Author Archives: Free Northerner

Racist

Calling a white person a racist is the the functional equivalent of calling a black person a nigger.

Racist is a racial disparagement aimed at whites, and only whites.

This is not me saying it. This is not a reactionary view, this is the vanguard of social justice saying this.

Now, some racists will say, “but the dictionary says…”

To use the dictionary definition of racism is racism and you are a racist if you use it.

The proper definition of racism, by those who use the word the most is “prejudice plus power“. Racism requires not just prejudice, it also requires privilege. Racism can only flow down from the powerful to the less powerful, it can never flow up. Because non-whites have less power, they can never be racist. They may be bigoted, but not racist. Only whites can be racist because only they have privilege and power.

Before a bunch of “liberals” can bring up their racist individualism, in this case, power only refers to structural power. So, while a specific non-white individual may have more power than a specific white individual, the white individual is part of the structure of power the black individual is not a part of, and therefore has the privilege of that structure. So, even in that case the white can be racist.

Practically all whites have a racial prefence for other whites. 70% of those who have taken the IAT are prejudiced and that’s only among test-takers who, for obvious reasons (ie. those who care most about knowing if they’re prejudiced are likely those least prejudiced), are probably less prejudiced than the average person. As well, just because I person doesn’t exhibit prejudice

All whites are white and therefore benefit from white privilege. All whites have more power than non-whites. Therefore, practically all whites have both power and prejudice. Therefore practically all whites are racist.

Combine with the fact that no non-whites can be racist and it is obvious that racist is racial term that can only be applied to whites.

Racist is definitely a negative term. Nobody is ever called a racist as a compliment. People get fired for being called racist and racists (ie: whites) are generally ashamed to be racists.

The conclusion is inescable: racist is a vicious term of racial disparagement aimed at white people.

Calling a white person a racist is the functional equivalant of calling a black person a nigger.

Culture Loss

Why not bring in immigrants and refugees? These people just want a better life, why not open the doors and let them in?

Spandrell found a thread of a Belgian couple sharing their journey through the Congo in 2008, and it is interesting, and answers why we shouldn’t.

Big mistake. We were stuck. The water came to the bottom of the door. This particular mudpit had a bit of a funny smell. It was the favourite place of the pigs so it probably contained a fair amount of sh*t. It sure smelled like it. The entire village gathered round us while we got out, knee deep in sh*t.

They did not offer help.

We started clearing the wheels. Josephine hurt her foot on a stick, the pain could be seen on her face. The people thought this was extremely funny and burst out laughing. This was very humiliating for Josephine and I could see the anger on her face. We looked at eachother and understood that this was not the time to get angry or start discussions with 50 or so people. We continued to work. As I bend over to clear the mud from underneath the car my pants get wet up until my ehrm.. ‘privates’.. . Once again this is the funniest thing these people have ever seen. Hilarity ensues. This was very humiliating to us.

Eventually they offered to help us if we pay them. I tell them that I do not have money. They did not move an inch.

The same thing happens a little bit later:

No surprisingly nobody they offered their assistance, they even had some shovels. But they wanted money first. By now you probably think we are just stupidly stubborn and naive. We probably are, but we refused to give in to corruption. I once again told them they were free to help, but we would not give them money. So I continued to dig on my own with an entire village as an audience.

Here man meets tribal culture. He calls it corruption, but it isn’t, it’s culture. Why would people help others outside their tribe without a reason? Why would someone honestly expect unrelated others to help them?

I live in Canada. Everybody gets stuck in the snow on occasion. When you do, you’ll always have someone stop to help push your car out and get you on the way. One time I slid up the curb and got stuck in a small snowbank at 2 am on New Years (it was a patch of ice, not alcohol). The family in the house came out and helped me push and dig it out for 15 minutes, until someone in a 4×4 showed up and gave me a quick tow. I’ve stopped to help others push as well. Helping to jump-start someone else’s car is barely worth remarking on. It’s just something you do because you trust people will help you out when you need, and so we all get to avoid freezing to death trying to get our cars going.

This is a cultural practice built up by an uncountable number of positive interactions over a unnumbered years. The Canadian experience is the unnatural outlier, the Congolese experience is the natural norm. Helping strangers get their car unstuck is an unnatural cultural practice held by a limited number. It is just one of many western Europeans have built up. These practices have not built up in many (most?) other countries.

If you import foreigners from Congo who do not have this cultural practice, fewer positive interactions and more negative interactions build up, and eventually a some tipping point, you no longer have the cultural practice.

This is the harm immigration causes, it wears away at built-up cultural practices. The insidious danger of it is that this regression is barely noticeable until one day you get stuck, look around, and wonder, ‘why is nobody helping me?’

Of course, cultural practices go far beyond simply pushing someone’s car.

****

I asked them if they would want us to help them if they had a problem. The acknowledged this. I said what they would think if we asked for money before we would help them. They called us racists and immediately demanded money from us.

Welcome to your future.

Also, the demands for money or free stuff is omnipresent throughout the trip. Everywhere they go, someone is demanding money, drinks, phones, or the like from them. Is this the cultural practice you want imported to your country, where ‘le Blanc’ is seen primarily as a source of free stuff?

We opened a can of Coke (still from Zambia) and a jar of pickled onions to eat with our bread.

Those ‘horrible’ people did not have a Coke, even if they had the money to buy it, it was not avaialble. They did not have pickled onions either. And between the two of us we ate as much bread as an entire family would eat for an entire day.

We tried putting things into perspective. Maybe we shouldn’t be here after all?

This is what immediately follows their ‘stuck in a mudpit’ story. The answer to the question is ‘correct, they don’t belong there’.

But more interesting is how they do not seem to make a connection. Maybe there’s an underlying reason why people who won’t help others stuck in mud don’t have Coke and pickled onions available. Coke and pickled onions require cooperation in the marketplace, but how can there be cooperation when you can’t even trust your neighbour to help pull you out of the mud?

****

If you want to know why there’s no social trust, here’s an illustrative example:

We came across a small motorcycle. You’d see them from time to time, it is the most luxurious transportation people have here. They are litte chinese 50cc (or 125cc) bikes. We stopped to let him pass and he stopped to greet and ask us if we had some oil for his engine.

