Latest Defensive Pistolcraft

Jon Low had published a new Defensive Pistolcraft prior to my leaving on my vacation, but with trying to get things done before I left, and then catching up on some matters after getting back, I'm only just now getting to his post. Before continuing, though, I want to publicly thank him for referencing some of my posts and comments.

    Now, getting to the stories and his comments. First up, it is not infrequent to read accounts of police conducting raids at the wrong addresses. You would think that with multiple officers all being given the correct address and being able to see the incorrect address on the structure being raided that this wouldn't happen, but as I've noted before, raids and police shootings often resemble feeding frenzies. Anyway, Jon has some recommendations for such situations:

    One of those Ring door bells, https://ring.com/doorbell-cameras[,] attached to the front door or the wall next to the front door would have gone a long way to keeping the residents safe.  All of my neighbors have them installed.  You can see and talk to the guys outside without having to open your door.  Generally best to stay away from your front door, as the bad guys can and do shoot through doors.  

     Police are human. They make mistakes. No sense compounding the mistake and getting killed.  The officers might get convicted. The wife might get a big civil settlement. But, the husband is still dead. How could he have avoided getting killed?  

1.  Don't answer the door. Let the police get a warrant. They would not have been able to. Call 911 and tell the dispatcher that there are men claiming to be police at your door trying to make entry.  "Are they really police officers?"  Impersonating a police officer is a common thing.  

2.  Leave via the back door.  Leaving is always a good idea.  Go to a movie theater and see the new "John Wick Chapter 4" movie.  No, as a matter of fact, you don't have to get involved in the drama.  My father (who was a prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge) often said, "You can always walk away."  And it's true!  

3.  Answer the door from your smart phone, using your remote door bell video and audio system.  Lot's of them on the market, cheap as dirt.  

[4].  Answer the door from a side window, balcony, etc.  

And some practice tips:

     Hopefully, you have had expert training before practicing to ensure that what you are practicing is correct.  

     Practice should be planned (have a list of things to do and execute to your list), deliberate (as opposed to casual), and intentional (attitude, concentrate on what you are doing without distraction).  

     If you are practicing a new skill, practice should be slow to ensure you are doing it correctly and not engraining bad habits.  If you are practicing a skill you know well, practice should initially be slow to make sure you're doing it correctly (not unintentionally engraining bad habits).  

     You must keep a highly detailed journal.  

     Before going to practice, write down what you are going to work on at the practice session.  (What are you going to accomplish?  If you don't know, STOP!  THINK!  {Ya, I kow it's hard.  Don't hurt yourself.}  If you don't have any goals, you're wasting your time. )  

     During the practice session, execute the things on your list.  

     After the practice session, write down what you did at the practice session.  Write down what worked, and what didn't work.  Write down what you will be working on at the next session based on the results of this session.  

     Otherwise, you're wasting your time.  Wasting time can be fun, especially when doing it with someone hot.  Just don't confuse it with practice.  Only practice will improve your performance.  

     "I went to the range today with the guys and shot a thousand rounds, while drinking a cooler of beers, and grilling burgers and hot dogs.  What a great day of practice.  I'm ready for war.  NOT!"  

     If you're going to practice, you're probably going by yourself.  Or, possibly with your coach.  Team practices make sense for team sports.  Shooting is an individual sport / art /skill/ combat skill.  Going with friends is distracting.  If you want to accomplish your goals for the day, best to go by yourself.  You're not being anti-social.  You're being serious.  

I don't think that going with a friend (emphasis on the singular) is necessarily a bad idea. I learned more about shooting by going with a friend of about equal skill level and having games or contests to shoot small targets under a time limit than all the aimed target shooting I've ever done (e.g., shooting at a can or shotgun shell hull to try and bump it up a short slope to see who would be first to get it to a ledge; or setting up a line of bowling pins and drawing and, starting from each end, see who gets the most down the fastest). One of the reasons I learned to appreciate the 1911 is because it is one of the best quick draw and shoot firearms out there. 

    But that said, Jon is right in saying if your "practice" shooting is just aimless plinking, you aren't going to get much out of it beyond the mental and emotional catharsis that just comes with shooting. And you won't know if you are getting any better without using a journal of some sort to record information. And if you are wanting to shoot a longer ranges, you will need to record a lot more information in order to learn the proper dope for your rifle and the ammunition. You can get by without a journal or records early on because you are just learning the gross skills, but in order to fine tune what you are doing, you need the records so you can analyze the patterns and spot problems. It also helps to record yourself or, during dry fire practice, watch yourself in a mirror. Repeating something wrong 1000 times is useless; you want some incremental improvement as you practice.

    But back to practicing around other people. What I've found inhibits my practice is where I have to instruct or monitor other persons for the majority of a shooting session. There is some benefit because in order to teach them, I have to really think about what I do which works and explain it/demonstrate it, but mostly it is babysitting. It is one of the reasons that I stopped going shooting with my father-in-law: I discovered that I was only invited along on those occasions where he and his sons needed someone to watch their kids and/or teach their kids to shoot. The other was that after a few years of constant excuses on why he couldn't go shooting on most occasions, I realized that he would go shooting with me or my kids only if one of his sons or their children were also going. I don't know why he favored the grandkids from his sons over the grandkids from his daughters (he was the same toward the kids of his other daughters), but that was how he was. 

    Anyway, sorry about getting sidetracked there. But back to Jon Low's post: it is full of good stuff so be sure to read the whole thing.

A Couple Videos Testing Two Methods Of Purifying Water

The Realist directed my attention to these two videos. The first examines pond water under a microscope before and after boiling. As the author notes, the boiling doesn't remove debris (dirt, etc.) in the water, so you will want to filter with a cloth, but the boiling does destroy the microorganisms.

VIDEO: "Boiling Water vs Germs Under Microscope (Does boiling pond water kill bacteria?)"

CloseIntel (1-1/2 min).

In the second video, the author does a before and after examination of water after going through a Life Straw. The author describes finding some debris after pumping it through the Life Straw but did not see any evidence of microbial life.

VIDEO: "Testing The Lifestraw Under Microscope"

CloseIntel (2 min.)

Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 83 (Streamed 4/26/2023)

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 83" (51 min.)

More fun and frolics

Welcome To The Collapse

Simon Black of the Sovereign Man website believes that "We’re done with 'gradually'. We’ve now reached the 'suddenly' part." Black is paraphrasing a passage from Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, where a character describes how to go bankrupt: "'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"

    What Hemingway's character is discussing, as Black explains, is called logarithmic decay: a line showing a gradual downward trend that suddenly makes a sharp and very steep decline. He continues:

    In fact logarithmic decay is great way to describe social and financial decline. Even the rise and fall of superpowers are often logarithmic in scale. The Kingdom of France in the 1700s infamously fell gradually… then suddenly.

