This is posted as a special open thread (requested by Nyan) — consider it a Chaos Patch with turbo-charged chaos. (Given my utter outsideness to the mysteries of 4chan, it can scarcely avoid teaching me something.)

There’s apparently been a brouhaha of some kind. Jim comments on the episode here (his post comes up first on a “4chan purge” Google search). I couldn’t find anything else that was helpful quickly.

This strikes me as far more also fascinating. It’s actual 4GW in the guise of a media prank.

Anyway, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law (with the understanding that sovereign Admin spanking rights are always conserved).

Continue Reading

The trailer for the ISIS jihad-porn blockbuster Flames of War is quite something.

The Rubin Report-embedded version. “They’re clearly trying to bring us into a fight …”

ADDED: A little background from the International Business Times:

The new video, titled “Flames of War,” was released late Tuesday by the Al Hayat Media Center, which, according to the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute, was established in May as the media arm of the Islamic State. […] The 52-second-long video, which, at first glance, seems more like a video-game trailer, is replete with slow-motion effects and high-definition images. It shows exploding tanks and Islamic State militants apparently preparing to execute captives before the words “Flames of War” flash on the screen, followed by the words, “Fighting has just begun.” And, before the screen fades to black, the video ends with the words, “Coming Soon.”

Richard Fernandez seizes upon Roger Cohen’s recent NYT lamentation (here) to explore the predicament of America’s narcissistic, ruin-mongering elite, as the world they broke collapses about them:

What’s the alternative to stupidity now? Now that they’ve gone so far it’s almost a shame not to see it through to the end. And therein rests the last remaining chance of the liberal establishment, imploring such divinities as they still believe in — luck maybe — that their hero can create a chaos so complete it will embroil the entire Muslim world, Russia and China in a vast conflagration before it consumes them.

Note: Cohen’s inclusion of a citation from Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings (in the NYT!) is a sure sign of the End Times. It makes me wonder whether the liberal media elite will be desperately chanting Moldbug poetry when Zack finally closes in.

‘To Beat ISIS, the Arab World Must Promote Political and Religious Reforms’, Rule Jebreal tells us. Picking on a writer for a headline is a mistake — who knows where it came from in the editorial process? — and, besides, this one employs (the exhortative) ‘must’ in its sole appropriate usage — as the completion of a hypothetical imperative. “If you want X, you must do Y” — that’s OK. (Y is a necessary condition for the accomplishment of X.) ‘Must’ is tolerable if it’s kept on a leash.

Once it slips the collar, ‘must’ reverts to its status as the most preposterous word in the English language, an instrument of sheer obfuscation. Watch it go:

The United States must review its policies across the Middle East. … It must take a stand against Riyadh’s promotion of exclusionary Wahhabism. […] … Likewise, pressure must be placed on Egypt to abandon its witch hunt of the Muslim Brotherhood. In undertaking an effective counter terrorism strategy, the United States must partner with the Arab states to undertake political reforms that ultimately lead to underwriting a social contract in which every group of the population are represented and protected. […] … If the United States and Iraqi government want to defeat ISIS, they must now ensure the inclusion and protection of Iraqi Sunnis, Kurds and Yazidis, along with the majority Shi’ites [this one is minimally OK]. […] … Eventually, a process of reconciliation must be initiated between Shi’ites and Sunnis. This centuries-old dispute is played out today in a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which has produced a monster that threatens the national security of not only Middle Eastern nations, but also the United States. It must come to an end. […] … The Obama Administration must pursue a policy of severe sanctions against any and all countries that finance jihadist — even if they are our own allies. … What will ultimately turn the tide in the Middle East are groups that actively advocate for a democratic culture and its values around the Arab world. A campaign to promote these ideas on every level must begin, as part of the counterterrorism initiative launched by Kerry. [Emphases added.]

Must they, really? Will they? Can they?

It’s irritating to see moral fanaticism — betrayed by its distinctive combination of groundless certainty and communicative fervor — masquerading as realistic analysis. The disguise is only necessary because the prescription so exorbitantly exceeds the diagnosis, tripping eagerly into glassy-eyed deontological intellectual abandonment.

“The Middle East must stop being the Middle East, and America must help to make this happen.” It can’t, and it won’t, on both counts. The musty smell is simply annoying.

The mainstream is running out:

In the broadcast media in particular, there is an implied assumption that “the Scotland moment” is something confined to that country. But the reality across the UK suggests something much deeper and wider, and a simple enough fact: that what is happening north of the border is the most spectacular manifestation of a phenomenon taking root all over – indeed, if the splintering of politics and the rise of new forces on both left and right across Europe are anything to go by, a set of developments not defined by specific national circumstances, but profound social and economic ruptures.

