Yuri Bezmenov and warnings unheeded

 Here's a must-watch. Soviet KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov lecturing around 1984. He sounds like he was watching us through a time machine, and he tells the people then how they can prevent us from getting to where we are.

Understanding the Modern Political Scenario

At least every minute in the video there is an insight that makes me want to pound my head on the desk because it's 40 years too late, but here's one I thought was particularly apropos about reversing the process of demoralization:

At that point, at the point of destabilization, also this could be reversed, again, easier than this [crisis stage]. No CIA involvement at this point. You know what it takes here? Restriction of some liberties for small groups which are self-declared enemies of the society. Simple as that.

'Oh, no,' the media and liberals will tell you. 'This is against the American Constitution. How can we by force deny the civil rights to criminals?' for example. 'Not good!' So, okay, you allow the criminals to have civil rights. Go on, bring the country to the crisis. This is the bloodless way to do it. Curb the rights. I'm not to put them in prison. No, no, I'm not talking about putting all the gays from San Francisco into the concentration camp. Do not allow them to take political force. Do not elect them to the seats of power, whether it is municipality level, state level, federal level. It has to be bitten in the heads of American voters: a person like that in the seats of power is an enemy. Do not be afraid of this word. It is an enemy. If he is not an enemy here [points to chart of subversion stages on board, of screen], he will be here [points to another spot on off-screen board]. Later on, he will be shot, of course [call back to earlier point in the talk where he says the early destabilization agents are always eliminated after their purpose is fulfilled]. But at this point he is an enemy.

You are doing him a great service by denying him a right to capitalize on his own crazy ideas and become a powerful man, a man who uses the seat of power.

What did I say wrong?

I commented on a Six Chix comic this morning.

Here's my comment. As you can see, it was removed:

I guess only White people aren't allowed to culturally appropriate. I object to her putting her words in the mouth of what is obviously a White rural man (note the trucker hat). If she actually knew any White rural men, she'd probably find out that our views of big box stores are nuanced, but that we also don't think dislike of something equals a right to burn down other peoples' property and businesses.

Xunise has been very upset because last week, some newspapers refused to run her comment, and one even dropped the Six Chix strip:

https://www.cbr.com/six-chix-pro-mask-pro-blm-comic-strip-pulled-from-newspapers/

Xunise doesn't like it very much when she is silenced and seems to think it is because she is black.

"Please stop giving the benefit of the doubt to people who silence Black voices."

But I guess silencing my White voice is OK. 

Lost ground

All my rentals are in suburban communities that have been destroyed by diversity. One particular that I was sad to see go was this little neighborhood between Morse and Dublin-Granville Rd. in Columbus. It is known as the Forest Park neighborhood and it was designed as a suburb with those winding roads and cul de sacs to suppress fast through traffic. At the center is a huge traffic circle and in the middle of the circle is a shopping center that was intended to be the community center. Grocery store, bowling alley, various other shops.

It managed to maintain for a good long while. The first killer was the fact that it is within Columbus Public Schools. As the schools went Black and violent, people with options didn’t want to live within the district, but there were still Catholic schools and a certain amount of people willing to brave the diversity. But the Catholic schools have become Blacker, too, and most of the charter schools in the area are majority Black.

Then a few years ago, they started dumping Somalis in the area. It destroyed the neighborhood. Untended garbage-filled yards, filth.

The North Linden area a little ways south was the same thing, but 20 years earlier, destroyed by Section 8. There were projects nearby, which a lot of people didn’t want to live too close to, and also Columbus public schools, but there were a decent amount of working-class Whites who figured that a nice 3-4 bedroom house for $40-$60k was worth the effort (I was one of them back in the late ’80s and early ’90s. WE homeschooled, so didn’t care about the schools). Back in those days Columbus Alternative High School was still a good place and it was smack in the middle of North Linden.

But once they shut down the projects and started offering section 8 vouchers, the ghetto streamed into North Linden.

The area south of Hudson Ave was always (at least, since Blacks started moving in in the 60s-70s) pretty bad, but the dysfunction has moved many blocks north. We only own one rental south of Hudson and we simply can’t rent it to White people — it’s not safe for them. North of Hudson, the farther north you go the nicer the neighborhood gets, but the cancer is still spreading. With the Somali invasion immediately north, it’s just sad what has happened.

Northland Mall used to be at the Northern border of North Linden about 20 years ago, but even then the rot was setting in. I had a friend from work who was cornered by a Black gang at the mall and savagely beaten: He was the most stereotypically mild, gentle GoodWhite you’ve ever met.