All over the world there is an unwritten rule that in remote or difficult to travel areas people help eachother. That is why in the sahara everybody says hi to eachother. That is why in the Mongolian steppe people drive for kilometers just to check up on you. People help when needed as they know they will be helped when they are in need. We very much honour this unwritten rule and will always assist when we can.

So when this guy asks for oil, I do not hesitate and take out a my spare can of oil. I warn him that this is oil for diesel engines, but that does not matter to him. It is probably the best oil he would ever find to put in his little bike. As I am pouring oil from my can in his can the passenger of the bike starts begging with Josephine. I am not impressed when Josephine tells me. And when the bike owner too start to ask for money, it really pisses me off. We are helping this guy and still he begs for more? So I pour the oil out of his can back into mine and tell them to sod off. In our car and off we go.

For almost a month now we were in a serious fight with Congo. We were fighting against corruption. We were fighting against the roads. A constant battle. Congo was giving us a serious beating, but we stood strong and did not give in. Slowly but steadily we were winning this battle against the Congo.
But while we were so busy battling the roads and the corruption, Congo sneaked in from behind. It had transformed us into loud and angry people. With no remorse, no compassion, and a total lack of rules.

What happened to the unwritte rule of the road less travelled? The rule we nohour so much? All out of the door..

Congo had beaten us a long time ago already. Just like it had beaten most of its own citizens.. And we didn’t have a clue

The defections finally got to our generous tourist and finally defected himself. I wonder if this will cause him to further defect in the future?

Foreign cultural practices are acidic and burn away your cultural practices.

****

Here’s the price for not having a culture of trust and cooperation which would allow for road-building:

As said, traffic is always local. They somehow manage to get cars into larger towns and then drive it around town, but no trough traffic. So cities/towns/village that are not on a river or on the limited railroad network have very limited supplies.

Up to 600kg of goods are transported on these bicycles. They do not ‘ride’ them, but push them instead. You can see there is a stick connected to the bikes handlebars.

This is the major transport method in Congo. It is probably one of the most ‘popular’ (this does not seem like a good wordchoice) jobs. There are fixed routes and people often travel in groups. For security reasons but also to help eachother on the hills.

At regular intervals on the main “bicycle” tracks there are “service stations”. This is usualy a small hut where one can eat a meal of fufu. They would also have a pump and some basic tools to fix flats.

We saw many of these overloaded bicycles before, but on this stretch of the road it seems to be the only means of transportation.

It must be very hard work to get these loads over the sometimes very rough roads. The ‘drivers’ are away from home for weeks on end and probably barely make any money out of it.

And here’s another cost:

We came across a truck that was parked in the middle of the track. Luckily the surrounding area was pretty open, so we could pass it.

Us: “Bonjour, ca va?” – “Hi, how are you?”
– Them: “Ca va un peu bien ” – “I am doing a little bit ok” -> typical Congelese answer this!

Us: “Votre vehicle est en panne?” – “Did you truck broke down?”
– Them: “Oui, mais ils vient avec des nouveaux pièces” – “Yes, but they are coming with spare parts”

So we chat a bit and we ask what their problem exactly was. They left Ilebo for Kananga with a load of building materials for a rich guy in Kananga. Their engine had completely seized. Their cargo was transferred onto another truck and they had taken the engine out and transported the engine to Kinshasa to get it rebuild. In the meantime the truck ‘crew’ stayed onsite to safeguard the truck. But they were very happy as they just received news that the necessary parts for the engine were now ordered in Germany, so the parts would come arrive in Kinshasa in a few weeks time!

A fascinating story, and they told it as if the was the most normal thing in the world. Fair enough. We said our goodbyes and asked them one more final question. How long had they been here?

“Un peu plus qu’un an maintenant” – “Just over a year”

“The most normal thing in the world“. Is this the culture you want to import?

****

After the preceding stories, someone did help them:

It took three more attempts to drive out before the village priest (7th day Adventist by the way) encouraged a few strong men to help.

***

Some other people in the Congo were more proactive:

When we continued on the same road we would pass other smaller mudpits. These bogholes always had a “crew”. When a truck arrived, they would throw in rocks so the truck could pass… for a fee ofcourse. After the truck passed they removed the rocks again. A lucrative occupation!

In our books this is just plain wrong and we refuse to support such behaviour. So we always charged trough in 4×4, hoping we would not get ourself stuck.

The corruption is omnipresent and not just limited to roads. The tourists can hardly go anywhere without some official or another demanding a road toll, a non-existent “tax”, or a “fine” for some made-up infraction. As the tourists note, despite all the road tolls:

Nothing ever returns to the maintenance of these roads, or anything remotely related to the province it is in. It shows:

All the roads are like that or worse, My favourite is the one with the tree in the middle of it:

Here’s there first two days of travel. Remember, day one was the fast part of their trip with the best roads.

Less than 200 miles in day one, barely 50 in day two, while driving a sturdy 4×4. That’s how bad the roads are.

But between the corruption and and distrust, why would anyone build a decent road? Who would build a decent road?

There was one group who tried, the Belgians, which brings me to the next point.

****

At some points the trip reminds me of Skyrim. The Congo resembles a pre-civilized society but there’s the (sometimes functioning) ruins of an ancient civilization scattered about.

Fallout 4 or a Belgian Ruin in the Congo

They’re driving down unkempt, potholed dirt roads, then suddenly:

The bridges were something we were very concerned about upfront. Congo has a lot streams and rivers and we knew the roads had not seen maintenance in many many years. If a bridge broke down, that could be a major problems. Up until now however we did not have any problems with the bridges. Some of the smaller bridges might have been dodgy, but all of them were passable. Most of the large bridges were fortunately made out of steel and in reasonably good nick.

Take the bridge we just crossed for example. I find it amazing that is still there. Numerous armies have crossed the Congo in the last 20 years, chasing their enemies down to the capital. Now, I am not a military expert, but if my army was losing terrain to the enemy army and I have to retreat. The one thing I would certainly do was blow up all bridges after me. Had it happened but was the damage so small that it could easily be repaired? Or did they just not bother? Or did they lack the explosives and time to actually blow it up? Who knows…. but at least the outcome is good for us now!

