolutely no ideals that are in common with the Founding Fathers or with libertarian ideals, would rapidly be able to come in and end that libertarian society in much the same way that the Californians have gone into Colorado and completely changed the political climate there.

So, Ian Fletcher’s book is what really triggered that whole shift in thought process. Now I look at the concept of the free movement of peoples, free trade, and those sorts of concepts with a considerable amount of skepticism. Of course, in Europe we’re seeing some of those problems related to the idea of the free movement of peoples just as you see it in the States with the Central Americans coming across the border.

Read the rest of it there. One factual update: the landmark Martin van Creveld essay mentioned will not be appearing in Riding the Red Horse Vol. 2 since I made the mistake of showing it to Jerry Pournelle, who promptly stole it for There Will Be War Vol. X.

Wiki SJWs reject Breitbart

I thought it was interesting to see that Breitbart News is not considered a reliable source by Wikipedia. But Salon and Sam Harris’s blog and every other two-bit SJW site is.

Day is the Lead Editor at Castalia House, a book publishing company, where he has published the novels of such writers as [[John C. Wright (author)|John C. Wright]], [[Tom Kratman]], and Rolf Nelson.{{cite web|work=[[Breitbart.com]]|first=Allum|last=Bokhari|date=April 4, 2015|title=Hugo Awards Nominations Swept by Anti-SJW, Anti-Authoritarian Authors|url=http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/04/hugo-awards-nominations-swept-by-anti-sjw-anti-authoritarian-authors/}}

  
Day is the Lead Editor at Castalia House, a book publishing company, where he has published the novels of such writers as [[John C. Wright (author)|John C. Wright]], [[Tom Kratman]], and Rolf Nelson.{{cn|date=November 2015}}

The funny thing is that they left the actual text completely unsourced. So, apparently no source at all is deemed more reliable than Breitbart.

Gloating Milo is Best Milo

Nero reaches 100,000 followers on Twitter and is characteristically humble and modest about it in an article entitled “Why I’m Winning”:

Earlier today, a student newspaper called Nouse published an op-ed titled, “We Need To Talk About Milo.” It’s a long explanation of why I’m so popular, influential and successful.

I’m mortified by its appearance, obviously. That said, it’s worth reflecting on….

My career is evidence not just that free speech is effective, but that free speech combined with a lack of snobbery and class war always wins in the end. There’s no defence against the truth – especially when it’s wrapped up in a joke and has great hair.

Progressivism and social justice threw everyone out one by one, until the number of people who weren’t permitted to talk was greater than the group allowed to. I’m a direct casualty of that exclusionary attitude: a gay, matrilinearly Jewish conservative Catholic who, according to your worldview, shouldn’t exist.

Is it any wonder I found common cause with the irreverent hordes of GamerGate? It’s the gamers, of course, I have to thank for giving me a leg-up a year ago. We might not look much alike, the average gamer and me. But, when you think about it, we’re natural ideological bedfellows – and we’ve both been cast out by the people who ought to have been our defenders. So we made our own family together, as dysfunctional as it can sometimes appear.

There are few things I like better than breathtaking arrogance that is based on genuine self-confidence and ability.

Caught red-handed

This is yet another reason why we need a new Wikipedia:

A crew member from “The Hunting Ground,” a one-sided film about campus sexual assault, has been editing Wikipedia articles to make facts conform with the inaccurate representations in the film.

Edward Patrick Alva, who is listed on the film’s IMDB page as part of the camera and electrical department, has been altering Wikipedia entries for months, in violation of the website’s conflict-of-interest guidelines. Alva is the assistant editor and technical supervisor for Chain Camera Pictures, the production company associated with “The Hunting Ground” director Kirby Dick.

Wikipedia guidelines state: “Do not edit Wikipedia in your own interests or in the interests of your external relationships.” As a member of the film’s production team, Alva should not have been editing pages about the film or related to the film.

I’m only surprised that it wasn’t a Wikipedia admin. They are the real problem. But it does demonstrate the Left’s backward thinking. Rather than observing reality and acting on that basis, they act on the basis of their ideology and then attempt to modify reality accordingly.

This is why they reliably fail.

Politico admits Carson didn’t lie

Not about West Point, at any rate.

Politico‘s Kyle Cheney admitted that he fabricated a negative story about Ben Carson. At least, according to his own standards, he admitted the grievous journalistic sin.

In a story published early on Friday, Politico’s Kyle Cheney authored a piece headlined “Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship” with a subhed “Carson’s campaign on Friday conceded that a central point in his inspirational personal story did not occur as he previously described.”

There were at least five major problems with the story:

  •  The headline was completely false
  •  The subhed was also completely false
  •  The opening paragraph was false false false
  •  The substance of the piece was missing key exonerating information
  •  The article demonstrated confusion about service academy admissions and benefits

Some of the readers here were upset that I linked to a news piece without doing any due diligence concerning whether it was true or not. To them, I can only suggest that they avoid reading every single post here that contains a link, because I don’t ever do any due diligence on any link.

