TIA extended audio

I expect most of the Dread Ilk will have read TIA in one form or another given the fact that it's been out for over a decade, but if you haven't, I've posted a two-hour audio sample that consists of the first three chapters on the Darkstream. If that inspires you to pick up the whole audiobook, you can do so at Arkhaven.

Mailvox: got a question for Jordan Peterson?

An Australian reader informs us that you can submit questions for Jordan Peterson to answer during his upcoming appearance on QANDA, an Australian panel show where audience members can ask questions via a video upload.

Ask a Question

Do you have a question for the Q&A panel?

Q&A is our national conversation. We want questions from every corner of Australia.

Send us the text of your question on this web form or by using your ABC account.

Include your contact details and if we shortlist your question, we’ll get in touch to show you how to ask your question by Skype, video or web.

Have fun, if you are so inclined. In the meantime, the New Zealand media is deciding that Jordan Peterson is more tedious than a threat of any kind:

On Wednesday, the crowd can hardly contain their excitement. As we wait for Peterson, someone brings a couple of water bottles on the stage and applause breaks out. When Peterson enters, people stand up and roar with delight. He sits down, opens his laptop and starts talking.

Soon, tired self-help advice comes: "Look for beauty during dark times"; "Wake up at the same time every day". Peterson says if you want to achieve anything in life, you need to make sacrifices. When he was a PHd student and trying to write a book, he used to party and drink a lot. He realised that in order to achieve his goals, he had to sacrifice his drinking. Wow, what triumph of the will. What a brave tale of conquest against all odds.

After about half an hour, he finally says something I don't know. When we dream, our body is paralysed so we don't act out our dreams and only our eyes are moving. Sometimes we don't quite wake up and we can't move and that's when people hear voices and see aliens. Well, I have experienced this half-awake state without realising it was perfectly normal to be paralysed for a few seconds, and it was terrifying. I feel a bit like that now - the room is hot, the guy next to me is manspreading and I am in the middle of the row so I can't move. I feel trapped in Peterson's interminable stream of consciousness. My chaotic brain is lost and wishing for some male order. I keep yawning uncontrollably. The thought of getting an ice cream after the show keeps me awake.

I was expecting sensational insights, or at least controversial thoughts, but most of what we are getting is self-help gibberish. Maybe Peterson is not so such a threat to humankind after all.

Put Facebook in prison

Facebook is relentlessly spying on people in a myriad of ways:

Facebook enabled its Android app to track and collect data from unwitting customers in order to increase advertising revenue, according to a cache of confidential internal emails that were leaked online. Some 60 pages of documents – including emails between Facebook executives – were posted anonymously on Github on Friday. The files were taken from a lawsuit between Facebook and Six4Three, an app developer, with most of them never having been published in fully unredacted form until now.

One email exchange from 2012 details plans by Facebook to use its Android app to track the location of its customers and pass data on single Facebook users to dating sites. The company also discussed providing data to organizations that wanted to target users with political ads – a business strategy that has led to scandal in the wake of alleged disinformation campaigns operating on the platform.

“This is a big win for the dating vertical specifically, but also supports our efforts to examine ‘good’ revenue opportunities resulting from policy relaxation/changes,” Marne Lynn Levine, then vice president of global public policy, wrote in support of the company’s plans.

In another message, Levine gloats about a meeting between General Martin Dempsey, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and Sheryl Sandberg, noting that Dempsey and his wife are “both active Facebook users.”

The leaked documents also include a memo about a meeting between Facebook and the head of California’s eCrime unit to discuss then-California attorney general Kamala Harris’s office of privacy protection. Harris, now serving in the US Senate, announced her candidacy for president in January.

The Facebook representatives were told that Harris views the company “as a good actor” and that the privacy office “will keep communications with us open (we will not unknowingly be the subject of an investigation).”

But it's even worse than that. Facebook also collects the data from apps used by people who are not even Facebook users.

It's time to shut Facebook down altogether. It clearly merits the corporate equivalent of life in prison. Which raises an obvious question. If corporations have rights based on their personhood, why don't they bear the responsibilities and potential consequence of people? A corporation that is found guilty of committing a crime should be no more able to earn an income than any other criminal who is sentenced to prison.

The COMPLETE Rebel Dead Revenge!

O Death, where is thy general?

Confederate general Stonewall Jackson has fallen, mortally wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Taken from the battlefield to his deathbed, he is not afraid to die, but Satan has different plans for him. Playing on the vanity of an aged voodoo priestess, the Devil decides to raise Stonewall from the grave and place the greatest tactical commander of the Civil War at the head of an evil army of angry dead.

The South rises again in REBEL DEAD REVENGE!

This is the biggest comic project that Dark Legion has published yet, a 340-page masterpiece written and illustrated by Savage Sword of Conan illustrator Gary Kwapisz. It is available in a stunning 10x7 edition for $34.99 from the Castalia Direct store, and it will probably NOT be available in a digital edition for reasons of your hard drive is not big enough.

If you're not prepared to dive in all the way, a 42-page first chapter is also available.

Burning the deadwood

There is certainly nothing like the mention of the state of Israel and one's opinion concerning it to bring out the lurking spergs, alt-retards, and other undesirables on a YouTube channel. I'm no enthusiast of the "look how virtuously moderate poor little me is because I am attacked by Left and Right" approach, but I will confess that it can be a little bit bewildering to find oneself being accused of a) antisemitism and b) being a Mossad agent within the space of two comments.

MPAI but SPASC. Which is to say Most People Are Idiots but Some People are Seriously Crazy.

Anyhow, the good thing about YouTube is that unlike Blogger, it makes it very easily to permanently disappear a commenter and his comments for good with just a single click. This is absolutely necessary there, as otherwise every single channel would have the comments turned off for good.

But the good news is that the video offensive continues making solid progress. The Darkstream now has nearly 20k subscribers, and if you haven't subscribed to it yet I would encourage you to do so even if you're not a big video watcher, for the extended audiobook samples if nothing else. Voxiversity has been on inadvertent hiatus due to the high demand for its producer, and that demand is only going to grow from here for reasons that will be clear in due course, so I've hired another producer who is very good at his recommendation and we anticipate releasing at least two Voxiversities in March.

There is also a third video front that is going to launch very soon for which I am seeking an tech-savvy volunteer from the VFM who has a) plenty of free time and a good Internet connection, b) doesn't mind dealing with tedious uploads, and c) has some ability to create simple image collages of the sort that I create for the Darkstream every night. I'm only looking for VFM at the moment, so if you're not VFM, please don't volunteer. If you qualify and you're interested, please email me.

In other news, multiple arbitration processes have formally commenced. I can't say more than that at the moment, and I may not be able to say much more once they have concluded, but I will share what I permitted to share. And to those who have expressed a desire to bring independent actions, I would recommend continuing to hold fire for the time being.