A bridge made by the evil Belgian colonialists over a half-a-century ago still functions, but the Congolese can’t keep basic roads functional. Here’s the ruins of “what once must have been a grand building… marked with logos from a Belgian University… [that] must have once been some scientific study centre of sorts.”

Everybody talks shit about imperialism and colonialism, but when the Belgians were there the people of the Congo had peace, order, bridges, working roads, a functional bureaucracy, non-corrupt police, and scientific study centres. Are the Congolese better off being ‘free’?

Here’s the tourist on the dark Belgian history:

I presume you are referring to the “not so nice” role Belgium has had in the history of Congo. For a while I thought that would be a problem as well, but it isn’t. Just about anything that still exists in Congo is made by the Belgians. The older generation who had their education from the Belgians really have fond memories of that era. And at the moment Belgium is still one of the main funders of the country (via aid). The dark pages of history during the Leopold 2 era is not what the Congolese people think about. All in all I think being Belgian was actually a plus. As a matter of fact, a lot of people asked how things were going with the “war” in Belgium :-o

****

Speaking of functional bureaucracy, mismanagement is not limited to infrastructure. Here’s the tourists on getting a permit to be tourists:

Nobody really know what kind of permit one needs, let alone where to apply for it. But everybody agrees that a permit is required. Officially it has got something to do with the many mining areas to be crossed. We contacted the few people who have attempted travelling trough congo but they too never managed to get hold of the permit. One of these guys did get arrested and deported because he could not provide a permit.
Our Belgian Consulate really tried hard to get this stupid little piece of paper for us, but to no avail. They even managed to get us invited with the governer of Katanga, but he too could not give it to us. After many days of trying we asked the consulate to give us some sort of official looking letter with an official looking stamp. We would chance it without the permit!

****

There are some actual functional paved roads around, made by foreigners:

So, why is there an asphalt road in the middle of Congo? Not connected to the rest of the road system (due to lack of road system).

There reason is simple: Diamonds. This is the main diamond center of Congo. This has attracted many people ofcourse, but the local people barely benefit of the natural wealth of the region. Officially it is the third largest city of Congo, after Kinshasa & Lubumbashi. Although by now it is probably the second largest city with over 2 million inhabitants. It also a politically important region. Most of the recent political problems start here. When Mbuji-Mayi “explodes” the rest of the country usually follows shortly after.

The diamong mining companies ofcourse need transport. Most is done via air, but the heavy supplies (fuel) are brought in by train. The nearest train station is in Mwene-Ditu. Hence the tar road between Mwene-Ditu and Mbuji-Mayi.

It’s hard to say “the local people barely benefit” when the mine is the only reason there’s a decent road in the area.

Here’s an interesting tidbit on who they talked to while prepping for their trip:

2) Coca-cola company: If there is ony thing you can find anywhere in the world it is Coca-Cola. They should know how to get their goods in the country. We had no response on mails, so we called them up. Their answer was pretty short: They do not have a distribution network outside the major cities in Congo 8O And it proved to be true, Congo is the first country we have visited were Coca-cola is hard to get once you leave the major cities.

****

An interesting thing about the trip, is the number of Catholic missions in the Congo, how often that’s where the tourists stay at them, how much the tourists appreciate them and their kindness, and how much a relief the priests are. From the way the tourists talk about them, Catholic monks seem to be what keeps the country even somewhat functional. I’m not going to quote all of the references, but here’s a few.

Here’s some priests picking up the white man’s burden. It speaks for itself:

The priests (Brothers actually) are nice guys. There are 4 of them, young and smart. All of them have studied in Lubumbashi or Kinshasa. After they finished the seminary they were sent to a mission. They cannot choose which one. We could hear the sadness in their voices when they told their stories.

They sampled the “world” when studying, they have a degree (one of them had a masters in engineering) and then they are sent to a mission. They know they will probably never have the chance again to live in a city. At the mission they take care of the kids, teach, etc.. A noble and rewarding job. But they carry all this knowledge that they cannot put in practice here. They have no computers, no tools, no electricity, no budget, …

Their living quarters were very comfy and clean for Congolese standards. They had a radio and a TV set. Because of their proximity to Lubumbashi they had a regular supply of newspapers.

The priest-engineer was setting up a project to generate clean energy from a river. He had a recycling project. A radio project. An irrigation project, … He had to run all these projects without any funds, without material. So many ideas, so little chances.

They remained positive but you could see it in their eyes that they were sad. Without a doubt they would take the first opportunity to get out of there. It would be a great loss for the mission and the village but I couldn’t blame them. In the way our talks went we thought we could hear them crying for help. To take them to Europe, to give them funds, to supply them with material. They did not speak these words, but to us it was clear that they really longed for those things. We were not able to provide this. It made us sad and we felt guilty.

Here’s another set of priests carrying the burden and the thanks they get for it:

We rolled into Kamina and had a warm welcome by several “frères” (Brothers), among them Frère Louis, the belgian brother that hosted us in Luena. The other frères were Croatian. They all have their missions deep in the brousse, but this week they had their annual gettogether.

The missions was big and well organized. They had all the facilities, even a workshop. They were responsible for almost everything functional in Kamina. Churches, school, farms, factories, …
…
That night we talked for hours with Frère Louis. Our little adventures here dissapear in the nothing compared to everything he went trough. He had been in DRC for over 40 years, he stayed during all the wars. He had to abandon everything and run for his live three times as teams were sent out to kill him. But he always returned. Many books could be filled with his adventures.

He is also responsible for most of the bridges Katanga. He build hundreds of bridges himself. He has a small working budget from Franciscans, but he funds most of it all by himself. He has put every last penny in the Congolese people. That is why his house in Luena was so rundown.

He also told us about the Mayi-Mayi rebels that still roam the jungle. We were not prepared for the horror stories we would hear. I still have problems giving these stories a place. They are not just stories though, he gave us a 100 page document with his interviews of victims. If you thought, like us, that cannibalism was something that belonged in comic books and dusty museums about Africa. You are wrong. :cry:

But not everybody is called to the self-sacrifice of the mission field:

Unfortunately the father of this mission was not there, but his apprentice was. A very young guy, fresh out of school. He was not happy to be here, that much was clear. He did nothing else but complain and he would whine on endlessly. He was not a bad guy, but was wan’t very good company either.. oh well.