    We can see the same logarithmic decay in the West today, and specifically the United States.

    The deterioration of government finances has been gradual, then sudden. Social conflict, censorship, and the decline in basic civility has been gradual, then sudden. Even the loss of confidence in the US dollar has been gradual… and is poised to be sudden.

    Back in 2009 when I started Sovereign Man, I spoke a lot about ideas that were highly controversial at the time.

    I suggested that Social Security’s trust funds would run out of money. That the US government would eventually be buried by its gargantuan national debt. That the US dollar would eventually lose its international reserve dominance. That inflation and social conflict would rise.

    The main thesis, quite simply, was that the US was in decline. And whenever I spoke at events, I used to talk about logarithmic decay, saying:

    “As a civilization in decline, you never really know quite where you are on the curve. You could be way over here on the horizontal line, at the very beginning of the decline… or you could be standing on the precipice about to hit the vertical slide down.”

    Well, now we have a much better idea of where we are on that logarithmic decay curve. Because these ideas about the national debt, inflation, social security, social conflict, etc. are no longer theories. Nor are they even remotely controversial.

    Just last week, US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said in a speech that “America’s debt is a ticking time bomb”. Social Security’s looming insolvency is now openly discussed in Washington and regularly reported in the Wall Street Journal.

    We’ve all seen with our own eyes (and even experienced) inflation, social divisions, and censorship.

    And as for the dollar, we continue to see a multitude of cracks in its dominance. Most notably, Saudi Arabia is considering a plan to sell oil not just in US dollars, but also in Chinese yuan.

    Plus the international development bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) announced earlier this month that they will start moving away from the dollar.

    Is it any surprise? The US government is weeks away from defaulting on its national debt over the latest debt ceiling debacle. And yet the guy who shakes hands with thin air refuses to negotiate a single penny in spending cuts to help reduce trillions of dollars in future deficit spending.

    The whole world is watching in utter disbelief at the astonishing level of incompetence that has infected the highest levels of America’s once hallowed institutions, including news media, big business, and the government itself.

    America– and the West by extension– really are on the precipice of that logarithmic decay curve… the part where the horizontal line becomes a vertical line down.

    It has taken years… even decades to reach this point, gradually. We’re now at the “suddenly” part.

He goes on to discuss some methods to slow or protect against the decay at both national and personal levels. And while he notes that some empires have, at least temporarily, pulled themselves out of this death spiral, it would require some sacrifices and changes that both the elites and the public would not like. 

• "Why plunging tax receipts are raising fears about the debt ceiling"--The Hill.

    The article cited above from The Hill mentions one great problem facing the country: declining tax receipts. It reports:

    The federal government is pulling in less tax revenue than expected, prompting concerns the early numbers could leave far less time for Congress to strike a deal to avoid a default on the national debt.

    Before tax figures started rolling in after last week’s filing deadline, Congress appeared to have until sometime in late July or August to pass legislation to raise or suspend the debt limit. But some experts have warned that a major shortfall in tax revenue means the U.S. government could run out of cash as early as June.

More specifically, according to the article:

    The U.S. government has collected 35 percent less in tax revenue this year than at the same time in 2022, according to a recent analysis released by Moody’s Analytics economists Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros. 

    Zandi noted in an interview that it’s “not a surprise” the receipts are coming in at lower levels than last year — when the government saw a budget surplus of more than $300 billion in April 2022, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). But he added receipts are “coming even weaker than” anticipated. 

    “They’re going to come to a point in early June when they don’t have enough cash to pay everyone on time,” Zandi said. ...

The article suggest that the primary drivers of the decline are decreased realization of taxable capital gains (i.e., weakening stock, bonds, and real estate markets), and a decline in corporate tax receipts (although corporate taxes are only a small share--10%--of tax receipts). On top of this, investors are shying away from short term Treasury Notes, so even short term debt financing is becoming more difficult. 

    Per the article, House Republicans have introduced a bill that would raise the debt ceiling in return for spending cuts, but the bill is expected to be dead on arrival to the Democrat controlled Senate.

• "An Obvious Solution"--Vox Day.

    Vox day notes a new report on New York City's efforts to curb its carbon footprint by requiring people to eat less. That news report relates:

    New York City will track the carbon footprint of residents’ food consumption as part of a sweeping initiative to decrease the city’s carbon emissions from food by a third this year, Mayor Eric Adams revealed on Monday at an event for the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. 

    About a fifth of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions come from household food consumption, Adams told reporters, blaming much of that total on meat and dairy. Household food consumption is supposedly the third largest contributor to city emissions totals, trailing only buildings and transportation. 

    The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy has ordered city agencies to reduce their food consumption by 33% by 2030, and Adams has asked private corporations to cut their own emissions by 25% by 2030, insisting New Yorkers’ wasteful eating habits cannot continue without imperiling the planet.

Vox Day reminds us that "Sooner or later, the Satanists always resort to starvation. It’s less confrontational, and therefore, less risky than war. This is why it’s important to start taking steps to secure your family’s food supply now." So, yet another reason to lay up substantial food storage and, where possible, to learn to garden.

• "Did the Neocons Save the World from the Thucydides Trap?" by Ron Unz, The Unz Review.

The Democrats and the Neocons did not save us from war with China, but they sure did their best to make sure we lost. As the two World Wars taught us, the manufacturing capabilities of the combatants is as or more important than what happens on the front line. So, this brings me to the first point: destruction of the U.S.'s ability to manufacture:

Following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago, America had emerged as the sole, unchallenged global superpower. But over the last generation, the tremendous growth rate of the Chinese economy had propelled it past America’s in real size, the first such transition since our own country had overtaken Britain near the end of the 19th century. China’s technological progress had been equally rapid, and in our modern world these constitute the raw elements of global power, while China had also begun bolstering its military, not previously a high priority.

    The second point is that the Neocons and Democrats have squandered and foiled any attempt to build an effective coalition with Russia against China. Although Unz does not delve into this, the U.S. missed an opportunity after the collapse of the Soviet Union to develop deeper ties with Russia. But things have obviously soured over the last couple of decades:

    When Mearsheimer had written his long final chapter in 2014, he had naturally envisioned Russia as a central element of the balancing coalition that America would construct against the Chinese, together with India and Japan as well as smaller powers such as South Korea and Vietnam. Any rational American geopolitical strategist seeking to contain a rising China would have taken that approach.

    But the Neocons running the foreign policy of the Obama Administration were remarkably arrogant rather than rational, and that same year they orchestrated an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine, followed by the loss of Crimea and ongoing fighting in the Donbas, all of which permanently poisoned Russian relations. Not long afterward, Mearsheimer gave his prophetic talk on the looming future risks of a NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine, a presentation that over the last year has been viewed some 29 million times on Youtube, perhaps more than any academic lecture in the history of the Internet.