What killed the mall was the apartments known as “Uzi Alley” immediately south of the mall.

The mall was shut down not long afterward, then torn down. The area stood empty for years, but now it is government buildings and has had a bit of a renaissance with a Menards and some strip malls, but the Somalis and Blacks make it hard to keep anything nice. One of my daughters lives in the area and will no longer go the Kroger there, because it is so full of Somalis who leave everything dirty and are always starting trouble.

You have to fight for every step. The problem isn’t “suburbs” or any way people like to live. The problem is Whites being driven out by Blacks and other minorities.

The Long Game

So, I’m laying awake this morning thinking about how unbelievable all this mass hysteria is, when the thought occurred to me, “Hey, it is unbelievable! Literally unbelievable.” As in, not to be believed. That’s not to say that what is happening isn’t happening, it clearly is. But the idea that this is a spontaneous uprising, that a Black felon dying during an arrest in Minneapolis actually sparked riots in places like Copenhagen and Berlin … that’s pretty far-fetched.

Now, we talk about “astroturf” and George Soros-funded organizations a lot, but it doesn’t take much digging to start uncovering companies like Crowds on Demand ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowds_on_Demand ), founded by Adam Swart.

From the Wiki, it’s easy to find out more of what’s going on by adhering to the principle “SJWs always project.” You look at what the SJWs are complaining about, then dig into the opposite. For example, John Oliver did an episode about astroturfing. Of course, he does it from the perspective of the left, that this is a thing that evil corporations do. He spends the entire episode making the case that astroturfing companies exist and are active all over, but then turns around and says “The very existence of groups like Crowds on Demand means that something authentic can now be tainted. In fact, conspiracy boards now regularly and wrongly cite Crowds on Demand as providing everything from paid protestors for Charlottesville to crisis actors for the Las Vegas shooting, and that is hugely dangerous!”

See what he’s doing there? When it’s the evil corporate right astroturfing, believe it, but left-wing astroturfers, no way, those are totes legit. Of course he ties the right-wing accusations into something like the Las Vegas shooting to try to emotionally influence his viewers.

He implies a lot about Rick Berman, “Dr. Evil” and the Center For Consumer Freedom, but when it comes to the meat of his accusations, he makes a point of saying he’s not allowed to legally express them, “I can’t say. I legally can’t say. I want to. I badly want to, but I’ve been explicitly told I can’t.” Well, why not? If he had actually done some real journalism and had evidence to back up what he was saying, of course he could say. Investigative journalism is a thing, he works for a very wealthy corporation and truth is a defense against libel and slander. By saying 'I can’t say,' what he’s really saying is that his claims are tendentious, and he can’t back them up. It’s funny that a sidebar to the article about the astroturfing episode is an article “Here’s Why it’s a Bad Idea to Sue John Oliver”. Yes, Oliver is just a brave truth-teller being silenced by The Man for telling the truth about Rick Berman.

So, since the marching orders for the Left are “Hate Rick Berman,” I decided to check out who hates Rick Berman and the Center for Consumer Freedom, now the Center for Organizational Research and Education. I noted that the wiki page for this organization is careful to detail concerns about its corporate funding. A lot of the subtext in Oliver’s show and a lot of left wing criticism of astroturfing is that if a corporation funds it, they must be lying, which is, of course, not self-evident. They simply want you to incorporate that assumption into your thinking.

Well, who hates CORE/CCF? Why, the CDC, CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest), MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), PETA, PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine). Barring the CDC, which itself is a heavily politicized agency, these are all leftist groups and all arguably astroturfed.

CSPI particularly stuck out at me, as it is famous for its dishonest, astroturfed campaigns. Of course, its wiki page wants us to believe that it is not astroturfed at all, that its $20 million/year operating budget comes primarily from 900,000 subscriptions to its Nutrition Action Healthletter. For comparison, that’s significantly larger than the circulations of the New York Times or the Washington Post. It’s bigger than the print circulation of USA Today. It’s about half the circulation of Time Magazine, one of the biggest magazines in the world. And what do we know about Time Magazine? It’s in near financial ruin. It has changed hands several times over the past several years because it’s a dying business with declining readership. The subscription magazine business model is not a healthy one. Yet we’re to believe that this crappy newsletter has 900,000 reliable subscribers and expenses so low that it manages to fund most of the rest of the organization’s operations. I smell plastic grass. Tell me another story.