And not every priest remains uncorrupted:

We discussed our plans with Abbé Omer in the garden of the mission (it must have been a wonderfull garden back in the days.. now it looked a bit rundown). The good news was that there was good ferry here that could take us across the mighty Kasai river. The bad news was that nobody every uses that ferry and it does not see any regular action.

Omer knew the guy who was responsible for the Ferry, a chap called Barthélémy. He even has his phone number, but he does not have credit on his phone. No problem, he can use ours. A conversation in Lingala starts, it takes about ten minutes until we run out of credit on our phone. I actually think they talked 1 minute about the ferry and the other 9 minutes about other things, but anyway. Here was the deal:

– Price for a two-way trip is 50$US
But,
– we have to supply our own diesel the engine of the boat. 150 liters is required (!). that’s about 200$US (Diesel here is cheaper because they have a regular supply via boats from Kinshasa).
– we have to supply two batteries to start the engines of the boat
– the ferry is on the other side of the river and they would only be able to get it across somewhere next week

That’s just great!

We immediatelly uttered to Omer that that was a ridiculously high price, one we would never pay. And that we wanted to cross as soon as possible. preferably tomorrow.

What followed was a very difficult negotiation. Abbé Omer insisted that he acted as an intermediate person. According to him to protect us from getting ripped off (because we were white). I was actually convinced that he was playing a game with his mate Barthélémy to make some money out of us. It took us many hours on the phone to finally convince this Barthélémy to come to see us to discuss the price. He would come at 8 the next morning.

Later that evening Omer suggested that we he would have to inform the police of our presence (c’est normal!), it took us a lot of persuading for him not to ‘give us in’.

Interesting that Omer is a local.

****

Of course, some secular non-profits are there to, but they are not as effective as the evil Catholics, MNC’s, and imperialists:

They told us about the mysterious roads. Apparently some NGO (they did not know the details… or they told the details and we forgot) has funded the construction. Several teams started working at several locations. The different bits were supposed to connect at one point. As of recent, work had nearly stopped… no more budget. It was unclear if more budget would become available or not. In any case the idea of the construction was to invest all the money in labour instead of buying an expensive CAT. Great idea ofcourse, that way all the money stayed in DRC, instead of filling the pocket of some bigwig at CAT. If you look at the road it was quite a feat. They thought about drainage and everything. Unfortunately they could not compress the earth enough with the tools they had. We already started a few ruts, it would only take 1 heavy truck to completely destroy these roads again. These roads would not last a rainy season.

Here’s Barthélémy’s ferry:

We couldn’t believe our eyes when we finally saw the ferry.

It looked brand new!
It wasn’t..

A German (?) NGO had funded the restoration of the ferry recently. It had received a nice fresh coat of paint, but the money to rebuild the engines had gone missing.

****

Here’s some more local cultural practices excerpted from a 131-page document by a priest:

“Y”‘s brother went fishing in Missa and saw mischief like cutting of ears. They fry the ears in a pan eat them. They make the victims look at how their own ears are being fried and eaten. They are being accused of cooperation with the Congolese FAC army. The May May continue to eat humans. Y’s brother managed to escape to Bukama, this is where I met him.
…
They kill those four soldiers and eat them. They then carry one of the heads of the murdered soldiers to Kintobongo and put the head on the table in our mission. They do this as warning not to attack hem, if not this is what happens.
…
..The hunters (May-May) asked food at the woman of Chef Kitumba. The women told they did not have food. The hunters then demanded that they roast their children for them to eat.
…
The commander Bati dared to display a naked woman. With a pen he pointed at every part of the “intimate organs” and told the onlookers the names in dialect. What a humiliation.
…
We are living in a situation of pure and simple cannibalism. The may-may plunder, rape and kill the civilian population. They then eath their meat, raw or smoked. This is true for the May-MAy chief Kabale, who was killed recently (15/05/2006) by the population of Kayumba.

Do we really want to bring these kinds of cultural practices here?

****

Of course, it’s not all bad:

We stopped in the first village. A car in the village.. with white people in it. Now that is an attraction ofcourse. And if they are covered in mud from head to toe it is even more interesting.

I do not have to explain we drew a bit of a crowd?

But people were actually quite nice. They offered us to use their shower (a tree with a mud wall before it and a bucket) and after an hour or so they actually left us alone.

Later that evening some kind of custom officer came to see us. He wanted to see our permits and whatnot. We kindly told him to bugger off and come back tomorrow. Surprisingly, it worked. Next day we were gone before he came back ;-)

As soon as it got dark we got into our tent and looked outside. We could see several fires in the village were people would gather around and sing and dance (mostly women). Small groups of men were having discussions. Peaceful village.

But small villages aren’t all good either:

The first village we encountered seemed deserted at first, but as soon as we entered the village we saw people coming at us from all sides. They had machetes and sticks and were shouting. “Des Blancs. Argent!” – “White people. Money!”. They were all over the place. This was not good! I floored it and sped out of the village. A rock hit the back of our car.

What in gods name was that all about?

Very few Congolese had made us feel welcome, but this was plain agression! It scared the hell out of us.

We passed another village, and once again a mob formed as soon as they heard us coming. Machetes flying round, racist slogans shanted. Once again we did not give them the chance to get near us and blasted out of the village. They tried following us. This was turning ugly, if we would get stuck here we would be in big trouble, these people did not want a chat!

****

Anyway, I’m about twenty pages into the thread and it goes on for almost 100 pages. I’m done reading and commenting on this (for now?), but I hope you found this illuminating, or perhaps endarkening?

Lightning Round – 2015/12/02

All they have is fear.

VD interviewed by Counter-Currents.

Whither leftism.
Related: Why the left pushes demographic destruction.
Related: Europe and the Muslims.
Related: The house of war.
Related: Mutually antagonistic governments everywhere.
Related: The media doubles down.

