Echoes of Azimov's Foundation

The New Scientist has an article entitled "Calculated Violence: Numbers that predict revolution." Mathematician Peter Turchin claims to have discovered a method of analyzing history with mathematics that has revealed regular cycles of stability and revolution. From the article:

Reasoning that the fate of an empire rests ultimately on social cohesion, he has used historical records to track the prevalence of what he calls collective violence - deaths due to political assassinations, riots and civil wars, but not international wars or ordinary crimes - in three major civilisations, the Roman Republic, medieval Europe and Tsarist Russia. Applying mathematical tools borrowed from population biology, he has found that in each case deaths from collective violence follow two superimposed cycles, one spanning two to three centuries and the other about 50 years (Secular Cycles, Princeton University Press, 2009). What's more, he thinks his data provide enough leverage to understand what drives the longer cycle.

The likeliest explanation, he says, is an idea known as demographic-structural theory, proposed two decades ago by Jack Goldstone at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. This argues that in a prosperous culture, population growth or advancing technology eventually leads to an oversupply of labour. That is good news for an expanding upper class who can more easily exploit an increasingly desperate labour force. Eventually, though, the society becomes so top-heavy that even some members of the elite can no longer afford the good life. Factionalism sets in as the upper classes fight among themselves, social cohesion declines, and the state begins to lose control of its citizens. Then, and only then, does widespread violence break out. Anarchy reigns until enough people fall out of the elite classes, at which point growth and prosperity can return.

A tidy story, but is it true? Fortunately for Turchin, the theory makes predictions that can be tested. In particular, it predicts that social collapse and widespread violence do not rear their heads when life first gets grim for the working classes, as you would expect if workers' misery were the catalyst. Instead, unrest should follow a generation or two later, because it takes that long to accumulate an excess of wealthy, highly educated elites. This is exactly what Turchin found when he compared the timing of collective violence with economic indicators such as wages, social inequality and population growth - a measure of labour supply - in the three civilisations. As a further test, he looked at the dates on coins in hoards unearthed by archaeologists. Coin hoards are an excellent proxy for political unrest, since their owners must have buried them in fear during dangerous times and then experienced some misfortune that prevented them from digging them up later. Again, he found that civil war lagged behind economic hardship by a generation or two. Moreover, the same pattern holds true for the US over the past 200 years, he reports in a new paper (Journal of Peace Research, vol 4, p 577 and see diagram).

Turchin is less certain about the causes of the 50-year cycle. His best guess is that people who grow up in times of strife come to crave stability, while those who grow up in stable times are more willing to rock the boat. This leads, he thinks, to a two-generation cycle of stability and violence. "It's not as well tested," he says. "Take it with a grain of salt."

So what does he predict in our near future?

Two years ago, Turchin put his reputation on the line by predicting publicly that political instability in the US and western Europe will shoot up in the coming decade (Nature, vol 463, p 608). In his new paper he provides more evidence for an impending crisis in the US, where both cycles look to be approaching a peak in 2020. Allowing for some imprecision in his calculations, Turchin says that if we make it to 2030 without major turmoil he will conclude that his prediction - and hence the underlying theory - is wrong. He doesn't think that will happen, though, and estimates that he has an 80 per cent chance of being right.

I don't know if a prediction of political instability made in 2010 really counts. It was (and is) obvious that the West had gone over a financial cliff. And critics note that his theory doesn't account for the influence of a particular leader, or black swan events like epidemics. Says the article:

Turchin's cyclic theory of history also seems to leave out any role for unique events such as changes in climate, disease outbreaks or the appearance of a remarkable, history-changing individual. "The patterns are more complex, more chaotic, than the patterns created by his model," says Preiser-Kapeller.

Second Day of Rioting in Kenya

Riots in Kenya's second largest city, Majengo:

Riots have rocked Kenya's second-largest city for a second day, again turning deadly. The violence was triggered by the killing of a Muslim cleric accused by the United States of aiding Islamist militants in Somalia.

Police battled stone-throwing youths on Tuesday, firing tear gas and warning shots as the rioters barricaded streets with burning tires in Majengo.

The district is a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in Mombasa, Kenya's second-largest city. Looting was also reported.

In support of the rioters, Islamist militant group al-Shabaab called on Kenyan Muslims to "take all necessary measures" to defend their religion.

