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Wednesday, September 29, 2021

The Docent's Memo (Sept. 29, 2021)

 

VIDEO: "Do NOT Draw Your Gun Until You Do This First | CCW Techniques for Drawing During a Fight"--Hard 2 Hurt (11 min.). Some grappling techniques to allow you to get to your firearm if you are physically assaulted, because sometimes a gun fight involves a fight for the gun.

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • "Buckshot or Bullshot?"--Sensible Self-Defense. The author discovered that some 00 buckshot rounds he was using wasn't actually loaded with 00 buckshot, but smaller shot (#00 is supposed to use shot 0.33 inches in diameter and weigh 53 grains). Investigating further, he discovered that:
    The #00 buckshot loads from all U.S. manufacturers (except one) had an average measurement of just over .320 inches or the diameter of #0 buckshot. Remington was the exception due to what I suspect is an issue of “roundness.” The Remington pellets were almost oblong with some measurements over .33 inches and others well under .32 inches. I averaged the Remington measurements to the best of my ability. 

    Why would manufacturers market and sell  #0 buckshot rounds as #00? The author suggests that "If you think about it, a pellet that weighs 5 grains less than the norm per pellet saves a pound of lead for every 1400 buckshot pellets produced. This is a significant amount of lead when we consider the hundreds of thousands of buckshot pellets that manufacturers produce." Unfortunately, some other manufacturers are even worse. So read the article.

  • "Data Study: 18 Months of Ammo Sales during a Pandemic, Protests, and the Biden Presidency"--Ammo.com. In this article, Ammo.com has taken a dive into their sales information to provide us with the statistics on increases on ammunition purchases. Although not broken down into all 50 states, they have broken down the stats on the top 10 states in certain categories. The author observes:
    In our previous data study on the initial effects of the pandenmic on our business, we outlined increased sales due to the public’s growing leeriness of COVID-19, starting from February 23, 2020 when the news coverage became ominous.

    That's only part of the story, however, because over the last 18 months, we've experienced a particularly charged election year, BLM protests amid calls to "defund the police," a contentious transfer of power, and most recently a surprise ban on popular Russian ammo.

    These events in particular, set against the backdrop of the ongoing response to the pandemic, resulted in demand spikes. Looking at the data below, you'll get a sense of a high level trend during the pandemic and then see how that trend changed during certain specific time periods, like the BLM protests, when already-elevated demand went up even more.

    To give a pre-pandemic baseline of sorts, over the past 18 months our overall sales have increased as follows:

  • 590% increase in revenue
  • 604% increase in transactions
  • 271% increase in site traffic
  • 77% increase in conversion rate

This data is from February 23, 2020 - August 23, 2021, when compared to the previous 18 months (August 24, 2018 - February 22, 2020). 

It then goes on to analyze various data with, as I mentioned, a look at the top 10 states for overall sales, the most popular caliber for each, and the percentage change in demand. Then, for the most popular calibers, it lists for each the top 10 states and percentage change in demand. You will note that from some states as to certain calibers, demand increased by six to seven thousand percent. This is just one company, but I would not be surprised if it tracked other on-line retailers. 

    Almost all of the rounds we tested penetrated a full 16″ of gelatin.  Folks were asking me why a bullet would need to penetrate 16″ when the heart and other vital organs are only a few inches deep in the chest cavity.

    The reason is that penetration in gelatin is not the same as penetration in human flesh and bone.

     The human body is not a consistent medium.  Muscle, fat, organ, and bone all have different mass, density, hardness, and flexibility.  In general, a bullet will penetrate much deeper in gelatin that it will in human flesh.

     The primary reason for the diminished penetration in an actual body is the presence of skin and bone.

    Skin is very elastic.  A bullet uses up a lot of energy stretching the skin before the skin actually breaks.  Most ballistic experts believe that the skin itself is equal to one to two inches of gelatin penetration.

     Bones also tremendously slow bullets and limit their penetration.

     We want a bullet that penetrates 12″-18″ of gelatin.  That translates to roughly 6″-10″ of human flesh, depending on the structures hit.

He goes on to observe that bullets are often recovered just underneath the skin on the back of the body, or inside the clothes of a shooting victim. Something that you will have seen many times if you watch Paul Harrell's YouTube channel and his "meat target" tests. Gelatin tests are useful because they provide a consistent medium against which to compare against other rounds, but I also find the meat target tests useful because it does try to mimic a flesh and blood target.

