No one wants Fake News

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

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

But will people actually pay for news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck with that.

They left their Ebola in San Francisco

It goes nicely with the sewage on the streets:

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

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

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

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

The lawless Parliament

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Bringing back the old books

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

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

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

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

Culturally enriching Fargo

It's simply astonishing how crime rates coincidentally change in harmony with the changing demographics.

Jones was out walking his dog around 1 Friday morning by the corner of 4th Street and 6th Avenue North near downtown Fargo He had a funny feeling about two men who were walking nearby.

“When I saw them watching me and I looked back at my dog and I heard pow, pow, pow, pow, pow,” Jones said. “I saw my neighbor who was running and he fell face down and was like help me, help me.”

Jones called 911 and ran back to the victim until Fargo police arrived.

Authorities say the man was taken to a nearby hospital where he died.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Jones said. “I could not believe it because I’m from Alabama and down there crime runs rampant and I moved up here to get away from it and not in a million years did I see something like that up here.”

19-year-old Kareem Byrd and 30-year-old Charles Harris the third, both of Fargo, were taken into custody in the murder of 38-year-old Jason Halvorson.

In Clown World, everything is inexplicable and coincidental. And in another ten years, writers will be writing science fiction stories about going back in time to assassinate Norman Borlaug before he goes to college in order to save the human race.

Gone in six months?

Fake Science is beginning to face the cruel realization that Nature is calling its bluff:

In recent years the National Park Service prominently featured brochures, signs and films which boldly proclaimed that all glaciers at Glacier National Park were melting away rapidly. But now officials at GNP seem to be scrambling to hide or replace their previous hysterical claims while avoiding any notice to the public that the claims were inaccurate. Teams from Lysander Spooner University visiting the Park each September have noted that GNP’s most famous glaciers such as the Grinnell Glacier and the Jackson Glacier appear to have been growing – not shrinking – since about 2010. The Jackson Glacier—easily seen from the Going-To-The-Sun Highway—may have grown as much as 25% or more over the past decade.

Apparently those computer models that indicated the glaciers will be gone by the year 2020 are inaccurate. That, or it is going to be one serious inferno of a summer.

A collection of curious anomalies

Ron Unz observes an intriguing anomaly in his review of a Jewish historian's account of anti-semitism in US military intelligence:

Oliver’s peremptory dismissal of the standard Holocaust narrative led me to take a closer look at the treatment of the same topic in Bendersky’s book, and I noticed something quite odd. As discussed above, his exhaustive research in official files and personal archives conclusively established that during World War II a very considerable fraction of all our Military Intelligence officers and top generals were vehemently hostile to Jewish organizations and also held beliefs that today would be regarded as utterly delusional. The author’s academic specialty is Holocaust studies, so it is hardly surprising that his longest chapter focused on that particular subject, bearing the title “Officers and the Holocaust, 1940-1945.” But a close examination of the contents raises some troubling questions.

Across more than sixty pages, Bendersky provides hundreds of direct quotes, mostly from the same officers who are the subject of the rest of his book. But after carefully reading the chapter twice, I was unable to find a single one of those statements referring to the massive slaughter of Jews that constitutes what we commonly call the Holocaust, nor to any of its central elements, such as the existence of death camps or gas chambers.

The forty page chapter that follows focuses on the plight of the Jewish “survivors” in post-war Europe, and the same utter silence applies. Bendersky is disgusted by the cruel sentiments expressed by these American military men towards the Jewish former camp inmates, and he frequently quotes them characterizing the latter as thieves, liars, and criminals; but the officers seem strangely unaware that those unfortunate souls had only just barely escaped an organized mass extermination campaign that had so recently claimed the lives of the vast majority of their fellows. Numerous statements and quotes regarding Jewish extermination are provided, but all of these come from various Jewish activists and organizations, while there is nothing but silence from all of the military officers themselves.

Bendersky’s ten years of archival research brought to light personal letters and memoirs of military officers written decades after the end of the war, and in both those chapters he freely quotes from these invaluable materials, sometimes including private remarks from the late 1970s, long after the Holocaust had become a major topic in American public life. Yet not a single statement of sadness, regret, or horror is provided. Thus, a prominent Holocaust historian spends a decade researching a book about the private views of our military officers towards Jews and Jewish topics, but the one hundred pages he devotes to the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath contains not a single directly-relevant quote from those individuals, which is simply astonishing. A yawning chasm seems to exist at the center of his lengthy historical volume, or put another way, a particular barking dog is quite deafening in its silence.