"Muslims must take the matter into their own hands, stand united against the kuffar (unbelievers) and take all necessary measures to protect their religion, their honor, their property and their lives from the enemies of Islam," the group said in a statement posted on Twitter. Al-Shabaab is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union and the US.

* * *

The violence in Mombasa erupted after cleric Aboud Rogo Mohammed, popularly known as "Rogo," was shot dead on Monday by "unknown people," according to Kenyan police. Mohammed was on the US and UN sanctions lists for his alleged support of al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based group linked to al Qaeda, which was said to have included fundraising and helping the group recruit new members.

The preacher was driving with his wife and children when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle, riddling it with bullets. Images released by his enraged supporters showed his bloody body slumped behind the wheel. Protests then erupted, with one person hacked to death, cars torched, businesses looted and at least five churches set ablaze.

When the Mississippi Changes Course

Reading about Isaac headed up the Mississippi River Valley reminded me of this article: "Mississippi Rising: Apocalypse Now?"

There is an event coming to the Deep South that is as inevitable, and as imminent in geologic time, and as unpredictable in human time, and as dangerous to human life and enterprise, as are the Great California Earthquakes. It is as easy to say as it is hard to imagine: the Mississippi River is going to change course, and when it does will reach the sea 65 miles west of New Orleans, at Morgan City. This meandering of the great river is not at all unusual – it happens frequently in geologic time – and is the process that created the Mississippi River Delta – a 200-mile-wide, three-million-acre arc of coastal wetlands stretching roughly from Lafayette, Louisiana, east to Biloxi, Mississippi. As the river nears the Gulf of Mexico, on the flat coastal plain, the current slows, allowing its massive loads of silt to settle out, creating new wetlands and building up the river bed, which eventually becomes higher than the surrounding area. Eventually the river breaks out, seeks a new and quicker way to the Gulf until the process repeats in about a thousand years.

In the 1950s the Mississippi was ready for another change, exploring in ever greater enthusiasm the Atchafalaya River basin. But this time the river had a new enemy: money. If the river succeeded in doing what it had always done, it would leave high and dry the Port of New Orleans, devastate the city’s economy as well as that of Baton Rouge, cut off nearly 20 per cent of the country’s oil imports and 16 per cent of the nation’s fisheries harvest, and choke off a major outlet for U.S. Agricultural exports. It would leave high and dry a chain of refineries and factories stretching from Baton Rouge to New Orleans that depend for their existence on the barges and the fresh water that the river wants to give to the Atchafalaya. It was, well, unthinkable. The Congress ordered the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to go to war with the Mississippi. “We are fighting Mother Nature,” the Corps declared in a promotional film, “It’s a battle we have to fight day by day, year by year; the health of our economy depends on victory. Our opponent could cause the United States to lose nearly all her seaborne commerce, to lose her standing as first among trading nations.”

The result of this declaration of war was named, with typical Corps hubris, the Old River Control Structures. The Old River was a natural east-west channel that had opened between the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers about 200 miles above New Orleans. By the 1950s, 30 per cent of the Mississippi’s flow was roaring down the steeper, lower Atchafalaya drainage, scouring it ever deeper, getting ready to switch its course entirely. The Corps’ war on water consisted of throwing a dam across the Old River, then building, 10 miles upstream, a 560-foot-long set of 11 floodgates across an artificial channel that henceforth would bend the Father of Waters to the will of the United States Congress. That body declared it illegal for the Mississippi to yield more than 30 per cent of its flow to the Atchafalaya. That is how much it gave up in 1950, and by law, for the Mississippi, it was to be forever 1950. The implementation of the law began in 1963, when the Control Structures took over. It was all part of the Corps of Engineers’ “Mississippi River and Tributaries Project” — the war to end all floods for all time from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans.

Ten quiet years followed, for which the Corps took a great deal of credit. Then came a most unquiet year, when a combination of heavy rains in the fall of 1972, heavy winter snow and repeated deluges in the spring of 1973 brought massive flooding. The Corps ran up the white flag and opened all the floodgates at Old River, and still, day after day, the Father of Waters hammered on the bars of its cell, shook the structure as if it were in a Magnitude 8 earthquake, threw nine-ton boulders at it and ate away at its massive foundations. If you stopped a car on top of the control structure (yes, there’s a road – Route 15 – across what you might call the bridge to San Luis Rey, Louisiana) and opened the car door, the vibration of the structure would slam it shut. One of the massive walls that gathered the flow of the Mississippi in to the floodgates collapsed. When the whole thing was a whisker away from total failure, the waters began to recede.

