Anniversary of Beirut Marine Barracks Bombing

Today is the 43rd anniversary of Hezbollah's 1983 truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut when the U.S. foolishly tried to keep a peacekeeping force in the city after the Israeli invasion. Per Wikipedia, "[t]he attack killed 307 people: 241 U.S. and 58 French military personnel, six civilians and both the attackers." The explosives were supplied by Iran and the driver of the truck carrying the bomb was Iranian. We should have launched military strikes against Iran at the time, but I guess better late than never. The incident also illustrates the stupidity of not having loaded weapons as both the guards' rifles and the crew served weapons overlooking the approach were unloaded per guidelines issued to the Marines. 

Of Course: "Iwo Jima Statue’s Beheader Is an Illegal Alien"

The man who took a sledgehammer to the Iwo Jima Memorial statue outside the Marine basic at Quantico, Va., has been identified as Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano, and he is an illegal alien and former DACA recipient whose legal status expired this year. The article relates: 

Melugin explained, “Per federal sources, Soriano illegally crossed into the U.S. in December 1999. He was granted DACA by the Obama administration in 2014 and had it extended for years, most recently by the Biden admin in 2024, but he lost his DACA status in August of this year when it wasn’t renewed by the Trump administration.” 

Life In A Diverse Country

 From the New York Post: "Heroic South African dad kills armed carjacker in gunfight with gang as he shields daughter from bullets." There is a video also showing the interior of the car and the father shielding his daughter with his body as he returns fire on the five gang members. One was killed by a shot to the head and four fled the scene. 

    Wild video showed the dad unleashing a volley of shots at the thieves who had seemingly eyed an opportunity to wreak havoc on his family just four days after moving into their Pinetown, South Africa home.

    The dad – identified as Sidney Hill – pulled out of his driveway late on Oct. 9 when he suddenly came under fire from two armed men who had jumped out of the back of a Renault Kiger.

    He then whipped out his gun from his waistband and retaliated – all while protecting his terrified daughter sitting next to him, the video shows.

    During the shootout, some 27 shots rang out in just 14 seconds — with one hitting one of the gang in the head, killing him. 

Another Milestone In The French Civil War

The Daily Mail reports that a man armed with a WWII-era Sten submachine gun drove through a Muslim neighborhood shooting at people. The article further relates:

    The gunman seemed intent on ‘causing as many casualties as possible’, according to Trappes mayor Ali Rabeh, who described the rampage as ‘racist [and] probably Islamophobic’.

    Gunshots were reported at several locations including a playground as the attacker attempted to ‘cause carnage’, Mr Rabeh added.

    A man of African origin aged 26 was killed while a 12-year-old girl was seriously wounded after being shot eight times. Two men, aged 29 and 49, have been taken to hospital after suffering life-threatening injuries.

    Mayor of La Verriere, Nicolas Dainville, said the suspect was of a ‘European type’ while France’s national anti-terrorism prosecutors have taken up the case as a suspected terrorist incident.

    They are investigating whether the acts targeted the ‘real or supposed race, ethnicity, nationality or religion’ of the victims.

    During his arrest, Kevin T ‘made no secret... [that] he was there to kill people he considered to be of foreign origin,’ according to local MP Laurent Mazaury.  

Latest Gov UFO Dump: Mysterious Black Triangles

The latest UFO dumps from the government include accounts of fast moving black triangle shaped craft. From the New York Post: "Mysterious black triangle objects speeding up to 1,800 miles per hour without vapor trails were spotted over secret US military bases on at least three separate occasions over the past year, a newly declassified tranche of government files on UFOs revealed Friday." That is about Mach 2.3. The article continues:

    The triangle sightings raised concerns both for the advanced technology they appeared to use and for the location  — over top secret sites where the US government tests new technology. The exact location and dates of the sightings were redacted for security reasons. 

    Sketches released by the government show the black, triangle-shaped object over a mountainous area. No photos were provided.  

Significantly, "The mysterious triangles made no sounds, showed no exhaust gases and, when scanned with a thermal device, gave off a consistent heat signal — unlike an airplane or drone, which would register at a higher signal around certain spots, like its engine." 

    The Daily Mail reports on other items in the information dump, including allegations that the government did recover bodies from a crash UFO.  From the article:

    The report made public on Friday included testimony from a military officer, whose name was redacted, who claimed he was present at the famous Roswell UFO incident in 1947 and was shown the spacecraft in a hangar known as 'Building 84.'