I am not an archival researcher and have no interest in reviewing the many tens of thousands of pages of source material located at dozens of repositories across the country that Bendersky so diligently examined while producing his important book. Perhaps during their entire wartime activity and also the decades of their later lives, not a single one of the hundred-odd important military officers who were the focus of his investigation ever once broached the subject of the Holocaust or the slaughter of Jews during World War II. But I think there is another distinct possibly.

As mentioned earlier, Beaty spent his war years carefully reviewing the sum-total of all incoming intelligence information each day and then producing an official digest for distribution to the White House and our other top leaders. And in his 1951 book, published just a few years after the end of fighting, he dismissed the supposed Holocaust as a ridiculous wartime concoction by dishonest Jewish and Communist propagandists that had no basis in reality. Soon afterward, Beaty’s book was fully endorsed and promoted by many of our leading World War II generals, including those who were subjects of Bendersky’s archival research. And although the ADL and various other Jewish organizations fiercely denounced Beaty, there is no sign that they ever challenged his absolutely explicit “Holocaust denial.”

I suspect that Bendersky gradually discovered that such “Holocaust denial” was remarkably common in the private papers of many of his Military Intelligence officers and top generals, which presented him with a serious dilemma. If only one or two of those individuals had expressed such sentiments, their shocking statements could be cited as further evidence of their delusional anti-Semitism. But what if a substantial majority of those officers—who certainly had possessed the best knowledge of the reality of World War II—held private beliefs that were very similar to those publicly expressed by their former colleagues Beaty and Oliver? In such a situation, Bendersky may have decided that certain closed doors should remain in that state, and entirely skirted the topic.

Translation: just about everything you think you know about 20th century history is wrong.

Trans-Exclusionary Bio-Essentialism

As predicted, once they were done expelling all the thought criminals, the SJWs in comics are now actively devouring themselves:

Mockingbird writer Chelsea Cain has deleted her Twitter account after facing mounting backlash and accusations of transphobia due to a creative choice present in the latest issue of her comic book series Man-Eaters.

Cain’s self-described “feminist” series Man-Eaters, published by Image Comics with art by Elise McCall, follows the exploits of a twelve-year old girl named Maude as she navigates a world wherein a mutation causes women’s menstrual cycles to change a woman into a ‘were-cat’ creature and the ensuing harsh, fear and paranoia motivated response from the government.

Cain has repeatedly faced waves of criticism and accusations of holding Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (or TERF) beliefs due to the alleged trans-exclusionary nature of the series’ concept, as some believed associating the monstrous change in women with a biological menstrual cycle excluded persons who were not biologically female but identified as such. In an interview with Kat Overland from Women Write About Comics, Cain specified that the series “is a story about what it’s like to be a cis gendered female coming of age in a culture that consistently reinforces the messaging that periods are shameful, that our bodies are shameful, and that womanhood—and the biology that goes along with it—is something gross and not for polite company” and clarified that she believes that “You don’t have to have a uterus to be a woman. Anyone who thinks that hasn’t been paying attention.”

I found this particularly amusing as Miss Cain is the SJW writer who was championed by Reveal in the very hit piece that targeted Chuck Dixon and me. As if the idea of a menstruation-themed feminist comic co-written by 14-year-old girls wasn't amusing enough....

Reality wins.

Lauren Southern and the sociopathic saboteurs

If you ever wonder why I don't respond to anyone's enthusiastic emails volunteering to help, why I absolutely refuse to be drawn into Internet drama concerning anyone on the Left or Right, why I keep my distance from most e-celebs, and why I refuse to place much trust in anyone outside the VFM, this explosive story by Milo Yiannopoulos should help you understand my standoffishness:

If you’ve ever donated to Tommy Robinson, the British free speech and anti-Islamist activist dubbed the “backbone” of Britain by Steve Bannon, there’s a fair chance your money didn’t end up paying for his tour bus or security guards, but was instead diverted to pay for champagne-fueled gay soirées in some of London’s most expensive zip codes. The culprits? A homosexual couple who produced both of Lauren Southern’s documentary films, and who last month released their own movie, You Can’t Watch This, about free speech.

More than a dozen former coworkers, friends and acquaintances say Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John bragged to them about these and other betrayals, thefts, frauds and sabotages, including a secret, years-long collaboration with a George Soros-funded far-Left activist group that endangered the lives of Gavin McInnes, this reporter and Tommy himself. Leaked documents, revealed here for the first time, confirm many of the claims....