Afterward, the badly frightened engineers of the Corps wondered how close it had been. As John McPhee described one of the more riveting moments in the long history of man’s war on nature:

“As soon as the water began to recede they set about learning the dimensions of the damage. The structure was obviously undermined, but how much so, and where? What was solid, what was not? What was directly below the gates and the roadway? With a diamond drill, in a central position, they bored the first of many holes in the structure. When they had penetrated to basal levels, they lowered a television camera into the hole. They saw fish.”

The Corps propped the structure up, poured more concrete, set more pilings, built even more floodgates (the so-called auxiliary structure, deployed in 1986) and saw it withstand major flooding in 1983, 1993 and 1997. But the river will win this war, and will go to Morgan City, and bring down the Control Structures and with them the economy of the United States. As a study conducted by the Water Resources Research Institute, at Louisiana State University, concluded: “It could happen next year, during the next decade, or sometime in the next thirty or forty years. But the final outcome is simply a matter of time and it is only prudent to prepare for it.”

Isaac Upgraded to Hurricane--Headed for New Orleans

The Daily Mail reports:

'Many parts of the state could see 24 to 38 hours of tropical storm-force winds,' Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal told a news conference. 'We're going to see a lot of downed trees and power lines,' he said. 'We need people to stay safe.'

Hurricane Isaac has made landfall in southeast Louisiana with winds near 80 mph.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm's center reached land at 6:45 p.m. in Plaquemines Parish, about 90 miles southeast of New Orleans.

Brandishing automatic assault rifles to ward off any threat of looting, the troops in military vehicles took up positions on mostly deserted streets. Their arrival came as driving rain and stiff winds battered the city's famous tourist district, The French Quarter, and its boarded-up storefronts.

White-capped waves formed in Lake Pontchartrain.

Earlier, the Army Corps of Engineers closed for the first time the massive new floodgate on the largest storm-surge barrier in the world, at Lake Borgne, east of New Orleans. In other preparations, oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico nearly ground to a halt, and ports and coastal refineries curtailed operations as Isaac neared.

At 5 p.m. CDT (2200 GMT), the Hurricane Center said Isaac was centered about 105 miles southeast of New Orleans with top sustained winds of 80 miles per hour.

The storm, becoming better organized as it nears land, was traveling at a relatively slow 8 mph. That pace is a concern for people in its path since slow-moving cyclones can bring higher rainfall totals.

Isaac was about 370 miles wide and due to make landfall at the mouth of the Mississippi River within the hour. Heavy rains and big storm surges were also forecast for parts of Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Isaac spared Tampa, Florida, where the Republican National Convention began on Monday. But it forced party leaders to revamp their schedule. They may have to make further revisions so as not to be seen celebrating Mitt Romney's presidential nomination while Gulf Coast residents struggle through the storm.

President Barack Obama urged Gulf Coast residents to take cover and heed warning, saying, Now was 'not the time to tempt fate.' He issued emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi earlier this week because of Isaac.

The president's stern warning comes as terrified New Orleans residents fear a repeat of the devastation inflicted by Hurricane Katrina after Isaac, which has now been declared a Category 1 hurricane, veers towards the Louisiana city.

Shop owners last night boarded up their businesses and the streets of the normally-bustling French Quarter are now eerily empty amid preparations for winds of over 100mph, which are predicted to hit the Gulf coast either this evening or tomorrow morning.

Although, the storm is currently generating surface gusts of 75mph, forecasters believe Isaac could pick up wind speed before it hits land in the same spot as Katrina, meaning roofs could be plucked from homes and cause extensive power outages in the city.

The shut-down of the refineries should jack up oil prices, which will further dampen the economy. The only thing that will bring us out of the economic doldrums will be cheap energy and fuel, which is anathema to the current administration.

More Bank Woes from Spain

The Daily Mail reports:

Spain's debt-ridden region of Catalonia will seek a rescue bailout of £4billion from a central government fund, it emerged today.

