Everyone is a conspiracy theorist now

Allahpundit finally breaks:

Me before Epstein’s death: Conspiracy theories are facile misdirections favored by people who crave simplistic explanations to soothe their own feelings of powerlessness.

Me now: The Illuminati whacked Epstein.

Everything’s on the table.

Conspiracy theory is the only credible theory of history.

Generation Zyklon rises

No wonder the neoliberals and the neoclowns are terrified of the rising nationalism across the West. As I have repeatedly told you, the youth of Europe have no sympathy for them or their false ideals of "progress", "equality", or even "democracy".

A poll has revealed that two-thirds of young people want a strongman as leader, while more than one-quarter would be happy with the military leading the country, revealing that younger generations are turning their backs on decades of liberalism.

The poll of 5,073 people conducted by Hanbury Strategy between the 21st and 28th of June and published on Thursday by conservative think tank Onward found that across all age groups, 58 per cent of people think that having “a strong leader who does not have to bother with Parliament” would be a good way to run the United Kingdom.

Let's face it. If the men who fought WWII for the Allies could see what has resulted from their sacrifices, they would have laid down their arms and refused to fight. Even nuclear devastation is less destructive than immigration and immorality.

Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally. But was it worth it? Her answer - and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s - is a resounding No. They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It's not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger.

Curious about his grandmother's generation and what they did in the war, he decided three years ago to send letters to local newspapers across the country asking for those who lived through the war to write to him with their experiences.

He rounded off his request with this question: 'Are you happy with how your country has turned out? What do you think your fallen comrades would have made of life in 21st-century Britain?'

What is extraordinary about the 150 replies he received, which he has now published as a book, is their vehement insistence that those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war would now be turning in their graves.

Reject Satan and all his devices and servitors.

They got to Epstein

Or perhaps they managed to disappear him. Regardless, it appears that Jeffrey Epstein will not be naming any more names:

Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced millionaire who was facing federal sex trafficking charges, died by suicide Friday night in his Lower Manhattan jail cell, three law enforcement officials told ABC News.

The exact timing and circumstances were not immediately clear.

Still dubious about the reality of the Gate that shall not be named? It's also a salutory lesson to those who are tempted to serve evil in return for massages, lollipops, and fancy pants. Once you have no further utility to the god of this world, once he is done with you, he won't hesitate to cast you aside and send you to Hell.

Keep in mind, however, that he may already have been interrogated and the material that he had amassed over the years may already be in the possession of the good guys. So, don't feel let down about this. It is always an occasion for celebration when the wicked fall.

The Lord watches over all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.

UPDATE: According to a prison officer, Epstein was being kept in a special unit with additional security, but he was not being actively surveyed by officials at the facility.  

UPDATE: The billionaire had been taken off suicide watch before taking his own life on Saturday morning.

Sounds likely, doesn't it? As I have stated in the past, the Official Story is the one scenario we can be certain did not happen.

Gracefully losing the struggle

The Z-man observes that conservatives and other deniers of history and science have decided to gracefully lay down and die rather than accept the cold, hard realities of human existence.

That really is the issue with the science deniers. It’s not so much that they don’t accept biological reality or even that they lack the numeracy to grasp it. They just hate facing the reality of the human condition. It should be noted that the science deniers tend to live as far from human diversity as possible. Steyn, for example, lives in a whites-only part of northern New Hampshire. Celebrating diversity from a great distance is the hallmark of the science deniers and egalitarians.

Putting aside the revealed preferences of the deniers, they cling to their superstitions because to do otherwise means accepting some harsh truths. One of which is that the only way to maintain Western civilization is to maintain the European people. That means playing very rough with the rest of the world’s people. It turns out that we have not advanced beyond our nature. Life for us is the same struggle for survival it has always been. The winner has to play for keeps.

As a practical matter, that means the Europeans will have to deport their non-European populations. Not all of them, but most. Telling a few million Muslims they have to go back is not something our betters care to face. Similarly, it means sinking enough migrant boats in the Mediterranean to discourage the practice. Europe’s leaders lack the stomach to defend their people, so instead they have embraced magical realism as a coping strategy. It’s an effort to gracefully lose the struggle for life.

Whatever happened to the old bromide about the "cold-hearted conservative" anyhow? If you are capable of understanding that the survival of the British red squirrel is threatened by the mass immigration of the North American grey squirrel, how can you consider it it even remotely objectionable to observe that the survival of the European nations are threatened by the mass immigration of foreign populations considerably larger and more fecund than they are?

The future belongs to those who show up for it. This has always been the truth. This will always be the truth. And another truth is this: leaders who do not have children do not care about the future.

The first unsealed Epstein documents

Surprisingly, no serious evidence against Bill Clinton has yet surfaced from the unsealed documents. But, as expected, the connection to Trump, far from being damning, is almost exculpatory.

The first trove of documents has been unsealed in the 2015 defamation case brought against Ghislaine Maxwell by Virginia Roberts. The documents were made public Friday morning just moments after the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the decision to make public over 2000 pages of court filings that had previously been under seal.