  • "Primary Arms SLx 1x Prism Gen 2- Can it Replace a Red Dot?"--The New Rifleman. The short answer is "yes"--in fact, not only can it replace a red dot, but it can exceed the performance of a red dot. The author tells us that the Gen2 is lighter and shorter than the Gen1, but also has a larger diameter optic allowing for a larger reticle. For those of us with astigmatism, this optic makes a lot of sense. But there is another reason to consider such an optic in lieu of a standard red dot. Recently I came across a discussion about how much of our electronics will become useless after SHTF as we run out of batteries to operate them or if the electronics are destroyed by an EMP (thus the reason the author had an A2 style AR). But that isn't necessarily true. Holosun makes solar powered red dots that can operate without a battery. Alternatively, any optic using an etched reticle will be usable even if the illumination feature no longer works.
  • More than a review: "Smith & Wesson Model 317 Kit Gun, a Perfect Survival Tool"--Ammo Land. Ostensibly, this is a review of the S&W 317 .22LR revolver: an aluminum framed J-frame revolver in .22 LR with a 3-inch barrel, a fiber-optic front sight and adjustable back sight, with a capacity of 8 rounds. A kit gun, if you are no familiar with the term, refers to a handgun that is small enough to fit into your "kit" when going fishing, camping, hiking, etc. Essentially, it is a weapon that you take along with you when you don't intend on doing any shooting (unless just some plinking). The article points out that some people use the term to include larger weapons suitable for defense against predators, but I've never heard the term used in relation to such weapons. 
    But that takes me into what I found most interesting about the article: the dichotomy between the "gun guys or gals" and those that spend substantial amount of time in the outdoors. It begins with the author discussing his assignment to review the kit gun with an anti-gun waitress who was a hiker. To his surprise, the waitress told him that she owned a Model 317. Intrigued: 
 
    I randomly surveyed fifty outdoor people at sports retailers upon beginning this article. They ended up including pro-2A folks, centrists, and avowed anti-gun types and found that nearly all of them, even the hardest and most outspoken gun grabbers in the bunch, owned and regularly carried a .22LR. Most commonly it was a double or single action revolver they brought with them camping. Being a friendly guy, and equally outspoken critic of hypocritical action of the part of my contemporaries, I asked why they had and used them. The answer I received is that a .22LR in a revolver is, to paraphrase, ‘part of the deal’ when it comes to hiking and camping.

    An interesting note of difference between the victims of my survey, most pro-2A people owned a gun that filled the role of a Kit Gun, but it wasn’t a regularly used item in their collection. The most common camp guns today in their hands are, not surprisingly, an AR-pattern rifle and a 9mm. One of the prompts in my survey asked if a .22LR was a good minimum caliber for campers and trail hikers. Pro-2A folks automatically said no, opting for a somewhat hyperbolic minimum of .44 Magnum. To make things interesting, I asked how often they carry a .44 Mag on the trail. Not one had. My native state of Michigan isn’t exactly teeming with predators like grizzlies, which makes their choice even more obnoxious.

    On the other hand, the casual hikers without political end goals, as well as the self-identified anti-gunners, viewed the .22LR as an essential item for the woods. This was very evident to me in one particular point of view: the uses of the gun. The individuals that identified as pro-2A unanimously put down ‘self-defense’ as a reason to carry a gun on the trail. This, I believe, is a cultural difference that spawns from the central tenants, and dogma, of this culture. Every other camper and hiker listed something to the tune of signaling, emergency hunting, weight considerations, ammo weight and variations, and as camp pest control.

And that is the basic them of the rest of the article: the gun people believed that a full size handgun was a necessity outdoors, but never actually hiked or spent as much time outdoors as the more liberal hiking crowd that preferred the light weight and unobtrusiveness of the kit gun. That is, as the author relates:

I came to the conclusion that, despite my own affiliations, gun people weren’t all that trail and stream savvy. In fact, being on the trail and being outdoors was simply an excuse to carry guns, not the other way around.