Sweden closes its doors.
Related: The war in Sweden.

Crime beyond the numbers.

The age of ideology is over.

The last men.

The parable of the good cuckservative.

White supremacy as suicidal liberalism. More.

Codreanu on the ruling class.

The 2015 Space Act.

Russia bans Soros.

Recap on NATO shooting down a Russian jet and murdering the pilot.
Related: The NATO-ISIS connection.

Scrooged and the boomers.
Related: The decline of the Playboy lifestyle.

Land finds the liberal id.

Alpha & Beta, Dionysus & Apollo.

The GOP against Trump.

Celebrating genocidal cannibals. Related.
Related: Thanksgetting.

An overview of recent higher education woes.
Related: The Yale problem begins in high school.

Enabling the left’s economic lies.

The lies of the media on Black lives Matter.

Jim takes on the question of how to genocide in a Christian manner. I think he stretches at points.

Homeschooling family gets 7 of 10 kids in college by age 12.

Serge and Frederick Kovaleski

Trump’s getting heat for mocking a disabled NYT reporter, Serge Kovaleski. I have no sympathy for NYT reporters, so I support Trump attacking them.

Anyway, Serge is the son of Frederick Kovaleski. Frederick Kovaleski was a tennis player who worked as a CIA spy for a decade, recruiting other spies. Serge wrote of Fred’s work as a spy in the Washington Post in 2006. Oddly, Fred doesn’t have an English wiki, although, he does a French one, which, run through Google Translate, states this:

He grew up in a small town Hamtramck Michigan near Detroit and mainly populated by Eastern European immigrants where most people converse in Polish. Poland is the country of his parents, he speaks Polish and Russian. At school he first played handball and his gym teacher sees him as a tennis player potential. There is no court in the city then it draws a line on the gym wall and asked if his parents can buy her a racket. After asking 10 dollars to his father who does not see what sport it is, it advises instead to play baseball or something like that. His teacher, Jean Hoxie who became a local legend of tennis, provides him a racquet and tennis teaches him, he is 11 years old. It will be selected for the US Junior Davis Cup Team and spotted by several universities of Michigan, where he will visit but for a short time since October 1942 he had to make war from the Philippines.

On his return his tennis success earned him invitations to tournaments, USTA and then left to tour Europe with the financial support of Jean Hoxie in 1950, after a 1/8 finals at Roland Garros is classified in the top 15 worldwide for Wimbledon where he also reached the 1 / 8th. His many successes throughout the world earned him a further invitations chaining in France, Italy, Pakistan, India, Hong Kong, Philippines etc. He met many US diplomats in various embassies. At Monte Carlo in 1951 the question arose to turn pro after an offer from Calcutta tournament, but he refused because only a handful of players at that time could make a living as a pro.

His contacts then offered her to work for the CIA. His first mission was to support defectors from the Soviet army because of his knowledge of the language. He continued in parallel its business coverage, tennis player. He meets in Cairo Manya Jabes, of Russian origin. The CIA considered too high risk and asked him to choose. He chose to marry her, in Lebanon or it will just find a position for Pepsi. They then go to Sudan and the CIA back in touch with him and asked him to make recordings of translations after reconsidering her marital situation.

He works after Yemen and South Africa in Cape Town, still for Pepsi. In 1961 Serge and his son was born, and he decided to leave the CIA. He left for Australia and Pepsi situation at Revlon, not before had an MBA at Columbia University. The family moved to New York and then go to Washington to follow their son Serge who works for the Washington Post. It is for this newspaper that Serge will tell the story of his father in 2006. Following the article the family returned back to Manhattan the son to follow in his new post at the New York Times where he will pick the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. That year Fred Kovaleski won the USTA National Men’s Grass Court Championships for over 85 years, and in 2010 and 2011. n June 2014, nearly 90 years he decided to speak for the first time in his past secret agent

According to Serge’s article linked above, Serge knew his father by 1973 and Fred worked in the upper echolons of Pepsi, Revlon, and Nabisco. There’s also this little tidbit:

Soon after my father arrived in Cairo, a socialite friend introduced him to an exotically fetching Egyptian woman of White Russian parents. He started to court Manya Jabes, even though she was married to a wealthy Egyptian banker, Rene, and devoted to her young son and daughter, who were at school in Europe.
…
To be inconspicuous, she and my father would meet at his apartment, take drives outside of Cairo or have drinks at a bar on a Nile house boat. After knowing her for two years, my father asked my mother to marry him. She said yes and divorced Rene several months later. She has seen her other children — my half siblings — often over the years.

My father was exalted about marrying my mother, but apprehensive. He knew how the CIA felt about agents wedding foreigners, especially a foreigner whose father had returned to the Soviet Union. His fears were justified. In March, 1957, his boss received a cable from Washington: If my father married Manya Jabes, he would have to resign.
…
Now out of the CIA, my father found civilian work with Pepsi, which sent him to Khartoum, Sudan, for training at a local bottling plant. Ironically, it wasn’t long before he got a call from the CIA chief of station there who offered him a job translating tapes from taps on Khartoum’s Soviet Embassy. My father declined, but said he knew someone for the job: his new wife, who spoke six languages, including Russian.

This article elucidites a bit more:

While Kovaleski’s cover story eventually changed from tennis pro to travel agent, he continued his work in Cairo with the CIA. There he fell in love with a woman named Manya Jabes of Russian descent. Marriage, however, required approval by his boss at the agency. “I supplied her name, birthdate, family members, et cetera, all of which was cabled back to D.C. for security processing,” says Kovaleski. “They discovered that Manya’s father had divorced Manya’s mother, married another Russian woman who was a poet and returned to the Soviet Union.”

She was considered a security risk. The CIA told Kovaleski he had to choose his career or Manya. He chose Manya and resigned as an officer of the CIA.

Manya ended up working for the CIA a few years later. Serge was born in Cape Town in 1961, which, as near as I can tell, would have been around the time Manya was working as a spy. Serge graduated from William & Mary, one of the original Public Ivies and has worked the rounds of newspapers: The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Money Magazine, and The Miami News.