[snip]

    The officer is believed to be Roswell Army Air Force Base Public Information Officer Walter G Haut, who confirmed that the US had recovered an egg-shaped craft and multiple dead bodies from a New Mexico crash site in early July of that year.

    'I am convinced that what I personally observed was some type of craft and its crew from outer space,' the witness said in a statement given in 2002 and kept secret by the Pentagon.

    The officer added that this wreckage and the aliens were taken to a guarded hangar where he was allowed to see the craft, described as being roughly 12 to 15 feet long and six feet wide with a metallic surface.

    It had no windows, wings, tail or landing gear, and was composed of a strange metal foil described as 'paper thin yet extremely strong.'

    The bodies were placed under a canvas tarpaulin, but the witness report revealed their heads were larger than normal and they were about the same size as a ten-year-old child, standing approximately four feet in height. 

Interesting: Ukraine's Starlink Issues Because Ukraine Hacked Starlink

Stephen Fleming on X notes: 

This makes sense. (1) Ukraine had been hacking Starlink to get around flight restrictions for years. (2) When Starlink tightened their security, the hacks failed. (3) For political reasons, Zelenskyy accused Musk of shutting down access.  

We give them hundreds of billions of dollars in aid and this is how they repay it?  

Weekend Reading #78

Some longer or more involved reading:

• Greg Ellifritz's Weekend Knowledge Dump for this week has a lot of interesting article. Some that for one reason or another struck my fancy were:
• A couple article about the recent Silver Rail Elementary active shooter incident, including a look at what the armed citizen did to stop the incident, some thoughts about using a vehicle as a weapon, and a look at Oregon law that would justify the armed citizen's response.
• An article about the Ruger Service Six and some modifications that the writer/gun smith is making to improve it's characteristics as a defensive revolver.
• A piece from Organic Prepper on how to read the streets--i.e., specific things to look for to better gauge a situation or local. 
• Lucky Gunner looks at sales data to examine changes in the most popular handgun and rifle cartridges. In the handgun category, unsurprisingly the 9mm is by far the dominant caliber being sold, while .40 S&W continues its decline. But frankly, 9mm was well on its way to becoming the dominant handgun cartridge in the 1990s before the Assault Weapons Ban intervened by limiting magazine capacity and, thereby, pushing people to the .40 S&W. Once the magazine limits disappeared, it was inevitable, in my mind, that the 9mm would once again reign supreme. The big upset is in the rifle calibers where in 2010 the .300 BLK and 6.5 Creedmoor were brand new, but now are both in the top 5. 
• An article going over the history of the Remington 870 shotgun as well as a list of some models to avoid and which to keep an eye on. 
• Mountain Man Medical's article of a recent shooting death at a hunting camp in the wilds of Idaho, the impact of long response time before medical help arrives, with some suggestions for a medical kit to keep at a camp--something more than the basic blow out kit you might carry on you. 
• And Empty Cases has an article discussing the "scout" part of Cooper's scout rifle concept, including what Cooper meant by "scout" and a couple of men that served as scouts and the templates for what Cooper was thinking about when he came up with the scout rifle.
• This week, Greg also posted another list of free Kindle books at Amazon with an emphasis on prepping, survival, self-defense, and travel, but also some more eclectic titles. Check it out.  
• And Greg has been extra busy because he also has an article entitled "What Do I Say After A Shooting?" 
• And John Wilder's latest: "Will We Win? Yes. Will It Be Horrible? Also Yes.  So, We Might As Well Enjoy It."  Some thoughts on the troubled times we live in, but also hope for a better future once we get through the bad times.
• "The Alternate View: Future Trajectories for Civilizations" by John G. Cramer, Analog. The author discusses a couple of recent papers with implications for the Fermi Paradox. He sums it up:

Th e [sic] bottom line of these two studies is that (1) the Fermi Paradox Great Silence may be in part the result of the short detection windows for unstable planetary civilizations, and (2) our present society (scenario S2) is fragile and subject to collapse, so we should be doing much more to stabilize and preserve it, and also to prepare for recovery after its collapse. 