Those documents reveal in great detail the three-year period in which Roberts claims she was Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell's sex slave.

Roberts has said that in that role she was 'forced to have sex with ...numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister.'

Those men do not include Bill Clinton and Donald Trump though, Roberts revealed in an unsealed deposition. Roberts said in a 2016 deposition that Trump 'didn't partake in any sex with us ... and never flirted with me.'

She also stated that despite Epstein talking about how the two were friends, she did not recall ever seeing him at the Palm Beach mansion.

There will almost certainly be a good deal more information forthcoming soon. The documents can be downloaded here courtesy of Mike Cernovich. As for the first names to be divulged, they are as follows:

Virginia Giuffre, who says that Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to powerful people for erotic massages and sex, claimed in a 2016 deposition that Maxwell directed her to have sex with former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Britain’s Prince Andrew (whom she has accused before), wealthy financier Glenn Dubin, former senator George Mitchell, now-deceased MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, and modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, as well as “another prince,” a "foreign president," and the owner of a “large hotel chain” in France.

How would this young woman even know the names of Dubin and Minsky, one wonders....

Another Hollywood revenge fantasy

Only this time it's Americans rather than Nazis like in Inglourious Bastards:

NBC Universal Pictures still plans to release The Hunt about 'liberal elites' kidnapping 'deplorables' from red states and killing them for sport despite backlash in the wake of mass shootings. NBC Universal is still pushing ahead with plans to release the movie The Hunt. Movie is about liberal elites kidnapping and hunting MAGA types for sport in the upcoming political satire.

Hollywood hates, hates, hates Americans, and hates American Christians in particular because Hollywood is owned and run by Paper American satanists. If you still can't understand this, if you still can't accept this, you're probably not going to get it until you are actually being hunted by them and their proxies.

Meanwhile, actual mass shootings are being committed by their co-religionists.

Their screams music, their pain my pleasure.' Dayton shooter's demonic notebook scrawls reveal he fantasized about massacres, 'hunting' for humans, craved marijuana and speed, called himself a sociopath and hailed Lucifer. Betts' rambling contributions, written around 2017, include a Satanic pentagram with the words 'Hail Lucifer' and numerous references to death and murder. The warped loner declares himself a servant of 'evil incarnate' and rants about everything from schizophrenia to satanic rituals and massacres.

The only problem that NBC Universal Pictures has with the Dayton shooter is that he didn't target white Christians. This post is directly connected to the previous one, because the movie represents what the satanists intend to do to Americans if Americans are foolish enough to permit themselves to be disarmed.

How can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. He that is not with me is against me.
- Matthew 12:30

Never quit, never cuck

And never expect the Left, the libs, the Paper Americans, the globalists, or the neoclowns to finally start being reasonable:

One of their tactics is exhaustion - to exhaust the weak among us and get them to say, “Gosh, if we just give in we can put this unpleasantness behind us.” But you can’t put anything behind you with these people, because there is nothing to put behind you. It’s all a lie. You are not a racist. Your guns won’t hurt anyone but criminals and aspiring tyrants. And the leftists know it. They know they are spewing skeevy slanders, and if you give in on this one - handing over your AR-15 and hanging your head over prejudices you don’t possess - the libs and their newsprint lackeys will just club you with another set of grievances that you can only atone for through further submission.

It will never end. They will always hate you. Always. Nothing you can do will change that. Nothing. So get used to it and invite them to pound sand....

They are always going to hate you, so get any idea out of your head that if you just surrender then this endless tsunami of lies will finally be over. It won’t, because it has nothing to do with what you actually think or have actually done. Nothing.

You cannot reason with the literally unreasonable. The only things they respect are will and power. So don't ever be reasonable with them. Conflict is now in the air we breathe, in the water in which we swim. Therefore, it is vital to learn how to let it energize rather than enervate you.

Needless to say, the cucks, neoclowns and Paper Americans are all endorsing the latest attempt to violate the unalienable rights of Americans.

"Red flag laws are a good idea."
- Ben Shapiru, 7 Aug 2019

And before you are tempted to take the idiotic position that because Little Benny went on to qualify his endorsement of gun control, it doesn't count and he isn't a fake conservative Paper American, notice this subsequent exchange:

Cameron Kasky@cameron_kasky
The good news, in my opinion, is that almost every mass shooter I’ve personally learned about had several people around them who knew they were at risk of violence. There are exceptions, of course, like the Vegas shooter, but I think red flag laws can do an awful lot to help

Ben Shapiru@benshapiru
I totally agree, and have been stumping for GVROs for years.

A GVRO is a Gun Violence Restraining Order which offers families and loved ones, household members, and law enforcement a judicial pathway for removing firearms and prohibiting future gun purchases. It is, without question, a violation of the 2nd Amendment. The Fake Right is actually a bigger problem than the Left because it gatekeeps, disrupts, and confuses the genuine Right. Which, of course, is why the Fake Right is more properly considered an important part of the Left.

How can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. He that is not with me is against me.
- Matthew 12:30

The algorithm made me do it

It looks as if Michael Yon's story on Google is going to be a lot more explosive than Wired's, if indeed the latter's ever runs.