    Thus, by the time Allison published his 2017 book, any possibility of an American-Russian alliance against China had evaporated and Russia scarcely featured in his discussion. These trends continued and a year ago Rudd’s book already characterized China and Russia as strategic partners, mentioning that Xi had described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “his best friend” and that the two countries regularly collaborated on a variety of different political, military, and economic issues. But Russia still remained a minor factor in Rudd’s analysis, with its role discussed in just a couple of pages together with scattered references elsewhere in his text.

    The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war completely changed everything, as did the unprecedented wave of resulting Western sanctions targeting Russia and the massive amount of financial and military aid provided to Ukraine, already totaling $120 billion, a sum far larger than the entire annual Russian defense budget. Over the last year, American-led NATO has been fighting a proxy-war against Russia on Russia’s own border, a war that many American political leaders have declared can only end with Russia’s defeat and the death or overthrow of Putin. The Hague in Europe has already issued an arrest-warrant against the Russian president for alleged war-crimes.

    Just prior to the beginning of the Ukraine war, Xi had held this 39th personal meeting with Putin, and had declared that China’s partnership with Russia “had no limits.” The subsequent all-out Western assault on Russia has inevitably produced a tight alliance between the two huge countries.

    China’s industrial strength is enormous, with its real productive economy already larger than the combined total for America, the European Union, and Japan. But add to that the enormous energy supplies and other natural resources of its remarkably complementary Russian neighbor, and the two together probably outweigh the power of America and its allies. ...

Moreover, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India and others are strengthening economic ties with this growing Sino-Russian alliance while reducing the dependence on the dollars. Other erstwhile allies, including France and Japan, are abandoning the U.S. coalition against Russia because of the harm caused by sanctions. As Unz points out, "Given our country’s horrendous budget and trade deficits, America’s continued standard of living is heavily dependent upon the international use of the dollar, especially for oil sales, so these are extremely threatening developments." The only way out of this is to get back to U.S. oil dominance as we briefly saw under the Trump Administration, but we all know the odds of that are practically nill.

• "Human tidal wave is waiting for border to open May 11 — Biden has no plan to stop it"--New York Post. 
• "Mayor Eric Adams says Biden's migrant crisis has 'destroyed' NYC"--New York Post.
• "'The Purpose of Communist Propaganda Is to Humiliate'—Why the Biden Regime Lies About the Border" by John Derbyshire, The Unz Review.

Derbyshire points out: "They lie. We know they’re lying, and they know we know. They don’t care that we know. The object is not persuasion, it’s humiliation—to break our wills and make us obedient subjects of the all-knowing, all-powerful state." As I stood in line with thousands of other passengers at the Las Vegas airport earlier this week to go past a drug sniffing dog just to reach a TSA checkpoint (where they had graciously decided to not require passengers to remove shoes and belts to make up for the delay by the dog sniffing) and thought of how useless all this was, I also thought how all of this is not intended to protect us from terrorist or win the war on drugs, but to humiliate the public.

• "US special forces evacuate nearly 100 diplomatic personnel from Sudan as African nation collapses into civil war that Biden calls 'unconscionable'"--Daily Mail. 
• "Massachusetts teacher and her toddler daughter are among thousands trapped in Sudan as conflict rages, as White House says it has NO plans to evacuate Americans"--Daily Mail.

The teacher was a teacher at the American School in Sudan--i.e., she taught the children of the diplomats that were evacuated. This is just another example that citizenship--at least U.S. citizenship--is bringing fewer and fewer benefits.

Bud Light Competitors See Massive Sales Jump

The Daily Mail reports that "Bud Light's hangover gets worse: Rivals Coors Light and Miller Lite sales SPIKE 18% in wake of Dylan Mulvaney debacle as flagship brand suffers a 17% dip and industry insiders call crisis 'an extremely difficult scenario'."

    I'm glad to see this. One of the reasons that the woke corporations are afraid of leftist groups is that they can be very effective at organizing boycotts. Conversely, one of the reasons that woke corporations have no problem with screwing over their conservative customers is because conservatives have, traditionally, been very poor at organizing boycotts or taking other unified action against woke corporations. The only real exception to this are gun owners and the difference can be seen in the results: while conservatism is generally on the retreat, gun owners have actually been able to take back ground from the gun grabbers over the past few decades. I hope the Bud Light reaction is a sign of things to come rather than a mere flash in the pan.

    As you probably know, Bud Light's marketing vice president Alissa Heinerscheid--the one everyone is pointing fingers at for teaming up with Mulvaney--has been put on a leave of absence. A second  executive, Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands, has also "stepped back" from his role. Fox Business has also reported that "[t]he company has also hired two consultants with experience in Washington, D.C.'s conservative circles"--Origin Advocacy consultants Sean McLean and Emily Lynch--"to advise the brand moving forward." 

    For all of her talk of diversity, Heinerscheid's marketing team appears to all be young (i.e., inexperienced), white (or Jewish), and overwhelming female. And certainly all young urban professionals. Exactly the wrong type of people to have the pulse of the company's customers. Which may be one of the reasons that the team was so interested with replacing that customer base with a different one.

    At American Thinker, Thomas Lifson has some additional thoughts in his article "Decoding the Bud Light disaster as marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid 'takes leave of absence'." He writes (bold added):

    The exact nature of that mistake is what makes this incident so fascinating and meaningful.  I believe that the political ramifications are profound.

    The first point to make is that nobody at Bud Light or A-B had a clue that many of their customers would take exception to transsexual "influencer" Dylan Mulvaney getting his picture on cans of Bud Light and serving as a marketing agent.  The company points out that only a few cans were produced and sent as a gift to Mulvaney, but as soon as pictures were available online of Mulvaney with his visage reproduced on a product that males place in their mouths and swallow, a homosexual connotation became attached to the product in the minds of many males who drink beer.

    It is not at all clear who signed up Mulvaney.  It might have been V.P. Heinerscheid, but given that the company says it has "hundreds" of influencers," it is possible that one of her staff came up with the concept, in which case she probably signed off on the idea, perhaps without giving much thought to any adverse consequences.

    Marketing is a discipline that uses a lot of research, normally, which makes the failure to understand the psychology of large numbers of Bud Light drinkers so curious.  I can only assume that, in her daily life, she associates with her peers: highly educated, affluent professionals, many of them from Ivy League schools, none of whom would ever dream of saying anything negative about transsexuality.  No blinking red light appeared in her mind to caution that not everyone approves of the trans movement, and that the trans extremists who bully and physically attack campus speakers like Riley Gaines, who insist on males showering with teenage girl athletes, and who have caused mass shootings, might have caused a powerful counter-reaction.

    The reality is that the ruling class in the United States are so full of contempt for what they regard as the lower orders of society that they feel no moral imperative to understand them.  The proper reaction to "transphobia" is contempt, because, after all, such retrograde views are "on the wrong side of history" and soon will be extinguished, just as resistance to homosexual "marriage" has vanished from the public sphere.

