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Wednesday, January 2, 2019

January 2, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"New Glock G43X & G48 First Look"--Sootch00 (10 min.)
Sootch00 gives a quick overview of Glock's two new products. Both of these models use the same frame and same 10-round magazine, but the G48 has a longer slide and barrel. The magazine is slightly wider than used in the G43, so they cannot be used with the G43.

            The reason most POlice [sic] and CCW qualification courses consist of high round count strings is simply to get the testing over with as quickly as possible. The underlying object is to facilitate the evaluation process, not to ‘train’ the shooter. When we’re practicing on our own, ‘getting it over with’ doesn’t have to be our primary concern, nor should it be.
             When we’re practicing for skill development, almost all of our time should be spent firing one or two shots at a time. For competitive shooters, using Bill Drills to practice recoil management does have value. For purposes of personal protection, however, the reality is that learning to put the first shot on target every single time has a lot more value.
      • You can't stop the signal: "R9 Arms strikes again (United Kingdom)"--Impro Guns. "R9 Arms" is a manufacturer's marking on what appear to be well-made black market arms in Europe. In this case, UK intercepted a smuggler bringing in guns and ammunition, including the two pictures at the link: a machine pistol and smaller standard semi-auto pistol.
      • "Prepping a Personal-Defense Kit: My Flyweight Travel EDC"--Shooting Illustrated. The author, Matthew Allen, has a background as a bodyguard and private intelligence, and gives some thoughts on lightweight kit for self-defense for traveling:
               Returning home a couple of weeks later, I decided to re-adjust my thoughts on low-threat work travel and armament. Not long after, I decided that for the first time in my life, I would have a "matched pair" of handguns. While the idea conjures up a slick pair of engraved 1911s or Colt Single Action Army revolvers, my reality was a bit more simple-minded.
                I managed to acquire one of Smith & Wesson's latest iterations of the Airweight 442 in the company's Pro-Series line. Unlike my No-Dash 442 Airweight from the mid-1990s, this updated model, like all of the ultralight Smith revolvers of the post-modern area, the new Pro-Series can handle a regular range use of +P ammunition, which only adds to the revolvers ability to diversify its diet.
          Allen notes that a couple of light-weight semi-auto pistols, like Glock 43s, would also work. His particular interest in the 442 was that it could be used with moon clips, but he found out that moon clips are not very easy to load into a J-frame revolver. But ... and an important but ... it does allow for more reliable ejection of spent cartridges.
          • I had a professor that observed that sometimes the best help was self-help, and I think it can over to dealing with crime. Sometimes street justice is the only justice you might find. This was brought to mind recently as I watched a short video documentary on the 1981 killing of Ken Rex McElroy in Skidmore, Missouri. Unfortunately, the video was removed from YouTube shortly after I saw it, but the New York Times article, "Town Mute for 30 Years About a Bully’s Killing," has most of the pertinent facts, although it underplays what an SOB was McElroy. Here is the thing: he was a violent, serial criminal, whose own attorney admitted that he had to be defended in at least 3 felony cases each year.  Yet, his threats, assaults, assaults with deadly weapons, thieving, arson, etc., never led to a conviction ... mostly because everyone was too afraid to testify against him. Yet the town's inhabitants finally had enough. McElroy was shot dead with two different weapons in broad daylight on the main street of the town, but "no one saw anything."
          • Woodpile Report cites to this same article, but I came across it last Sunday as well and thought enough of it to bookmark: "The Golden Age"--The Anatomically Correct Banana. Writing of the denouement of Western Civilization:
                   ... the media prefers the false alarm over hate crime to the real alarm which needs to be sounded over the ethnic rape epidemic.
                    This cannot happen, however, because to do so would be to admit that not just the policies of the Left have failed terribly—and are getting people raped, maimed, traumatized, and killed in the millions—but that their entire worldview has been invalidated. To ideologues such as these, that is a fate worse than death, and that reality, coupled with their cowardice, makes them very dangerous. For those behind the curtain so to speak, they certainly do not believe these outrageous fictions of equality, but find them useful to further their own agenda. Whether it be the #MeToo hysteria and feminism’s “impossible burden” of proof—a burden shared by all Cultural Marxist schools of “thought”—or cries of police wantonly gunning-down inner-city blacks (the same blacks that are four-and-a-half times more likely to kill a police officer than a white person is), these narratives do not need to be factually-based to be effective. They are used for one purpose only—to target and destroy opponents, whether on the individual or the group level. Empiricism and the logos itself are anathema to the Left for both purposes of the will-to-power and for the religious zealotry of many of its “true believers.”
              He also notes:
              On a related note, the United States does not have a gun problem, by the way. The firearm homicide rate in the US seems very high for a developed nation, but that’s until you look under (in?) the hood. The firearm homicide rate for white Americans is 1.7 per 100,000, which is identical to the Czech Republic and lower than countries like Canada, France, and Austria. The firearm homicide rate for Hispanics in the United States is 6.4 per 100,000, or nearly four times that of white Americans. The firearm homicide rate for blacks in the US is 19.8 per 100,000, or eleven-and-a-half times that of whites. This is very obviously not a gun problem, but a people problem, and a black and brown people problem at that. 
                    There’s something different about those new police cars patrolling the streets of New York City. They look a lot like your standard NYPD cruisers. They are Ford Tauruses painted white with blue trim. They have the same departmental insignia, followed by the same familiar blue lettering.