The northeastern region, which has Barcelona as its capital, became the third region after Valencia and Murcia to officially ask for aid.

Many of the 17 semi-autonomous regions are struggling with the recession, the country's second in three years, following a real estate crash in 2008 that has pushed the unemployment rate to near 25 per cent.

* * *

A rush by consumers and firms to withdraw their money from Spanish banks also intensified in July, with private sector deposits falling almost five per cent, to £1.2trillion at end-July from £1.26trillion a month earlier.

George Bernard Shaw's Prediction

In reviewing portions of "How Civilizations Die", I came across the following:

"The day is coming when great nations will find their numbers dwindling from census to census; when the  six-roomed villa will rise in price above the family mansion; when the visciously reckless poor and the stupidly pious rich will delay the extinction of the race only by degrading it; whilst the boldly prudent, the thriftily selfish and ambitious, the imaginative and poetic, the lovers of money and solid comfort, the worshippers of success, of art, and of love, will all oppose to the Force of Life the device of sterility."

Shaw wrote this in 1903.

"The Rise and Fall of Sexual Promiscuity"

Interesting article from Forbes:

The study highlights several current theories of pair-bonding: instead of fighting, male hominids began to devote effort to caring for offspring, protecting their mate, or provisioning food for sex. But Gavrilets builds mathematical models to show how each of these hypotheticals leads to a “sub-optimal” outcome—how “investing more in offspring means that there is more paternity for other males to steal.” Run the model, and instead of choosing cooperation, the males will choose to fight. It’s not the outcome any one male desires, but the free-rider problem effectively “traps” the whole group in a benighted state.

Gavrilets proposes a modification to existing theory. What if we assume that males began to provide for one—and only one—female, and females, likewise, began to depend on a sole mate for food and help with childcare? First, not all men are created equal; there are few Ryan Goslings and many Kevin Redmons. The weaker among us quickly learned the futility of direct competition, and turned to “alternative reproductive strategies” to spread our genes. (I may not be a dreamboat, baby, but I’ll bring you coffee in bed.) Second, females make choices. Whereas previous models ascribe females a passive role, Gavrilets asserts that “because they receive direct benefits from provisioning males, females should be choosy, and they may become, to some extent, faithful” to their providers.

Promiscuity is a funny thing in nature. Despite what your mother and youth pastor spent so many years telling you, sleeping around has real (genetic) benefits. Polyandry—in which females take more than one mate—allows for better gene diversity, boots the likelihood of fertilization, decreases infanticide, and means more male providers. Gavrilets acknowledges that in switching from promiscuity to monogamy, females actually risked lower fertility. The tradeoff was security.

When he runs the model again, with these two assumptions in place, the outcome is different: instead of a spiral into violent competition, male provisioning and female faithfulness “co-evolve in a self-reinforcing manner.” Males escape the “social dilemma” and pair-bonding replaces promiscuity.

The issue is: If promiscuity among females were to increase, would it eventually cause an increase in "violent competition" among men? Anecdotal evidence would suggest it does (e.g., bar fights over women).

"Sword Fighting: Not What You Think It Is"

From io9:

Fortunately, during the Medieval and Renaissance eras, hundreds of detailed instructional manuals were produced by expert Masters of Defense. These knights and professional instructors in arms wrote and illustrated immense technical treatises and books on their "science of self-defense." Intended to preserve their secrets or instruct their students and patrons, these little-known works, some in excess of six hundred pages, represent time-capsules of the actual fighting systems and proven combative disciplines used at the time. Focused mostly on swordsmanship, these handbooks and study guides reveal highly sophisticated combat teachings. Further, their content and presentation is unmatched by any martial-arts literature from anywhere in the world. And we have dozens of them.

Only recently in the last decade or so has this extraordinary and all but forgotten material finally come to be properly examined and studied. Reconstruction of these remarkable teachings offers an unparalleled view into how fighting men prepared and trained themselves for duels, street-fights, and battlefield encounters. Their manner of fighting with swords is not the classical Western style we see today, which is largely a contrived 19th-century gentleman's version of a narrow, aristocratic Baroque style. What the surviving sources show us is wholly different from the familiar pop-culture version, as well as being dramatically distinct from what has gone on for years in assorted reenactments and contrived living-history efforts. Rather, Medieval and Renaissance sword fighting was a hell of a lot more violent, brutal, ferocious, and astonishingly effective. The way in which these swords were held, the way they can be maneuvered, and the postures and motions involved, differ substantially from common presumptions and modern-era fencing styles.