Yet it remains true that Tommy Robinson and Lauren Southern both employed Caolan Robertson and George Llewelyn-John knowing they were accused of stealing money from their previous employer, and that Levant had publicly alleged that they had extorted him for ever-larger sums long after they left the company. It was only thanks to their close relationships with Tommy Robinson and Lauren Southern that other conservatives granted the pair access and interviews. Tommy kept the boys around for too long, hoping they would change. But Lauren Southern’s relationship with the pair was especially close and lasted until May 2019. Not only did she live with Robertson and Llewelyn-John in London for a time, but Llewelyn-John wrote the majority of the script for Borderless, as well as Southern’s speech at the European Union.

Southern, famously, writes very little of her own material, and has often embarked on sexual liaisons with men who have helped her with video scripts or notes for her content. While giving speeches about the “trad life,” which typically refers to fidelity in same-race nuclear families, Southern was, in the indelicate words of one major YouTuber, “throwing herself around what seemed like the entire conservative movement in exchange for help with her writing.” We approached four of the men she has been linked to romantically, each of them a prominent Right-wing media figure in a position to help Southern succeed professionally. All four begged not to be named in this story.

 As a general rule, don't trust anyone who blows up quickly to become the conservative media star du jour. Chances are, if they're not Approved or Controlled Opposition, they are controllable opposition that comes armed with an easily-triggered self-destruct. And there are a LOT of grifters out there, all across the political spectrum.

The Red Petition

Disney, Netflix, and Hulu hate you, your family, your Christian faith, and America. So why support them with your financial resources, asks the Red Petition.

The mainstream media and entertainment companies have come out in full force against conservative values and it’s time we show them that our voice matters. Perhaps they just don’t realize how much the conservative audience is worth?

From large cities, to rural America those who hold to conservative values still have a massive financial influence and it’s time we see just how much their opposition to our core values really costs.

With that we are asking you to stand with us to stand up to the liberal agenda against families, and basic morality.

But this is not just a petition.

Every time someone signs up and fills out our petition, it automatically calculates your value as a customer, and your loss to media companies per year. The latest total loss per year is posted at the top of this page for Netflix, Disney and others to see.

I would sign the petition myself, but then, I've never subscribed to any of the three services involved. On a not-unrelated note, it's interesting to see that DC has officially denied rumors that it is shutting down its DC Universe streaming service, which tends to suggest is only a matter of time before it confirms that it is, in fact, doing so.

Two new vids

On Unauthorized TV today:

• DC or Marvel? The Legend explains the difference between the two comics giants
• Managing your career. White Bull Business reviews the effects the Big Bull's choices had on where he ended up today.

In addition to that subscribers-only content, there is of course the usual free daily videos from Big Bear, the Darkstream, and David the Good.

Stripping the assets

It's just about all over for the major publishers now that Barnes & Noble has been acquired by a hedge fund:

Barnes & Noble Inc said on Friday it would be bought by hedge fund Elliott Management Corp for $475.8 million, marking the end of the once-dominant U.S. book retailer as a public company after years of falling sales.

Shares in the largest U.S. bookstore chain rose 11%, after ending up 30% on Thursday when reports of a potential deal surfaced.

Listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 1993, Barnes & Noble has struggled to grow its business since the arrival of Amazon.com Inc turned the book sales market on its head. Even the company's recent efforts to pull in a more tech-savvy audience with its Nook e-book reader failed to compete with Amazon's Kindle and other tablets.

Elliot's offer of $6.50 per share, represented a premium of about 42% to Wednesday's close, the day before media reports of a potential transaction first surfaced. Barnes & Noble has been exploring options for a buyout since at least last October, with multiple parties showing interest including founder-chairman Leonard Riggio. Riggio acquired the flagship Barnes & Noble trade name in 1970s, nearly a century after Charles Barnes started the business in his Illinois home. Riggio grew the business, adding several retail stores across the country, but could not sustain the growth in a retail landscape dominated by Amazon.

In 2014, Barnes & Noble closed its New York Fifth Avenue store - once the world's largest bookstore - and has faced declining sales for at least the last three years. As of this January, it ran 627 retail stores.

I very much doubt that Elliott Management has any interest whatsoever in building up a bookselling business. Instead, it's going to methodically extract the most valuable pieces of the business, sell them off, and profit from the dismantling of the business. This means that the Big Five publishers will probably merge and reduce themselves to a Big Three, with at least two attempts to set up their own competitor to Amazon, both of which will fail, like Macmillan's attempt to establish Pronoun, due to their structural inability to ignore the legacy requirements that inhibit their decision-making.

As a onetime Barnes aficionado, I'll be sorry to see it go away. Most of my dates with Spacebunny, including the first years of our marriage, involved us spending an hour or two in the evening browsing the bookshelves, drinking coffee, and leaving with about $50 worth of books.