So, yes, astroturfing is big business, especially on the left (We know especially on the left, because it is the left complaining about it through John Oliver. See “SJWs always project”).

I believe the current BLM/Antifa protests are a heavily astroturfed psyop. Most of the protestors out there are legit, but that’s because it only takes a handful of astroturfers to play off the predictable responses of credulous leftist protestors. The fact that BLM is just a front group isn’t even arguable. BLM contributions go directly to the Democratic Party. I also think the entire thing has been planned out way beyond the seemingly chaotic moment, and is taking into account the response of the average normal citizen on the center to right.

First we have the response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, which was a truly fortuitous virus in that it is primarily deadly to the old – the most conservative demographic. It also spreads relatively easily, but is almost no danger to the youngest, most radical, credulous, left-leaning portion of the population. They ginned up fears of this virus and pushed to see how much totalitarian control they can exhibit over the world population (Spoiler: near total). If the virus had been treated normally, with normal moderate precautions, it would have really represented no particular threat to the world economy. Most of the harm was done by the response to the virus.

They waited for people who still care about civil liberties to start acting out, then they demonized them: crazy, anti-Semitic, racist, anti-science nuts who are risking everyone’s lives by gathering in crowds and spreading the virus!

Then the George Floyd protests. A total flip of the script. The mainstream right is supposed to react exactly as it has: “See what hypocrites they are! Protests on the right were crazy, but when these BLM and Antifa goons protest, it’s fine!” The people organizing the protests make sure they’re as violent and unreasonable as possible. Lots of rioting and looting. And that’s not hard, because they’ve been nurturing Black and left-wing Anti-Americanism for decades.

All the BLM demands, all the ostentatious kneeling and submission to Blacks, yeah, that’s going to be with us a long time, but it’s not really the endgame. Neither is the defunding/abolition of cops. Anyone with a brain knows that is never going to happen. Oh, they will allow some defunding, all right, but just enough to cause enough disorder to scare normie back into line.

What’s coming is, they let the normies do their work for them. Normie is going to get increasingly shocked by all the apparent insanity. They still haven’t recovered from being terrified about COVID-19. First the crazies on the right (never mind that they were peaceful), then the crazies on the left! Rising crime rates over the summer or the next year or two will cement the call: “What we need around here is just some freaking order!”

“Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch, Br’er Normie!” And order is just what the authoritarian left is waiting in the wings to provide. Of course the left can stop the riots – they started them. Of course they can refund the cops -- they defunded them! And those civil liberties, clearly they were getting out of control. We need to dial back those crazy freedoms because, darn it, they were just being misused by both the left and the right! We want everyone to be safe. We want everyone to get along. We need to dial back the “racism” and “hatred.” We need to make sure that the stuff people say online is more “responsible.” And thank goodness Google, Twitter and Facebook are there to help!

You want a picture of the future? Imagine a Trust and Safety Council stomping on dissident speech, forever.

ETA: When I talk about the mainstream right acting exactly as planned, this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. What is going on in the video discussed in the post is absolutely not going to convince normie that gun control is a bad idea!

The Revolutionary Phenotype

I just bought The Revolutionary Phenotype on Kindle and I've been browsing through it. I'm frankly a little disappointed. It was exactly what I expected. Another Kiplingesque "Just So Story." The author says "By the end of this book we will have made a definitive case that each of the phenotypic revolutions listed above did occur." Well, no. Definitive, as in conclusive, as in no further discussion needs to be had? No. The author has told a story, that's all. It's a plausible story that doesn't contradict any known physical laws, like all the best science fiction. But it remains just a story. It hasn't been tested, hasn't been subject to falsification. I am unbearably tired of these attempts to tell a story regarding evolution and call it conclusive.

I find it very significant that the author refers to the "interests" of RNA molecules. Only conscious actors have interests. Self-replicating molecules have no interests. They don't "want" to keep replicating. They don't "want" anything. Throughout the book, he uses the language of agency. It's very anthropomorphic the way he talks about tricksters and goals and relative importance of different tasks to these non-thinking entities that have no internal notion of their own survival.

He refers to "the rules of evolution": "If Quantum Darwinism is correct, then a replicator was subject to the rules of evolution long before the appearance of life on Earth..."

He defines the first principles of evolution:

1. Some entities make almost exact copies of themselves (replicators);
2. These entities do other things (phenotypic machines).