Read the whole thing. (This article was originally published on the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts website).

I think that one of the greatest tragedies of Western civilization is the loss of our martial arts history and knowledge. Not only swordsmanship, but the magnificent unarmed combat schools of the Greeks and Romans, and, more recently, the knife fighting schools and methods that developed here in the United States in the early 1800s oriented around the use of the Bowie knife. It is nice to know that there are people trying to preserve and recreate these arts.

The author of the article, John Clements, has published a book on Renaissance fencing called Renaissance Swordsmanship.

Info Wars: TSA Exceeding Its Mandate

From Infowars:

As we have previously documented, airport security style checkpoints and inspection procedures are already in place at bus terminals, train stations, and are rapidly being expanded to the streets of America.

Agents have even been spotted roaming around at public events such as sports games and music concerts, and even at high school proms.

The TSA even moved beyond its own borders this summer as agents were dispatched to airports in London for the Olympic Games.

The TSA has also announced its intention to expand the VIPR program to include roadside inspections of commercial vehicles, setting up a network of internal checkpoints and rolling out security procedures already active in airports, bus terminals and subway stations to roads and highways across the United States.

These internal checkpoints, run by Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, and the TSA, involve trucks being scanned with backscatter x-ray devices in the name of “safety” and “counter terrorism”.

Drought Causing Food Prices to Rise

Food prices are expected to surge after the worst drought in the U.S. for half a century destroyed one-sixth of the country's expected corn crop over the past month.

The hottest July in U.S. history has caused irreparable damage to crops, forcing corn farmers to abandon fields greater in area than Belgium and Luxembourg.

Soyabeans, which are used for animal feed and to make vegetable oil, have also been affected, with this harvest likely to be the worst for five years.

The crisis has prompted the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to forecast record-breaking price rises, and some of the world's largest food manufacturers, including Kraft, Tyson and Nestle, have already indicated that they will pass on the increase to consumers.

USDA now expects 10.8billion bushels of corn to be produced this year - 2.2billion bushels less than the projection it made last month.

USDA chief economist Joseph Glauber told the Financial Times: 'We're going to see very high prices.'

The problem could have far-reaching consequences internationally.

In 2007-08, high food costs led to riots in more than 30 countries, but Jose Graziano da Silva, the director general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, said the current crisis was not as severe.

'We do not have the demand pressure from China and India as five years ago.'

(Full story here).

"10 Things Gun Guys Never Say"

Some gun humor from the Daily Caller:

Every gun guy knows the list of things you should never do with a gun. Don’t point it at anything you don’t intend to shoot for instance . If you have been around gun guys as long as I have you can spot a wanna-be gun guy quickly. Sometimes it’s their actions, other times it’s with their words. Here are 10 statements a real gun guy will never say.

I like No. 4: "John Moses Browning? John Moses Browning? Nope, never heard of him. What did he do?"

India Planning On Launching Ballistic Missile Submarines

It was inevitable, I suppose:

INS Arihant, planned to be the first of five submarines of its class, will be ready to begin sea trials, said Admiral Nirmal Verma, the navy commander. When the vessel eventually becomes operational, India will be able to launch nuclear missiles from the sea, land and air, joining a handful of countries possessing the "nuclear triad".

The strategic aim is to deter China and Pakistan and establish India as the leading power in the Indian Ocean.

* * *

INS Arihant will carry the K-15 ballistic missile, which carries a nuclear warhead. However, this weapon has a relatively modest range of less than 500 miles, raising questions about its ability to hit a target in China.

* * *

He pointed out that India is also planning to launch six nuclear-powered attack submarines, adding that within seven years the country should have a varied fleet which would, in theory, be able to block Chinese access to the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca. "They could be sitting off Karachi – or China. It's an investment for the future," said Mr Guruswamy. 

(Full story here).