Achtung! Pay attention: tonight I talked for about an hour with a "Google Snowden" who will soon go public. A deep insider.

Fascinating stuff. I cannot say much now other than pay attention to what is coming out starting in a week or so from now.

Source said many interesting things about how Chinese are flooding into tech companies like Google, and some of the incredible techniques they can use to brainwash or at least mislead millions of people.

Take this as an example that I am making up based on our conversation. Again, I am making this up but it is based on our conversation:

A politician tweets saying we must protect our national interests.

Google, or whoever, immediately promotes all stories that translates, "must protect our national interests," to "nationalism," and then in almost real time rewrites the meaning of "nationalism" to include traits such as xenophobic, racist, and references Nazis as nationalists.

This happens so quickly and so comprehensively that most people never will notice that in the 30 seconds the curtain was closed, Google (or whoever) rewrote part of the dictionary, and history.

To state this more clearly: they can basically rewrite what you say, write, sing, wear, or hand gesture -- name it -- and they can rewrite that faster than we can make popcorn.

They can do this anonymously saying the algorithm is doing it when in reality they write the rules that make the rules.

Anyway, the insider told me much more. I do not know how much already is public but I do think that if the source is correct, President Trump and a lot of others in powerful positions will be extremely angry with some of the internet players who already have hired half of China.

The amusing thing is that those of us who are dev-savvy already knew this was how it worked. An algorithm is not an excuse, it's just a series of rules. So, blaming bad behavior on "the algorithm did it" is simply pointing the finger at the programmers of the algorithm.

But an insider putting it in terms that non-developers will understand and demonstrating the intrinsically and intentionally manipulative of the process is essentially translating it from techno-dialectic to techno-rhetoric, which is necessary if people are to be stirred into action.

And the most revealing aspect will be the obvious aims of the manipulators being revealed by the nature of the manipulation.

A tale of two occupations

An interesting perspective on the Hong Kong situation from a former resident:

The fact that Hong Kongers are right to be angry about what is a de facto Tycoon Club oligarchy controlling every nook and cranny of the economy. The local backlash against “the invasion of the mainlanders”. And the relentless cultural war of Cantonese vs. Beijing, north vs. south, province vs. political center.

What these protests have accelerated is Beijing’s conviction that Hong Kong is not worth its trust as a key node in China’s massive integration/development project. Beijing invested no less than $18.8 billion to build the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge, as part of the Greater Bay Area, to integrate Hong Kong with the mainland, not to snub it.

Now a bunch of useful idiots at least has graphically proven they don’t deserve any sort of preferential treatment anymore.

The big story in Hong Kong is not even the savage, counter-productive protests (imagine if this was in France, where Macron’s army is actually maiming and even killing Gilets Jaunes/Yellow Vests). The big story is the rot consuming HSBC – which has all the makings of the new Deutsche Bank scandal.

HSBC holds $2.6 trillion in assets and an intergalactic horde of cockroaches in their basement – asking serious questions about money laundering and dodgy deals operated by global turbo-capitalist elites.

In the end, Hong Kong will be left to its own internally corroding devices – slowly degrading to its final tawdry status as a Chinese Disneyland with a Western veneer. Shanghai is already in the process of being boosted as China’s top financial center. And Shenzhen already is the top high-tech hub. Hong Kong will be just an afterthought.

But occupations? Whatever can he mean by occupations? I'm sure the natives will welcome the New Hong Kongese and the New Kashmiris, who are every bit as Hong Kong and Kashmir as the people who were there already!

Speaking of HSBC: the CEO of HSBC was fired yesterday and the rumor is this: the BOE found out that they were lending to the PBOC to prop up the currency.

Medieval History 101 Episode VII

Medieval History Episode VII: Getting Medieval on the Saxon Christ. For subscribers only.

You thought keeping track of all the relationships in Game of Thrones was complicated? Just wait till you hear about the relationships between Gregory the Great, the monastery at Jarrow, the oldest copy of the Vulgate translation of the Bible, the Anglo-Saxon missionaries to the continent, Charlemagne’s campaign against the Saxons, the secret runes of the evangelists, and how the bird came to sit on the shoulder of the Peace-Child of God at his baptism."

Episode Guide.

The incipient death of DC

Forbes doesn't see a future for DC Comics in the wake of the AT&T acquisition of WarnerMedia:

Earlier this month at San Diego Comic-Con, returning attendees noticed a major change on the show’s massive exhibit floor. The booth for DC Comics, which had been a massive standalone pavilion in the center of the publishers’ area in the center of the hall, was gone. America’s oldest and second-largest comic book publisher had retreated to the far back corner of the hall, where it was incorporated into the multi-level WarnerMedia exhibit, in the shadow of banks of giant monitors previewing upcoming shows and cast appearances.

The subtext of this move could not have been clearer. AT&T—now the parent company of WarnerMedia and its divisions, including DC Comics (previously known as DC Entertainment), HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros.—does not seem terribly interested in being in the comic book publishing business....