Mailvox: BREXIT update

From a UK observer of the Brexit shenanigans:

The EU is prepared to offer Britain an extension to the Article 50 period. The offer is from 29 March 2019 to 18 April 2019, a total of 14 working days. Theresa May has wasted more time than this repeatedly since November. In return for agreeing to the extension, the EU wants £7bn. i.e. £500m per working day. Whilst there is probably a majority in Westminster for an extension to Article 50, such a financial penalty could be sufficient to extinguish that majority and deliver Brexit on time.

It is notable that they are making this offer before we have asked for it. Previously they said they would only make an offer if we asked. They are clearly worried about the economic contraction of the Eurozone currency economies. In particular, the EU estimates that Germany will lose 100,000 jobs in a ‘no deal’ scenario.

One of the things which the EU was adamant that Britain should pay for as part of its departure was the cost of offices in London which would no longer be used for European agencies. Mr Justice Smith ruled this week that the 25 year office lease of European Medicines Agency, signed in 2014, is not legally frustrated by Brexit. There is no legal obstacle to the EU continuing to run its affairs from Britain, and therefore the EU is liable for the full 25 year lease of £500m. There talk of appealing to the European Court of Justice, however, the law and the contract is very clear. There is a reason that international companies choose English Common Law as the basis for their deals, even when neither of the parties is actually English.

As part of Brexit, the German government has considered setting up English language courts in order to attract international business. They have completely missed the point that what attracts contractual parties to London is English Common Law, not the English language. It is the same thing that keeps the financial industry here, together with the fact that the banker’s wives get bored in Frankfurt, Paris and Geneva. Don’t underestimate the attractions of London’s social life. Places like Frankfurt don’t even have the quantity and quality of office accommodation to attract anything other than minimal “post office box” offices to establish a legal presence. Similarly, most of the European Medicines Agency staff will remain in London to seek other healthcare jobs and the Agency will need to be re-staffed with new people.

When the £39bn EU financial demand was first mooted, several groups of lawyers took a look at the basis for this demand and concluded that the EU did not have a legal basis for its demands. Ensuring that the EU does not get a penny to which it isn’t legally entitled is part of demonstrating responsible behaviour to the EU. Today the EU is saying that any discussion of future relationship after a ‘no deal’ scenario would be prefixed by a demand for the money. Britain should not attempt to strike a deal with an organisation which is clearly behaving outwith the law. How could we possibly trust an agreement with them? They are not “agreement capable”.

There goes the dynasty

A surprising arrest of a rich and influential man, especially in light of the connection to sex trafficking and all the conspiracy theories that surround it these days.

Robert Kraft, the owner of the Super Bowl-champion New England Patriots, has been arrested in Florida for soliciting a prostitute, the Jupiter, Fla., police department said Friday. The arrest was part of a bigger operation to uncover human sex trafficking that included the facility used by Kraft, the police said, but the NFL owner was not, as of Friday, linked to that trafficking operation. Police said Kraft was involved in two incidents in the last month at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter and there is video evidence showing the Patriots owner in the act, the CBS affiliate in Boston reported.

And to think that Patriots fans thought they were sick of hearing about TapeGate and DeflateGate.... I note that former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was forced out of ownership for less.

But wait, there's more:

Adam Schefter said on ESPN that Kraft isn’t the most famous person — there’s someone else whose name hasn’t surfaced yet who’s better known than Kraft. “I’m also told that Robert Kraft is not the biggest name involved down there in South Florida,” Schefter said.

An illegal slap on the wrist

A Florida judger refuses to let federal prosecutors avoid prosecuting a pedophile:

A U.S. District judge on Thursday ruled that federal prosecutors illegally signed a plea agreement with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and hid it from his more than two dozen underage victims.

“Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra of Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’

Epstein, now 66, reached a nonprosecution deal in 2008 with then-Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s office to secretly end a federal sex abuse investigation involving at least 40 teenage girls that could have landed him behind bars for life. He instead pleaded guilty to state charges, spent 13 months in jail, paid settlements to victims and is a registered sex offender.

Acosta, now President Donald Trump’s labor secretary, has defended the deal as appropriate but has not commented since the recent round of stories. He was asked about the case during his Senate confirmation hearings for the Cabinet post. “At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,” he said.

Earlier February, the Justice Department opened an investigation into federal prosecutors’ handling of the plea deal.

The USA is increasingly a government of men, not laws. But not, it seems, entirely. At least, not yet.What Acosta did was wrong and he must have known it to be wrong, or he would not have hidden the deal from the victims.

Social credit system in the UK

Unlike China, the social credit system in the UK penalizes natives who prefer the native culture:

A student who claimed the NHS should not be free to immigrants and lamented about the 'Islamisation' of Britain has been kicked out of his university. Sebastian Walsh expressed his controversial opinions during class seminars and the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) decided to suspend him after they received several complaints about his behaviour. The 19-year-old student also branded halal meat 'barbaric' and 'inhumane' and vowed to friends he would never eat at Subway or KFC due to the way the animals are killed.

For all that the conservatives and cuckservatives like to complain about "the Left", it is becoming rapidly clear that nationalist communism as practiced in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China is genuinely preferable to the globalist cultural subversion that has infested the West.

It's a hellish and capricious system, complete with reeducation courses.

The University of Central Lancashire told Mr Walsh he could return to his social work studies in September is he signed a good conduct agreement and undertake a diversity training course.

Left and Right is all but irrelevant now. Nationalist vs Global Imperialist is the only battle that matters in the present circumstances. And we - to the extent there can even be said to be a we - are now the global bad guys.

It's time to bring back the Christian blasphemy laws, many of which are still on the books, and begin enforcing them with a vengeance. Deus vult!

A tale of two social credit systems

In truth, the Chinese system sounds considerably more just and rather preferable to the current US system:

Millions of Chinese individuals and businesses have been labelled as untrustworthy on an official blacklist banning them from any number of activities, including accessing financial markets or travelling by air or train, as the use of the government’s social credit system accelerates.

The annual blacklist is part of a broader effort to boost “trustworthiness” in Chinese society and is an extension of China’s social credit system, which is expected to give each of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score.

The social credit system assigns both positive and negative scores for individual or corporate behaviour in an attempt to pressure citizens into behaving.

Human rights advocates, though, worry that the arbitrary system does not take into account individual circumstances and so often unfairly labels individuals and firms as untrustworthy.

Over 3.59 million Chinese enterprises were added to the official creditworthiness blacklist last year, banning them from a series of activities, including bidding on projects, accessing security markets, taking part in land auctions and issuing corporate bonds, according to the 2018 annual report released by the National Public Credit Information Centre. The centre is backed by the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s top economic planner, to run the credit rating system.

According to the report, the authorities collected over 14.21 million pieces of information on the “untrustworthy conduct” of individuals and businesses, including charges of swindling customers, failing to repay loans, illegal fund collection, false and misleading advertising, as well as uncivilised behaviour such as taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals.

About 17.46 million “discredited” people were restricted from buying plane tickets and 5.47 million were restricted from purchasing high-speed train tickets, the report said. Besides restrictions on buying tickets, local authorities also used novel methods to put pressure on untrustworthy subjects, including preventing people from buying premium insurance, wealth management products or real estate, as well as shaming them by exposing their information in public.