Interestingly, he won a Pulitzer in 2009 for his work in writing on Spitzer’s prostitution scandal. 28 Sherman has connected Spitzer’s scandal to Maurice Greenberg, who himself has numerous known CIA connections and has been accused of even deeper connections.

Also, Greenberg and Trump have been feuding for a while now, starting around the time Greenberg was forced out of AIG by Spitzer and is backing Bush in this election.

I don’t see a direct link between Greenberg and Kovaleski,* but it would be doubtful that someone who wrote for Money Magazine didn’t know someone as involved in the financial world as Greenberg. It seems at the very edge of coincidence that the man who was awarded for destroying Spitzer, which just happened to benefit the big hedge funds and got revenge for Greenberg, is also the man who is at the centre of a manufactured controversy against Trump, who is also warring against hedge funds and is feuding with Greenberg.

Don’t forget, Serge’s entrance into the controversy was when he backtracked on his article in 2001 which stated:

In Jersey City, within hours of two jetliners’ plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.

Which directly supports Trumps assertions on this issue and which the usual suspects are attacking him on.

If you look around, Kovaleski has been involved in pushing numerous other left-wing causes in his “reporting”. Here he is sympathizing with Tsarnaev, painting Zimmerman as creepy and crazy, and pushing the poor, victimized Michael Brown narrative.

None of this amounts to proof of anything, but the coincidences of a left-wing NYT reporter being involved in two scandals to destroy the enemies of AIG and Greenberg, are rather interesting. In fact, it’s almost amazing how little there is on the internet about the Kovalski family despite (because of?) the two parents being known CIA spies, the father being an executive at multiple MNC’s and a world-class tennis player, and the son being a NYT reporter at the heart of two different national headline political controversies. I suspect there’s probably more to this than the superficial outrage generation.

What NRx and the alt-right really need is a wiki/encyclopedia/editable web so we can track the web of connections between all these people. It would be a huge project, but if we mapped the web of connections within the Cathedral over the last century, I’m sure it would provide reams of interesting information.

****

* There’s a Dan Kovaleski who works as an Assistant VP at AIG, but I don’t see any linkages but the name (Dan Kovaleski is almost non-existent on the internet), and Kovaleski isn’t rare enough to assume a family connection on last name alone.

A Democratic Thanksgiving

A couple years back, I posted on the emptiness of leftists who think of the holidays as an opportunity for indoctrinating their family. It looks like the campaign has started again this year. (H/T: SDA).

If you want my thoughts this, you can read it there. Right now, I’m going to forgo any substantial insights and indulge in a little bit of lulz, by focusing on the content of the official Democratic site for turning Thanksgiving into an opportunity to spew political propaganda: Your Republican Uncle. The site states:

The holiday season is filled with food, traveling, and lively discussions with Republican relatives about politics sometimes laced with statements that are just not true. Here are the most common myths spouted by your family members who spend too much time listening to Rush Limbaugh and the perfect response to each of them.

Look at these “perfect responses” on Trump:

Trump1Trump2Trump3

These responses are retarded. Maybe, I might be able to understand looking up and memorizing talking points full of hard statistics, sophisticated political philosophy, and strongly reasoned ideology, if you are broken enough that that what’s Thanksgiving and Christmas mean to you. But this? Who can not think up the stunningly intellectual arguments of “Trump is an evil xenophobe who went bankrupt a couple times” and “deportation is mean, you meanie-head” without the gentle guiding hand of a DNC shill.

Oh, and just in case you were thinking those links may expand on the arguments, they do not go to supporting documentation with anything more substantial, they merely allow you to tweet your ignorance and asininity to the people you know. Although, why Democratic operatives anybody would think anybody would want to publicly advertise their own vacuousness is beyond me? They must think even more condescendingly of their base than I do.

The rest are more of the same asininity. Read them if you thinks your IQ is too high and you want to lop off a few points.

Now, note the faces: The Republican Uncle is a grumpy meanie-face, while the Liberal, who has prepared and memorized partisan political talking points in advance so he can “win” a debate family dinner, is happy (because that’s what happy people do right?). But look at the happy face:

Smug

The smug just radiates from it. Even leftist PR flacks can’t imagine a liberal at a family dinner not being an insufferable, smug, condescending asshole.

Finally, look at this. The site was designed so that only the first talking point is shown when you open a category and you have to click to see more. This is what you click on to see more:

StillTalking

Note how condescending it is (that fool is still yapping). Then consider this, the site is implying that parroting the first of your inane Democratic talking points will so bedazzle ‘your Republican uncle’ that he will fall silent in awe of your superior genius and insight. Heh.

I found something even better. Here’s a DNC flack:

“This time of year, the only thing more annoying than holiday traffic is an awkward conversation with family about politics,” DNC Digital Director Matt Compton wrote in an email announcing the site. “We designed YourRepublicanUncle.com so that it look greats and loads quickly on your phone — no getting ambushed when you go back for seconds on stuffing.”

Political conversations suck, so make sure to prepare for and start them, and we know our base is completely ignorant about everything, so you can pull up rebuttals on your phone and let us do your thinking for you.

****

Now, I doubt (hope?) that there is (not) any statistically significant number of people who actually use these talking points, however many guides the media will put out.

Rather, the most interesting part of this is just how little the Democratic Party thinks of their base. The GOP cuckservatives will attack their base and ignore their base’s wishes, but at least they assume we’re evil. The DNC just assumes their base are a bunch of dysfunctional retards who are ignorant of the world around them and need to be handheld through basic human interaction.

Lightning Round – 2015/11/25

The official neoreaction forum.

On pseudonymity.
Related: Tips for staying secure and anonymous.

History never ended.
Related: The third world is colonizing us.
Related: Another open letter to France.
Related: How to deport 11 million people.
Related: Immigration theology.
Related: The Muslim rape of Norway.
Related: What percentage of Muslims approve of terrorism.
Related: Refugee system discriminates against Christians.
Related: A short allegorical SF story.

The Confucian heuristic.

Underclass coddling.

Whiteness as liberalism.

The Jewish role in the NAACP.

Hispanic migration makes secession more difficult.

Homeostasis.
Related: Homeostasis and modernity.
Related: Beer, cholera, and public health.