He's with Harambe now

It appears Tony Rodham went against the family:

Hillary Clinton’s youngest brother, Tony Rodham, died on Friday night, the former Democratic presidential candidate said on Twitter. Rodham’s age was not immediately known but he was born in 1954, six years after Clinton, 71, and four years after the other Rodham sibling, Hugh, 69, in the Chicago suburbs.

“We lost my brother Tony last night,” Clinton wrote. “It’s hard to find words, my mind is flooded with memories of him today. When he walked into a room he’d light it up with laughter.”

Clinton described her brother as “kind, generous [and] a wonderful husband to Megan [and] father to Zach, Simon [and] Fiona”.

“We’ll miss him very much,” the former senator, secretary of state, first lady and presidential candidate said. “But he had to go. He knew too much.”

She did not say how her brother died.

RIP, etc.

This can't be good

Two former state senators, both Republicans, were killed in recent days:

Lawmakers in Arkansas and Oklahoma are mourning the loss of two former state senators who were found dead in their homes within a span of two days.

In Arkansas, this week's fatal shooting of former Republican state Sen. Linda Collins-Smith is being investigated as a homicide, authorities said.

In Oklahoma, former state Sen. Jonathan Nichols was found dead from a gunshot in his home in Norman, about 20 miles from Oklahoma City, according to police.

It could be a coincidence, of course. But it probably isn't.

Remembrance Day

This is taken verbatim from the Moorer Report, published in 2003:

Findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli Attack on USS Liberty, the Recall of Military Rescue Support Aircraft while the Ship was Under Attack, and the Subsequent Cover-up by the United States Government 

We, the undersigned, having undertaken an independent investigation of Israel's attack on USS Liberty, including eyewitness testimony from surviving crewmembers, a review of naval and other official records, an examination of official statements by the Israeli and American governments, a study of the conclusions of all previous official inquiries, and a consideration of important new evidence and recent statements from individuals having direct knowledge of the attack or the cover up, hereby find the following:

1. That on June 8, 1967, after eight hours of aerial surveillance, Israel launched a two-hour air and naval attack against USS Liberty, the world's most sophisticated intelligence ship, inflicting 34 dead and 173 wounded American servicemen (a casualty rate of seventy percent, in a crew of 294);

2. That the Israeli air attack lasted approximately 25 minutes, during which time unmarked Israeli aircraft dropped napalm canisters on USS Liberty's bridge, and fired 30mm cannons and rockets into our ship, causing 821 holes, more than 100 of which were rocket-size; survivors estimate 30 or more sorties were flown over the ship by a minimum of 12 attacking Israeli planes which were jamming all five American emergency radio channels;

3. That the torpedo boat attack involved not only the firing of torpedoes, but the machine-gunning of Liberty's firefighters and stretcher-bearers as they struggled to save their ship and crew; the Israeli torpedo boats later returned to machine-gun at close range three of the Liberty's life rafts that had been lowered into the water by survivors to rescue the most seriously wounded;

4. That there is compelling evidence that Israel's attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew; evidence of such intent is supported by statements from Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Undersecretary of State George Ball, former CIA director Richard Helms, former NSA directors Lieutenant General William Odom, USA (Ret.), Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, USN (Ret.), and Marshal Carter; former NSA deputy directors Oliver Kirby and Major General John Morrison, USAF (Ret.); and former Ambassador Dwight Porter, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon in 1967;

5. That in attacking USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States;

6. That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack; evidence of the recall of rescue aircraft is supported by statements of Captain Joe Tully, Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, and Rear Admiral Lawrence Geis, the Sixth Fleet carrier division commander, at the time of the attack; never before in American naval history has a rescue mission been cancelled when an American ship was under attack;

7. That although Liberty was saved from almost certain destruction through the heroic efforts of the ship's Captain, William L. McGonagle (MOH), and his brave crew, surviving crewmembers were later threatened with "court-martial, imprisonment or worse" if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government;

8. That due to the influence of Israel's powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people;

9. That due to continuing pressure by the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, this attack remains the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress; to this day, no surviving crewmember has been permitted to officially and publicly testify about the attack;

10. That there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history; the existence of such a cover-up is now supported by statements of Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN (Ret.), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy; and Captain Ward Boston, USN, (Ret.), the chief counsel to the Navy's 1967 Court of Inquiry of Liberty attack;

11. That the truth about Israel's attack and subsequent White House cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the American people to the present day and is a national disgrace;

12. That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel's interests when they conflict with American interests; this policy, evidenced by the failure to defend USS Liberty and the subsequent official cover-up of the Israeli attack, endangers the safety of Americans and the security of the United States.