Contrast this with the US system, where you can't go to college or get a job in academia if someone suspects of insufficient enthusiasm for blacks, gays, women, or [fill-in-the-blank], you can't have a bank account if someone believes you have engaged in hate speech, you can't raise funds if someone suspects you of insufficient enthusiasm for Jews, and you can't win government contracts if you don't agree to do business with Israel.

At least the Chinese know the score and know that the social credit system is based on upholding things the Chinese people traditionally support. Wouldn't most American people prefer a transparent system that actually benefits normal Americans and American traditions rather than an unpredictable one that benefits foreigners, degenerates, and foreign countries?

No Darkstream tonight

As I'll be talking with the Big Bear on his stream at 7:30 PM Eastern. However, by way of compensation, I can offer you nearly 90 minutes of hard-core military science fiction action in the form of the WARDOGS INC #1 extended audio sample.

If you are inspired to listen to the whole thing, or want to pick up the sequels, you can do so at Arkhaven.

Truth is not a Judeo-Christian value

Dennis Prager projects too much:

Truth is not a left-wing value.

I first discovered this as a graduate student studying the Soviet Union and left-wing ideologies at the Russian Institute of Columbia University School of International Affairs. Everything I have learned since has confirmed this view.

Individuals on both the left and right lie. Individuals on both the left and right tell the truth. And liberalism, unlike leftism, does value truth. But the further left one goes, the more one enters the world of the lie.

Why does the left lie?

There are two main reasons.

One is that leftists deem their goals more important than telling the truth. For example, every honest economist knows women do not earn 20 percent less money than men for the same work done for the same amount of hours under the same conditions. Yet leftists repeat the lie that women earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn. Why any employers would hire men when they could hire women and get the same amount of work done at the same level of excellence for the same number of hours while saving 20 cents on the dollar is a question only God or the sphinx could answer.

So, when New York Times columnists write this nonsense, do they believe it? The answer is they don’t ask themselves, “Is it true?” They ask themselves, “Does the claim help promote the left-wing doctrine that women are oppressed?” Whatever serves that end is morally justified.

The second reason is leftism is rooted in feelings, not reason or truth. From Karl Marx to Bernie Sanders, left-wing preference for socialism over capitalism is entirely rooted in emotion. Only capitalism creates wealth. Socialism merely spends what capitalism creates. Do leftists not know this? Even if they know it, the emotional pull of socialism prevails.

The Fake Right loves to whine about the Left. It's all they ever talk about. And there is nothing they enjoy doing more than explaining the Left to the Right; that's why this is taken from what is part six of Dennis Prager's opus called Explaining the Left. Of course, if you pay sufficient attention, what you eventually realize is that the Fake Right is a part of the Left. Dennis Prager behaves in exactly the same manner he decries here, because he deems his goals more important than telling the truth and because his loyalty to his people rooted in feelings, not reason or truth.

Truth is not a Judeo-Christian value because Judeo-Christianity itself is a shameless, ahistorical, and anti-Christian lie.

Alt-Hero #6 preview

Bounding Into Comics has a preview of the forthcoming Alt-Hero #6. We expect to send it to backers this weekend, and for it to be available on the Arkhaven store in CBZ and Kindle format next week.

And yes, this also means that the first six-issue omnibus will be going out to backers next month. We have a lot of releases planned for March, including the first issue of Swan Knight Saga.

Check out the art for the first five pages there!

Stealing the shield

The French globalists are desperately trying to hide behind the shield of anti-semitism:

More than 20,000 demonstrators filled the Place de la Republique in Paris on Tuesday night in response to a nationwide call for mass rallies against the continuing surge of antisemitism in France.

The show of solidarity with French Jews in the capital was replicated across the country, with rallies against antisemitism being held in more than 60 cities and towns, including Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse and Strasbourg — the city in eastern France near which only on Tuesday morning dozens of graves in a Jewish cemetery were found defaced with swastikas and antisemitic slogans.

The vandalism at the cemetery came following a week of high-profile antisemitic incidents, including the daubing of a Jewish-owned bakery with the slogan “Juden!” and the abuse hurled at the French-Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut last weekend by protesters affiliated with the populist “yellow vest” movement.

Under the floodlit statue of Marianne, the symbol of the French Republic, the demonstrators who gathered at dusk in Paris held signs declaring “Ça suffit!” (“That’s enough!”), as well as the greeting “Shalom, Salaam, Salut.” Many of the signs at the rally highlighted the figure “74%” — the total increase in the number of antisemitic outrages recorded in France during 2018.

At the podium, children from schools in the local district read out speeches against antisemitism, some of them recalling the mass deportation of the Jews of Paris by the Nazis in July 1942.

French rap artist Abd al Malik closed the rally, leading the crowd in a chorus of “La Marseillaise,” the national anthem.

Initiated by the opposition Socialist Party, Tuesday’s rallies against antisemitism were backed by 14 political parties from the far left to the center-right. Political leaders attending the demonstration in Paris included Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and 14 other members of the French cabinet, including Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal.

Minutes before the rally against antisemitism commenced, French President Emmanuel Macron paid a separate visit to the Holocaust memorial in Paris.

Yeah, crying anti-semitism works about as well these days as crying drowning polar bears. This clumsy attempt at changing the nationalist narrative in France strikes me as a highly effective way to make anti-semitism very, very popular again. The French globalists are transparently trying to disqualify and discredit the Gilets Jaunes and shore up an emergency foundation of support for a tottering Macron regime, but they will fail because no one who is struggling to make ends meet in a country that is disappearing before their eyes gives a damn about foreign people being killed in foreign lands more than seventy years ago.

Cat ladies will love it!

You can't make this stuff up. You really can't. A "glowing review" of the forthcoming Captain Marvel movie:

Some initial #CaptainMarvel reactions:

1. Cat people will love this movie.
2. Several truly magnificent music moments for this 90s kid.
3. Carol's hero moment was very cathartic/true to the female experience, imho.
4. The MCU feels more complete now that Carol is in it. ♥️

I suspect serious Marvel fans are going to hate this thing with a fury hotter than angry Star Wars fans contemplating the next entry in the Disney Wars movie franchise: Rose Tico: Poledancer: A STAR WARS Story.

When - not if, when - Arkhaven Studios begins making movies, I guarantee that they will not merely be better than this SJW nonsense, they will be vastly better despite having budgets that are two orders of magnitude lower.

In case you care

I don't care about what was an obvious hate crime hoax all along, but apparently a lot of people do. So, discuss amongst yourselves:

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett has now been charged with disorderly conduct for filing a false police report, the Cook County States Attorney says.

Disorderly conduct is a Class 4 Felony. CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller says Smollett could face probation to up to 1.5 years in prison.

He is expected in bond court tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. Detectives will make contact with his legal team to negotiate a reasonable surrender for his arrest, according to a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department.