A Quick Run Around the Web (April 25, 2023)

 Just some articles that have been clogging my in-box that I found interesting:

• "Yes, intelligence agencies work against their own governments" by David Strom, Hot Air. Strom begins:

    After the past several years it should come as no surprise that intelligence agencies are not mere servants to their government masters, but rather sophisticated and nefarious political players of both the domestic and international political game.

    The history of the FBI and CIA meddling in domestic politics is long and not especially heartwarming. Despite being lionized by the media, “Deep Throat” was nothing more than a disaffected FBI bureaucrat named Mark Felt who despised Nixon because he didn’t get the promotion to FBI director he wanted. He started leaking right after he was passed over for the directorship after J. Edgar Hoover died. Hoover himself was a vile political player, and his passing led to major reforms at the FBI.

    Most people don’t know this, but Felt himself was convicted of violating the civil rights of political opponents he suspected to be in the Weather Underground. He ordered agents to break into people’s houses looking for evidence of wrongdoing. He was pardoned for his crimes while appealing his case. He was a real Hoover acolyte.

    There are many other examples in the US, of course. The most recent was the campaign waged against Donald Trump both during the 2016 political campaign and the relentless and often illegal hounding of Trump and his associates. Lying to courts, illegal leaks, constant misinformation spreading. The works. And, of course, the FBI has helped cover up Hunter Biden’s crimes, as we all know through the Twitter files.

    Well, it’s not just in the United States that this happens. You can bet it happens everywhere. And through some very disturbing leaks of top secret information that was tossed out onto the Internet, we have learned about Mossad plotting to discredit the current Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

The intelligence agencies (and I include the large federal law enforcement agencies as well) often work against the interests of the country the supposedly serve and certainly against the interest of citizens:

• "The Leak Was the Op - White House and Congress Demand New Powers, Think Restrict Act, in Aftermath of Classified Intel Leaks"--The Last Refuge.
• "This Shadowy Group Ran The Government's Censorship Scheme"--The Federalist. An excerpt:

    The State Department’s Global Engagement Center used a cutout corporation headed by a former intelligence officer to fund and promote the blacklisting of conservative media outlets and other censorship endeavors, research by The Federalist reveals. 

    When Elon Musk gave a group of independent journalists access to internal Twitter communications, the resulting “Twitter Files” quickly revealed the existence of a Censorship-Industrial Complex that included an array of federal agencies colluding with social media companies to censor disfavored speech. One of the many federal players was the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) — but GEC did much more than cajole tech giants to censor viewpoints the government didn’t like.

    As The Federalist previously reported, GEC funded the development of censorship tools and used “government employees to act as sales reps pitching the censorship products to Big Tech.” Further investigation into its operations now reveals the government’s GEC used one or more for-profit businesses to lead four separate censorship initiatives with contractors at times engaging in “inherently governmental functions.” 

Another example of the government using private actors to do what the government cannot legally do. Read the whole thing.

• Speaking of using private actors: "Ex-acting CIA director reveals he had 50 spies sign a letter saying Hunter Biden laptop scandal was Russian disinformation to HELP Joe 'win the presidential election'"--Daily Mail.

    Mike Morell told the House Judiciary Committee that he was asked by Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State - who at the time was a senior member of the Biden campaign - to help discredit the laptop reporting.

    Morell was a former acting CIA director, serving for two months in 2011 and four months from 2012 to 2013. He retired from the CIA in September 2013. 

• And another example, this time using a foreign lab to perform research that it was illegal for the NIH to do in the United States: "Judicial Watch Obtains Docs Showing U.S. Funded Wuhan Lab Research From 2013-2020"--PJ Media. Among other things, Fauci had given them money to research the risk of bat coronavirus emergence, and continued to provide funding even after the Covid-19 outbreak.
• "Michael Shellenberger: The Deep State's Using Psychological Operations Used Abroad Against Americans." A recording of a Tucker Carlson interview of Shellenberger.
• "Robert F Kennedy Jr on How JFK Stopped the Operation Northwoods False Flag Attack". Operation Northwoods, if you are unfamiliar with it, was going to consist of a series of false flag terrorist attacks that would be pinned on Cuba in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. 
• "9/11 Hijackers Given Bank Accounts, California Apartment at ‘Behest of the CIA’ – FBI Investigator"--Sputnik News. The filings give the impression that this was another example of a CIA operation that had so much blow-back that the CIA's involvement needed to be concealed. But given what the intelligence agencies were willing to do in Operation Northwood, had it been approved, who knows?

    An extraordinary legal filing revealed two of the hijackers responsible for the September 11 terror attacks had a much more intimate relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency than previously known. 

 

    At least two of the 9/11 hijackers were being closely monitored by the CIA and may have even been recruited by the agency well before they helped fly a pair of Boeing 767s into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, newly-released documents reveal. 

 

    The jaw-dropping court filing contains extensive testimony by multiple FBI investigators who maintain that the CIA obstructed official investigations into the notorious terrorist attack in order to conceal its connections to al-Qaeda*. 

 

    Perhaps even more shockingly, one FBI agent explained that American bank accounts were opened for the two hijackers – and a San Diego based apartment rented for them – “at the behest of the CIA.” 

 

    Skeptics have long focused their attention on the extremely close relationship between 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar and alleged Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi, who arranged a steady stipend as well as accommodations for the pair immediately after their arrival in the US. Al-Bayoumi has publicly maintained that his incredible generosity towards them was based on a mere ‘chance encounter’ at a restaurant after they landed in California.

    According to one agent, who’s code-named “CS-23” in the documents, the CIA has long been working to stonewall the FBI’s investigation into the 2001 terrorist attack, in part by refusing to divulge information regarding the agency’s relationship with al-Bayoumi.

    According to CS-23, when first asked, “CIA officials responded to the [FBI’S] San Diego field office and reported that the CIA held no files on al-Bayoumi,” a claim which the agent said was “a falsehood,” given “the CIA maintained ‘operational files’ on Omar al-Bayoumi” and that their relationship had left a noticeable “paper trail.”

    Indeed, “information concerning al-Bayoumi was never passed to the FBI,” the agent explained – likely because Omar al-Bayoumi was “an intelligence officer in [the] employ of the Saudi government,” who was “directed to attempt to recruit Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar as intelligence sources while they were in San Diego.”

    Even more horrifying is the fact that “the attempt to recruit al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar was an operation directed by the Central Intelligence Agency,” CS-23 maintains.

    According to that FBI agent, “the CIA used their liaison relationship with the Saudi intelligence services to conduct an operation on US soil,” the legal filing reveals.

    Such an arrangement would be necessary since “the CIA is forbidden by law to conduct intelligence operations within the US,” the agent explained, noting that “the CIA has used its relationship with allied intelligence services to conduct operations inside the United States in the past.” 