I am responsible for my own words. I am no more responsible for the words on a linked site than I am responsible for your comments on this one. I had no more reason to doubt that Dr. Carson said something stupid about his past than I have to doubt that he said something stupid about the Egyptian pyramids. Perhaps Politico made that up too. I don’t know because I am not the News Police.

Tom K asks why I would denigrate Dr. Carson:

I’m wishing you could explain why you would denigrate a man who is, as far as I can tell from the fact that the media hasn’t been able to trash his medical credentials, a truly inspiring black man who exercised the discipline necessary to become a fucking brain surgeon and an expert at separating conjoined twins.

Because he wants to be President of the United States of America. I wouldn’t have a word to say against him if he was content to continue being a surgeon or if he took up professional knitting. But I’d rather not see another affirmative-action anti-gun intellectually overmatched individual at the head of the US government in what are all but certain to be unusually interesting times.

Also, unlike many, I do not find inspiration in black individuals who manage to do what white people have already done. I wasn’t impressed by Herman Cain being a chairman of a regional Fed bank either. Fair or not, all accomplishments by black individuals will remain intrinsically dubious so long as affirmative action is a U.S. government policy.

Sometimes the vile hatred spewed out in the things I read on this site, posts and comments, turns my stomach. I don’t understand it. It makes no sense. What the fuck has Ben Carson ever done to hurt you? He’s got ideas you don’t like. Yeah. So? Argue the facts. Point out where he’s wrong. Hatred and contempt should be reserved for those with contemptible motives and evil goals.

Just because it doesn’t make sense to you does not mean it doesn’t make sense. Ben Carson’s motives are contemptible: he wants to rule over us despite being utterly unfit in almost every way. And Ben Carson has evil goals; he is absolutely wrong on both immigration and guns, the only two issues that matter. He absolutely merits contempt. The only reason he’s been treated with kid gloves until now is because he is a) black and b) as this campaign’s Token Black Republican Candidate, no one has been taking him seriously.

Stephen St. Onge doesn’t appear to have paid attention to previous elections:

Lots of you believed this Politico lie because you were pre-disposed to believe something bad about Carson. Which means you have typical human weaknesses. Try to overcome them.

It is admittedly possible that something legitimately disqualifying won’t surface about Carson by the time he ends his campaign. But the history of Token Black Republican Candidates strongly suggests otherwise.

Meanwhile, Phelps demonstrates that he doesn’t know what an SJW is:

Accepting any story from Politico was a serious own-goal. You get a soccer metaphor for acting like a SJW. I hope to see this embarrassment put you back onto your game.

Again, Politico is responsible for their error. Not me. If I were to stop linking to sites I know to have posted erroneous original material, I would not be able to link anywhere except Castalia House and iSteve. Phelps should give up the retarded rhetoric; also, he is fat. Sorry, no offense, but it’s true.

Meanwhile, for those who are seeking a more substantive reason to hold Ben Carson in contempt, the Token Black Republican Candidate helpfully provided it yesterday. Although perhaps I should not post this, given what I already know about the Wall Street Journal’s propensity for falsehoods:

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Friday that he supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement negotiated by the White House – aligning himself more with the GOP’s establishment wing than with the social conservatives who have powered his campaign.

The genteel civility of the moderate

Charles C.W. Cooke defends Salon’s pedophile piece on NRO:

I’ve seen a good number of conservatives slamming this confession, often on the presumption that it represents an attempt to “mainstream” pedophilia. Respectfully, I have to disagree with this assessment.

Naturally, I am as disgusted by the urges that are referenced in the piece as the next guy, and, despite the author’s heartfelt plea for “understanding,” I find it difficult not to harbor a real animus toward him.

But I see no evidence whatsoever that Salon is endorsing or excusing child abuse, or that it is making the case that pedophilia is an “ingrained identity” and that its sufferers should therefore be free to act as they wish.

On the contrary: The piece draws attention to the fact that some people live with these abominable proclivities — “a curse of the first order” and “a massive handicap,” the author calls them — and yet manage successfully to suppress them. Whatever one might reasonably think of the man and his afflictions, to draw the opposite lesson from his admission than the one he intended seems to me unjust.

It’s fascinating to see how NRO is always willing to bend over backwards to view all statements from the other side in the best possible light, while being the first to heap anathema on any right-wing figure who dares to cross what they consider to be a line.

Derbyshire’s frank talk about blacks merited permanent banishment into utter darkness. Providing a sympathetic platform to a pedophile, well, that’s just good Christian behavior, at least according to this particular non-Christian.

(Seriously, what is with non-Christians who keep trying to lecture Christians about Christian theology. Don’t even go there; you wouldn’t tell Jews how to keep kosher, would you?)

The truth is that neither National Review nor NRO are on our side. They’re moderates and they’re down with Salon, the SJWs, the cucks, and the pedophiles.