What's the over/under on a deeply emotional Hollywood movie about this little incident, complete with a prison montage and a triumphant redemption arc that culminates in Smollet's character collecting an Oscar, 7 years?

The barbarization of sport

This is just... sad. The latest addition to the Olympics is a grand metaphor for the descent of the West:

Breakdancing is one of four additional sports expected to be included at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris along with surfing, sport climbing and skateboarding, sources indicated Wednesday.

The list of additions is due to be revealed by the local organising committee (OCOG) on Thursday and must be signed off on by the International Olympic Committee. Their inclusion would come on top of the 28 sports already on the programme, although the Paris 2024 committee did not confirm the reports to AFP.

Breakdancing, an acrobatic style of street dance typically set to hip-hop or funk music, would be making its first appearance in the Olympics, while the three other sports will all be introduced at the 2020 Games in Tokyo. Karate and baseball/softball, all part of the Tokyo programme, are also candidates, as well as squash, which has been repeatedly rebuffed, and petanque.

At least 20 disciplines from federations recognised by the IOC have applied for inclusion.

From the sporting arts of the gentleman to primitive posturing and thrashing about. Petanque, in case you don't know, is essentially horseshoes with metal balls, or to put it another way, curling on sand. There are few things more pathetic than an old institution attempting to create appeal for "the youth". And if that's the goal, they'd do better to simply throw up their hands and embrace esports.

Jumping the narrative

Nothing like getting your story written three weeks early.

Though it won’t hit theaters for another three weeks, Captain Marvel is already being review bombed on Rotten Tomatoes. These reviews aren’t from critics or journalists, but from angry impotent men flooding the audience reviews with their anger. What are they angry about? So many things!

Men are shouting from basements all across the land about Brie Larson, her feminism and liberal politics, how Captain Marvel is an SJW film, and ARG WOMEN I HATE THEM WHY WON’T THEY LOVE ME!? Sidebar: I still don’t get how “social justice warrior” is an insult? Like, those are all good qualities and it’s basically a superhero name. If anyone needs someone to write a Social Justice Warrior origin story, call me.

The point of this kind of review bombing campaign is to drag down the average audience rating to discourage folks from seeing the film. In some instances it works, like with 2016’s Ghostbusters, which suffered from massive downvoting of the trailer on YouTube, as well as a rush of one star IMDb reviews. The film even added a scene featuring the Ghostbusters reading nasty internet comments about themselves in a moment of meta-awareness.

The viciousness of this review bombing campaign is particularly noteworthy given that the bomb-to-be isn't even reviewable on Rotten Tomatoes yet.

CAPTAIN MARVEL 2019

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The Promethean extended audio

Now that Castalia House is free to sell our audiobooks our own way, we're going to be putting up extended audio samples on the Darkstream for your listening pleasure. In, today's case, it's a pair of particularly funny chapters that appear in succession in the extended audio sample of The Promethean by Owen Stanley. Rather than simple putting up the prologue or the first chapter, we're seeking to provide a discrete element of the book that can be enjoyed in its own right, even if the listener doesn't proceed to purchase the entire book in one form or another.

No party for white men

The Democratic Party is rapidly approaching its final destiny as the Diversity Party:

Of the nine candidates officially running in the Democratic presidential primary, only one is a heterosexual white man. And that guy, former Rep. John Delaney, generally polls somewhere between zero and 1 percent.

But of the 17 Democrats reportedly still pondering a presidential bid, all but one is a straight white man. It’s hard to chalk that up to coincidence. Clearly, the women and minority candidates sensed that the water is warm for them, and the straight white men appear to be worried that this is just not their year.

CNN’s demographic number cruncher Ron Brownstein noted recently that the percentage of the Democratic primary electorate who are women, nonwhite voters and—“the most liberal component” of the party—college-educated white voters are all on the rise. The 2016 Democratic primary electorate was 58 percent women, 38 percent nonwhite voters and 37 percent college-educated white voters, all numbers that could be bigger in 2020, and strongly suggest a hospitable environment for candidates who embody a diverse America.

The problem, of course, is that the Republican Party is actively resisting embracing what logic, game theory, and simple arithmetic dictate is the correct strategy: become the White Party, stop trying to win diversity votes, and focus solely on advancing white interests. Even the cucks and virtue signalers will be won over in time, once they finally grasp their only choice is between flush toilets and full refrigerators versus fleeing unarmed from starving socialists who are desperate to rape, kill, and eat them.

The importance of morale

It would be unwise to count out the Catalonian bid for independence yet. They have a long history of being tenacious in defeat. From A History of the Peninsular War:

Thus six months had elapsed between the fall of Lerida and the commencement of the next stage of the French advance in Eastern Spain. If it is asked why the delay was so long, the answer is easy: it was due not, as some have maintained, to Suchet’s slowness or to Macdonald’s caution, but solely to the splendid activity displayed by Henry O’Donnell, a general often beaten but never dismayed, and to the tenacity of the Catalans, who never gave up hope, and were still to hold their own, after a hundred disasters, till the tide of success in the Peninsula at last turned back in 1812-13. 

And clearly Henry O'Donnell was no gamma. Failure is never to be feared. It may be disappointing, but it should be viewed as nothing more than a stepping stone - and sometimes a necessary one - to ultimate success.

There is a lot to love

According to CatholicAnarchist Bear, Jordan Peterson is still going on about me in New Zealand.

Pretty funny how JP is giving you free publicity on live NZ live TV, this time he said you are a man completely in love with his own intelligence.

Jordan Peterson: I think the tactics to describe what I'm doing are generally reprehensible, but that's not surprising, it's part and parcel of the way political discourse is conducted today. A lot of epithets and namecalling, none of which is justified in my estimation.

Hayley Holt:  And a lot of pendulum-swinging. You're not a friend of the radical left, so people may assume you are a friend of the radical right, but that's not true is it?

Jordan Peterson: No the radical right is not very fond of me. There is a book written recently by a man named Vox Day called Jordanetics which is a criticism of what I'm doing from the radical right perspective. It's a particularly low-blow book, I would say, written by someone who is dreadfully in love with his own intelligence, um, but its fine as far as I'm concerned. It's a good thing because I'm not a fan of collectivists on the right either. I think it's a mistake to make your primary identity your group, it doesn't matter if it's a nationalist perspective, or an ethnic or racial perspective, or a sexual perspective, it's a fundamental error and an extraordinarily dangerous one.

That's like saying Owen Benjamin is a man who is dreadfully in love with his own height. I may enjoy being highly intelligent, and I may rely upon having more cognitive firepower at my disposal than most on a not-infrequent basis, but this is the sort of comment that is made by someone who knows nothing of the experience himself. What those of lesser intelligence fail to realize about the UHIQ or the subject savant is that we actually have a tendency to take our intellectual gifts for granted; we are far less obsessed with them than our observers and critics are.