Conversely, for those that did a lot of hiking:

    Fifty individuals in this category were asked the same questions as above. Ideal gun for their outdoor time? A compact .22LR with about three fifty-round boxes of ammo. Most (34/50) either owned or wanted a revolver. None wanted anything to do with a rifle because of weight and size factors. The other most desirable calibers were .38 Special and .22 Magnum.

    Miles traveled and hours camped? This group had an average of 5-600 miles hiked annually, with some outliers as high as 2,000. One woman claimed to go through two pairs of hiking boots a year and the guy at the sales counter confirmed this. Most individuals also camped and fished on the trail, while only four claimed to hunt on the trail or camp.

    There is a certain validity to this point. I don't have a Model 317, although I have on and off wanted one over the years (unfortunately, availability of the firearm and availability of funds never seemed to correspond). But I have an Airweight in .38 Special which is generally what I take with me when doing some day hiking. I've even carried it as a sidearm when hunting. 

    Most of my reason for carrying such a firearm is my assessment of threat. While there are grizzly bears in Idaho, there are none in my part of the state. In theory, the forests to my north and north-east are black bear habitat, but I've never come across bear tracks let alone an actual bear. Thus, my sidearm is really more for dealing with a two-legged predator, a mountain lion, or an aggressive dog or badger than anything else. 

    My father carried a .44 Magnum when hunting, but it was for the purpose of taking a deer when his rifle was not handy (and, in fact, he took at least one deer to my knowledge that had wandered into his camp spot when his rifle was still stowed in a vehicle). If I was in grizzly or brown bear territory, I would probably carry a full-sized handgun. But I'm not so I don't. On the other hand, if I'm in a vehicle accessible area and not doing a lot of hiking, I will take a larger, more powerful weapon because weight and size is not as much of an issue. 

    While the odds of having to make a long-distance shot with your handgun may be low, the stakes are unquestionably high, which is reason enough to add this important skill to your training regimen. But tactical relevance aside, developing the ability to fire your handgun accurately at distance is bound to make you a better shooter at more probable shooting distances.

    As a case in point, I reflect on my days as a karate student. Despite training in a traditional style of karate that emphasized kicking no higher than waist level, I spent countless hours working on high kicks. I could easily kick over my head with accuracy and power.

    In a real fight, the chances of delivering a kick to an attacker’s head in a fight are minimal, while at the same time leaving you vulnerable to having your kicking leg caught or having your support leg swept out from under you. However, high kicks helped me develop the flexibility, balance and technique that made me a much better all-around kicker.

    This logic can be applied to long-distance shooting. Being able to hit a target at distance will invariably make hitting a closer target that much easier. But there are some nuances specific to shooting a handgun at longer distances.
  • "What’s Your 'Go See' Gun?" by Jon Stokes, All Outdoors. By this, he means the gun you take with you to investigate a strange noise when you have no idea what you may encounter. The author, who apparently lives on a farm, likes a shotgun for such tasks, specifically mentioning a Tac-14. I live in a city, so mine is a handgun--preferably something I can slip inside a pocket or keep next to my side where it is not visible so I don't alarm a neighbor that might have been awakened by the same noise. When we were having problems with raccoons, though, more often than not I would grab a spear over a gun. It just depends.

    In any event, the author adds:

I’ve been thinking about this lately in terms of preparedness. I’m an advocate of the AR or AK for a SHTF long gun, and a 9mm pistol for every other preparedness scenario (everything from short-term displacement to long-term bugout.) But I have to admit, in the moment, when I really don’t know what’s out there, I do reach for a shotgun every time. So maybe I should reconsider my long gun recommendation, because isn’t that sort of the essence of a SHTF scenario? You have no idea what you’re up against?
    'Take this fire alarm for instance, it is placed right above the bed,' he explained while guiding his own camera to the ceiling.

    'Now one way to see if the device is a camera is to shine a bright light at it. If you hit a camera lens it's going to get a blue-ish reflection.

    'Now you can test this by shining a light at your phone and seeing how the camera looks when placed under a flashlight.'

    He then moves to a digital alarm clock beside the bed which also has a sneaky camera lurking behind the mirrored glass.

    In the video, which has notched up more than 5.5million views, he explained how it's possible to see if a camera is there by shining a bright light on the glass.

The link to the video is here. 