A generation ago, faced with a similar situation, DC’s then co-President and Publisher Jenette Kahn appealed to Time Warner management that wanted to dramatically cut back on DC’s current publishing in favor of reprints, saying that the company’s new material was the lifeblood of the company, a source of new fans and new IP without which the characters and related merchandise would decline into obscurity. She won that argument and DC, under her stewardship, ended up minting many of the golden coins in which it still trades, including The Dark Knight, Watchmen and Sandman, despite never being a gigantic engine of revenue within the Time Warner corporate umbrella.

Today, DC Comics is in a similar situation. Following a demoralizing mid-decade move from its traditional home in New York to Warner Bros’ headquarters in Burbank, CA, the company has stumbled through various events and line reboots, milking assets like Frank Miller’s once-fresh take on Batman and post-Alan Moore Watchmen for the last dregs of fan appeal and relevance, and relying on high priced milestone thousandth issues of long-running titles like Action Comics and Detective Comics to make up in dollar share what they are losing in unit share of an increasingly crowded comics market.

Recently, DC co-President Dan DiDio publicly fumed that reissues of comics 30 and 40 years old were outselling current stories featuring the same characters, calling that a “failure on us.”

The SJW takeover of DC is precisely why AT&T's best bet is to shut down the publishing business before the current generation of editors and writers start to harm the valuable brands that were created over decades. The world observably neither needs nor wants new Batman and Superman comics, particularly not those that transform Batman into a black transgirl and Superman into a lesbian Hispanic woman. There isn't enough money in new comics to be worth the risk of moronic SJWs devaluing the brands that are the only real value of DC's publishing business.

AT&T's management will almost certainly do the math and realize this, which is why I expect Arkhaven to see off DC, and probably sooner rather than later, just as it has already witnessed the ugly last gasp and mercy killing of Vertigo.

Welcome to the Winestream

No, not mine... Barcelona Life is picking up where I left off.

Also, due to an ongoing SJW campaign aimed at YouTube, please note that I have locked down the Darkstream channel on YouTube, so only the most recent two videos, as well as the audiobooks, are publicly accessible now. If you want to watch an older video, visit UATV or BitChute.

UPDATE: No Winestream tonight, unfortunately, due to technical difficulties.

How to combat nationalism

Indian Prime Minister Modi is attempting a bold political stroke intended to extinguish the spirit of Kashmir's independence and is utilizing some strategies that might strike the American observer as being more than a little familiar:

Internally, Modi’s bold re-designation of Kashmir as a union territory with a legislature is a dream fulfilled for Indian nationalistic sentiment which never accepted the compromise provisions in the Indian Constitution under Articles 370 and 35A, wherein Muslim-majority Kashmir had been allowed a parallel Constitution with a flag of its own. State governments in Kashmir had powers over law enforcement, residence and property rights. Central laws had no validity in Kashmir unless the local legislature approved them.

In effect, the autonomous status turned Kashmir into a ghetto with a mentality of uniqueness and distinctness from the rest of India. It strengthened the nearly seven million Kashmiri Muslims’ feeling that they are not Indians but a different nationality who deserve to keep Indians out of their paradisiacal enclave except as visiting tourists....

Over time, the halfway house existence of Kashmir as a state within India and yet a nation that does not emotionally belong to India failed to meet both India’s objectives and Kashmiri Muslims’ aspirations. Waves of anti-India uprisings and insurgencies, supported from across the border by Pakistan, kept Kashmir burning. Autonomy had become a slippery slope for separatism, jihadist extremism and alienation of Kashmiri Muslims from the rest of India.

Modi’s bet is that by corralling Kashmir under tighter central government control, he will marginalise the secessionist politicians there, open Kashmir up for the return of Hindu Kashmiri minorities who had been ethnically cleansed by jihadists in the late 1980s, and alter the demographic mix in Kashmir through settlement of Indians of all religious and ethnic backgrounds.

Since autonomy backfired, Modi is saying ‘enough with appeasement’ and aiming for assimilation and complete integration of Kashmir. Demographically, the idea is to dissolve Kashmiri separatism in a sea of Indian nationalism through the intermixing of populations, blunting the sharp edge of separatism that comes from lack of ethnic heterogeneity in the Kashmir Valley, where 97 percent of the population is Muslim.... Modi’s determined push for total absorption of Indian Kashmir into India proper presents an existential challenge to the long-entrenched Pakistani strategy of fanning alienation of Kashmiri Muslims against India. If Kashmiri Muslims are reorganised and no longer grouped together as an exclusive ethnic entity, Pakistan will find it a lot harder to foment the flame of self-determination.

Modi is redefining the very meaning and identity of ‘self’ in Kashmir, a process that will take years and decades, but whose endpoint will be dilution of pro-independence and pro-Pakistan affiliations in the reshuffled Kashmiri society of the future. Kashmiri Muslims may become further alienated from India as a result of this makeover, but Modi is calculating that, in years to come, they will no longer be numerically so dominant as to stymie Indian sovereignty.

Demographically dissolving a nation through the intermixing of populations and ethnic heterogeniety just sounds so very... 1965?

Anyhow, this strategy will almost certainly lead to war in Kashmir. And elsewhere.

