F-18 Fires On, Disables Iranian Oil Tanker

The New York Post reports that "[t]he US military fired on and disabled an Iranian-flagged tanker that tried to break the naval blockade around the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday[.]"

“After [the M/T] Hasna’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings, US forces disabled the tanker’s rudder by firing several rounds from the 20mm cannon gun of a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72),” CENTCOM wrote on X. 

In other news, France has deployed its sole nuclear aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, and its battle group to assist with peacekeeping operations should the U.S. and Iran reach a peace deal. The carrier and its retinue of ships is en route to the Red Sea. 

Tips For Bugging Out To The Country

I'm not a big fan of bugging out because home is probably where your supplies are located, you know your neighbors and hopefully have friends and family nearby, and you likely know the area and resources near at hand. Unless you have a cabin or vacation home somewhere, you are leaving behind your greatest advantages in order to become a refugee, subject to the whims of other people. And even if you have a cabin or second home, you still have to get there ... and hope someone else hasn't already taken over the place. 

    A couple things that come to mind on that last point, one fictional and one real. The fictional one is from the novel Lucifer's Hammer.  One of the main protagonists, who is moderately wealthy, and another character are fleeing Los Angeles to get to our main protagonist's cabin/private observatory because it is isolated and there is food. They get there, though, and the caretaker and his wife won't admit them, claiming there is not enough food. Deciding not to push the issue, the two journey on. 

    The second was a news story from 60 Minutes or similar from back when I was a kid. It was mostly about how motorcyclists and other people operating off-road vehicles were tearing up the fragile ecosystem of the Mojave Desert. But some of these people were also breaking into houses and cottages. And one item that stuck with me through the years was the account of a family that had come out to their vacation home one weekend to find it had broken into with dozens of motorcyclists still there. Walking in, the homeowner was offered a beer--one from his own refrigerator--by a trespasser. 

    The point of these is that you cannot guarantee that if you are going to a second home or cabin somewhere that it will still be available to you. If you don't have someone there, it could easily be taken over and claimed by strangers who got there before you, or even someone living in the area. If you do have someone living there, in a widespread SHTF event, there is no guarantee they will allow you to stay there. 

    And what if you don't have a vacation home or cabin to go to?  Then what? Are you going to set up a tent in the nearest state park or national forest with thousands of other people and slowly starve? 

    More likely, if you have to bug out, you are probably going to try and make it to a rural community or hope some farmer or rancher takes you in. If you are better prepared, you might have even planned ahead and have some agreement with a farmer or rancher to take you in. In that regard, The Survival Mom has some thoughts on making things run more smoothly in her article, "10 Tips For Bugging Out to the Country." But she also has some words of warning:

    "Farm” does NOT mean remote or isolated or even self-sufficient.  Farmers live pretty much like you do, but with more elbow room.  We go to the grocery store.  We have jobs.  We have neighbors.  And we have towns nearby.

    Okay, granted those towns can be pretty small by urban standards, but they’re just as full of unprepared people as anywhere else.  That means if the manure hits the rotating device, we’re going to have our hands full dealing with them.

    Bear in mind that most people in the country may not be much more prepared than you are – which is to say, perhaps not at all.  Unless rural folks already have a preparedness mindset, they’re just as susceptible to societal interruptions as your average city person.

    Our only advantage is we’re farther away from the masses of people, city folks who will take to the road in times of disorder, or so some survival experts believe.

    Or, are we really that far away and safe from thousands of straggling refugees? In our case, we live within a very short drive (as in, four minutes) from a town of 1000, many of whom are on welfare and are just as dependent on government checks as anyone in the inner city.  This means they will certainly go “foraging” when they get hungry.

    A rural “survival” retreat may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

    Many people don’t realize that the Greater Depression has already impacted rural areas. Hard. Jobs out here are as scarce as hen’s teeth (as the saying goes) and unemployment in our county hovers around 20%. Most of us are poor to begin with, especially by urban standards.  That means we don’t have a lot of money to pour into elaborate “prepper” projects.