The Daily Beast has a retarded article on #NRx up.

Technological responsibility.

The rise of obesity and anorexia.

Yet another PC outrage.

On North Korea.

The mammon trap.

Urban tactics: survival. Related Brainstorm.

Quebec and Sanders.

H/T Zippy

Le Petite Mort

I was asked if I was going to write something on the French Attacks. I wasn’t planning to, but I will now.

Anyone could have told France these attacks were inevitable, and in fact many have. The French invited diversity in and were culturally enriched. Following 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Rotherham, 7/7, Burgas, Madrid, numerous riots, and the untold other incedences, this is not unexpected.

However, unlike in Charlie Hebdo, these were not leftists, these were just normal people going about their lives, so I do have sympathy and wish their families the best; may God have mercy on the victims in the next life.

And yet, while the individual victims deserve sympathy, France as a corporate body doesn’t. France is a democracy. Theoretically, the people rule and, in actuality, the people are able to vote for their government in relatively fair elections. The people even have a party dedicated to preventing foreign invasion and mass murder. Yet, the people refuse to vote for that party. France has willfully chosen pro-immigration policies and has once again received the natural consequences of their actions. If the French don’t want to be mass-murdered by savages, they should stop inviting savages in.

France chose to suffer these attacks. Not just once, but repeatedly, the French have overwhelmingly voted to aid savages in attacking France. If the French wish to play status games rather than defend themselves, no amount of sympathy in the world will help them. They have chosen their fate.

Now, I doubt the French are going to lay prostrate forever. They probably won’t do anything real now, the status games are too entrenched, but at some point something will happen.

The rational, compassionate thing to do, would be to find and execute everyone somewhat involved in these attacks, then end (Muslim) immigration and (humanely) mass deport Muslims from France. This would be a calm, measured respone and could be done with minimal bloodshed and suffering.

But equal and opposite reactions are the thing of physics. Humans work differently, especially when aggregated. They tend not to take measured and appropriate responses. Instead, they tend to keep doing what they are doing, ignoring or downplaying tensions as they build. Political inertia is a powerful force. Things will keep chugging along as they are right now.

Then suddenly, they won’t.

Humanity does not work like a spherical cow in a vacuum, it works more like man’s most base act. The act begins, tension mounts over time, then the pent-up pressure is released in a singular explosive moment.

In the case of Muslim immigration, the act has already begun. We are in the tensions mounting phase. Attacks, assaults, and riots and the occasional counter-attack (a la Breivik) will create continual friction between the French and their invaders, but nothing will be solved by these thrusts and counter-thrusts. Instead, at some point, the French tensions will reach their breaking point, and the French will release themselves in an orgasm of violence.

This will be an explosive release, not a calm, measured response. Cracked had a recent article about the Bosnian genocide, and an earlier one about the Rwandan genocide, the first point of each is how sudden it was. So it will be in France.

Contrary to these articles, these types of violence are never sudden or shocking, however quickly they may occur. They are the final result of long-standing tensions. They can be prevented if action is taken before the release, but once the release occurs it can not be stopped until it is fully spent.

The French will play their status games, ignoring the low-level guerrilla war and avoiding taking necessary measures, then, at some unknowable point for some unforeseeable reason, the dam will burst and genocidal violence will release all over the country. Rather than enacting a preventative policy now, while it will be comparatively clean and merciful, the French will bloody their hands in brutality when the situation has gone beyond reason.

After the violent release, they will look back and realize a little part of them died in that brutality. Their sons and daughters will look back and wonder how neighbour could turn against neighbour so suddenly.  People will be shocked at how violence like that could happen so suddenly.

Now, as I said before, I want to prevent this violence. I don’t want the white man to be broken and forced into this brutality simply to be able to enjoy their own civilization and culture in peace.

So, France, please stop the status games and act now while you can do so with clean hands. Don’t wait until fields of blood are your only recourse. If nothing is done now, the blood will be on your hands, because you valued status more than peace and justice.

Lightning Round – 2015/11/18

Status point theory.
Related: Paris and signalling.
Related: The madness of the social signalling game.

Controversial: A letter to France.
Related: Observations on Paris.
Related: Yes, we are at war with Islam.
Related: A difficult question.
Related: A look at the stats of Islam and terror.
Related: Not with gold.
Related: The attacks and the future of Europe.

Servants without masters.
Related: On The Economy?
Related: The system, SCALE, and scams.

Corrosive individualism?

The day they tore down The Future and the sinking of the working class.

Curt adds a third point to What is Neoreaction? I think that it is simply an outflow of the first two.

Mike released his Idaho Project book.

Propaganda in standardized tests.

The end of Rex Americana.

China, Forex, and Rubin.

Against neo-paganism.

On the Bay of Pigs.
Related: Communications architecture.

Women can serve because the state doesn’t need combat units.

BW Rabbit is closing up and starting anew.

On the Puritans. More.
Related: Irish and Germans in America.

The unintended consequences of recording the police.

Unreality.

The wages of female pastorship.

Live and let live.

Who owns the red pill?

The slow drift from marriage.
Related: The daddy-go-round and the family-go-round.

Nobody believes porn is adultery.

Martel returns with a couple of stories.

Scientist: Peer review doesn’t work. Related.

These candidate questions are fairly amusing.

GOP prefers Hillary to Trump.

The collapse of the publishing industry.

H/T: SDA

Lightning Round – 2015/11/11

There won’t be any other posts this week and the LR is short, but here goes:

Primary loyalties.

Social Matter at NPI.
Related: Amusing NPI silly string video.

Ruminations on pan-whitism.

Mass migration is war.
Related: The Europeans guide to helping refugees.
Related: The rape feminists will ignore.

Stereotype accuracy is one of the most robust social science findings.

Keep manhood in the bargain.
Related: The forgotten men.
Related: Why are middle-aged white male deaths rising?
Related: Whites down, diversity up.
Related: Why this trend from 1999-2002 wasn’t noticed until 2015.

Corrosive individualism.

SJW “rights” are anti-rights.

Why the web is disappointing.

Oppression is in the eye of the beholder.

The cultural revolution in the US.
Related: Anti-intellectualism is good.