WHEREUPON, we, the undersigned, in order to fulfill our duty to the brave crew of USS Liberty and to all Americans who are asked to serve in our Armed Forces, hereby call upon the Department of the Navy, the Congress of the United States and the American people to immediately take the following actions:

FIRST: That a new Court of Inquiry be convened by the Department of the Navy, operating with Congressional oversight, to take public testimony from surviving crewmembers; and to thoroughly investigate the circumstances of the attack on the USS Liberty, with full cooperation from the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military intelligence services, and to determine Israel's possible motive in launching said attack on a U.S. naval vessel;

SECOND: That every appropriate committee of the Congress of the United States investigate the actions of the White House and Defense Department that prevented the rescue of the USS Liberty, thereafter threatened her surviving officers and men if they exposed the truth, and covered up the true circumstances of the attack from the American people; and

THIRD: That the eighth day of June of every year be proclaimed to be hereafter known as USS LIBERTY REMEMBRANCE DAY, in order to commemorate USS Liberty's heroic crew; and to educate the American people of the danger to our national security inherent in any passionate attachment of our elected officials for any foreign nation.

We, the undersigned, hereby affix our hands and seals, this 22nd day of October, 2003.

Thomas H. Moorer
Former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff

General of Marines Raymond G. Davis, USMC, MOH

Rear Admiral Merlin Staring, USN, Ret.,
Former Judge Advocate General of the Navy

Ambassador James Akins, Ret.,
Former United States Ambassador to Saudi Arabia

Congolecation

Apparently the integration problem is going to be an increasingly challenging one for the next wave of "Americans":

Roughly 350 migrants from the Congo are expected to arrive in San Antonio in the coming days leaving the city scrambling for French-speaking volunteers.

"We didn't get a heads up," Interim Assistant City Manager Dr. Collen Bridger told KEN 5 on Thursday.

Bridger said the Congolese migrants began to arrive in town on Tuesday. They told Migrant Resource Center workers, they traveled with a group of about 350 migrants through Ecuador to the southern border.

"When we called Border Patrol to confirm, they said, 'yea another 200 to 300 from the Congo and Angola will be coming to San Antonio,'" Bridger said.

What are all these Congolese migrants doing in San Antonio? Apparently they are being directed there.

Hundreds of illegal immigrants from the Congo are showing up on the streets of Texas. Jewish organizations have instructed them on how to fly to Ecuador and how to travel to the U.S. and how to claim asylum.

This is why a nation that wishes to survive is always well-advised to a) sink the damn ships, and, b) shoot refugees on sight. If Texans thought Californication was bad, just wait until they get the chance to experience the vibrant joys of Congolecation.

Unauthorized history

Unauthorized Professor Rachel Fulton Brown defends the Middle Ages:

We medievalists all know the drill.

Somebody in public life says something disparaging about the Middle Ages, and we all leap in to insist that either:

  a) Europe in the Middle Ages was actually much more advanced/enlightened/sophisticated than the off-hand comment about people believing the world was flat suggests, or

  b) yes, absolutely, they’re right, medieval Christians were murderous thugs, barbarians of the first order who knew nothing of tolerance or diversity and probably ate babies for breakfast whenever they could get them.

Neither answer ever changes the public conversation one iota because everybody knows that whatever Charles Homer Haskins might try to insist about the real Renaissance happening in the twelfth century, there is no getting round the Albigensian Crusade and the massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland (the former called by the pope, the latter resisted by all the bishops and other leaders of the Church).

The more those of us who study the intellectual, institutional, and spiritual achievements of the period succeed in pointing to the great depth and complexity of the Christian tradition (including its criticisms of the very kinds of violence so often cited as paradigmatic of the Dark Ages), the more our colleagues who study the massacres and inquisitions reinforce the prevailing sense of the period as benighted and savage, and we are right back where we started, blaming Europe and its colonial offspring for all the woes in the world.

Our Enlightened and liberal predecessors would say we've been doing it wrong.

This is the blog attached to the coming Unauthorized course on medieval history, so if you're interested in it, be sure to bookmark it.

X-Men meltdown

The SJW implosion continues apace:

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is on track to have the worst opening in the history of the franchise.

The movie collected just $14 million on Friday, making it the lowest debut ever for an X-Men movie, reports Variety on Saturday.

The Simon Kinberg-directed Phoenix, which cost $200 million to make, was initially projected to gross $50–60 million with the studio expecting a $40–50 million debut.