    The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey indicates that around 100,000 defensive gun uses occur each year -- an estimate that, though it may seem like a lot, is actually much lower than 17 other surveys. They find between 760,000 defensive handgun uses and 3.6 million defensive uses of any type of gun per year, with an average of about 2 million.

    The difference between these surveys arises from the screening questions. The National Crime Victimization Survey first asks a person if they have been a victim of a crime. Only respondents who answer “yes” are asked if they have ever used a gun defensively.

    In contrast, the other surveys screen respondents by asking if they have been threatened with violence. That produces more self-acknowledged defensive gun users, since someone who successfully brandished a gun is less likely to self-characterize as a crime victim. Survey data indicate that in 95% of cases when people use guns defensively, they merely show the gun to make the criminal back off. Such defensive gun uses rarely make the news, though a few do.

Also:

    Defensive gun uses don't loom large as a public concern not only because they tend not to feature dead bodies or blood. They are also underplayed because of a distorting feedback loop involving news organizations. Many leading outfits use data from the Gun Violence Archive to track firearm use. The GVA, however, relies primarily on news reports, creating literally an unvirtuous circle. This media coverage focuses on the most extreme cases, which academic research suggests is actually a minority of gun uses.

    “Media stories cannot be trusted to accurately reflect the number or type of defensive gun uses that actually occur,” Professor Gary Mauser of Canada’s Simon Fraser University told RCI. Mauser has conducted national surveys on defensive gun use. “National surveys find that firearms are rarely fired when used to stop a violent attack," he said. "Such cases are unlikely to be reported to the police, and even less likely to found in media stories. Relying upon media stories would greatly underestimate the true number of defensive gun uses.”

He cites many examples of defensive gun uses that haven't received much if any media attention. One of these:

On May 15, an attacker at an apartment complex in Fort Smith, Ark., fatally shot a woman and then fired 93 rounds at other people before a man killed him with a bolt-action rifle. Police said he “likely saved a number of lives in the process.” 

A lot more there, so be sure to read the whole thing. 

 

VIDEO: "FULL NELSON DEFENSE"--Nick Drossos Defensive Tactics (3 min.)

Prepping:

    As I’ve grown in the gun scence — written, studied, matured, and most of all, trained — my views on what this rifle should be and how it should be configured have evolved quite a bit. And oddly enough, they’ve sort of gone in a circle. I started out with Jeff Cooper’s scout rifle concept, then ditched it as old fogey in favor of the “use what they use” motto of operator wannabees everywhere, and I’ve now come back around to seeing the wisdom of Cooper’s thinking.

    I still believe an AK- or AR-15-pattern rifle is the best choice for those who live in an area where that’s an option, but I think Cooper’s recommendation of a simple, handy, lightweight bolt action gun isn’t as far off as most members of the 101st Chairborne Rangers would have you believe.

The author then goes on to discuss operators and their weapons. Using a video from a SOF member concerning his rifle and setup as an example, Stokes notes two main points. 

    First, the operator's rifle is set up with the anticipation that the operator is working as part of a unit. Thus, the operator's set up (basically an M4 with a silencer) is with the knowledge that he will be working with other operators who will have weapons that will compliment his weapon, such as someone with a rifle or machine gun capable of engaging more distant foes. 

    Second, the operator benefits from what Stokes refers to as the best logistical chain money can buy. "They’re shooting a very tightly controlled selection of ammo, and their gun only has to be reliable with the ammo they carry, not with whatever they might scrounge in the field." Moreover, he adds, they are typically in the field for only a few hours or a few days and thus never far removed from their unit's armorer. 

    Conversely, Stokes argues, the prepper will probably not be operating as part of a trained unit with defined roles with ready access to parts and ammunition. Thus Stokes has relegated his "standard battle rifle" (i.e., M4 style carbine) to a backup role and gone back to a full length rifle allowing him to engage targets at greater ranges. He has also switched from .223 to .308 for the same reason. He also has abandoned upgrades like a JP Silent Captured Spring and a Geissele trigger because he doesn't want to be monkeying with the internals of a rifle (an LMT LM8MWS) which in its stock configuration is supposed to be utterly reliable.