Why fat activism is a godsend for the right.

Currency debasement is immoral, but not in the way you think.

Are you a nut?

On ambiguous proverbs.

Ranger School cover-up.

Most educated women have rape fantasies and 40% of rape victims continue to date their attacker.

The feminist backlash against the red pill documentary.

A review of Cernovich’s new book.

SJW’s using honey-pot traps in tech.

Trudeau literally makes the “because it is 2015” argument.

 

Order and Freedom

Freedom comes from social trust, social trust comes from order.

Formal rules are only necessary when there is a lack of social trust. When people trust each other, there is no need for an impartial mediators such as law and bureaucracy, as social norms . When I lend money to a friend, I do not make him sign a contract, because I know he will pay me back. Evolutionist X outlines this more thoroughly.

Social trust is built through repeated positive interactions. If I’ve lent $10 to a friend before and he paid me back, I’d consider lending him $20 at later time. If he has a repeated history of paying me back and spotting me when I needed a loan, I may even lend him $1000 if he needed.

I would probably not loan $10 to someone I had never met. But, if I’ve loaned to many friends (and they’ve reciprocated) within a social circle over the years and was always paid back, and I met someone new within that social circle at dinner and they forgot their wallet, I’d likely be willing to spot him $20 for dinner. By being part of the social circle he has inherited that social trust.

Social trust is destroyed through negative interactions. If just once my friend stiffed me, I’d probably never loan to him again; it’s possible I may no longer remain his friend. I’d also be less willing to loan to other friends in the future. If I was stiffed a few times, I’d probably never loan again.

Social trust builds on itself. If I loan to a friend, he’s likely to loan to me in the future, and I in turn am then even more willing to loan to him in the future, and upwards rides the virtuous cycle. Likewise, social distrust spirals downwards. If my friends stiffs me, I refuse to loan to someone else, who in turn refuses to loan to me, which in turn makes me even less likely to loan to others, and downwards spirals the vicious circle.

Eventually, the virtuous cycle results in a social norm of lending and repaying. The vicious circle results in no social norm of lending and repaying arising. Rather, if someone ones to borrow money, legally enforced contract loans become necessary. The vicious cycle leads to law and regulation. It also leads to much higher transactions costs. In the virtuous cycle, a $1000 loan requires little more than politely asking a friend or two and providing an explanation. A $10 loan requires nothing more than a “can you spot me til payday?”  In the viscious circle, a $1000 loan requires lawyers, banks, contracts, insurance, and interest. A $10 loan is impossible because the extra costs would be worth more than the loan itself.

Those first few interactions are critical. If my first interactions are positive, the virtuous cycle will build itself and will naturally continue. Once I’m caught up in the virtuous cycle with strong social norms, even the occasional defector will be regarded as a bad apple rather than representative of the group. Only a critical mass of defections will destroy the cycle. On the other hand, if my first few interaction are negative, the vicious circle will start to decay. Once I’m trapped in the vicious circle, the positive interactions will be seen as the unrepresentative outliers. It is nigh impossible to rebuild a virtuous cycle as a critical mass of non-defectors will rarely build up as others defect on them.

Because of this, it is necessary to stop natural defectors from destroying those initial interactions. Order is what prevents defectors from defecting. If a potential defector knows he will be punished should he defect, he will not defect and will not start a viscous circle. In the loan example, if someone knows there is a social norm of shunning by the group for refusing to pay back a loan, they will likely not defect.

Because there is order in the group, we can freely loan. There is no need for laws or regulations regarding loans because we know the social norms will enforce repayment, and these social norms were originally built by the maintenance of order.

We can also see order builds upon itself. The social norm of punishing defectors, leads the the social trust virtuous cycle, which leads to the creation of the social norm of repayment.

If freedom is your goal, order will break down; if order is your goal, freedom will naturally result.

As we can see above, freedom is the natural result of order. Social norms lead to social trust which leads to further social norms which frees us from regulation and bureaucracy.

We can start this order with law as well. If the authority emplaces an authoritarian initial law that harshly punishes stiffing on a loan, people know defectors will be punished and will be willing to engage in those initial positive interactions, even with people they don’t know. The virtuous cycle builds upon this initial law.

In this situation a man’s handshake becomes his bond. When a man’s handshake is his bond, there is no need for contracts, there is no need for lawyers and no need for regulations on the minutiae of contract law. Social norms enforce the spirit of the agreement and there is freedom in loan-giving.

On the other hand, if that initial law against stiffing on a loan is not put into place, people can not trust that defectors outside their close social circles will be punished. So defectors defect. With no social norms people turn to written, enforceable contracts. As they write contracts, they will realize the letter of the agreement is enforced, the spirit is not. This leads to the necessity of lawyers to ensure the letter is correct and the need for detailed regulations to define every aspect of lending contract. With no social norm enforcing the spirit of the law, people will learn to manipulate the letter. In order to prevent the injustices of those manipulating the letter of the law, further regulations will be introduced to prevent manipulation. This will result in a bureaucracy to create these regulations, which will itself be manipulated, and so on down the vicious cycle, as more regulations are placed upon more regulations. Order and freedom break down, replaced by the letter of the law and regulation.

Order is freedom, chaos is tyranny.

As above, we see that order leads to freedom. In a ordered community, strong social norms make intrusive, detailed regulation or bureaucracy unnecessary. The social norms uphold themselves while allowing freedom.

On the other hand, where there is no order, where there is chaos, laws and regulations become necessary. If you can’t trust your neighbour not to defect, not  to violate the spirit of any agreements, you need laws and regulations to enforce agreements make up for the lack of social trust.

Increased regulation is a sign that your community is becoming more chaotic and more disordered. Increased tyranny is a result of disorder.

As well, tyranny creates chaos. As shown, as regulations increase the letter of the law and of the agreement becomes more important than the spirit. When the letter become more important, people stop simply not defecting. Instead, people try to defect as much as possible on the spirit while still holding to the letter. Trust breaks down, and chaos reigns.

Increased regulation leads to more chaos, which leads to more regulation. Tyranny is not order, tyranny is chaos and chaos is tyranny.

Order is freedom.

If you desire freedom, order should be your primary goal.