Police your organization

Or it will be infiltrated by evil and it will be destroyed:

A lawsuit announced Tuesday against the Boy Scouts of America alleges a former Scout was sexually abused as a young boy in the organization for years. The unnamed plaintiff is the latest in a long line of men who say they were raped and assaulted by pedophiles whose actions were ignored or covered up by the Boy Scouts.

More than 800 men have joined a movement called “Abused in Scouting,” started by a group of lawyers who worried that the Boy Scouts of America were planning to file for bankruptcy, cutting short the timeline for victims to bring sex abuse claims against the organization in court. Those attorneys filed a lawsuit Monday on behalf of one ex-Scout identified as “S.D.,” who said he was assaulted hundreds of times as a Boy Scout in Pennsylvania in the 1970s. The suit demands $50,000 in damages from both the Boy Scouts organization and the alleged abuser.

The extent of the Boy Scouts’ sex abuse problem first surfaced in 2010 when a judge ordered the organization to release its so-called “Perversion Files,” which listed complaints of abuse in the Scouts. In January, a child abuse expert hired by the Boy Scouts to analyze the files testified that she found 12,254 boys had reported experiencing sexual abuse at the hands of at least 7,800 alleged assailants between 1944 and 2016.

Now, hundreds more men are claiming they were abused by men who do not appear in the published “Perversion Files.” “It’s the largest pedophile ring on earth,” Tim Kosnoff, one of the lawyers representing alleged victims, said during a press conference on Tuesday. “The numbers we’re talking about now dwarf what we’ve seen in the Catholic Church cases.”

“The recipe is there for an abuser to take advantage of boys alone out in the woods at night, at their homes, at their apartments,” added another of the lawyers, Stewart Eisenberg. “Many of the boys have reported drugs and alcohol being given to them when they were minors. This abuse is baked into the culture.”

The nearly 800 members of the Abused in Scouting campaign, who hail from across the country and range in age from 14 to 88, have given their attorneys the names of 350 men who never appeared in the Boy Scouts’ internal files. The lawyers said they’d done their best to verify each of the alleged victim’s claims, based on records of their participation in the Boy Scouts and other evidence the accusers have been able to provide. But they decided to not make public names of all the newly accused men until law enforcement can confirm the legitimacy of the allegations.

This is why Christian organizations need to keep out those who are unrepentant and take pride in their sins. It's particularly important for organizations that have child members, because predators always go where the prey is.

I was a Boy Scout for a number of years and reached the rank of Star Scout before dropping out at the age of 15, being more interested in sports and chasing girls. It was a very good experience for me and I learned a lot of useful skills; I even first encountered Tolkien in the form of The Two Towers at a Boy Scout overnight. I was fortunate and never experienced or witnessed even the slightest form of abuse myself, but it's not hard to see how easily an infiltrating predator could have taken advantage of the boys entrusted to him.

Sadly, the BSA is now a fully converged organization, so the sooner it dies, the better. And the more pedos that are exposed and held accountable for their crimes, the better.

Republicans killing the GOP

It's almost astonishing to witness how determined the Republican politicians are to commit seppuku by embracing gun control:

Congressional Republicans, under intense pressure to respond to this weekend’s massacres, are coalescing around legislation to help law enforcement take guns from those who pose an imminent danger — a measure that, if signed into law, would be the most significant gun control legislation enacted in 20 years.

Now, after back-to-back shootings this weekend left 31 people dead in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, Republicans who have long resisted gun restrictions appear rattled. In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine was shouted down on Sunday by mourners in Dayton demanding that he “do something.” On Tuesday, he urged his fellow Republicans in the state legislature to pass measures establishing red flag powers and expanding background checks.

“They were absolutely right,” Mr. DeWine said Tuesday morning at a news conference. “We must do something, and that is exactly what we are going to do.”

Gun control is unconstitutional, immoral, unAmerican, and intrinsically dangerous to the citizenry. It's also electoral suicide for Republicans. If we didn't already know many of them are cucks hell-bent on surrendering at any cost, it would be hard to understand why they are so quick to embrace the media's false narrative on the subject.

Why Boris means Brexit

Like me, Mark Steyn we can have confidence in Boris Johnson's desire to be regarded as a Man of Destiny and a historical figure of note:

Like Boris, Theresa May schemed and maneuvered for decades to reach the top spot ...and, by the time she pulled it off, she'd spent so much time and effort on the scheming and maneuvering that she had no idea of what to do once she got there. Boris is likewise invested in himself, but, having reached the finial of Disraeli's greasy pole, he doesn't intend to be just the latest seat-filler. Mrs May wanted to be prime minister; Johnson wants to be a great and consequential prime minister.

Does that make him a philosophical Brexiteer? Doubtful. In the 2016 referendum, he considered the Leave and Remain choices in terms of what served his interests. To favor Remain meant supporting David Cameron, the de facto leader of the cause, and consigning himself to being a mere gentleman of the chorus. Whereas, if he chose the other side, his star power would make him the face of the campaign. He expected the Remain guys to win, and himself to have done himself a world of good with the Tory base come the next leadership election. Instead, and at least partly because of him, Leave won, and the chaos of the last three years began.

