December 27, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Eerie photos show abandoned churches which have been left to crumble with graffiti-covered walls, decaying pews, and BONES littering the floor"--Daily Mail.

Firearms/Prepping:

• "The Unlikely Resilience of the AR-7 Survival Rifle"--American Rifleman. This article traces the history of the AR-7 rifle from its genesis with Armalite to its present day iteration as the Henry Survival Rifle. In doing so, it discusses its predecessors, development, marketing (including appearances in various movies, including From Russia With Love), and variants (including a version adopted by the Israeli air force).
• "Obama Administration Finalizes Social Security Gun Ban"--Breitbart. Under the regulations, something as simple are requiring someone's assistance with finances will be enough to trigger a mental health review, the results of which might prevent the person from owning a firearm. While this seems benevolent on its face, never underestimate the malevolence of an indifferent bureaucracy. 
• "Magpul Shipping PMAG 12 GL9 for Sub-Compact 9mm Glocks"--The Firearms Blog. The Glock 26 has a short grip, comparable to other pocket 9 mm pistols, which only allows a two-finger grip on the weapon unless you purchase pinky extensions for the magazines. Magpul is continuing its line of less expensive PMAGs for Glock with a new model for the G26 which includes a pinky extension. And, since they had the room, Magpul upped the capacity to 12 rounds from the normal 10.
• "A New Perspective On Broadhead Performance"--The Nine Finger Chronicles. The author of this piece has gone back to a 2015 test of broadhead performance by Outdoor Life and provide his own evaluation or prediction of effectiveness based solely on the size of the wound channel. By wound channel size, the author means the area represented by the depth of penetration multiplied by the cutting length of the broadhead. Because the author used imperial measurements (inches), the results are given in square inches. The author notes that his evaluation is one tool or factor in selecting a broadhead, but actual conditions may call for a broadhead that scores lower in his evaluation because you may want to sacrifice penetration for cutting length (such as a short range shot at smaller game), or vice versa (a longer shot at larger game).
• "8 Checks to Run Before Firing Your New Gun"--American Rifleman. Although the author breaks down the process into an 8 point process, the basics are: look your gun over, make sure you have all the parts and there are no loose screws, clean the weapon and perform a function test. 
• "How Hard Does It Hit? -- A Study of Atlatl and Dart Ballistics"--Daryl Hrdlicka. While this article is intended for the primitive hunter/weapon enthusiast, don't skip it because you are only using firearms. The physical attributes which the author considers in evaluating the performance of a dart--kinetic energy, momentum, and sectional density--are also useful for evaluating bullets. In fact, the author includes .30-06 and .357 exemplars for comparison purposes.
• "Army Develops Wool-Blend, Flame-Resistant Uniform"--Kit Up!. The article indicates that the fabric is composed of 50 percent wool, 42 percent Nomex, 5 percent Kevlar and 3 percent P140 antistatic fiber. Field testing found that the uniform was cooler and more comfortable than the standard uniform.

Other Stuff:

• Most of you probably already heard of the sad fate of a Russian military airliner that crashed into the Black Sea while en route to a Russian air base in Syria. The plane carried among it passengers the members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, the Russian army's official musical group also known as the Red Army Choir, and its conductor Valery Khalilov. The group was headed to Syria to participate in New Year celebrations at the airbase. There were apparently no survivors. There has been varied speculation as to what caused the crash. News reports this morning indicate that authorities had recovered the flight recorder, so answers may soon be forthcoming. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the victims of this tragedy.
• "Hitler's Religion"--Frontpage Magazine. A review of a book of the same title by Richard Weikart. So what was Hitler's religion? According to Weikart, "Hitler's God was a Darwin-inspired, non-personal, pantheistic deity exacting a pitiless survival-of-the-fittest-through-struggle morality. Neither Hitler nor Nazism were Christian, and the elimination of Christianity was certainly one of the long-term goals of Nazism." 
• "SWAT teams dispatched, families flee from 'gunfire' and dozens are arrested... all for the sake of a few holiday bargains: Massive brawls break out as shoppers descend on malls across the country"--Daily Mail. The headline is misleading. The article indicates that the altercations were mostly fights involving "youths" or "teens". ABC News reports that the fights were the result of gatherings arranged or advertised via social media.
• "‘Better Is Good’: Obama on Reparations, Civil Rights, and the Art of the Possible -- The second in a series of interviews between Ta-Nehisi Coates and the president"--The Atlantic. After urging government programs that are facially neutral but discriminate against whites in practice (disparate impact discrimination), Obama suggests that "fairness" toward blacks requires additional programs specifically intended to benefit blacks (including enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and affirmative action). Obama then is quoted as saying:

Now, does that mean that all vestiges of past discrimination would be eliminated, that the income gap or the wealth gap or the education gap would be erased in five years or 10 years? Probably not, and so this is obviously a discussion we’ve had before when you talk about something like reparations. Theoretically, you can make, obviously, a powerful argument that centuries of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are the primary cause for all those gaps. That those were wrongs done to the black community as a whole, and black families specifically, and that in order to close that gap, a society has a moral obligation to make a large, aggressive investment, even if it’s not in the form of individual reparations checks, but in the form of a Marshall Plan, in order to close those gaps. 

Obama acknowledges, however, that such a program would not be politically acceptable to the electorate, stating: "But as a practical matter, it is hard to think of any society in human history in which a majority population has said that as a consequence of historic wrongs, we are now going to take a big chunk of the nation’s resources over a long period of time to make that right." However, as I noted the other day, Obama does not believe that whites will be a majority for much longer. Then, I suppose, all bets are off the table.