500 miles may not seem much, but it is sufficient to reach the major Chinese cities if parked somewhere off the coast of China...or detonate high over China to produce an EMP burst. Probably more importantly to India, though--at least over the short run--is that it is sufficient to threaten Pakistan.

The Barbarization of Mexico

Small Wars Journal has an article, written in 2011, that discusses the increasing barbarization of Mexico. (The article is a PDF that you can download here). The authors make the following observation:

Perhaps the most prominent element of Mexico’s narcoviolence is the increasing tempo of atrocity. Daily media reports recount beheadings, dismemberments, persons hung from bridges, the discovery of mass graves (narcofosas), grenade attacks, drive-by shootings, rape and
femicide, running gun battles in the streets, assassinations of police, mayors, and journalists. Refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are increasingly a factor in the conflict. While illegal immigration to the US as a whole has declined, a quiet exodus of affluent Mexicans across the border is emerging. Meanwhile, one in three murder victims go unidentified and few cases reach prosecution, highlighting a state of impunity.

In one recent example of atrocity, a casino in Monterrey—Casino Royale—was the scene of a deadly assault on Thursday 25 August 2011. Initially pegged as a grenade attack, it was in fact an arson attack where a group of at least eight assailants (believed to be linked to Los Zetas) poured gasoline inside the casino before setting it on fire, trapping dozens of people inside and killing 52 people. The brutality of the attack shocked Mexico and led to the government to characterize it as an act of terrorism. In a nationally televised speech, an angry President Felipe Calderón declared three days of mourning on Friday and labeled the attack—the worst against civilians in the nation's recent history—an act of “terrorism.” In Calderón’s words, "We are not
confronting common criminals... We are facing true terrorists who have gone beyond all limits." 

It is easy to lose sight of the violence’s human toll in the debate over insurgency tactics, flurry of statistics, and high-profile events like the casino attack. One of the most saddening cultural artifacts of the drug war is a video of a Mexican schoolteacher keeping her students close to the ground while gunfire rages outside. She leads them in song to try to keep them calm while simultaneously keeping their heads down from stray gunfire. Such daily descriptions of horror belie assertions that Mexico’s ongoing conflict with drug cartels is mere criminality.

Just as an example, here is a recent article posted at Borderland Beat about increased violence and collapse of the rule of law in the Tarahumara Mountains:

At the municipality, the local area's government center, the inhabitants have turned their homes into "tanquetas" (light armored vehicles) and live with the uncertainty that at any moment and at any hour, they will see armed men, with or without hoods, come to fight with each other or with the townspeople.

On weekends, teachers, medical personnel and residents leave the town, because the violence gets worse on those days.

"When we return, we find out there have been murders, abductions (levantamientos), kidnappings. Ransom demands are made in millions of pesos, generally 5 million pesos. People work hard to get the money together, it's very common for them to work the gum opium (la goma); they sell it and resell it and get the money," explains one of the town's school teachers.

People get together early in the day and behind closed doors to celebrate birthdays. "There's so much fear, that you lock the door, and if somebody knocks you don't open the door or ask who it is until you hear the voice of whoever is knocking. Or, if they come to visit, they have to call ahead by phone to warn you. Schools are always locked up, kids only go out for recess, and they don't leave until their parents come (for them). Only a few are allowed to leave by themselves because they live close by," he emphasizes.

According to the teacher, more than half of the students in one of the grade schools are orphaned of either a mother or father. In fact, there are class groups in which out of 23 students, 18 are orphans, since women are also murdered because they're the partners of men involved with criminal groups, he points out.

Read the whole thing.

Best Wishes for the Landing of the Curiosity Rover Tonight

The landing is supposed to be at 10:31 PDT.

Fun in the Sun

Got a chance to go shooting today, including with the AK 74 I had built. (A few thoughts and lessons learned concerning the build are here and here). As long-time readers know, I had some extraction issues with this firearm last year, which appear to have been resolved. I haven't had any problems since.

As you can see, I used a tan U.S. made front stock and pistol grip from K-Var, as well as a folding metal stock from K-Var that was designed to fit into a standard trunnion and receiver. (I discuss 922r parts and options and what I used in the first part of my post on building the AK). I didn't like the standard AK sling--the front clip was noisy and scratched the finish. So I took an SKS sling with leather tabs, and trimmed the tab for the front sling loop so it would fit. Works great. Of course, now I have an AK sling that I don't need....