• Related to the story immediately above: "'Special' service: Declassified Guantanamo court filing suggests some 9/11 hijackers were CIA agents"--RT World News. 
• "FBI Was Behind Plot to Blow Up Governor Ralph Northam - Used Elderly Vietnam Veteran in Diabolical Plot to Bomb VA Gov" by Jim Hoft, The Gateway Pundit. As the author notes: "Back in the spring of 2020, the FBI was recruiting innocent Americans hoping to entrap them in their disgusting terrorist plots.  This was part of their plan to paint conservatives as violent extremists.  It has been in effect now for several years under Director Chris Wray."
• "FBI Withholding Records of Retired Fed. Agent’s Communications w/ Buffalo Shooter"-- Headline USA. "Citing a potentially ongoing investigation, the FBI is refusing to disclose records about whether a retired federal agent had been communicating with mass shooter Payton Gendron shortly before he went on his killing spree in a Buffalo supermarket last May." Translation: we're not really investigating but this is really embarrassing to the Bureau so we are going to refuse to release it under the exception for on-going investigations. 
• "Brazilian Hackers Linked to Lula Arrested in Paraguay Election Rigging Scheme"--National File. 
• I recently had noted that the St. Louis shooter's manifesto included as one of his reasons that he wanted to show how easy it was to procure his weapons, presumably to help support anti-gun legislation. So, of course: "Family of Louisville Bank Shooter Calls for More Gun Control"--Breitbart. 

    The family of the portfolio banker who opened fire on fellow employees, killing five in Louisville on April 10, 2023, has released a statement calling for passage of more gun control.

    The Daily Mail report the statement, wherein the Sturgeon family said, “This tragedy is yet another indication that meaningful, common sense gun safety measures must be enacted.”

    They specifically targeted a Kentucky law that requires guns used in crimes to be sold at auction, rather than the destroyed. The auction sales are used to raise funds for police. The Sturgeon family wants such auctions stopped.

    They said, “We respectfully urge the Kentucky state legislature to lead the way by changing Kentucky law to remove the gun auction provision.”

    CNN noted the portfolio banker who attacked fellow bank personnel left behind a manifesto explaining that one of his goals was to show how easy it is to buy a gun in Kentucky.

    CNN points out the attacker bought his gun legally, which means he completed an ATF form 4473 and underwent an FBI for the rifle purchase. These requirements are standard practice for a retail gun purchase, regardless of whether a gun is purchased in Kentucky, Indiana, Texas, or any of the other 47 states.

• Speaking of connections between shootings and the battle against the Second Amendment, a reminder I came across recently: "Supreme Court rejects challenges to gun silencer laws days after Virginia Beach massacre"--Salon.com (2019). The Virginia Beach shooter killed 12 while conveniently using  a "silencer" and "high-capacity" magazine. The case involved was Jeremy Kettler v. United States. Kettler had been convicted of illegal possession of a sound suppressor and had appealed his conviction to the 10th Circuit, where he lost, and filed a petition of certiorari to bring an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. His petition was denied, as the article notes, just days after the Virginia Beach shooting.  Only four Justices are required to vote in favor of an order to grant certiorari so if one of the conservative justices was wavering, the incident might have been enough to block a review of the case by the Court.

• Christian churches should take advantage of this to start broadcasting Christian messages and prayers: "Minneapolis becomes first major American city to allow broadcast of five Muslim calls to prayer per day year-round"--Daily Mail. "The Minneapolis City Council unanimously agreed Thursday to amend the city's noise ordinance, which had prevented dawn and late evening calls at certain times of the year due to noise restrictions, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported." The move is seen as a victory for the City's exploding population of East Africans. Of course, having make an exception for one religion, the City has now opened itself up to lawsuits for exceptions for other religious and non-religious groups. This could be fun.
• Why are trannies so violent? 

• "Moment raging trans activist flips a Turning Point student information stand at the University of Washington and screams 'get the f*** off my campus, you Nazi!'"--Daily Mail. 
• "Home of Utah GOP state senator is VANDALIZED with spray paint after he sponsored a bill restricting sex change operations and hormone therapy for transgender children"--Daily Mail.
• "Transgender activist warns women who try to stop her using their bathroom that 'it will be the last mistake you ever make' in chilling video urging LGBTQ people to buy guns"--Daily Mail.
• "Tennessee Republicans demand FBI release Audrey Hale manifesto amid stalled investigation, despite councilmember warning it is a 'blueprint on total destruction'"--Daily Mail. 

    Metro Nashville Councilmember Courtney Johnston said that, regardless of when, the manifesto will not be released in its entirety, noting what is expected to be a shocking read.

    'What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned,' Johnston said. 

    'That document in the wrong person's hands would be astronomically dangerous,' she told the New York Post. 

    Officers retrieved a 'manifesto', hand-drawn maps, a suicide note, 20 journals, laptops, phones and several writings, from Hale's home and the Honda Fit she left in the school parking lot. 

I believe that the FBI is blocking the release because it would be so damaging to the Democrats and the narrative they have been carefully crafting.

• Why do trannies hate foster children? "Christians Must Take Children to Transgender Procedures or They Can’t Adopt, Oregon State Law Says" – enVolve. 
• As you know, Florida had passed a law earlier this month that banned abortions after 6 weeks gestation. It has the left the anti-lifers with their panties in a knot: "The astonishing radicalism of Florida’s new ban on abortion"--Vox. The two main objections in the article are that: (1) "Many people do not even know they’re pregnant at six weeks" (probably because they apparently aren't sure if they are men or women) and (2) the ban "would also significantly curtail care for women across the South, who have been traveling to Florida from more restrictive states since Roe was overturned last summer." Since black women disproportionally have abortions in this country I have to ponder, as John Wilder would likely phrase it, "Why do leftists hate black babies?"

• Related: "California Bill Would Teach 7th Graders How to Have an Abortion"--LifeNews.com. 
• Related: "Kansas and Arizona governors veto bills to protect babies born alive after botched abortions"--Catholic News Agency.  

Tiger McKee Has Passed Away

I heard from Jonathan Low that Tiger McKee has passed away. McKee founded and taught at Shootrite as well as being a prolific writer for numerous publications as well as a regular contributor to the Tactical Wire blog. American Handgunner has an In Memoriam article.

VIDEO: When Societies Commit Suicide

VIDEO: "A Study of Decadence(When Societies Commit Suicide)."

Whatifalthist (30 min.)

Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 82 (Streamed 4/19/2023)

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 82" (44 min.)

Evidence of a CIA Motive to Assassinate JFK?

Even though federal law required all papers related to the JFK assassination be released in 2017, the CIA is still holding back thousands of pages of documents. (See the two videos below from Tucker Carlson--the first is his opening monologue and the second is an interview that immediately follows--which discuss why the CIA is afraid to release the documents).