In other words, it's not that we think we are so special, it's that we find it very hard to believe that other people can't do what we do. My father, the designer of various military and aeronautic technologies who did his doctoral work at MIT, genuinely could not believe that anyone was even remotely puzzled by math. "What's there to be confused about?" he would ask in disbelief. "It's all literally right there!" It's like imagining a Frenchman to be impressed by the fact that he speaks French. Of course he does, it's part of what makes him who and what he is!

Anyhow, it's clear that Peterson is attempting to accomplish two things here. First, he's trying to rhetorically disqualify a book that is significantly damaging him with his fan club by discrediting the author with epithets and namecalling. Second, he's attempting to use my criticism as a way of positioning himself as a centrist and a victim. And, of course, because he is a habitual liar, he doesn't even hesitate to lie about the book, about the author, and about himself.

All you really need to know about Peterson can be seen in this one interview, especially the way he so readily resorts to the rhetorical tactics he declares to be reprehensible in lieu of substantive responses? I invite you to count the number of lies and deceptions he tells in that last paragraph alone. Without bothering to do so myself and based only on an initial read, I'll put the over/under at seven.

Too little, too late?

Q is back and is still going on about how careful this and cautious that. I have to admit, whether there is any substance there or not, I stopped paying attention a while ago:

Q !!mG7VJxZNCI ID: 7390a9 No.5271872  📁
Feb 19 2019 18:43:38 (EST)
The DECLASSIFICATION of all requested documents (+ more) will occur.
This is not a game.
Do not let personal (emotional) desires ("do it now""now""what is taking so long""NOW!") take over.
Logical thinking and strategy should always be applied.
Game-Theory.
WE ALL WANT TO SEE EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW.
NEW THREATS (investigations by [SDNY], [AS], [MW] in an effort to delay/prevent release ('insurance extension') WILL FAIL.
TRANSPARENCY is the only way forward.

Here is some logical thinking: act while the window of opportunity is open. People are disappointed, bored, and if they haven't already lost interest in the topic, are rapidly doing so in light of the series of what look like ongoing retreats on the part of President.

My perspective is that if it happens, great. But I'm not interested in actively following along anymore. I'm certainly not with the black-pillers, who are always looking to justify their hopelessness no matter what happens, just so they can say they were right to never believe in anything. I still hope that the God-Emperor is willing and able to take action to at least try to save the American nation from the global evil that is seeking to destroy it.

But if transparency is the only way forward, then be transparent. Stop listening to all the dire warnings of so-called allies and experts, declassify everything, and let the chips fall where they may. This stage management was working beautifully for a while, but what was once a morale booster has become an irrelevance.

Q is still an entertaining concept, and AH:Q is going to be great. But it's too bad that it appears the comic will become material reality sooner than the inspiration.

A legend has left us

I used to wear Karl Lagerfeld's signature cologne back in the day and it is still one of my favorites. The late fashion legend was also ruthlessly hysterical. Some of his classic quotes:

• Kate Middleton has a nice silhouette and she is the right girl for that boy. I like that kind of woman, I like romantic beauties. On the other hand, her sister struggles. I don't like the sister's face. She should only show her back.
• I hate ugly people. They are very depressing.
• Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.
• We cannot talk about suffering. People buy dresses to be happy, not to hear about somebody who suffered over a piece of taffeta.
• I have a sort of Alzheimer's for my own work, which I think is a very good thing. Today too many people remember what they did -- just forget it all and start again.
• I am very much down to earth. Just not this earth.
• Women can be short, but for men it is impossible. It is something that they will not forgive in life... they are mean and they want to kill you.

Owen Benjamin would approve.

Mailvox: too short for the ride

Deceivers are always going to attempt to deceive. Especially after they find themselves getting caught out. A reader emails to note that Richard Spencer is still trying to dig himself out.

At 1 hour and 49 minutes in this video Richard Spencer claims he misused a term , and you jumped on him, but he claims he didn’t mean what you thought he did. He goes on to explain his vision of pan nationalism and says omni-nationalism is naive and wouldn’t work because larger powers would easily control them.

Sounds to me exactly what you said he said but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know what he is talking about half the time. Not very articulate and sounds, like you said, a leftist. I thought I would pass this on to you so next time his name or position comes up, you would have his “clarified” current statement on his stance.

Richard Spencer is a midwit leftist and racial imperialist who is totally incapable of articulating a coherent case for any political program going forward, let alone a credible one. He's a fame whore about as intellectually serious as Ben Shapiro.

Pan-nationalism did not work for Arabs or Africans. It will not work for Europeans or for US whites. The high-water mark of civic nationalism, a very artificial, watered-down, and surreptitious form of pan-nationalism, was the 1950s in the USA, and as we have witnessed, it carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction.

Dissecting the failed coup

Historian Victor Davis Hanson summarizes the failed Deep State coup directed at President Donald Trump and calls for prosecuting those who staged it:

Weaponizing the Deep State

During the 2016 election, the Obama Department of Justice warped the Clinton email scandal investigation, from Bill Clinton’s secret meeting on an airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to unethical immunity given to the unveracious Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, to James Comey’s convoluted predetermined treatment of “likely winner” Clinton, and to DOJ’s Bruce Ohr’s flagrant conflict of interests in relation to Fusion GPS.

About a dozen FBI and DOJ grandees have now resigned, retired, been fired, or reassigned for unethical and likely illegal behavior—and yet have not faced criminal indictments. The reputation of the FBI as venerable agency is all but wrecked. Its administrators variously have libeled the Trump voters, expressed hatred for Trump, talked of “insurance policies” in ending the Trump candidacy, and inserted informants into the Trump campaign.

The former Obama directors of the CIA and National Intelligence, with security clearances intact, hit the television airways as paid “consultants” and almost daily accused the sitting president of Russian collusion and treason—without cross-examination or notice that both previously had lied under oath to Congress (and did so without subsequent legal exposure), and both were likely knee-deep in the dissemination of the Steele dossier among Obama administration officials.

John Brennan’s CIA likely helped to spread the Fusion GPS dossier among elected and administrative state officials. Some in the NSC in massive and unprecedented fashion requested the unmasking of surveilled names of Trump subordinates, and then illegally leaked them to the press.

The FISA courts, fairly or not, are now mostly discredited, given they either were willingly or naively hoodwinked by FBI and DOJ officials who submitted as chief evidence for surveillance on American citizens, an unverified dossier—without disclosure that the bought campaign hit-piece was paid for by Hillary Clinton, authored by a discredited has-been British agent, relied on murky purchased Russian sources, and used in circular fashion to seed news accounts of supposed Trump misbehavior.

What is strange, however, is that despite being at the height of his popularity and all-but-cleared of the false charges of the failed Deep State coup, Trump appears - appears - to be submitting to the neocons. Is it possible that this submission is what brought the attempted coup to a close? Or is he simply playing rope-a-dope again prior to throwing a few knockout punches?

Always be cautious about concluding that anyone is finished, be it the creatures of the Deep State or the God-Emperor.

Owen Stanley in audiobook+

Both The Missionaries and The Promethean are now available in audiobook+ at the Arkhaven store. You might suspect that I am exaggerating when I say that they are two of the funniest satirical novels ever published. And you would be absolutely and utterly wrong. Narrator Gabrielle Miller also does a wonderful job of conveying the literary humor in her unique Australian accent.