    I agree with certain of the points Stokes raises. For instance, as I've discussed not too long ago, I am in the process of building an AR 308 influenced by Cooper's Scout Rifle concept. One of the decisions I made was to use a standard AR trigger system rather than the drop in units in order to facilitate repairs. That doesn't mean that I'm using the GI trigger, though. I picked up a PNT Trigger Assembly manufactured by BCM to give me a better trigger. But, should I have to repair it, I could still use standard AR trigger parts or springs. Similarly, I have other non-standard parts I will be using, but I could substitute more standard parts if I have to.

    Ports in California are heavily backlogged as record-breaking numbers of ships have waited to dock and unload cargo this week. As of September 22, 62 cargo ships were waiting to dock in both Los Angeles and Long Beach. Ships are waiting an average of ten days to dock and unload goods.

    On September 22, ports in both Los Angeles and Long Beach reported more than 150 ships docked in port which included 95 container ships. The number of ships docked Wednesday was more than double that of pre-pandemic averages when the ports typically dealt with 60-70 ships at once.

And the key point: "Before the pandemic, the typical number of ships waiting to dock was 'between zero and one,' Executive Director of the Marine Exchange of Southern California Kip Louttit told Business Insider in July." 

    The sharp rise in energy prices is already feeding into red hot inflation pressures. The inability to secure supplies of natural gas and propane could have dire consequences for the economy. With some weather forecasters predicting a very cold winter, there's the possibility that here, in the United States of America, we could see prices for heating fuels double and triple. We potentially could see shortages in parts of the country unless the Biden administration treats this as the emergency that it is. Supplies of energy need to be built up and built up quickly. 

    The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has reported the crude supplies are 8% below the five-year average, and the country needs to restock crude supplies if we have a chance to meet the demand that will be rising in the winter. Distillate inventories that include things like heating oil are 14% below the five-year average. That is a huge deal. Because of the shortages of natural gas and propane around the globe, countries will look more to oil and distillate fuels to keep factories running and the heat on. Propane inventories are at a dangerously low level of 21% below the five-year average. This is almost unheard of for supplies of propane to be this low at this time of year, and this is a real danger, especially to rural America, which depends on propane.


VIDEO: "Uncovered: China’s Plan to LEAK Coronaviruses into the Wild"--China Uncensored (12 min.)
DARPA denied funding for gain-of-function research on coronavirus which would be subsequently released into the wild because of the danger. So Dr. Peter Daszak, his company EcoHealth Alliance, and obtained funding for the research that DARPA had rejected.

COVID News:

    Israel has become the Covid capital of the world despite leading the charge on vaccines, in a clear warning sign that Britain, the US and other highly-immunised nations are still vulnerable to another wave.

    Stats compiled by Oxford University-backed research team Our World in Data shows there were a record 1,892 Covid cases per million people in Israel on Wednesday — nearly 0.2 per cent of the entire population in a single day.

    That was significantly higher than second worst-hit Mongolia, where the rate was 1,119 per million, and double the figures for Kosovo (980), Georgia (976) and Montenegro (909), which rounded out the top five.

According to an August 31, 2021, article from Haaretz, "[m]ore than 78 percent of Israelis eligible for COVID-19 vaccination have been inoculated." The Haaretz article goes on to indicate that:

Six million Israelis have received the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, 5.5 million got their second one, and 2.2 million have already received a booster shot, according to data released by the Health Ministry.

But the vaccines are proving so ineffective that the "[t]hose who do not receive a booster shot will no longer be considered vaccinated as it relates to restrictions if more than six months have elapsed since their second shot, Israel's coronavirus czar said Sunday. That change will go into effect on October 1." You can get more statistics about Israel and Covid from Reuters. 

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the race for testing new platforms designed to confer immunity against SARS-CoV-2, has been rampant and unprecedented, leading to emergency authorization of various vaccines. Despite progress on early multidrug therapy for COVID-19 patients, the current mandate is to immunize the world population as quickly as possible. The lack of thorough testing in animals prior to clinical trials, and authorization based on safety data generated during trials that lasted less than 3.5 months, raise questions regarding the safety of these vaccines. The recently identified role of SARS-CoV-2 glycoprotein Spike for inducing endothelial damage characteristic of COVID-19, even in absence of infection, is extremely relevant given that most of the authorized vaccines induce the production of Spike glycoprotein in the recipients. Given the high rate of occurrence of adverse effects, and the wide range of types of adverse effects that have been reported to date, as well as the potential for vaccine-driven disease enhancement, Th2-immunopathology, autoimmunity, and immune evasion, there is a need for a better understanding of the benefits and risks of mass vaccination, particularly in the groups that were excluded in the clinical trials. Despite calls for caution, the risks of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination have been minimized or ignored by health organizations and government authorities. We appeal to the need for a pluralistic dialogue in the context of health policies, emphasizing critical questions that require urgent answers if we wish to avoid a global erosion of public confidence in science and public health.