                    But there is still something amiss. If you study hard, you notice it: Instead of NYPD spelled out on the front doors, these cars have the letters MCP. And in place of the CPR acronym on the rear doors, standing for “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect,” these cars again have MCP, this time fleshed out to read “Muslim Community Patrol.”
              "The Pressed Fiber Sun Helmet"--The History Guy (8 min.)
              America's version of the pith helmet. Less expensive and more durable.

                       Such a background of political implications of Iran's water crisis has in recent years triggered public protests, in many cases turning ugly, with security forces making arrests in their heavy-handed response. The latest of such unrest rocked Khuzestan province last summer.
                         To overcome the crisis, the Iranian government has launched at least 10 water transfer megaprojects in the target areas. The projects, however, remain incomplete and have only complicated the situation by sparking protests in areas from which water is meant to be transferred to drought-hit regions.
                           Given the current circumstances amid the deteriorating water scarcity, the political ramifications and the public-level tensions are expected to only grow further. The graveness of the crisis was laid bare last August by head of the country's Environment Department Issa Kalantari, who warned that Iran's water resources would completely vanish within 40-50 years. He had already raised the alarm on a mass exodus of inhabitants from the areas suffering from water shortages.
                      In the last few days, Egyptian and UAE military officers visited the contested north Syrian town of Manbij. They toured the town and its outskirts, checked out the locations of US and Kurdish YPG militia positions, and took notes on how to deploy their own troops as replacements. On the diplomatic side, the White House is in continuous conversation with the UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Muhammed Bin Ziyad (MbZ) and Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi. The deal Trump is offering, is that they take over US positions in Manbij, where the Kurds have sought protection against a Turkish invasion, and American air cover will be assured against Russian, Syrian or Turkish attack.
                               While the Chinese, Pakistanis, Indians and Iranians are all developing competing energy and mining projects in and next door to Afghanistan, the United States appears to have little commercial future in the country, even though it spends about $45 billion there annually. The total cost of the war could reach as high as $2 trillion when long-term costs are factored in, according to Brown University's Cost of War Project. All that to prop up an unstable government that would most likely disintegrate if aid were to end.
                                 Indeed, Afghanistan represents the triumph of the deterministic forces of geography, history, culture, and ethnic and sectarian awareness, with Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras and other groups competing for patches of ground. Tribes, warlords and mafia-style networks that control the drug trade rule huge segments of the country. To show just how perverted Western experts’ view of the situation has become, the British regional specialist Anatol Lieven, writing in The National Interest, argues that “just because the U.S. money was stolen does not mean that it was wasted,” since it has gone to paying off tribal chiefs to keep them from joining the Taliban or becoming feuding warlords.
                            Even if Lieven's theory of paying off tribal chiefs was a successful strategy, it was mortally crippled with the October 18, 2018, assassination of General Abdul Raziq, the key person responsible for the security of Kandahar province. The author of the latter piece also notes:
                                     I also hear, although I’ve found no verification yet, that China is most interested in assisting the Afghan military with tons of equipment, aircraft, trainers and both combat and combat service support. The combat service support piece is, to be honest, about 10 times more important than contractors advising at the battalion level. And I think having contractors take on that role is a good idea, particularly in the cost effectiveness category.
                                       The Chinese, like Mr. Prince, are also interested in mineral extraction which can only be accomplished with significant infrastructure development that can only be accomplished if people stop blowing things up and shooting at the ANSF.