From The Promethean:

They went off in Fortescue’s Range Rover to The Drunken Badger, an old pub nearby with a mouldy green thatched roof that was the local meeting spot and had been kept for years by the genial Ken with fat Shirley his wife. Fortescue offered to stand Harry a pint of beer, but when Harry surveyed the range of drinks available, his heart sank. There was no prosecco, no white wine, indeed, no wine of any kind, as the pub had for generations stocked only local ales, the favourite of which was Old Stinker. However different palates were known to prefer Smoking Dog, Swine Snout, Wife Beater, or even Holy Terror, the most alcoholic.

This was made from a traditional recipe inherited from the local monks before Henry VIII destroyed their abbey nearby, and was notable for producing some very unmonkish behaviour. The label of Swine Snout depicted a farmyard dominated by a large manure pile, in which assorted pigs were busily rooting, and Smoking Dog was advertised by a hairy monster with very large teeth smoking a pipe. Wife Beater is perhaps best left undescribed. As he surveyed these relics of the Dark Ages, Harry groaned inwardly. Was an ice-cold Budweiser really too much for a civilised man to expect in a presumably industrialised nation?

Shirley informed Ken that the American gentleman was asking about Budweiser. Ken scratched his head and said he thought he had seen a can somewhere only recently.

“I know you was rummaging around in your shed looking for rat poison the other day,” said Shirley. “Could it have been there?”

Ken went off to look and came back with a filthy old can that had been put up on a shelf with the weedkiller and lawn fertiliser in the garden shed long ago. Ken washed it off under the tap in the bar.

“Not in a very good state, I’m afraid. Must’ve been there for years, ever since Don used to run this place. We had some Americans stationed at the airfield back then. But you’re welcome to it. Glad it’s found an ’ome at last,” pouring it into a glass. “We won’t charge you for that. On the ’ouse.”

Harry pretended to be grateful for the warm and rather odd-tasting relic of the Budweiser brewery and thought that Swine Snout might have been preferable. A local inhabitant, dressed in what looked like greased sacking, had just brought his old, wet, and shaggy dog in with him, which was now sitting under the table. Harry noticed the brown stains on the grubby carpet and wondered if they had any connection with the rather unpleasant odour that seemed to be coming from the direction of the dog.

Charles asked Harry what he would like for lunch, and Ken passed them the menu, a sheet of greasy plastic covering a crudely typed list of local delicacies. At the top of the list were pigs’ trotters and then tripe and onions, blackbird pie, jellied eels, boiled calf’s head, deep-fried pigs’ ears, brains in white sauce, ox tail fritters, and bull’s testicle soup as the pièce-de-résistance. Everything, apparently, came with chips and gravy, except the bull’s testicle soup which had mushy peas as a side order.

Shuddering, Harry asked what tripe might be.

“Ah, that’s real delicious,” said Shirley, “a nice tender piece of sheep’s stomach—more flavour than cow’s stomach—but the pigs’ ears are very tasty as well.”

Despair seized him, and for a moment he actually found himself wishing for a McDonald’s. But then, like an island of sanity in a sea of madness, Harry suddenly noticed pork pie at the bottom of the menu and said he would really like some of that.

“A very good choice,” said Ken. “That’ll be old Percy. We only slaughtered’n t’other day. If you’d’a been ’ere then, you’d’ve ’eard’n squealin’. Summat terribul t’were. Still, ’e makes a right tasty pie, no mistake about that.”

Good God, was there no end to these rural horrors, thought Harry.

The intrinsic limits on power

I've been reading the third volume of Oman's excellent A History of the Peninsular War, and a particular passage on the solid reasoning that lay behind Napoleon's self-obstructive and objectively suboptimal decision to refuse to appoint a proper unitary command to execute the invasion of Portugal and the attack on Wellington's British army while simultaneously maintaining the Spanish occupation caused me to reflect on the limits imposed on evil by its own nature.

As has been shown above, from his own words, he [Napoleon] was conscious that he was too far from the scene of operation, and that mere ordinary directions to his lieutenants might not be carried out with zeal. ‘Je donne l’ordre. L’exécutera-t-on? De si loin obéit qui veut.’ But if this were so, it was surely necessary either that he should go to Spain in person, or else—the more obvious alternative—that he should appoint a real Commander-in-Chief in the Peninsula, who should have authority to order all the other marshals and generals to obey his directions, without malingering or appeals to Paris. Napoleon had deliberately created a divided authority beyond the Pyrenees when he set up his military governments, and instructed Suchet, Kellermann, and the other governors to report directly to himself, and to pay no attention to commands emanating from Madrid. King Joseph, as a central source of orders, had been reduced to a nullity by this ill-conceived decree. Even over the troops not included in the new viceroyalties he had no practical authority. Not he and his chief of the staff, but Masséna, ought to have been entrusted with a full and autocratic power of command over all the armies of Spain, if a true unity of purpose was to be achieved.

This necessary arrangement the Emperor utterly refused to carry out: he sent rebukes to Drouet for hesitating to obey the orders of the Prince of Essling, and he jested at the absurd conduct of Ney and Junot in conducting themselves like independent generals. But these officers were in command of troops definitely allotted to the Army of Portugal. Over the other generals of Spain he refused to allow Masséna any control, and he continued to send them his own ever-tardy instructions, which had often ceased to be appropriate long before the dispatch had reached its destination. If we seek the reasons of this unwise persistence in his old methods, we find that they were two.

The first was his secret, but only half-disguised, intention to annex all the Spanish provinces north of the Ebro to France, an insane resolve which led him to keep Suchet and Macdonald in Aragon and Catalonia, as well as the governors of Navarre and Biscay, out of the control of any central authority that he might set up in Spain. The second was his jealousy of entrusting the vast army south of the Ebro, far more than 250,000 men at the moment, to any single commander. He remembered Soult’s absurd strivings after royalty in Portugal; he knew that Masséna, though the best of soldiers, was false, selfish, and ambitious; and he refused to hand over to either of them a full control over the whole of the forces in the Peninsula. It was even better, in his estimation, to leave King Joseph a shadow of power, than to take the risk of giving overmuch authority to one of the two able, but not wholly trustworthy, marshals to whom he must otherwise have entrusted it.

Napoleon made a conscious choice to reduce the probabilities of defeating Wellington and conquering Portugal in order to reduce the risk of creating a powerful rival power on the Peninsula. He knew he couldn't trust Soult or Masséna to remain loyal to him if either of them found themselves victorious and in command of an army capable of rivalling his own forces, so he refused to take the step that was absolutely required in order to win the war.

This is one of the fundamental weaknesses of evil, however strong it appears, however much potential force it has at its disposal. Self-interest imposes an intrinsic limit on evil's ability to bring its power to bear, because it always has to worry about its forces fragmenting and pursuing their own goals instead of the obediently pursuing the goals set by the leadership. This, of course, is why evil puts so much effort into creating social pressures and false narratives its NPCs will blindly follow, and to ensuring that its NPCs never dare to think independently or in a critical manner.