• On a related note: "What if we’re alone? The philosophical paradox of a lifeless cosmos" by Shai Tubali, Big Think. The author writes:

Despite all our searching and knocking on cosmic doors, we may be utterly alone — effectively or actually — and for now, that’s the reality we inhabit. Futurist John Michael Godier observed that true solitude in the Universe can never be proven; we could discover alien life and know we’re not alone, but we’ll never confirm that we are, trapped as we are within the observable Universe’s shimmering bubble. What if, after centuries, our telescopes find no alien biospheres, no technosignatures, just an unbroken cosmic silence? As Arthur C. Clarke said, either we’re alone or we’re not, and both are terrifying. To make sense of this profound solitude, philosophy might just hold the key.

But, Tubali continues, it shouldn't be terrifying if we are alone because that just makes Earth and us just that much more special. 

VIDEO: The Darkweb's Most Popular Forum Was Hacked

Not my usual fare, but interesting nonetheless. The forum is called Dread and it is apparently the dark web's version of Reddit. Anyway, not something you would have come across in the MSM.  

 VIDEO: "The Dark Webs Most Popular Forum Got Hacked"
Mental Outlaw (19 min.)

Climate Scientists: We Need More Money!

In 1999, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg published a highly influential paper which predicted the loss of coral reefs by 2050--50 years in the future at that time--due to global warming (although there were some dissenting voices that said it was due to killing wildlife or pollution, which had been ongoing for centuries in some parts of the world). 

In 2017, the British Independent newspaper continued to report that "More than 90 percent of world's coral reefs will die by 2050," and that there was, at that point, no way to stop it. 

Today we are being told that "Almost all coral reef ecosystems face risk of collapse in 50 years, study warns." In other words, after 26 years, we are still 50 years from when the coral reefs will collapse. Or, as the Los Angeles Times put it last month: "The Great Barrier Reef refuses to die on schedule." 

The author of the latter article, Bjorn Lomborg, begins by noting (bold added):

    Australia’s marine scientists released their annual audit of the Great Barrier Reef last month, and it contains news you almost certainly haven’t heard: Coral cover held steady or increased across most of the reef. The scientists measure the percentage of living hard coral cover, and in the 40 years of systematic study, the five best years on record are the five most recent. That is the sound of a catastrophe not happening.

    You haven’t heard the good news because the reef has an entire public relations industry built around predicting its imminent demise as a result of global warming. In 2012, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science reported that the reef had lost about half its coral cover since the mid-1980s — falling from 28% to just 13.9% — and projected that cover could halve yet again by 2022. In 2014, the Guardian published an interactive obituary for the reef. In 2016, Outside magazine agreed, declaring the reef dead at age 25 million.

    The patient, it turned out, hadn’t read the notices. By 2021, coral cover was higher than at any point since measurements began in 1986. It stayed at unprecedented levels through 2022 and 2023 and climbed to a new all-time high in 2024. The reef answered two decades of death sentences with more coral than anyone had ever measured.

    The scientists even stopped publishing the reefwide statistic — making it harder for the layperson to easily see that the reef was defying long-held predictions. But researchers from AIMS continued publishing regional averages, making it possible to effectively re-create their reefwide average — which clearly kept increasing.

 In the case of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia then reverted to Plan B:

When catastrophe fails to arrive, a second story stands ready: Take a bow and send the bill. Australia’s federal and Queensland governments have spent more than 5 billion Australian dollars on reef programs since 2014, and when UNESCO declined in July to put the reef on its “in danger” list, Australia’s ministers hailed the decision as recognition of the country’s world-leading reef management. It takes nerve to spend decades forecasting an ecosystem’s death and then claim credit for its historically high coral cover and remarkable resilience. 

But Lomborg's article must have caused a stir because we are now back to Plan A, just with the doomsday of coral reefs pushed out a bit longer. 

More Fraud From California

The New York Post reports on "Feds bust $2B medical fraud rings secretly operating in California — as agents seen scaling rich doctor’s mega mansion." Two of those arrested are Dr. Hany Malek, a chiropractor, and Dr. Harold Tabaie, a cardiothoracic surgeon. They are accused of working together to convince patients they needed unneeded, invasive (and expensive) heart procedures called atherectomies. But even this was small change compared to others being rounded up:

Others defendants sought Thursday included Nathan Young, 39, and his father David Young, 71, who allegedly operated a $1.6 billion substance abuse scam to traffic addicts from around the country to dozens of Los Angeles rehab centers.