The vacuum just keeps expanding. And the high regard for the comic arc from which it was derived only underlines how badly the filmmakers screwed it up.

The Dark Phoenix Saga is not only one of the greatest X-Men tales, but it is also a frequent nominee for the best comic book storyline of all-time.

Yeah, so, about that....

Remember, Pizzagate is Fake News

To virtually no one's surprise, another SJW writer has been outed as a pedophile:

Peter Bright, best known as a contributing writer to the tech publication Ars Technica, has been arrested on charges of soliciting sex with children online. This complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, shows that an undercover FBI special agent contacted Bright via KinkD, a social media platform for sexual fetish connections, on April 18.

“Bright has been charged with one count of attempted enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity,” reports Claire Goforth at The Daily Dot:

A federal complaint alleges that Bright sought to molest a 7- and 9-year-old and met with an undercover agent for this purpose, at which point he was arrested. It also states that Bright claimed to be in a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old. He is currently being held without bail.

His Twitter handle is... wait for it... @DrPizza. And no one could ever have guessed his inclinations from his tweets.

As someone named DrPizza I dread to think what my involvement in pizzagate will turn out to be.

And now we know.

Less intelligent, but more ignorant

The Great Enstupidation of the United States proceeds apace:

When Yale recently decided to relocate three-quarters of the books in its undergraduate library to create more study space, the students loudly protested. In a passionate op-ed in the Yale Daily News, one student accused the university librarian—who oversees 15 million books in Yale’s extensive library system—of failing to “understand the crucial relationship of books to education.” A sit-in, or rather a “browse-in,” was held in Bass Library to show the administration how college students still value the presence of books. Eventually the number of volumes that would remain was expanded, at the cost of reducing the number of proposed additional seats in a busy central location.

Little-noticed in this minor skirmish over the future of the library was a much bigger story about the changing relationship between college students and books. Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade.

Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves. The University of Virginia, one of our great public universities and an institution that openly shares detailed library circulation stats from the prior 20 years, is a good case study. College students at UVA checked out 238,000 books during the school year a decade ago; last year, that number had shrunk to just 60,000.

One can make a very good case for outlawing so-called "higher education" now, as the Christian university created to educate young men has now devolved into a worse-than-useless factory for transforming young women into barren SJW debt-slaves.

Chernobyl, corrected

A Soviet general who was featured in the recent miniseries Chernobyl, Nikolai Tarakanov, corrects the liberties taken by the creators of the docudrama in a fascinating interview with Russia Today.

Tarakanov: It was a terrifying sight, really. What on Earth could demolish an entire structure of reinforced concrete? A nuclear bomb? Some massive accident? I couldn't imagine what had happened there. As a result of the explosion, all the rubble and dust was sent into the air. 300,000 cubic meters of soil around the plant were extracted, put in trucks and taken to burial sites. The soil was replaced with 300,000 cubic meters of crushed stone, sealed with concrete and covered with heavy concrete plates. This led to radiation levels falling by hundreds of times around the site, which allowed us to deal with the plant itself and decontaminate the equipment. It’s a long story. But then again, it was the soldiers who did all that. That is why when they ask me about it I always say: yes, there were scientists. Of course there were scientists; I have a doctoral degree myself. But it was the soldiers who were the main heroes of this story. When you think about war history, you always remember the military leaders, great generals, like Zhukov and Voroshilov. But who did all the fighting? It was the soldiers.

Tarakanov: There’s this episode, it’s is an ugly one. They show this boy, a conscript arriving at the military compound. What comes next is just ridiculous. They give him a uniform and moments later they are teaching him how to shoot animals. I mean, that’s just silly. Nothing even close to that ever happened. This is one serious mistake.

RTD: Are you saying they never executed animals, like they show in the episode?

Tarakanov: No, they did, but never in the residential area. In the residential parts, there were no cows, no dogs – not a single one. The shooting did take place, but it was in the forests, where wild animals still roamed, including deer, as well as cattle that wandered off after the evacuation. But to show this young boy, recently drafted, being given all this equipment straight away [is just absurd].

The way it actually happened was pretty simple. The government issued a decree announcing general mobilization. They were supposed to call in 20,000 reservists, as they were called, from, say, Moscow and elsewhere... Those were all men of conscription age, between 30 and 40, mostly. And, of course, they knew nothing about their pending deployment. Later, when they arrived at the base, they were assigned to different units, a platoon, company or battalion. Only then would they set off for Chernobyl. So, all the procedures followed the law. Yet, the time they had to serve there was way too long.