Today, the people in charge have no respect for the law or the concept of law, so their agents just do as they please. In fact, they take pride in trampling the rights of the people, because it pleases their masters. The goons prosecuting the January 6th protestors, for example, take a sadistic pleasure in the torment they are inflicting on the people caught in their trap. Their intentional cruelty has become a positional good, something that elevates them in the eyes of the oligarchs.


VIDEO: "Deep State and Deep Church Conspire Together - NEW! Bishop Vigano Warning of Global Takeover"--Nelson Walters (17 min.)

Miscellany: 

    I’ve long felt that I understood why this was.  Let me give it a shot.

    For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life.  For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more.  It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%.  For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years.

    If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years.  1/8 versus 1/20?  It’s amazingly different.  We don’t perceive life as a line.  We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives.  Each day you live is smaller than the last.

    But that’s not everything.

    As we age, novelty decreases.  When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily.  New words.  New thoughts.  New ideas.  That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing.  They don’t realize that I can reattach it.

    Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents.  Ever drive a new route somewhere?  When I do it, I have to focus my attention.  It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.

    I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years.  I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.

    There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive.  Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.

    Work is similar.  Over time, we gain experience.  Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them).  But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.

    The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims.  I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life.  Finding a new one is . . . difficult.

    Life goes faster, day by day for me.  Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.

    And yet . . .

    Each day is still 24 hours.  I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling.

Read the whole thing. 

    ... He was traveling on a rural road in his Nissan Teana near Absard between Tehran and his weekend villa. His Nissan was part of a three-vehicle convoy. He had eleven trained security operatives in tow and sat alongside his wife. Along a deserted stretch of road, the little convoy approached a Nissan truck parked on the shoulder. During a subsequent debriefing, the security forces claimed it looked like the pickup truck was carrying a load of wood.

    The attack lasted less than three minutes. Fakhrizadeh was shot a total of thirteen times from a range of 150 yards. His chief security officer purportedly threw himself on top of the Iranian scientist and caught four rounds for his trouble. Fakhrizadeh’s wife was sitting some ten inches away and was unharmed. Apparently, Fakhrizadeh was hit, climbed out of the car, and was then cut to pieces. The gun clearly tracked him as he moved. Once the attack was complete the Nissan pickup truck simply exploded.

    In the immediate aftermath, the Iranian government spun an elaborate yarn about multiple attackers and a suicide bomb. They claimed that three bodyguards died while either three or four of the attackers were killed. They even dredged up a few witnesses who corroborated part of the story, claiming that the suicide bomber lingered on for a bit after the blast before succumbing to his injuries. Apparently, all of that was made up.

    The Fars News Agency later reported that Fakhrizadeh had actually been killed by some kind of killer robot. They stated that a remotely-controlled machinegun linked to Israel by satellite and utilizing both Artificial Intelligence and facial recognition had identified Fakhrizadeh and gunned him down. A subsequent article in The Jewish Chronicle quoted unnamed intelligence sources claiming that the attack was indeed the work of the Israeli Mossad using a remote-controlled automatic weapon. Holy crap.

The remainder of the article discusses a bit more of the purported weapon before delving into robotic weapons development. Read the whole thing and check out the photographs and map. 

Before 2020, the idea of Australia all but forbidding its citizens from leaving the country, a restriction associated with Communist regimes, was unthinkable. Today, it is a widely accepted policy. “Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a government website declares. “International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.” The rule is enforced despite assurances on another government website, dedicated to setting forth Australia’s human-rights-treaty obligations, that the freedom to leave a country “cannot be made dependent on establishing a purpose or reason for leaving.”