                                         Unlike Mr. Prince the Chinese are self funding, and there are more of them, but my understanding is there is significant pushback from both the US and India on the matter. Which may not, in the long run, matter because the donor money has already started to dry up and that trend will continue. If the Chinese really want to come into Afghanistan and invest in both security and natural resource development I don’t see a better option.
                                          As long as Secretary Mattis and General Dunford remain in their respective positions both the Prince and Chinese plans are D.O.A.  But both [United States’ special adviser to Afghanistan Zalimay] Kahlizad and President Trump are practical men who are not afraid of counter narrative options. The narrative is a product of elite thinking and the billions spent on credentialed elites, both in and outside the government, to think, has not produced in reasonable path forward. What the elites don’t think about is the fact that they have little idea what is happening in Afghanistan  outside the wire of our embassy and military installations. If they could get their brains around that and mitigate it maybe reality and the narrative would come in closer alignment.
                                    • Mit Romney has proved to be a globalist cuck basking in his own self-righteousness: "New GOP Rivalry? Romney Bolts Into Washington, Blasts Trump"--AP. The article reports that "in a Washington Post column published two days before Romney was sworn into office, he said Trump's 'conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.'" I think Romney figures that he can gain the power and influence wielded by John McCain by "reaching across the isle" (i.e., selling out to the Democrats).
                                             In 2007, Dr. Watson, who shared a 1962 Nobel Prize for describing the double-helix structure of DNA, told a British journalist that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really.”
                                          Although Dr. Watson had apologized after his comments and pretended to be contrite, his apology was not accepted and his career and livelihood was destroyed. Now that there is nothing to be saved, Dr. Watson has reaffirmed his initial statement, much to the horror of the SJW media. The author never considers whether there is any evidence to support Watson's views, but merely paints them as "fundamentally unsound."
                                                    Unfortunately, in a post-script, Dreher appears to walk back on some of his observations. Basically, he takes the position that something like the Spanish Civil War couldn't occur in the U.S. because, in his opinion, the U.S. does not have the same divisions as existed in 1930's Spain. That is an untenable position. Dreher, himself, notes in his article that the Democrats and the U.S. federal government is increasingly anti-Christian and hysterical. Moreover, more objective measurements of the shifting political landscape show an increasing political division. Château Heartiste recently posted some illustrations of this from an Economist article (see below) showing how the Democratic leadership has swung hard left. If there is anything lacking in the United States, it is that American Christians don't appear to have the backbone to resist their demise. 
                                                   Vox Day, commenting on Dreher's article, seems to be more optimistic about resistance forming on the right:
                                            Once you figure out that the other side really, genuinely, and truly wants to exterminate your religion and your race, only the suicidal and the delusional will persist in trying to "come together" and seek to "discuss our differences". You can brag about being anti-racist, apolitical, post-ideological, colorblind, or even apathetic all you like, but once it finally registers that the other side is literally hell-bent on destroying everything and everyone you value, it's no longer possible to continue lying to yourself. 


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                                            2 comments:

                                            1. John WilderJanuary 4, 2019 at 4:47 PM

                                              I still have a BSA post coming. It's gonna be a tough one to write.

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                                            Weekend Reading -- A New Weekend Knowledge Dump

                                            Greg Ellifritz has posted a new Weekend Knowledge Dump at his Active Response Training blog . Before I discuss some of his links, I want to ...