    So does this mean you should give up your idealized little dream about bugging out to the country?  Yes and no.  It depends on how realistic you’re being about your bug out plans.

She then lists and expounds on 10 points:

1. Don't come unannounced.
2. Prepare the way.
3. Clarify your baggage.
4. You're not the boss.
5. Prepare to work.
6. Don't be wasteful.
7. Bring skills.
8. Clarify by contract.
9. Shut your mouth.
10. Practice forbearance.  

And just to be clear because no one else is saying it is, if you are bugging out to the country because of some civilization shattering disaster, prepare to enter a new era of feudalism where if you are lucky you will be a servant or farmhand on a small farmstead or the peasant (or slave) to a larger ranch or farm owner. More likely, at least until those farms run out of fuel for equipment and need the physical laborers, you will be turned away to either starve or join the ranks of raiders or warlords. 

Wilder: The Movie "Falling Down" Was Anti-White Male Propaganda

Falling Down was a reasonably popular movie released in 1993 starring Michael Douglas as William "D-FENS" Foster, who Wikipedia describes as "a disgruntled, unemployed defense worker who abandons his car in the middle of a traffic jam and goes on a violent rampage trying to reach his family for his daughter's birthday." But as John Wilder explains, "Falling Down [Is] A Movie You Should Hate, Because It Hates You." John goes through the subtle means by which the movie propagandizes you, but the answer to why "the movie" hates you is summed up by this quote from its writer, Ebbe Roe Smith:

“To me, even though the movie deals with complicated urban issues, it really is just about one basic thing:  The main character represents the old power structure of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost.  And that way, I guess you could say D-FENS is like Los Angeles.  For both of them, it’s adjust-or-die time–that’s what the movie is about.”   

And by "adjust-or-die" he meant that white guys need to adjust or die. Because that is what the ending of the move was about. Or as John explains it:

    If you’re a white guy and thought that this movie was about you, from your frustrations with fast food to the epidemic of divorced dads who couldn’t see their kids, notsofastguido.  The author hates you.  The director hates you.

    They hate you and want not only to replace you but to eradicate you from memory.  In the end, D-FENS is shot to death in front of his ex-wife and kid.  Erased from history just like he was erased from his job and erased from his family.  His life, his dedication, turns to dust.  Even the lines, “I’m the bad guy?  How’d that happen?  I did everything they told me to,” are meant to demoralize you.   

In that way, no different from the theme (yes, singular) that plays out in the Knives Out movies by Ryan Johnson, except that Johnson's propaganda is about as subtle as a MOAB going off. 

The Federalist: The Real SPLC Scandal Is Their Use By The FBI

 Nicholas Giordano, writing at The Federalist, argues that "[t]he real Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) scandal isn’t just the indictment. The deeper scandal is that the FBI used a highly partisan activist group as an unelected, unvetted intelligence wing of the federal bureaucracy." He adds:

For years, the bureau didn’t just consult the SPLC. It folded the group’s ideology into its threat assessments and other work products, then used those products to brand Americans as hateful or flag them as potential domestic violent extremists.  

How did this work out in practice?

    The FBI’s Richmond memo, better known as the anti-Catholic memo, showed exactly what that pipeline looked like in practice. The FBI used the SPLC’s analysis to define so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholics” by their opposition to abortion, LGBT ideology, and adherence to traditional family values. Sen Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, revealed that one Richmond analyst produced a slide presentation that equated Catholic beliefs in “[c]onservative family values/roles” with ideas “[c]omparable to Islamist ideology.” 

    Despite former FBI Director Christopher Wray’s claim that the anti-Catholic memo was the work of “a single field office” with limited distribution, the records tell a different story. Multiple field offices were involved, the memo was distributed to more than 1,000 agents and employees, and congressional investigators uncovered at least 13 more documents using similar SPLC-driven “anti-Catholic terminology.” Ideological narrative laundering became the FBI’s standard practice.

    FBI officials themselves recognized the problem. In an internal FBI email exchange, one official asked, “Is anyone really asking for a product like this?” and complained that “[a]pparently we are at the behest of the SPLC.” Another FBI official admitted the FBI’s “overreliance on the SPLC hate designations is … problematic.”