VIDEO: "Tucker Carlson: We were shocked to learn this"

Fox News (7 min.)

VIDEO: "Tucker: What could the government be hiding about the JFK assassination?"

Fox News (5 min.)

    Nevertheless, what has been released has not been without useful information. Geoff Cruickshank has a post that puts some pieces together and found that the CIA's then-chief of counter-intelligence, James Angleton, was running a covert program to supply Israel with nuclear weapons behind President Kennedy's back. He writes:

    The testimony of James Jesus Angleton during the Church Committee hearings in 1975 in the recently released tranche of records also gives some insight into why the C.I.A. needed a rapid change in Administration in 1963.

    On page 6, they establish that Angleton had two separate responsibilities within his role at C.I.A.; one as Counterintelligence Chief, whilst the other role is redacted.

    Fortunately for us, on page 13, they missed a redaction when asking Angleton what his responsibilities were in the role:

He then posts a couple pages that mention another role, and then continues:

    So, Angleton was in control of the “Israeli Account”.

    We also find out in this document on page 86 that Angleton’s close friend, William Harvey, who ran the C.I.A.’s assassination program, ZR/RIFLE, also used the intelligence components of the “Israeli Account” during the Bay of Pigs invasion:

After another copy of a document:

    This revelation is interesting because journalist Tad Szulc wrote an article for Penthouse magazine in August 1975 that stated the CIA was running a program to deliver nuclear weapons to Israel, and that Angleton was in charge of the program. In his testimony to the Church Committee in 1975, Szulc describes how his source (someone in Angleton’s CI division) claimed the CIA was supplying technical knowledge AND fissile material to the Israelis, and Szulc approached Angleton to check his source's veracity. Szulc recounts Angleton’s confirmation of the main thrust of the story but denies the fissile material supply:

    https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/157-10005-10255.pdf

    It has long been suspected that the source of the fissile material was the NUMEC plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania, where noted Zionist Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro was the plant manager. It was found that between 1957 – 1978, over 300 kilograms of highly enriched Uranium 235 went missing from the Apollo plant. The plant was producing HEU for the NERVA / Project Rover nuclear propulsion rocket engines, which was a joint NASA-AEC project. This provided an ideal source of fissile material to "launder" to Israel - normally, the only way to dispose of HEU is to detonate it - having a rocket engine that uses fissile HEU as a fuel source means it is easy to siphon off a portion of the supply chain and redirect. It also helped when the Director of the Atomic Energy Commission was "in" on it - between 1958 and 1961, the D-AEC was Mr. John McCone - the guy who replaced Allen Dulles as the CIA Director when President Kennedy sacked him in November 1961. The "Old Boy's Club" was alive and well back then...

    https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program

    After investigating Shapiro and the missing fissile material, the FBI and AEC mysteriously dropped further inquiries in 1966. After Szulc’s article was published in 1975, however, the Justice Department did not concur with the FBI’s assessment and believed a U.S. Government Officer had committed a long list of crimes including espionage and felonies against the Atomic Energy Act. The last three crimes listed were accessory after the fact, misprision of a felony (concealing knowledge, usually by a government official, of a felony committed by another person), and conspiracy. When read in context, these possible crimes appear to refer to someone in the federal government. That person was most likely James Jesus Angleton, comptroller of the “Israeli Account” for the CIA.

    https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/22156-21-dr-zalman-mordecai-shapiro-atomic-energy-act page 3

    It is helpful to understand the situation that Israel faced in 1963. In his book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, Ronen Bergman describes how in the 1962 - 1964 time frame Israel faced a serious security conundrum: Egypt successfully tested two new types of surface-to-surface missiles in July 1962 (the Al-Zafer and Al-Qaher models) which Egyptian President Nasser claimed could strike any point "south of Beirut"--i.e., anywhere in Israel. 

    Bergman describes the development of the missiles as having caught the Israelis completely off-guard. The Mossad launched an emergency effort to gather intelligence, including breaking into Egyptian embassies in several European countries and intercepting Egyptian intelligence mail bags being transported by EgyptAir out of Zurich. The Israelis discovered that Egypt had hired a team of German scientists and engineers that had worked on the German missile programs during World War II to develop and manufacture the missiles. Then in August 1962, Israeli intelligence learned that Egypt was planning on manufacturing 900 of the missiles and they feared that Egypt would arm the missiles with radioactive or chemical weapons.

    The Israeli response described by Bergman was similar to its response to most any other security threat: initiate a campaign of assassination and letter bombs focused on the scientists and engineers working on the missile program--specifically those working on the guidance system which development lagged behind other portions of the program. This terrorist campaign continued through 1963. But due to its lack of success (they seemed unconcerned about the innocents injured by the bombs), Israel became so desperate that in 1964 it wound up engaging the assistance of Otto Skorzeny--Hitler's special-operations commander who among other things led the mission which rescued Mussolini from his mountain-top prison--in exchange for granting him amnesty from Israeli anti-Nazi kill teams or prosecution. Long story short, Skorzeny was successful in convincing the German scientists to quit the Egyptian program and that essentially wound up Bergman's account.

    But that was not all that Israel was doing to counter real and perceived threats from its Arab neighbors. We know from many sources that Israel was deeply involved at the time in its own program to develop nuclear weapons. From what Cruickshank discovered, it appears that James Angleton had been tasked, ostensibly with the blessings of President Eisenhower, to assist Israel with its nuclear weapons program. 

    That this had the blessings of Eisenhower may or may not be true. In his book, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, Michael Collins Piper has a lot to say about Angleton, but one thing that sticks out is that Angleton had de facto control and final say over everything related to Israel at the CIA. Given that he had zero oversight in regard to Israel, Angleton could do about anything he wanted to assist Israel. And, in fact, Piper claims in his book that Angleton had set up extensive ties with the Mossad as well as Jewish-American gangster Meyer Lansky, creating a vast intelligence/organize crime network. It is no wonder that Angleton is considered a hero by the Mossad. 

    After going over more testimony concerning Angleton's role in providing technical assistance to Israel for its nuclear weapons program, Cruickshank then goes on to discuss JFK's well documented opposition to Israel's nuclear weapons program. He quotes extensively from a Wikipedia entry summarizing a 2019 Haaretz article revealing the acrimony between the Kennedy Administration and Israel over Israel's weapons program, including the U.S. demanding bi-annual inspections of Israel's Dimona reactor which could be used to produce fissile materials. This matches up with Piper's discussion of the conflict between Israel and the U.S. over Israel's nuclear weapons program. 