One of the problems with the metal folding stock is that it can get too hot (or cold, depending on the conditions), which is uncomfortable. I'd read that the Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan would wrap the stocks. The problem was trying to figure out what to use. I wanted something easy to apply, but that wouldn't slip around a lot. I had some Camo-Form wrap laying around (you can read my prior review of the wrap here), and decided to wrap the upper metal strut. It has worked out well.

I have several areas, including a public shooting range, that I shoot at depending on who I'm going with, whether I'm taking my dog, how long I expect to be out, whether the roads are passable, and my mood. The public shooting range is always crowded this time of year, so I tend to just find a place in the scrub that I can use. In winter, if I go shooting, I will use the public range because it is easier to get to.

This particular area is one that I hadn't used for a couple of years, and apparently neither had anyone else (the old refrigerator and plywood had already been there for years when I first stumbled across the site).

The stand is one that I put together with some odd pieces of PVC. The cardboard backing (just the lid from a photocopy paper box) fits into slots that I cut in the PVC tubing. As you can see, the right-side upright to hold the cardboard was the victim of an errant shot earlier this year. However, it still holds the cardboard backing. It's ugly and crude, but it works.

Detroit Has Become a Dumping Ground for Dead Bodies

Another chapter in the decline and collapse of Detroit:

Abandoned and neglected parts of the city are quickly becoming dumping grounds for the dead — at least a dozen bodies in the space of 12 months. And authorities acknowledge there is little they can do.

'You can shoot a person, dump a body and it may just go unsolved' because of the time it may take for the corpse to be found, Officer John Garner said.

The bodies have been purposely hidden or discarded in alleys, fields, vacant houses, abandoned garages and even a canal. Seven of the victims are believed to have been slain outside Detroit and then dumped within the city.

It's a pattern made possible by more than four decades of urban decay and suburban flight. White residents started moving to burgeoning suburbs in the 1950s, then stepped up their exodus after a deadly 1967 race riot. Detroit's black middle class followed over the next two decades, leaving block after block of empty homes.

Over time, tens of thousands of houses deteriorated. Some collapsed, others were demolished. Empty lots gave way to block-long fields. 

* * *

Detroit has more than 30,000 vacant houses, and the deficit-strangled city has no resources of its own to level them. Mayor Dave Bing is promoting a plan to tear down as many as possible using federal money. The state is also contributing to the effort.

But it's hard to keep up. About a quarter-million people moved out of Detroit between 2000 and 2010, leaving just over 700,000 residents in a city built for 2 million.

Census figures from two years ago show 793 people living on Lyford and the other 20 or so streets near the Coleman A. Young airport. Two decades earlier, about 2,900 people lived there.

 (Full story here).

Australia Refuses to Base U.S. Carrier

From the Daily Mail:

Australia has risked a diplomatic bust-up with its closest ally America after rejecting a plan to base a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier near Perth, the capital of Western Australia.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith ruled out the proposal yesterday, saying Australia does not want to host U.S. bases.

The plan, put forward in a Pentagon-commissioned report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggested repositioning U.S. forces in the region by relocating an aircraft carrier from the U.S. East Coast.

Mr Smith said that while negotiations were underway to increase U.S. navy access to Australia's Indian Ocean base, HMAS Stirling, it would never become a U.S. military base.

'We have made it crystal clear from the first moment - we don't have United States military bases in Australia. We don't see the need for that,' Mr Smith told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television.

And why wouldn't they want the jobs that a new or expanded naval base would bring?

China - Australia's most important trade partner - has blasted the closer bilateral military ties as a return the Cold War divisions that risk the peace and security of the region.

Hugh White, head of Australian National University's Strategic and Defense Studies Center, noted that American combat troops had not been based in Australia since World War II and said that was unlikely to change in the future.

He said Chinese objections were the major reason why Australia was unlikely to ever allow U.S. bases on its soil.

'The government was surprised that China reacted as negatively as it has to the decision to have Marines rotate deployments through Darwin, and I think they'll be very careful not to risk further displeasure from China by doing anything that suggests they're supporting a U.S. military buildup in Asia,' Mr White said.

The Ulsterman Report has a New Interview with the Whitehouse Insider

(Link here).