Something of a similar head fake is going on right now. A threatened "no deal" departure on October 31st is supposedly being touted by Boris just to force the EU into re-negotiating Theresa May's floppo "withdrawal agreement". So M Barnier and his backstop boy Leo Varadkar are insisting that'll never happen, and it's the May deal or nuthin'. Let them huff on. My view is that the whole re-negotiation thing is a feint, and Boris actually wants to leave with no deal. He wants a clean split - and the UK reborn as a sovereign nation, no ifs or buts. Whether he wants it because that's his preferred public policy or because it cements his place in history is unimportant if you happen to believe, as I do, that that's in the best interests of the United Kingdom.

Greatness beckons, Boris.

Get Unauthorized!

Crypto.Fashion comes through again with the official Unauthorized logo t-shirt for men and women. As you can see on the store there, the back of the shirt features a concert tour-style list of all the current creators, from The Big Bear to Channel Zammy.

The great dumbing-down

A regular observes a change at work:

In high school we were told the newspaper was written for a 7-8th grade level.

Last month  in our corporate meeting we were told the new standard is 5th grade.

Next step: crayon.

'Merica!

I don't think it's the Americans who are the problem, for the most part. At least, not Americans of the non-Paper variety.

Heating up all over

It looks increasingly as if the world wants war, despite the social mood metric of the stock market being at an all-time high.

New Delhi has declared it is revoking a decades-old constitutional provision that granted special powers to the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. The move comes amid ongoing flare-ups between India and Pakistan over the region.

The majority-Muslim region that became part of India in the times of decolonization, and has been a point of dispute between India and Pakistan ever since, has enjoyed broad autonomy under the Indian constitution. It is the only Indian state that was allowed to have its own constitution.

All laws passed by the Indian parliament, except for those regarding defense, communications, and foreign policy, had to first be ratified by the local legislature before coming into force in Kashmir. Apart from that, only local residents could purchase land or property in the state or hold office there.

This will no longer be the case starting Monday, New Delhi has announced. A resolution to revoke Kashmir’s special status was introduced on Monday by Home Minister Amit Shah and enshrined in a decree signed by President Ram Nath Kovind, the ceremonial head of India.

Translation: The Hindu nationalists are intending to crack down hard on India's Muslims. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were large-scale population transfers in the cards. Remember, we're living at the end of one of the greatest global peacetime expansions in human history. The correction will therefore likely be of similar scale and scope.

Math is hard, Barbie

Uncephalized demonstrates why it is tremendously foolish to attempt to "correct" one's intellectual superiors in taking exception to my observation about it being astronomically unlikely that any individual present at one mass shooting in the United States will be present at another one:

I'm responding to Vox's OP: The odds against one person in a country of 320 million being in the vicinity of two such events are astronomical.

Which is flat-out wrong--unless I am making some boneheaded error, which is always possible, and why I showed my work--and leads me to think Vox didn't bother doing the math at all before jumping to a conspiracy as his explanation. I may be in error here--I'm sure someone will quickly point it out, if so--but by my math these coincidences are far from astronomically unlikely.

Las Vegas 2017 attendance: 20,000
Gilroy 2019 attendance: 80,000

I don't know how many attendees were actually physically present at each event at the time of the shootings, but I'll assume two thirds, so 14,520 and 52,800.

Proportion of US population present at LV shooting: 14,520 / 350,000,000 = .000041 or .0041%

Proportion of the population NOT at LV is the inverse or 99.9959%

Likelihood of one person being at both events is then: 1 - (.999959^52,800). Which is 88.8%. The number of times this apparently happened is 3, so it's 0.888^3, or 70%.

In other words, through purely random chance it is more likely than not that 3 people who were at the LV 2017 shooting would also be present at the Gilroy shooting.

Making similar estimates about the LV-Parkland connection: 39% likely assuming an average family size of 4, 3000 attendees of Parkland and we are looking for a direct family member involved in both events.

The Borderline-LV coincidence has the lowest odds as I run the numbers, actually quite low, at 0.046% or about 1 chance in 2200, partly because the guy was actually killed, a much lower number than "was also there".

I don't know enough about the San Bernardino or Toronto events to start even making assumptions.

In this model the probability of the LV-Gilroy and LV-Parkland coincidences both happening is 0.70*0.39 = 0.27 or 27%. Just better than 1 in 4.

The very large numbers present at these festivals make for counterintuitive probabilities. The Borderline connection is the only one that even gives me pause, but even 1 in 2200 is not what I'd call "astronomically low".

Uncephalized is correct about one thing. I didn't bother actually doing the math beforehand because I didn't need to do it. And I didn't need to do it in order to have a general idea about the size of the probabilities involved because a) I am highly intelligent and b) I have an instinctual grasp of mathematical relationships. I knew the probabilities were astronomical, in much the same way you know a tall man's height is over six feet without needing to actually measure him. The boneheaded error Uncephalized has made here is that he simply doesn't know how to calculate the probability of independent events. But it's really not a difficult concept. For example, if the odds of rolling a six on a six-sided die are 1 in 6, then the odds of rolling two sixes on two different six-sided dice are (1/6) * (1/6) = 1/36.