• "Why Europe Rose And Others Did Not"--Foundation for Economic Education. The question:

The "miracle" in question consists in a simple but momentous fact: It was in Europe — and the extensions of Europe, above all, America — that human beings first achieved per capita economic growth over a long period of time. In this way, European society eluded the "Malthusian trap," enabling new tens of millions to survive and the population as a whole to escape the hopeless misery that had been the lot of the great mass of the human race in earlier times. The question is: why Europe?

The typical answer, based on Marxist claptrap, is that Europeans somehow appropriated wealth to themselves (rather than creating wealth) from other civilizations and people. The more honest answer, though, is much different: Europe's radical decentralization and respect for free enterprise.

• "The Wages of Merkelism, and the Death of Europe"--Michael Walsh at PJ Media. No mincing words here:

     That those million Muslims are in Germany is entirely the fault of the second-worst German chancellor of the past hundred years, the wretched Angela Merkel, whose colossal stupidity in falling for the "plight" of "refugees" will go down in history as the greatest civilizational error since the Trojans opened their gates to a giant horse stuffed full of Greeks. Whether from naivete, arrant stupidity, cultural inexperience with Islam or sheer malevolence toward a country she was raised to despise and betray, Merkel opened the borders of Germany in 2015 with the bold motto "wir shaffen das" (we can do it). In flooded an army of mostly young males of military age without the slightest interest in accommodating themselves or their rancid culture to western European cultural norms, but with rapine, exploitation and Islamic triumphalism foremost on their dark and savage minds.

     That Merkel -- like all the politically correct liberals across the European Union who have brought Europe to its present low estate -- could not see this coming speaks to the tyranny of cultural Marxism that imposed itself on the nation-states of Europe in the form of the EU: a form of compulsive national suicide, preached as the logical consequence of guilt over World War II and imposed using the stick of "racism" with which to beat a gullible public.

• "Angela Merkel is destroying Europe"--The Week. From the article:

Germany thought it could assimilate newcomers. It believed it had done so before, having absorbed Turkish "guestworkers" during the 1960s and 1970s. But there are notable differences between Turks and the current refugee wave. Turkey had already undergone significant secularization. This new wave of migration into Germany is showing signs of developing some of the generational problems that mass Islamic migration has created in France. Syrian migrants find that the Arabic-language mosques in Germany, often funded by Saudi Arabia, preach a form of Islam far more fundamentalist and hostile to Western people and culture than anything they knew in Syria. Secondly, Turks came with skills that were immediately put into employment in the German economy. The new migrants are hardly working at all.

• "The Fake Hijab Hate Crimes Witch Hunt"--Sultan Knish. Documenting the rash of fake hate-crimes reported following Trump's election. 
• And I thought the "Jesus was a refugee, too" comments were bad: "Prince Charles: 'Normally at Christmas' We Think of Jesus; This Year Remember Muhammad"--PJ Media. The Prince is quoted as saying:

     “Normally at Christmas, we think of the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ,” said Prince Charles. “I wonder, though, if this year we might remember how the story of the nativity unfolds, with the fleeing of the holy family to escape violent persecution.”

     “And we might also remember that when the prophet Muhammad migrated from Mecca to Medina he was seeking the freedom for himself and his followers to worship.”

And kill. Don't forget the killing part.

• Karma: "Mexico Overwhelmed With Foreign Migrants Heading To US"--Anonymous Conservative.
• Stupid is as stupid does: "France opens world’s first solar road in Normandy"--France 24. Solar panels as the road surface. The company producing the panels required a 5 million Euro subsidy, and the cost of the product is so high that the per kilowatt cost will be 13 times that of regular roof-top solar arrays: 17 Euros per kilowatt-hour according to the article. (In comparison, electricity rates for where I live is about 6.2 cents per kilowatt-hour). The electricity from this project is expected to generate only enough electricity for street lighting. Although the article notes possible problems with the roadway as being that the panels aren't tilted to maximize efficiency, and will be subject to wear and tear, I don't see any mention of the affect on power generation by dirt and other material that will be deposited on the roadway through weather and normal use, or the costs of the frequent and special cleaning that the roadways will require. I wouldn't be surprised if the additional energy required for the special maintenance will exceed the energy produced by the solar panels.
• "The Free Trade Fallacy"--Archdruid Report. The author contends that pure free trade (i.e., trade of goods and money, not people) is not the panacea which it is generally touted to be, but instead, historically, has resulted in "staggering profits for the rich, impoverishment and immiseration for the working classes, and cascading economic crises" leading to massive depressions.
• When children become an expensive luxury: "Japan - a wealthy nation with poor children"--DW. According to the article, Japan is not doing a very good job of safeguarding its next generation.
• "What China Didn’t Learn From the Collapse of the Soviet Union"--Foreign Policy (via Yahoo News). From the author's conclusion:

The hostility toward the color revolutions and the chaos they’ve unleashed has thus been projected backward. The Soviet fall, once seen at least in part as a result of the Communist Party’s own failings, has become reinterpreted as a deliberate U.S. plot and a moral failure to hold the line against Western influence. That has ended what was once a powerful spur to reform — meaning that, barring a major change in leadership, the likely course of Chinese politics over the next few years will be further xenophobia, even more power to the party, and an unwillingness to talk about the harder lessons of history.