The article notes that Australia's high court upheld the restrictions even while recognizing that the restrictions curtailed individual rights. Also:

Intrastate travel within Australia is also severely restricted. And the government of South Australia, one of the country’s six states, developed and is now testing an app as Orwellian as any in the free world to enforce its quarantine rules. People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation. The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person. “We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” Premier Steven Marshall explained. “I think every South Australian should feel pretty proud that we are the national pilot for the home-based quarantine app.”

Finally:

    In New South Wales, Police Minister David Elliott defended the deployment of the Australian military to enforce lockdowns, telling the BBC that some residents of the state thought “the rules didn’t apply to them.” In Sydney, where more than 5 million people have been in lockdown for more than two months, and Melbourne, the country’s second-biggest city, anti-lockdown protests were banned, and when dissenters gathered anyway, hundreds were arrested and fined, Reuters reported.

    Australia is undoubtedly a democracy, with multiple political parties, regular elections, and the peaceful transfer of power. But if a country indefinitely forbids its own citizens from leaving its borders, strands tens of thousands of its citizens abroad, puts strict rules on intrastate travel, prohibits citizens from leaving home without an excuse from an official government list, mandates masks even when people are outdoors and socially distanced, deploys the military to enforce those rules, bans protest, and arrests and fines dissenters, is that country still a liberal democracy?

Unknown terrorists used a bomb to kill two men outside a restaurant in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. The device injured four more individuals [Sept. 19]. The attack took place on Sunday evening in the city of Salamanca when two men riding on a motorcycle delivered a package to Barra 1604, information released by the Guanajuato Attorney General’s Office revealed.

Although undoubtedly a cartel bombing, officials are calling it a terrorist attack. The article adds: "The once peaceful state of Guanajuato has become one of Mexico’s most violent since Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG) made a push for control of the region, clashing with smaller criminal organizations." 

Some of the Haitians are, in fact, being flown to Haiti. We saw the Coast Guard C-130 that’s ferrying migrants from the Del Rio to Port-au-Prince, on the tarmac and readying to taxi. But only some: an unknown number of intact families among them are, we were told, being transported inland, released, and given notices to appear before an immigration judge sometime in the future. When will they have their day in court? Apparently the timeframe is within twelve to thirty-six months. Will they appear for that hearing? Will anything happen to them if they don’t appear?

    Also riding in with the Afghans will be malaria, a parasitic disease spread by the Anopheles mosquito. Though “eliminated from the United States in the early 1950s,” CDC said, “travelers continue to bring malaria into the country, and numbers of cases have risen since the 1970s to about 2,000 cases per year. The last confirmed outbreak of locally transmitted malaria in the United States was in 2003.”

    The news on polio is particularly troubling. In Afghanistan, the “wild poliovirus remains endemic.” Polio can lead to paralysis and is sometimes fatal.

The U.S. had been polio free since 1979. Maybe not anymore.

  • "White House: OK, Amnesty Cuts Wages, But Not for the ‘Longer Run’"--Breitbart.  That would be true if the economy grew and the labor market tightened up. But the constant, unchecked immigration has meant that wages for men have stagnated since the 1970s when measured in real dollars.
  • Speaking of stagnating wages: Since the late 1980s, demographers have known that the U.S. and other developed countries were suffering from declining birth rates--the so-called "birth dearth"--and these same countries have been looking at different ways to counter the birth dearth. In the U.S., at least, the primary policy has been importing hordes of aliens to make up for stagnating population growth. Other countries have looked at other solutions such as subsidizing child formation through tax credits or outright payments to new parents, providing free day care, etc. None, however, has looked at trying to reverse the trend for stagnating wages. Would it work? Perhaps. Business Insider reports that "After this CEO raised his company's minimum wage to $70,000, he said the number of babies born to staff each year grew 10-fold and revenue soared." From the article:
    Six years ago, Dan Price, the founder and CEO of credit-card processing company Gravity Payments. made waves when he announced that he was raising the firm's minimum salary to $70,000 for his 120 employees. 

    To accommodate the change, Price slashed his own $1 million salary.

    In the following years, revenue soared, and staff had many more babies and bought more homes, Price told Insider.

    The Seattle-based company's starting wages used to be roughly $35,000, Price said. But for the company to thrive, he felt he needed to make sure all employees were making enough to look after themselves. 
    