But before we calculate the probability of these two specific independent events, let's get the base numbers right. The Gilroy Garlic Festival is a three-day event, so that 80,000 is reduced to 26,667 before being reduced another one-third as per Uncephalized's assumption to account for the timing of the event. This brings us to an estimated 17,787 people present at the time of the shootings. Note that reducing the estimated 20,000 Las Vegas attendance by the same one-third gives us 13,340, not 14,520.

It's never a good sign when they can't even get the simple division right. Now for the relevant probabilities.

• Gilroy probability: Dividing 17,787 by 350,000,000 results in a probability of 0.00005082, or one in 19,677.
• Las Vegas probability: Dividing 13,340 by 350,000,000 results in a probability of 0.00003811428, or one in 26,237
• Gilroy AND Las Vegas probability: Multiplying 0.00005082 by 0.00003811428 results in a probability of 0.0000000019369677096, or one in 516,270,868.

You will observe that 88.8 percent, or 1/1.13, is very, very far away from 1/516,270,868, and 0.0000000019369677096 cubed - to account for all three dual survivors reported - is even further off from 70 percent. As I originally stated, the odds against anyone having been at both events are astronomical, even if we leave out relevant factors such as the fact that 11 percent of all US citizens have never left their birth state throughout the course of their entire lives and that Las Vegas averages 24,381 visitors from California every day.

I suggest that "astronomical" is a perfectly reasonable way to describe a probability of one in 516 million cubed, or if you prefer, one in 137,604,570,000,000,016,192,784,160. I also suggest that you refrain from attempting to correct me if your IQ is sub-Mensa level. And finally, I suggest that it is not "jumping to a conspiracy" to observe obvious and glaring statistical improbabilities.

Owen takes a week off

Courtesy of YouTube. Apparently a Boomer was threatened by criticism of his g-g-generation and complained, leading to a strike and a one-week timeout.

Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our hate speech policy.

We've removed the following content from YouTube:

Video: The Boomer - Owen Benjamin

How dare you, Big Bear? How double-dog dare you? This is the banned video, which you can still watch on Unauthorized. Making fun of Boomers is now officially considered "hate speech" by YouTube.

Called it

Once men who should never have been pastors fall to temptation, they fall hard:

So let’s get this straight. Josh Harris poses with his wife to announce a divorce. Several days later, he announces on Instagram that he has renounced his faith with a “heartfelt” apology to the LGBTQ community. Now, he’s seen marching in a gay pride parade wearing rainbow gear and eating rainbow food. Is there another announcement he will be making soon?

One certainly assumes so.

China fires its biggest gun

Economically speaking, you understand, by lowering the value of the Yuan against the USD:

“The wait is over for those wondering how Beijing would respond to Trump’s recent tariff announcement,” BMO said. “The result: the yuan was allowed to depreciate well beyond 7.0.”

Krueger called China’s retaliation “massive,” adding that “on a scale of 1-10, it’s an 11.” He cited the Chinese government calling on state buyers to halt U.S. agricultural purchases, while there’s “increased anecdotal evidence that the Chinese government is tightening its overview of foreign firms.”

“While there were measures that could have been chosen with larger direct effects on supply chains, the announcements from Beijing represent a direct shot at the White House and seem designed for maximum political impact,” Krueger said. “ We expect a quick (and possibly intemperate) response from the White House, and consequently expect a more rapid escalation of trade tensions.”

This doesn't matter to the real economy. The US economy will only benefit from a reduction of trade with China. But it does matter quite a bit to the financial economy, hence all of the sturm und drang and falling stock markets.

It's interesting that they resorted to this so quickly. It appears things are a little shakier over there than everyone except Nate suspected.

Credit where credit is due

Black Science Man actually makes a modicum of sense for a change:

In the past 48hrs, the USA horrifically lost 34 people to mass shootings.

On average, across any 48hrs, we also lose...

500 to Medical Errors
300 to the Flu
250 to Suicide
200 to Car Accidents
40 to Homicide via Handgun

Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than to data.

We'd better hope no one tells Ivanka about these statistics or President Trump will be announcing a VERY GOOD, NO, GREAT proposal to ban doctors, the flu, and automobiles before the end of the week.

What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?

Cloudflare cucks again

This is why you shouldn't have cucked in the first place, Matthew Prince. Once you have demonstrated your willingness to do so, you have not signaled virtue, but weakness, and thereby guaranteed that pressure will be placed on you to do so again, and again, and again:

The mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio are horrific tragedies. In the case of the El Paso shooting, the suspected terrorist gunman appears to have been inspired by the forum website known as 8chan. Based on evidence we've seen, it appears that he posted a screed to the site immediately before beginning his terrifying attack on the El Paso Walmart killing 20 people.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Nearly the same thing happened on 8chan before the terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. The El Paso shooter specifically referenced the Christchurch incident and appears to have been inspired by the largely unmoderated discussions on 8chan which glorified the previous massacre. In a separate tragedy, the suspected killer in the Poway, California synagogue shooting also posted a hate-filled “open letter” on 8chan. 8chan has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate.