Here, Labour and the Conservatives have recently been scoring their lowest combined share of support. Organisationally, they are both hollowed out and increasingly staffed by wet-behind-the-ears apparatchiks who only compound the parties’ distance from the public. Whether justifiably or not, millions of British people have passed through holding politicians in contempt and now treat them with cold indifference. Let’s face it: the only thing keeping all this alive is the electoral system.

(The whole opinion piece is well worth reading, on panic-socialist Colin Crouch’s ‘post-democracy’ observations in particular. You know things are really beginning to get desperate when the Left begins to have interesting thoughts.)

Bruce Charlton isn’t messing around:

As an ‘entity’ the mainstream mass media is by far the most wicked THING that has even been in existence …

Autophagy is spiraling into its cultural moment right now. The Ouroboros is our sign. It’s cybernetic mythology, self-referential looping, and auto-consuming process. There is no end to the ways the theme could be currently pursued.

Simultaneously most comic, tragic, and prominent is the reflexive perception that contemporary hegemonic power is being devoured by the media. In other words, the Cathedral is undergoing accelerated auto-cannibalization. The news is eating itself.

The Hill reports:

“I can see why a lot of folks are troubled,” Obama told a group of donors gathered at a Democratic National Committee barbecue in Purchase, N.Y. […] But the president said that current foreign policy crises across the world are not comparable to the challenges the U.S. faced during the Cold War. […] Acknowledging “the barbarity” of Islamist militants and Russia “reasserting the notion that might means right,” Obama, though, dismissed the notion that he was facing unprecedented challenges. […] “The world’s always been messy … we’re just noticing now in part because of social media,” he said, according to a White House pool report. […] “If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart” …

So the world’s supreme talking head is trying to talk us out of taking the Apocalypse Show seriously. Don’t listen to us, you’ll find it far too upsetting. If this is getting repetitive, it’s due to the pattern. Catatonia is the final prescription. We’ve clearly passed beyond irony into something altogether more twisted. The intriguing syndrome labeled Horror autotoxicus seems to be ready for political-economic application.

“Hint: it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup,” suggests Lesser Bull persuasively. Mangan fills this out, with an especially valuable link to this round-up of orchestrated obliviousness.

Does the progressive media really think it can de-realize this festival of cultural ruin with a standard inattention protocol? If so, it has to count as an extraordinary peak hubris moment. Perhaps the left is structurally incapable of preventing itself from pushing things over the brink of catastrophe. It always has to take that one additional step, and it has no sense at all of how to back down.

There have to be a lot of people in the UK right now who would be delighted to see the media establishment strung up from lamp-posts, with panic and defection rife in journalistic ranks. It’s surely not impossible that the pattern now jutting into hideous visibility in Britain will evoke a disturbing sense of recognition elsewhere, possibly throughout the Anglosphere. As far as core Cathedral operating procedures are concerned, this has to be a period of (possibly unprecedented) vulnerability. As a source of regime threatening irritability, the Rotherham syndrome is the droit du seigneur of the new nobility — even among a pitifully broken people, it pushes some deeply atavistic buttons. Lies, sexual exploitation, and foreign invasion — who’d want to be PR manager for this cocktail of native degradation?

(Any cover-up -themed T-shirt slogan suggestions in the comment thread will be very gratefully received.)

Continue Reading

Tobin Grant (of the Religious News Service) charts political ideology by religious affiliation:

Continue Reading

The BBC fog-machine at work on the UK child-predation story:

Child sexual exploitation is happening in a “number of towns” in different parts of the country, according to the author of a damning report into abuse in Rotherham. … According to an estimate from the Children’s Commissioner for England three years ago, 2,409 children were identified as victims of exploitation by gangs over a 14-month period from 2010-11 …

Oxford … Seven men were sentenced to a total of 95 years in June 2013, for offences including rape, facilitating child prostitution and trafficking. [Follow the link for ethnic details censored by the BBC]

Derby … Nine men were convicted over three trials of systematically grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls in 2010. … [Oh look, a clue –] Speaking in 2011 after the jailing of two of the men, former Home Secretary Jack Straw suggested some men of Pakistani origin saw white girls as “easy meat”. The judge in the case said the race of the victims and their abusers was “coincidental”. …

Rochdale … In May 2012, nine men were given sentences ranging from four to 19 years after being found guilty of offences including rape and conspiracy to engage in sexual activity with a child. …

Telford … Seven men were jailed after a series of court cases related to a child prostitution ring. The charges included rape, trafficking and prostitution, sometimes involving girls as young as 13. …

Peterborough … A gang of five males was jailed in February after being found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting five vulnerable girls.

I’m going to assume that all the fanatically unspecified “men” (or “males”) involved are Muslims of Pakistani origin (abusing white children), unless presented with definite evidence to the contrary. Any other default would be an act of cognitive collaboration with Britain’s sordid little branch-operation of the Cathedral, and we’ve now seen with stark clarity what that enables.

Continue Reading