RTD: This series portrays then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev as a confused man, who is doubting the reality and hesitating to take control. Is that true? Is that how it was and did he really fail to assume responsibility for the incident?

Tarakanov: What I can tell you is that if we speak about the man’s character, since I knew him quite well... he did lack that firm grip on things that, for example, Boris Yeltsin had, the kind that majors and generals have, who can take the lead; issue orders and know what to do, that kind of stuff.

So, when he got the news he didn’t even go there himself, he sent [Nikolai] Ryzhkov [chairman of the Council of Ministers] and Shcherbina to take care of things. And not knowing what’s happening on the ground; not having the slightest idea of what it’s like, he was trying to low-ball the whole thing about the danger to the population and the impact. He was hoping that the commission would report any day that it was all over and fine.

It's disappointing to hear that the pet shootings were invented, not because one wishes they were real, but because it casts a malevolent shadow on the makers of the docudrama. What is the point of inventing and then subjecting the viewer to such psychological horror, especially when it was not real? Given the way in which Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin claims "The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous", what could possibly be the objective of lying about the mass slaughter of puppies and kittens by Russians.... oh.

It's not "a serious mistake", it's malicious revisionist historical (((wizardry))). Every. Single. Time.

Delighted to hear it

Damn the rocks and the coastline, it's full speed ahead for Marvel Studios:

Marvel Studios Producer Victoria Alonso: “We Are Actively Working On Making Our Universe As Diverse and Inclusive As We Can”

Marvel Studios producer Victoria Alonso recently did an Ask Me Anything on the Marvel Studios subreddit where she indicated Marvel Studios is “actively working on making our universe as diverse and inclusive as we can.”

Alonso noted that she has been with Marvel Studios since late 2005 at the very beginning of Iron Man. She began as a co-producer on Iron Man and visual effects producer.

During the AMA she noted that her best part of working for Marvel Studios is “to be able to show new generations the characters that represent them in each and every way.” She would go on to note that she “would feel honored to have a member of the LGBTQ+ group represented in our films and I hope the future shows that.”

Alonso’s comments should not come as a surprise. She recently described the X-Men as “outdated” arguing there are a number of female characters in the team. She also discussed how Marvel Studios is committed to diversity at the world premiere of Captain Marvel.

“Why wouldn’t we be? Why wouldn’t we be? I’m so passionate about this. Our entire success is based on people that are incredibly different. Why wouldn’t we? Why wouldn’t we only want to be recognized by one type of person? Our audience is global, is diverse, it’s inclusive. If we don’t do it that way for them, we will fail. If we don’t put pedal to the metal and the diversity and inclusivity, we will not have continued success. Our determination is to have that for all of the people out there watching our movies.”

They're betting on diversity and inclusivity. We're betting against it. Snicker-snack....

A historical rhyme

It appears Americans will find themselves sympathizing with the Palestinian people sooner rather than later now that Florida and other states are occupied territory:

What is, however, less known is that inside the US, the Neocons and their allies have been a prime force to dismantle the Bill of Rights, especially the First and Second Amendments.

Today, I want to give a simple yet telling example of how this kind of stuff is quietly happening with very little opposition. And for that example, I will use the US state in which I am currently living, Florida.

Check out this stunning sequence of events:

On April 11th the FL House unanimously (114-0) passed a House Bill 741 which would define anti-Semitism as:

• “A certain perception of the Jewish people, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jewish people.”
• “Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism directed toward a person, his or her property, or toward Jewish community institutions or religious facilities.”

The bill also provides many examples of “anti-Semitism,” including:

• Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews, often in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.
• Accusing Jews as a people or the State of Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
• Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.

The bill also provides that examples of anti-Semitism related to Israel include:

• Applying a double standard to Israel by requiring behavior of Israel that is not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, or focusing peace or human rights investigations only on Israel.
• Delegitimizing Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying Israel the right to exist.

On April 29th Governor DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet met in Jerusalem (not a joke!) to proclaim their support for “the Jewish state” (sic) and declare that DeSantis will be the most pro-Israel governor in “America” (sic). The fact that holding that meeting abroad is a violation of Florida law did not bother anybody (except The Florida First Amendment Foundation which filed a lawsuit against this outrage). Neither did the fact that Israel is the last openly and officially racist state on our planet. Sadly, Florida is hardly an exception, two dozen other states (including Texas) have passed similar laws.