8chan is among the more than 19 million Internet properties that use Cloudflare's service. We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.

This may explain the real purpose behind the shootings: interfering with Q's communications. But regardless, Cloudflare is about to learn that there is no rest for the weak, as this comment from the Verge posted on Instapundit demonstrates.

excellent. now can Cloudfare remove DDOS protection from the GOP website until the Republicans stop being the party of white supremacist, bigots, xenophobes and racists?

Attack of the zombie gunmen

The government is obviously hiding the true story in Dayton in order to prevent panic. The shooter rose from the grave in order to take his revenge!

Item: Connor Betts named as gunman in body armour who shot dead 9 and injured 26 in Ohio

Item: Dayton gunman Connor Betts' sister and her boyfriend 'shot dead' in massacre. Megan Betts was killed by her brother Connor who slaughtered eight others before being shot by police

Item: an obituary published in The Hartford Courant on Feb. 23, 2014

Connor D. Betts
1992 - 2014

Connor D. Betts, 22, of Suffield passed away suddenly Wednesday, February 19, 2014. Connor was born in Hartford on February 12, 1992, son of Kathleen O'Leary Betts, and was loved by all who knew him. Growing up in Suffield he graduated from Suffield High School in 2010 and then attended Lincoln Tech for Diesel Technology and received his certification in 2012....

Connor was always willing to lend a hand and had the great ability to fix anything. He was known for his heart of gold and will be missed dearly by all. He was a 6'3" teddy bear known as "Baby" by his "Mama." Along with his mother Connor is survived by his four siblings, Colleen Rodriguez and her husband Alfredo; Megan Betts; Brian Betts; and Kathryn Betts all in Suffield.

In other words, it's zombies. That, or the guys writing the scripts are complete hacks who comb through obituary notices to name their characters.

UPDATE: Some have suggested that it is simple coincidence that two young men named Connor Betts happened to have sisters named Megan. And that is surely within the realm of reasonable possibility; White Pages lists six Connor Bettses across the United States. But if it's just a case of nomenclatural coincidence, then why are people reporting that the obituaries of the late Connor Betts are being wiped off the Internet?

Another atheist shooter

Interesting that the low-status atheist angle doesn't seem to come up often amidst all the theatrics and diagnostics that have been performed over the years concerning mass shooters. Notice the patch on the right side of the Dayton shooter's chest.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that says Against all Gods. The primary pattern to be recognized here is low-status white male atheist. Perhaps they make the best wind-up toys.

A series of highly improbable coincidences

One strong indicator of a Narrative at work is the presence of people connected to similar previous events:

The parents of one of the Stonewall Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida happened to be in El Paso on Saturday.

I said the over/under was three, although I was anticipating a connection to Las Vegas rather than Parkland. But regardless, we're already at two. Let's just say this isn't the first time there has been an "amazing coincidence" of this type.

• Gilroy Garlic Festival: 3 also survived Las Vegas shooting 2 years ago
• Telemachus Orfanos, 27, died alongside 11 others when a man opened fire at the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, north-west of Los Angeles. He escaped death last year when a gunman killed 58 people in Las Vegas.
• A woman from California who survived the Las Vegas attack had been driving to her job in San Bernardino, California, when the mass shooting at that city’s Inland Regional Center began in December 2015.
• Parkland survivor's dad escaped harm in Las Vegas shooting.
• One of the victims of the 2012 mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado, had been at the site of a mass shooting in Toronto only a month before.

The odds against one person in a country of 320 million being in the vicinity of two such events are astronomical. The odds of this happening at least six times are astronomical squared. What the explanation is, I don't know, but the probability math indicates extreme skepticism is required.

She's not wrong

Too many commentators are still caught up in the irrelevant Republican-Democrat shell game:

Tulsi Gabbard is running for president of a country that she believes has wrought horror on the world, and she wants its citizens to remember that. She is from Hawaii, and she spends each morning surfing. But that is not what she talks about in this unlikely campaign. She talks about the horror.

She lists countries: Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Iraq. Failure after failure, she says. To drive the point home, she wants to meet on a Sioux tribe reservation in North Dakota, where, she explains, the United States government committed its original atrocity.

“These Indigenous people have been disrespected, mistreated with broken promises and desecrated lands,” Ms. Gabbard says.

Ms. Gabbard, 38, was a soldier in Iraq and currently serves as a major in the Hawaii Army National Guard, which she cites to temper her message: Get out of foreign wars. Leave other countries alone. Not everyone wants democracy.

Her position is hardly new. It's essentially what George Washington recommended and what Donald Trump promised.

The US government has arguably committed more atrocities and broken more promises and treaties than any other extant government in the world, with the sole exception of Great Britain. That is an easily verifiable fact. The list of Indian treaties alone that it signed, then violated, are in excess of 100. In fact, it's incredible that any foreign governments even bother to go through the charade anymore.

I'm not a fan of Tulsi Gabbard. But on this particular matter, she's absolutely correct.