    Cruickshank continues:

    Having already supplied the technical know-how (and possible fissile material) for assembly of one or [more] nuclear weapons at the cut-out site in Germany – Angleton and the C.I.A. find themselves in May of 1963 in quite a dilemma. Having continued the Israeli nuclear weapons program, started by Allen Dulles during the Eisenhower Administration and continued behind President Kennedy’s back, Angleton believes there can only be one solution and turns to his old friend William Harvey for a ZR/RIFLE Executive Action. Harvey in turn assembles the team of E. Howard Hunt, David Morales, Frank Sturgis, Bernard “Macho” Barker, Lucien Conein (who recruits Corsican thug Lucien Sarti as backup shooter), and of course, Lee Harvey Oswald. George H.W. Bush is on the periphery too, though it is never proven he is on the C.I.A. payroll during that time.

    With President Kennedy’s assassination, Angleton’s problem is now solved.

    Cruickshank obviously believes that it was an entirely CIA operation, but that is not necessarily true. Even at the early date of 1963, Israeli intelligence had carried out more assassinations than the CIA ever would because it was one of their primary methods of dealing with foreign security threats, as documented in Bergman's book, Rise And Kill First. Thus, it would have been natural for Israeli intelligence to at least consider assassination to resolve its problems and either pursue such plan itself (with Angleton's blessings) or provide assistance to Angleton.

    Moreover, as noted above, the CIA had close ties with Lansky's mob organization. It should be no surprise that Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, was reputed to be a mobster who worked for one of Lansky's associates. 

    A final bit mentioned by Cruickshank is that JFK had stated his intent to dismantle the CIA: “I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind” JFK reportedly said. 

POTD: Camping in a Train Wreck

Sometime you may need to find shelter where you can find it. The producer of this video, who does a lot of videos on stealth camping, spends the night camping in an old box car left over from a 1950's train wreck outside of Whistler, B.C.

VIDEO: "Train Wreck Camping"

Steve Wallis (30 min.)

Article: "How the Tonga eruption rang Earth ‘like a bell’"

  The January 15, 2022, Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcanic explosion near Tonga was the largest natural explosion ever recorded (i.e., since the 1960s when scientists started deploying a network of sensors and satellites--the 1815 Tambura and 1883 Krakatoa explosions were more powerful). It was, the article states, an order of magnitude larger than the explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980. But as the Popular Science article referenced in the title explains, there was a mystery: why were there not more damage and deaths? The article noted that it devastated Tonga but it only caused four deaths in the archipelago. The island nation's disaster response played a role, as did the fact that Covid-19 lockdowns meant that there were no tourists. But the saving grace for Tonga was apparently geographic. 

    The main island located 40 miles south of the eruption is surrounded by shallow seas and coral reefs. The shallow seas meant smaller waves; and the coral reefs also seemed to shield the island. Conversely, the article explains, the isle of Tofua, about 55 miles northeast of the eruption, is a volcanic caldera and sits in deep waters with sharp, mountainous coasts that offer no protection from an incoming tsunami. As a result, it may have been struck by waves more than 100 feet tall. But as Tofua is uninhabited, there was no loss of human life.

Imminent Means Imminent

    First up, as always, I am not your attorney and this is not legal advice.

    One of the requirements for using deadly force in a self-defense situation is that you are faced with an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. But I've seen two stories in the same number of days where a homeowner did not appear to understand that very basic concept. 

    The first occurred last Thursday evening when a 16-year old black male, Ralph Paul Yarl, was shot by an elderly white homeowner after ringing the wrong doorbell, the media is reporting. According to reports, Yarl was picking up two younger brothers from a friend's home at around 10 pm when went to 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace and was shot twice after ringing the doorbell. 

    NBC News relates:

    “Whoever was inside took a little longer than he anticipated to respond, and so he just waited at the door,” Merritt, told NBC News on Monday, citing a formal statement Yarl gave to law enforcement investigators from his hospital bed Friday.

    “He heard rustling around going on in the house and then finally the door was open,” the attorney said. “And he was confronted by a man who told him, ‘Don’t come back around here,’ and then he immediately fired his weapon.” 

    The teen was shot in the head, which cracked his skull and left him with a critical, traumatic brain injury, Merritt said. While the teenager was still on the ground, the homeowner opened fire a second time, striking Yarl in the upper right arm, he added.

Supposedly Yarl ran to three different homes before being helped. Some of the reports indicated that even then he was forced to lie on the ground with his hands over his head, but the Daily Mail is reporting today that actually a good Samaritan resident of the neighborhood rushed over to Yarl and held his hand while other neighbors helped with trying to stop the bleeding. Yarl's relatives have already tried to make this into an incident all about race, which seems to be successful as they have already raised over $1 million and have had plenty of celebrities signal support. 

    NBC News also reported that "Police Chief Stacey Graves Sunday said that while shooting did not appear to be racially motivated, she did 'recognize the racial components of this case.'" But the Daily Mail article cited above stated: "Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson confirmed there was a racial factor in the attack - after the teenage music scholar was shot twice, in the head and arm, after ringing the wrong doorbell when he went to pick up his younger brothers." In any event, on Monday the "prosecutors filed two two felony counts against the white homeowner, Andrew Lester, 85: assault in the first degree and armed criminal action." NBC adds: "Lester faces a maximum punishment of life in prison in the assault charge and three to 15 years for the alleged gun crime, Thompson said."

    I'm sure that there is more to this story than we know. For instance, it might very well turn out that Yarl started pounding on the door or shouted or made threats if the door wasn't opened. Perhaps he made some furtive movement or did something else that made Lester fear for his life. But the fact remains that Yarl, who was unarmed, was on one side of a door (probably locked) from the homeowner prior to the homeowner opening the door and shooting him, so it will be difficult for the homeowner to convince a jury that he reasonably believed he was facing an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. 

    The second new story is even more egregious. As CNN reports, "[a] 20-year-old woman [Kaylin Gillis] was shot and killed Saturday after she and three others accidentally turned into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house in rural upstate New York, authorities said."  The homeowner, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan, has been charged with second-degree murder. Quoting the local sheriff, CNN relates:

“It’s a very rural area with dirt roads. It’s easy to get lost. They drove up this driveway for a very short time, realized their mistake and were leaving, when Mr. Monahan came out and fired two shots,” Murphy said, adding that the area has poor cell phone service.

Gillis' friend drove to a nearby town and called 911 but it was too late for Gillis. The article continues:

    Police officers later responded to the home from which shots were fired and found Monahan to be uncooperative, Murphy said, adding he “refused to exit his residence to speak with police.”

    He was taken into custody hours later with help from the New York State Police Special Operations Response Team, according to a press release from the Washington County Sheriff’s office.

    No one is believed to have exited the car and there was no interaction between Monahan and anyone in the vehicle before shots were fired, Murphy said.

    “There was clearly no threat from anyone in the vehicle. There was no reason for Mr. Monahan to feel threatened,” Murphy said.

Not having the same celebrity appeal as Yarl's family, Gillis' family has only been able to raise $50,000 for funeral and other expenses. 