Playing for the other side

National Review is confirmed to have been funded by Google:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed that the tech giant gave funds to the National Review Institute, the policy arm of establishment conservative magazine National Review — but there is a discrepancy in Pichai’s explanation of why the donation is not listed in the company’s annual transparency report. Pichai used his written answers to congressional questions to disclose his company’s donation to the National Review Institute, which was revealed by National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg last year. The Google CEO confirmed the donation, stating that it was made in 2018 and would, therefore, be disclosed in the company’s next report.

And you wondered why they were drifting ever-leftward? Cuckservatives have no principles, they only pretend to do so. This may not be the nail in National Review's coffin, but it should be.

Invaders in London

That map shows very clearly how invaders have taken over London. Interestingly enough, it appears the media thinks the British are supposed to be deeply concerned about Japanese knotweed replacing the native plants, but celebrate Asians and Africans replacing the native people.

Jordanetics is now an audiobook+

Having successfully extricated JORDANETICS: A Journey Into the Mind of Humanity's Greatest Thinker from Kindle Select, we are now able to offer it as an audiobook+, which means that you can acquire both the audiobook and the ebook in two formats from Arkhaven for $14.99.

Two recent reviews by people who have actually read the book:

Systematic breakdown of Peterson's core ideas and assessment of his character

Notice how the 1-star reviewers are claiming jealousy on Vox Day's part in order to dismiss his systematic breakdown of Peterson, instead of pointing out any factual errors. They behave exactly like the very SJWs they criticize, who bring emotional accusations to logical conversations.

If you pay attention, reviews by verified purchases are almost unanimously 5-star, while the vast majority of bad reviews are by people who haven't bought Jordanetics, much less read it. You can't review something you've never read, because that's not what the word 'review' means. But Peterson himself could very well argue, "Well, it depends on what you mean by review, eh". So maybe this is the Petersonian tactic of redefining commonly used words to make a ludicrous position seem reasonable, which Vox Day exposes beautifully in Jordanetics.

Vox Day's critiques of Peterson in Jordanetics are extremely methodical and clear, and peppered with a healthy dose of humor. He uses Peterson's own words as the basis of his attack, analyzes the very sources that Peterson himself cites as the foundation for his claims, then shows you step-by-step how Peterson has twisted the original meaning of his sources to fit narratives that are wildly inconsistent with the sources themselves. And that's just scratching the surface of what Vox Day breaks down throughout the book. Anyone who says Vox is making anything other than a clear, logic-based attack on Peterson, doesn't see the obvious irony that Vox's language and method is far more clear and concise than Peterson's ambiguous and foggy ramblings.

Then again, should Peterson's followers be expected to recognize such irony when they follow a man who claims to tell the truth, while arguing there is no such thing as objective truth? Who says Europeans should abandon basic in-group preference while defending the extremist in-group preference of another group? Who acts like a champion of free speech while de-platforming speakers like Faith Goldy? Who speaks against Communism while covering every wall in his house with realist paintings of Bolsheviks? Who says you should never cave to a Leftist mob, then at a critical moment in our Republic, says Kavanaugh should cave to a Leftist mob because of feelings? Who practices psychology while consuming psychotropic drugs for decades?

Well, it depends on what you mean by irony, bucko.


JBP has dreams...

I have to say, Jordan Peterson had me going for a while. I'd heard rumors and decided to dig a little deeper. I found this book, and jordan's magic spell was broken. The troubling part was discovering how easily I was fooled. Here's how:. Vox outlines how Jordan Peterson will give a title that sets the tone, and then go full into " Baffle Garble" where he casts a myst of nonsense where he loses you...and because you're desperately trying to find the point of what he is saying, you'll project and "fill in the blanks" and make yourself feel content with the message "YOU heard." This is why if you ask any of JBP's fans to explain ANY of the rules in "12 rules for life" you'll get a curious range of answers.

Vox sums up nicely that JBP mostly appeals to the "bottom of the barrel" and lures them into both Mediocrity and Compliance (See the chapter titled "Why Won't You Just Take Your Damn Pills" in 12 Rules for Life). As a funny, yet disturbing bonus, we discover that Peterson has dreams about "ravishing" his female cousin, as well as his grandmother rubbing her vagina on his face....totally serious here...JBP is a real Loon. I hope you enjoy the wakeup call from Vox, and don't shoot the messenger. Instead, do as I did and kick yourself for being lured in with Peterson's nonsense.

Everything is falling into place

Now Disney is destroying the Marvel Comic Universe:

I previously wrote how Brie Larson is a huge gamble for Disney and Kevin Feige - especially following the failure of Star Wars: The Last Jedi - and now the Captain Marvel movie looks to be in big, big trouble, unfortunately.

Back in January, following the NCAA trailer, it was reported that Captain Marvel was projected to have a massive $160 million opening weekend with some estimates even offering $180 million.

However, the bad news for Kevin Feige and Captain Marvel is that those projections have now dropped upwards of $80 million (note: article has been updated to reflect million and not percent), as it is reported the flick may only open around $100 million.

The latest projections come from Deadline, with the site offering Captain Marvel will now open in line with other Marvel origin films, but won't come anywhere near Black Panther's $202 million. Interestingly enough, further evidence Captain Marvel is not as highly regarded among fans comes from the fact that Black Panther supporters have not supported the Captain Marvel gofundme to get girls to go see the movie.

There is also a huge problem with Brie Larson who has been spinning Captain Marvel as a feminist movie, essentially isolating the audience, and she even recently came out against white males for some reason. I'm actually surprised and disappointed in Kevin Feige that he is allowing Larson to destroy the MCU audience, and that Disney and CEO Bob Iger haven't learned anything from Star Wars.

It's mildly amusing to observe that the media simply can't grasp that Disney WANTS to destroy Star Wars and Marvel and everything else that appeals to white men. That's why they acquired it in the first place.

Digital gangsters

As an ex-libertarian, I am instinctively hostile to government regulation. But, as we have learned over the last decade, there are much worse things than regulation by nationalist governments.

Facebook deliberately broke privacy and competition law and should urgently be subject to statutory regulation, according to a devastating parliamentary report denouncing the company and its executives as “digital gangsters”.

The final report of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s 18-month investigation into disinformation and fake news accused Facebook of purposefully obstructing its inquiry and failing to tackle attempts by Russia to manipulate elections.

“Democracy is at risk from the malicious and relentless targeting of citizens with disinformation and personalised ‘dark adverts’ from unidentifiable sources, delivered through the major social media platforms we use every day,” warned the committee’s chairman, Damian Collins.