And his brief definition of the theory of natural selection:

"Across generations replicators occur within restricted restricted environments and produce imperfect copies of themselves. Because the imperfect copies vary across the population, each set of replicators produces phenotypic machines that differ across the population as well. The replicators able to create machines that favor their own replication naturally increase in number. The replicators that produce less efficient machines become less numerous. Accordingly across generations, replicators are served by machines that are increasingly well-suited to favor their copying."

But this all falls back to the fundamental tautology of natural selection. The devil is in the value judgments: "favor" and "less efficient." Simple self-replicating molecules don't "favor" anything and efficiency can only be predicted after the fact -- what survived, survived. RNA doesn't intelligently adapt to changing conditions. It doesn't have "interests."

It's simply a more sophisticated sounding version of the turtle story: "My opponent's reasoning reminds me of the heathen, who, being asked on what the world stood, replied, 'On a tortoise.' But on what does the tortoise stand? "On another tortoise." With Mr. Barker, too, there are tortoises all the way down." -- Joseph Frederick Berg

Where did DNA come from? RNA! Where did RNA come from? Some previous self-replicating molecule! And where did it come from? It's replicators all the way down!

It seems to me that if you get down to a simple enough replicator, you would get to one so simple that it was incapable of making copying errors and still having a functional machine. Each step he describes represents a statistical anomaly that is incredibly unlikely -- "not enough atoms and time in the universe" levels of unlikely, but he expects us to believe this happens over and over and over with striking and necessarily cascading frequency as the self-replicators grow more complex, yet he gives no concrete, testable examples of how this occurs or what the rate is.

"One day [me: it even opens like a Kipling Just So Story], by pure chance, a single RNA molecule developed a small mutation. This mutation caused the RNA molecule to produce a new type of phenotypic machine, one that resembled RNA, but with an additional smattering of oxygen and hydrogen atoms.

"That machine was DNA. 

"Presumably, at some point, the presence of DNA somehow advantaged the RNA replicators that produced it..."

When your entire book comes down to a "presumably" and a "somehow" you're not making a "definitive" case for anything.

The rest is just the same "time and random mutation" claptrap we've been hearing about for more than a century:

"Simply put, the replicators able to create good phenotypic machines replace other replicators by outnumbering them. If you extrapolate this principle over millions and billions of generations you can understand why a bacteria could progressively evolve into a bird."

Well, no, I don't understand that. Birds don't outnumber bacteria. They don't outcompete bacteria. They are food for bacteria. They are not as successful as bacteria at surviving or thriving in any given environment on Earth. All they are is more complex, and nothing the author discusses posits complexity as a good in itself. Complexity just means more points of failure. Birds are far more fragile, more sensitive to changing environmental conditions than bacteria.

I've only lightly skimmed the "Answers" section of the book, but at first pass, the entire section with all its talk of "trickster printers" appears to be just baseless, non-technical, blue sky theorizing about stuff that, when you strip away all the author's language, doesn't really solve or explain anything.

The "Predictions" section isn't even worthy of discussion.

The New Plame Affair

Is Philip Giraldi wrong?

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/americas-jews-are-driving-americas-wars/

This is what "free speech" looks like on Disqus discussion groups

Disqus hosts its own internal discussion groups. I have rarely been able to post in any of them without getting immediately banned from the group. So I suppose this actually rates as a relatively positive experience, because I wasn't banned and some of my posts are (for now) still up.

Disqus groups are relentlessly leftist, and they can absolutely not tolerate BadThink.


In the News Views group, this article was posted:





So I posted the following and got a very quick reply, to which I courteously responded:




In very little time, I was deleted:

I posted a followup. I was actually pretty sure this was going to get deleted. Imagine my surprise:




But just look at that. The conversation is unreadable. It wasn't even allowed to proceed for even a few minutes before being shut down by a moderator. I don't mind at all whatever "terrible" thing the other person may have said. The Disqus moderators, in my experience, are terrified of actual free speech and open discourse. And if they shut the other person down for rude speech, or whatever, then they also shut down my speech by making any discourse impossible.

I'm really beginning to hate Disqus. At least they don't get to pick the moderators for independent sites.

ETA: Gotta capture this one, in case it doesn't make it!

ETAA: In the same vein, had a post at The Mary Sue deleted. The accompanying article was literally just repetition of "TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS. spliced with emotionalistic tweets supporting trans people.

Leftists simply cannot abide any sort of disagreement. How is one supposed to respect their positions when they are unable to cogently argue them, and simply shut down any disagreement?