This is pure and unmitigated anti-American evil on display. It clearly demonstrates the way in which the Republican Party has been totally corrupted and is now incapable of defending either American interests or American rights. It is said that while history does not repeat, it does rhyme. And what we are seeing is an astonishing ur-repetition of the way in which the Roman empire offered refuge to poor, desperate Gothic refugees beleaguered by the Huns in 376 AD, only to see those refugees slaughter the emperor and sack Rome within 44 years.

I wonder how many states will support identical laws banning a certain perception of Christians, which may be expressed as hatred toward Christianity? I also note that some of these examples of "anti-semitism" observably contradict some of the other examples provided.


UPDATE: Lest you fail to grasp that this Florida law is a direct Neo-Palestinian attack on the First Amendment rights of Americans:

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the enforcement of a state law that prohibits government agencies in Texas from doing business with contractors who are boycotting Israel. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued an injunction Thursday against the law, saying it threatens to suppress unpopular ideas and manipulates “the public debate through coercion rather than persuasion.” "This the First Amendment does not allow," he wrote.

The end of the Conservative Party?

This isn't a protest vote. This isn't the European elections. This is an actual vote for a Member of Parliament. The stupid stubbornness of the Remainers in the Conservative Party and their false appeals to the absolute need for EU approval in the name of a deal may end up relegating the party to third-party status.

Predictions based on the latest polls show the Conservatives losing 264 seats, which would mean they wouldn't even win enough seats in Parliament to give the Brexit Party a majority in a coalition government.

A true CON

Just in case you weren't convinced that Jonah Goldberg is also a fraud:

Will Chamberlain@willchamberlain
HOW DID I NOT HEAR ABOUT THIS STORY BEFORE

@JonahNRO REPEATEDLY CLAIMED TO HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR A PULITZER TWICE

ALL THAT HAPPENED WAS THAT HIS BOSSES PAID 50 BUCKS AND SUBMITTED AN ENTRY FORM

HAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT A CLOWN

It's true, as it turns out. From now on, I doubt I will never think of him again as anything but "Two-time Pulitzer nominee Jonah Goldberg". And speaking of the CON game:

David French@DavidAFrench
There’s something grossly entitled about claiming you should have government-mandated access to a social media platform you didn’t create, maintained by people you oppose, and that you should have that access for free.

Kurt Schlichter@KurtSchlichter
What have I told you?

Every single time, liberals and their collaborators will find a reason to justify silencing actual conservatives.

Always a reason.

Always some excuse.

Always another principle.

But the end result is always that you will be silenced.

Always.

But at least they have Jonah Goldberg's fake Pulitzer nominations. These unprincipled losers are so desperate for liberal approval, they'll even fake it if need be.

My eyes are dry

Oh, the irony. The anklebiters who have been attacking Owen and I for creating Unauthorized have belatedly discovered why we created it in the first place.

Just to be clear, neither Owen nor I, nor any of our supporters, had anything whatsoever to do with their demonetization. We've just ignored them; the simple fact is that they fucked up, they trusted YouTube.

Build your own platforms.

UPDATE: Apparently some people are under the mistaken impression that I reported the anklebiters. I did not do so, and in fact, I have never, ever, reported any YouTube channel to anyone for anything. If I had reported their numerous copyright violations, they would have received three strikes and their channel would be terminated, not simply demonetized. As it happens, I had three videos deleted myself in the most recent YouTube purge.

The dysgenic civilization

I've been warning about the decline of human intelligence for some time now. And contra the uninformed assumptions of the author of the piece, the average intelligence of the residents of the United States has been dropping precipitously for 50 years:

People are getting dumber. That's not a judgment; it's a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline.

Though there are legitimate questions about the relationship between IQ and intelligence, and broad recognition that success depends as much on other virtues like grit, IQ tests in use throughout the world today really do seem to capture something meaningful and durable. Decades of research have shown that individual IQ scores predict things such as educational achievement and longevity. More broadly, the average IQ score of a country is linked to economic growth and scientific innovation.

So if IQ scores are really dropping, that could not only mean 15 more seasons of the Kardashians, but also the potential end of progress on all these other fronts, ultimately leading to fewer scientific breakthroughs, stagnant economies and a general dimming of our collective future....Details vary from study to study and from place to place given the available data. IQ shortfalls in Norway and Denmark appear in longstanding tests of military conscripts, whereas information about France is based on a smaller sample and a different test. But the broad pattern has become clearer: Beginning around the turn of the 21st century, many of the most economically advanced nations began experiencing some kind of decline in IQ.

There are two reasons. First and foremost, immigration. Second, dysgenic social policies discouraging the most intelligent quintile from propagating. The 20th century involved more than a rejection of eugenics across the West, it also witnessed an active and enthusiastic embrace of dysgenics.