    This led him to double their salaries. The move inevitably drew skepticism. "The media in general said we would fail. Or even in some cases, rooted for us to fail," Price said. 

    But he believes he's proved them wrong: "It's been over six years and we've had really fantastic results. We've had a 10 times increase in the number of first-time homeowners every year and 70% of our employees were able to pay down debt," Price said. About a third of his staff reported they were debt-free.
    Continuing from Germany’s Incredible Courage: How Hitler’s Invasion Surprised Stalin, this series of articles explores the staggering scale of preparations by the Soviet Union from 1927 to build the greatest offensive army ever known. The Soviet 5 Year Plans were effective for this purpose and implemented with barbaric cruelty. Under the terms of the Soviet universal military draft, ratified on September 1, 1939, the Soviet Army grew five-fold, from 1.1 million to 5.5 million. Stalin knew when he established the draft that in two years, in the summer of 1941, the Soviet Union must enter into a major war.

    It is worth noting that far from being the conqueror of Europe, Adolf Hitler saved it from Stalin. Therefore it is unsurprising that the historical narrative was both intentionally and grossly distorted to portray Stalin and the Soviet Union as the victims of German aggression[.]

The article, as the title suggests, deals with Soviet tank development in the 1930s and the large number and variety of tanks designed and constructed that far surpassed both quantity and quality the tanks of any other major power. Moreover, the tanks were intended for an offensive war. For instance, the article relates:

    The Soviet Union also built an entire family of BT tanks—the BT-2, BT-5, BT-7, BT-7A, and BT-7M. BT stands for bystrokhodnyi (high-speed) tank. At the beginning of World War II, the Red Army had 6,456 BT tanks, as many as all other operational tanks in the rest of the world. The BT tanks were well designed, heavily armed for their times, had standard bullet-proof armor, and used a diesel engine which made the tanks far less vulnerable to fires. The first BTs had a speed of 69 mph; today most tanks would still be envious of such high speeds. Nevertheless, Soviet historians categorized these tanks among the obsolete models, so obsolete that until 1991 they were not even included in statistics.[9]

    The disadvantage of BT tanks is that they could only be used in aggressive warfare on good roads such as the autobahn in Germany. The BT tank’s most important characteristic–its speed–was achieved through the use of its wheels. The wheels of the BT tank made it impossible to use the BT tank successfully off the roads, or on the bad roads of the Soviet Union. In the battles fought on Soviet territory, thousands of BT tanks were abandoned. Historians say that Stalin’s BT tanks were not ready for war. This statement is not true. The BT tank was ready for an offensive war on German territory, but not in a defensive war fought on its own territory.[10]
    Underneath reactor 4 there is still nuclear fuel that is active and which will take around 20,000 years for it to deplete. The uranium is too radioactive for anyone to live in the city and since the incident, the European Union had created a shield around the reactor which should not allow for the radioactive rays to come out.
 
“Chernobyl officials presumed any criticality risk would fade when the massive New Safe Confinement (NSC) was slid over the Shelter in November 2016.”
 
“The €1.5 billion structure was meant to seal off the Shelter so it could be stabilized and eventually dismantled.”
 
    However, many other parts around Chernobyl have also been affected due to prolonged exposure, some more than others, and many of them have not been contained as they were not presenting any major radioactive activity until now. Neil Hyatt, a nuclear chemist from the University of Sheffield had mentioned that there is a possibility for the uranium fuel to reignite on its own.
 
    Hyatt also offered a simple explanation on how this is possible, just like charcoal can reignite in a barbeque, so can nuclear materials that have once been ignited. He as well as a handful of nuclear chemists have mentioned previously the possibility of the uranium from Chernobyl to reignite, but the scientists from Ukraine that are responsible for managing the nuclear activity within the vicinity never really listened, until now.

One of the theories is that there is a critical mass of fuel, but rainwater had kept that mass cool. But with Russia building a new containment vessel around the ruined reactor, it has cut off the source of water for cooling, allowing the fuel to begin reacting. It shouldn't have been unexpected since it has been found to occur naturally in some deposits of uranium. 

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Weekend Reading--A Knowledge Dump and More

 Greg Elifritz has posted a new Weekend Knowledge Dump   with links to articles and a podcast on a variety of self-defense and prepping topi...