    In this latter case, the homeowner's actions are even less defensible: he killed someone in a car in a driveway (what actually sounds more like a short road or path) apparently in the process of turning around. There was nothing to indicate the two women in the car posed any sort of imminent harm to the homeowner. 

Tips On The Marlin 60

I saw this article, "TFB Armorer’s Bench: Commentary on The Marlin Model 60," at The Firearm Blog. The Marlin Model 60 is a semi-auto .22LR rifle that uses an under barrel tube magazine, similar to what you see on lever actions. It was introduced in 1960 and went on to become one of the most successful firearms designs in history in terms of the numbers sold. It originally featured a 17-round magazine but this was reduced in the 1980s to 15 rounds to comply with New Jersey law. The barrel length was also reduced from 22 inches to 19 inches so that the barrel would not extend past the end of the tube magazine.

    The Model 60 was upstaged by Marlin's own Model 70 (which used a detachable box magazine) and the Ruger 10/22, but it is my understanding that it remained popular overseas. Production ceased in 2020 when Ruger acquired Marlin.

    Because the Armorer's Bench column focuses on gun maintenance and repair, the article primarily focuses on common issues with the rifle. Unsurprisingly to me, many of the issues identified by the author have to do with the older style feed throat (the piece that guides the cartridge from the magazine and into the chamber). The older feed throats were of a cast metal, and included as part of the casting the extractor. It was also cast in to halves which were roughly riveted together. The author notes that in most of the older models he's inspected, the ejector had broken off. Also, he notes, the two-pieces of the old style feed throat can separate over time and cause feeding issues.

    These issues are probably why one of my most popular posts is "Replacing the Feed Throat on a Marlin 'Glenfield' Model 60" where I describe replacing a feed throat in an early Model 60 with a modern part. The modern feed throat is a one piece design, and the cast ejector has been replaced looping one tail of the lifter spring around to the top of the feed throat to also serve as the ejector.

    Another issue he describes is the buffer (which is just a plastic piece) cracking or disintegrating with age. I haven't had any issues with mine (cross my fingers). And there are few others.

    Anyway, if you own a Model 60, this is a useful article.

VIDEO: "5 Signs A Civilization Is About To Fail"

The five signs, per the video, are: (1) climate change, (2) environmental degradation, (3) inequality and oligarchy, (4) complexity, and (5) external shocks of some sort. 

    While the video describes the climate change as "global" it doesn't have to be global. For instance, the Chaco Canyon culture collapsed because of drought but there is no evidence that it was global in nature.

    Environmental degradation includes things such as loss or decline in soil quality due to farming and/or irrigation, pollution, loss of vegetation, and so on. A good example of this is Mayan civilization that had cut down so much forest land that they were having difficulty getting the wood for the fires needed to make the plaster with which they coated their stone structures. Their collapse is also believed to be related to a loss of nutrients in the soil due to over farming. 

    Inequality and oligarchy essentially results in an impoverished citizenry with little investment in the continuation of the nation. In fact, the need for cheap labor generally leads to a nation being replaced by a country with a polyglot of peoples.  In the Roman Empire, this shows up with the many small farmers throughout Italy being replaced with large plantations owned by the extremely wealthy and worked by slaves. The result was the creation of a welfare state and moral decadence. 

    Complexity refers to how that term is used by Joseph Tainter. As the complexity increases (i.e., cost or energy input goes up) the state will eventually reach a point where it encounters negative returns (i.e., the cost or energy input is greater than the benefit derived from a particular law or bureaucracy or military) and this makes the system unstable and prone to collapse. Which leads to the final point.

    An external shock to push everything over the edge. Frankly, the external shock could be climate change or environmental degradation. But climate change or environmental degradation also leads to the negative returns on complexity. Sort of an egg and the chicken argument. But external shocks could also be war or disease or economic collapse.

VIDEO: "5 Signs a Civilization is about to Fail"

The Pixel (6 min.)

This Is Why We Carry ...

The article is "Police Search for Suspects After Brazen Assault in Rocky Hill Driveway" and is from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, a suburb of Hartford. The video at the link shows your typical street thug breaking into someone's car when the vehicle owner suddenly comes out of his home and gets into a physical altercation. The thug breaks loose, but instead of running, immediately attacks the homeowner. Two of his thug buddies then run up and they start stomping and kicking the homeowner. 

New Weekend Knowledge Dump ...

 ... from Active Response Training. I always try and highlight a few of the links, so here goes:

• A Michael Bane podcast. I haven't had time yet to listen to the podcast (it's 52 minutes long), but Greg comments:

Michael Bane discusses how the “doctrine of the reasonable person” may no longer be the legal standard we have to overcome before exercising our rights to self defense in today’s increasingly tribalized world.  This is important information to consider.

•  An article analyzing whether .22 LR, .22 Magnum, .25 ACP, and 5.7x28mm are good defensive rounds. I have a couple disagreements with the article and/or conclusions. First, the article starts off talking about "mouse guns" and "micro pistols," but then includes the 5.7x28mm. All of the 5.7 pistols of which I'm aware are full size (i.e., duty sized) handguns. And, as becomes apparent from his discussion of the Fort Hood shooting, the 5.7 is in a completely different class from the other calibers discussed in the article.

    Second, the author states:

I will just pass right over the .25 ACP. Despite the compactness of some of the pistols that use it, it offers nothing the .22LR doesn’t, ballistically, and does so at greater cost, less availability and fewer options for pistol choices.

Well, the .25 ACP may not offer better ballistics but it does offer something potentially much more important: because of the cartridge design and the fact that it is centerfire, it offers more reliable ignition and operation.

• If you have a revolver for self-defense, Greg has linked to a truly excellent article from Firearm News entitled "Self-Defense with a Revolver: Fundamentals and Tips." I've printed it so I can keep it as a reference. 
• An article I found interesting was one from the Tactical Professor that tested whether a handgun with a longer barrel was more accurate at self-defense distances and easier to recover from shot-to-shot. The test was performed using revolvers of different frame sizes and barrel lengths, but of the same caliber. One of the short barreled revolvers did the best.
• An article from Massad Ayoob on the importance of being able to use your support hand to shoot and manipulate your handgun. Besides the fact that you might injure your hand (unrelated to a self-defense shooting) and have your hand/fingers in a splint, cast, or sling at the critical time, Ayood also points out:

Let’s say you want to take care of yourself and your loved ones in life-threatening emergencies. Any smart carrier is going to work on “weak-hand only” shooting (and reloading and malfunction clearing) due to the high percentage of wounded good guys in gunfights taking the hit in their dominant hand or arm.

Besides which, you might have someone grab your dominant arm in a fight. 

• Finally, check out the video from Active Self Protection, "Switched-On Concealed Carrier Wins Insane Gun Fight Against Moto Robber." Some good lessons.