The report:

• Accuses Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, of contempt for parliament in refusing three separate demands for him to give evidence, instead sending junior employees unable to answer the committee’s questions.
• Warns British electoral law is unfit for purpose and vulnerable to interference by hostile foreign actors, including agents of the Russian government attempting to discredit democracy.
• Calls on the British government to establish an independent investigation into “foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation and the sharing of data” in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 general election.
• Labour moved quickly to endorse the committee’s findings, with the party’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, announcing: “Labour agrees with the committee’s ultimate conclusion – the era of self-regulation for tech companies must end immediately.

Highly regulated corporations are not known for their performance or their innovation. But let's face it, Ma Bell and the various utilities have served the interests of the American people considerably better than Facebook and the other social media giants have. It's time for the national governments around the world to crack the whip and take the international digital gangsters firmly in hand by turning them into utilities.

This is one issue upon which the Left and the Right should be able to find plenty of common ground.

The diminishing appeal of Harry Potter

I never, ever, thought the Harry Potter books were destined to become classics. This commenter at Castalia House gets it:

I started reading Harry Potter in 2004. I devoured the 5 books in less than 6 months, and followed the release of the last two books. Harry Potter was the fever of my teenage years. What I think made me like HP was not exactly the characters themselves, but the universe created by JKR. I liked to imagine myself inside that universe, being a witch like Harry and studying at Hogwarts.

Of course, as a teenager, I knew very little about other fantasy works and literary classics, so back then I really believed that Harry Potter was a genius story and JKR was the best writer in the world. Today I recognize that this is far from being true. JKR's characters are mostly shallow, static and stereotyped. Voldemort is part of the villain trope I least like, an irremediable psychopath who was born evil and died evil, remaining eternally static, and without any trace of humor. There are villains who are irremediable but at least they have a vein of great humor, like Joker. Voldemort is nothing like that.

In addition, I think JKR made some bad decisions and wasted a lot of interesting characters on the books. I've always found it a shame she'd never delved into such treacherous characters as Wormtail / Peter and for example. Traitorous characters can make great stories, but instead of going into a story of redemption, she decides to put him in the shadows of the story with a death so irrelevant that it does not even appear in the film's adaptation. Game of Thrones does a much better job with Theon Greyjoy for example, giving him more prominence and a arc of his own.

Talking about her bad decisions... I never liked JKR's decision to make Ginny be Mrs. Potter. In a universe where we have unique and fantastic female characters like Luna and Hermione, why did JKR make Ginny the Mrs. Potter? The romance between Harry and Ginny was poorly written in the books, and extremely cringeworthy to watch in theaters. They make the most insipid and generic pair of literature, IMO. Luna Lovegood would was the best choice for Harry's romantic pair, imo. Or if Harry finished the story with no one, it would not be bad either. I just think Ginny / Harry was hideous.

I'm not saying that the HP series is horrible and unimportant. Quite the contrary, it was part of my adolescence and in a way, it is nostalgic. The fact is... the Harry Potter books lose more and more appeal to me every time I revisit them, and today, I do not feel like reading them any more.

Rowling's one skill was creating vivid and compelling characters. But that's not enough to create a classic capable of withstanding the erosion of time.

A cause that unites

I think most of the human race is solidly behind the idea of Ricky Gervais's assisted suicide:

Comedian Ricky Gervais, 57, says he in favour of assisted suicide as he launches new Netflix series about death and grief. He has notoriously joked about the most controversial of subjects – but Ricky Gervais is deadly serious about how he sees his own life ending. Speaking exclusively to Event magazine today, the creator of The Office and Extras reveals: 'I am in favour of assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia.

'I know that I'd want it. I hope when I'm ready to go you can just go to Boots and get something. I hope we get more advanced and more liberal, that there's not all this hate for people who want to do it, all this going, 'How dare you?' That's madness.'

His comments come ahead of After Life, his upcoming Netflix series about death and grief, which is said to be as black as comedy can be. Gervais, 57, reveals his latest TV character, a depressed journalist who dabbles with hard drugs and thoughts of suicide after his wife's death from cancer, is his darkest by far and made him face up to his own mortality.

There are probably a lot of people who would pay rather well for the privilege of assisting Mr. Gervais. Perhaps he could approach it as a charity auction.

Failure is no hindrance

Not when you're able to produce the answer "THE US MUST INVADE [Fill-in-the-blank]" on cue whenever called upon by the Fake News. Tucker Carlson shares a compelling selection from his recent book about two neocon mediocrities who keep being called upon for their opinions on military matters despite their collective track record of complete failure:

One thing that every late-stage ruling class has in common is a high tolerance for mediocrity. Standards decline, the edges fray, but nobody in charge seems to notice. They’re happy in their sinecures and getting richer. In a culture like this, there’s no penalty for being wrong. The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America.

Boot is a professional foreign policy expert, a job category that doesn’t exist outside of a select number of cities. Boot has degrees from Berkeley and Yale, and is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written a number of books and countless newspaper columns on foreign affairs and military history. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential British think tank, describes Boot as one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict.”

None of this, it turns out, means anything. The professional requirements for being one ofthe world’s Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict do not include relevant experience with armed conflict. Leading authorities on the subject don’t need a track record of wise assessments or accurate predictions. All that’s required are the circular recommendations of fellow credential holders. If other Leading Authorities on Armed Conflict induct you into their ranks, you’re in.

Meanwhile, brilliant military historians and strategists like Martin van Creveld and William S. Lind are being ignored, to the cost of many thousands of lives.

Obvious hoax is hoax

To precisely no one's surprise, the purported attack by MAGA-chanting white men on an attention-seeking black fame whore has been determined to be a hoax by the police:

On Saturday night, Chicago Police confirmed to PJ Media that the testimonies of two black men arrested in the case of Empire star Jussie Smollett have flipped the story. Rather than considering Smollett the victim of an attack, it appears that police may now see him as the perpetrator of a hoax.

"We can confirm that the information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the Empire case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation," Chicago Police chief communications officer Anthony Guglielmi told PJ Media. "We've reached out to the Empire cast member's [sic] attorney to request a follow-up interview."

Two law enforcement sources confirmed to CNN that police are considering the Jussie Smollett case a hoax. Police now think the two men they arrested last week — Olabinjo "Ola" Osundairo and his brother Abimbola "Abel" Osundairo — were paid by Smollett to attack him. Chicago Police believe the Empire star orchestrated the assault.

All of these sorts of attacks are always hoaxes. Because in a society that rewards victimhood, the victims manufacture themselves. And in a society dominated by Fake News, the news is reliably false.

UPDATE: The details are now being reported. And now we know the going rate for crisis actors. The imported ones, anyhow.

Jussie Smollett paid two brothers to stage an attack against him, directed them to buy items used in the alleged assault and actually rehearsed it with them, sources say.

Sources say at least one of the brothers bought the rope used in the incident at Smollett’s request. The sources also say the “Empire” actor paid for the rope, which was purchased at the Crafty Beaver Hardware Store in the Ravenswood neighborhood the weekend of Jan. 25.

The brothers, who were questioned by police this week before being released, were paid $3,500 before leaving for Nigeria and were promised an additional $500 upon their return. They left for Nigeria later in the day on Jan. 29, after the attack.