Read the whole thing. 

Black South Africans Protest Illegal Aliens

 A young black woman they interviewed had this to say:

Anyone just wakes up in the morning and decides that they're having problems in their own country. "Oh, let me look for greener pastures" and it's South Africa. And if we don't say anything about it or if we say something about it, we're told that it's black people. This is not a skin color thing. It's about us protecting our country, which is a sovereign state. We love our African brothers and sisters, but it's time now that they also fix their own countries for their own children and their own future. We're making it very clear to you guys, we don't want you here. 

 VIDEO: "South Africa anti-migrant protests: Thousands march, demanding illegal immigrants to leave" -- Al Jazeera English (2 min.)

Not-Americans Kill Boy's Pet Pig

The Daily Mail reports on a Georgia family who found their missing pet pig shot dead and lying next to kettle of boiling water at a neighbor's house. 

    Garrett's father Matt Cox said he heard a gunshot shortly after [they realized the pig was missing from its pen] and the family followed the sound to their neighbors' home.

    They claimed they found Bootsy dead beside a pot of boiling water and the neighbors wearing aprons which lead them to believe they planned to eat Bootsy.

    Kerrie told Fox 5 Atlanta that she asked one of them: 'Why would you do this? You knew she was our pig,' only to be met with laughter and derision. 

The article relates that "[p]olice have now arrested three people in connection with the case. Mai Kia Vang-Moua, 54, Maysy Moua, 59, and Kee Moua, 33, all face aggravated animal cruelty charges." 

How Many Shots To Stop A Grizzly Bear?

Dean Weingarten is the go-to source for handgun effectiveness against North American bears. But in his latest article on the subject, "Handgun Defense Against Brown Bears: How Many Shots Are Fired in Grizzly Bear Encounters?" he breaks down the numbers of shots used in encounters with brown bears (which include Grizzly bears) and notices that the number of shots required is higher than other bears such as black bears or even polar bears. Of the 93 encounters where the number of shots was known, the largest grouping (18 encounters) only required one shot. But 2, 3, 4 and 5 shots all had 10 or more incidents each and 9 incidents where 6 shots were required. In short, "69 cases of six shots or less, or 76.3% of the total for Grizzly bears, where the number of shots is known." That still leaves nearly a quarter of incidents requiring more than 6 shots, and he mentions that there was one incident where there were 31 shots from two handguns. 

The Purpose Of An Organization is What It Does: Brady, Giffords Law Center, and Everytown

Ammo Land reports that "Gun-Control Groups Tell Court Americans Have No Right to Body Armor," referring to arguments made by the Brady, Giffords Law Center, and Everytown gun control groups supporting a New York law that would ban most citizens from purchasing body armor. The author remarks: "Calling armor dangerous because it can stop a bullet is a confession that the anti-gun movement is not merely interested in disarming citizens. It wants citizens easier to hurt." 

Trump Admin. Sues Denver Over Gun Ban

This is what I voted for. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced it "filed suit against the City of Denver, Colorado alleging that the City unconstitutionally bans certain constitutionally protected semi-automatic rifles. These laws unconstitutionally infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms in common use for lawful purposes." The ban includes popular semi-automatic rifles including AR-15s. 

Powerline Blog: Diversity Is Our Weakness

From the Powerline Blog post entitled "'Diversity' Is Our Weakness":

The shibboleth that “diversity is our strength” is one of the worst canards of our time. There is a great deal of empirical data indicating that in general, cultural diversity is a weakness, not a strength. Culturally diverse societies (which can mean ethnically diverse, but doesn’t have to) are generally lower-trust societies, which inhibits economic growth. Western Europe is living proof of that proposition.

This sounds good in a "propositional American" way, but it ignores the science. Robert Putnam's work--the work that he voluntarily suppressed for years because it was so bad for liberals--found that it was racial and ethnic diversity that reduced social capital and trust. (See also Putnam's paper, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century"). Putnam specifically states in the abstract to his paper that "evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer." Culture is part of it, but it isn't the whole story.