Ol Remus Has Good Advice for the Hard Times Ahead

Ol' Remus has the following this week:

Assume for the moment a '30s variety Depression lies just ahead. Here are a few things you may wish to consider. 

Nothing lasts forever. You'll be living among the newly poor and they will be unpredictable, even dangerous, but it's out of confusion and desperation. Remember, your friends and neighbors actually are blameless for what has befallen them, aside from being unprepared, and they'll still be around when the hard times have passed. For your part, you don't have to be a self-sacrificing martyr but you do have to acquit yourself honorably. There will come a time when you'll have to answer for what you did and didn't do. You'll want to look back and know you did the best you could with what you had. 

Get out of debt. What you actually own may be all you actually have. You'll be sacrificing for the present, not the future. You can't do either if you're sacrificing for the past. Debts that are manageable now will crush you in a Depression, pay off those loans. If you must have credit cards, treat them like a thirty day interest-free loan and carry a zero balance. Own at least one vehicle outright, preferably a plain, utilitarian, economical model of good quality, well maintained. If you're a city person or an apartment dweller, consider getting a habitable RV-style vehicle and a well situated parcel of land as well. After you've attended to the basics, insulate yourself from currency disruptions with cold hard cash, meaning precious metals. For most of us that means silver. 

Save. Live within your means. Have a savings account and an adequate checking account, yes, at a bank, if the banks collapse money will be the least of your problems. In some phase cash will be king, keep a few hundred dollars in small denominations squirreled away. You might put aside trading material too: liquor, ammunition, medical supplies, tobacco, that sort of thing. 

Stock up. Don't buy groceries, lay in supplies. Better yet, hoard. Look at it this way, if it comes to where food is more valuable than gold it's better to have the food in the first place. Keep a perpetual three to six month's supply of long shelf-life staples, even hard times have their hard times. Next time you're shopping, look around. How many light bulbs do you have? Durable clothing? Tough and comfortable shoes? Consider what you might need when you're down with the flu and threatened by roaming gangs or looters or partisan raids. And whatever you buy, buy quality. Reliability is more valuable than features. Experienced engineers adore robust simplicity, you should too. 

Learn the basics. Carpentry, vegetable gardening, emergency medical skills, that sort of thing. You don't have to be a back-to-the-land fanatic or do your own dentistry, but you do need to be minimally competent and self-reliant. If you can set up a surround-sound system you can replace a light switch. Equip yourself with excellent hand tools and basic components. Most of what you'll be doing will be maintenance. What you don't know your friends and neighbors will. Learn from each other, widen your skills, become more valuable to yourself and others. 

Arm yourself. There's no need to outfit yourself like a comic book commando. A .22 rimfire rifle and a shotgun will do nicely for taking game and protecting home and family from casual intruders. For those special occasions, add a center-fire rifle, capable but mild enough for your smaller adults to handle with confidence. There won't actually be much call for shooting through engine blocks half a county away. Handguns are a weapon of last resort, if a bad guy gets within whispering range your fitness to survive is questionable on other grounds. Plain vanilla is preferable to high-tech. Figure five tough years and think about how much ammunition you might need, worst case, then triple it.

Anticipate trouble. Expect bizarre and violent behavior at the outset from the kind of people who take gravity personally. They're not the real threat however, the improvident and irrational will expend themselves early on, it's the mid and later phases that bring out the really dangerous sorts. A Depression is the sort of change that favors competent gangs, urban demagogues and rural populists, and semi-official committees of this and that, usually more or less lawless and eager to back up intimidation with force. Your mother's advice is the best, be seen as no better off than your neighbors whether you are or not, be polite to strangers but don't trust them, stay away from crowds, fasten on fundamentals like a puppy to a root. 

Know yourself. A Depression not only throws people back on their own resources, it demands good judgment in times of uncertainty and stress. The last few decades were about choosing between good and bad, in hard times your decisions will be between bad and worse. Yet even when your choices are bad, and they will be, there will always be an even worse choice. Know what you will compromise and what you will not compromise—ever. 

Amusement. Although 'thirties-era people had unforgettable tales of misfortune, it's remarkable that most also remembered those times with fondness. The gentle delights of ordinary life provided most of their entertainment. Notice how valuable their diaries and recollections and ephemera have become. Notice how their recollections centered on small things, anecdotes of how they "made do" when their life was stripped of artifice except for pretending on Saturday nights they were doing well when everybody knew better. It was an era when style was in style, probably the last time the affluent, street thugs and destitute men in soup lines all wore three-piece suits. 

Final thoughts. Every era has its texture, every texture has its fine grain. For the 'thirties it was G-Men and Public Enemies, the Okies and the Dustbowl, union organizers and union busters, Huey Long and Father Coughlin, the National Recovery Act. These things affected relatively few people directly, most felt far more involved than they really were. One doesn't lose much by giving only passing attention to such things, nor is there much to be gained. It's wisest to treat politics and mass movements like supermarket music, unrewarding yet not quite avoidable. As a general rule, if there's nothing in it for you by that same afternoon, make your excuses.

The Mechanical Transmission of Power

Low-Tech Magazine has three articles on historical methods of mechanically transmitting power over short distances--several miles or less.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Killed by Hail

In 1942, British soldiers discovered the skeletons of 200 people in a frozen lake in northern India. At the time, it was believed that the skeletons were Japanese soldiers. The skeletons actually date from about 850 A.D. And scientists now think that they were killed by hail stones.

A 2004 expedition to the site concluded the group was killed by cricket ball-sized hailstones during a sudden storm. 

This, they decided, was the only way to explain why the skulls and shoulder bones of the dead had all been hit by rounded objects directly from above. 

As there was nowhere to shelter in the valley, the group was at the mercy of the storm.

Their bodies lay in the lake, which regularly freezes, for the next 1,200 years until their wartime discovery.

Protests Simmer in Kuwait

Der Spiegel reports on a growing dissatisfaction with the Kuwaiti emir and the crony government. According to the article, the people want more rights and true representative government.

Al-Barrak is the country's conscience, his supporters say, the future prime minister of a Kuwait with free elections.

He certainly seems to be the emirate's most popular politician at the moment. At first glance, he seems fairly conventional, with his portly figure and fastidiously colored mustache. But perhaps a demagogue is not what's needed here in this city of one million, where nearly everyone knows everyone else. Perhaps it's enough to move with a reasonable degree of confidence through these tangled webs of clans and tribes, urban and rural populations, between Shiite merchant dynasties and the Sunni majority, between young people and dignitaries. Al-Barrak is as respected by the country's young people as he is by the Bedouin population. His attacks on the conservative elite in Kuwait City have also made him popular with the unions and with those who live on the city's outskirts.

"The country is being robbed," he says. "The worst of the fraud is committed by the ruling family," who al-Barrak says managed to increase its wealth even during the 1990 invasion by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

The true danger to the regime, al-Barrak says, is the regime itself and its inability, demonstrated time and again, to run a modern state. Kuwait recently had to pay $2.2 billion (€1.7 billion) to American company Dow Chemical for breach of contract because the emirate pulled out of a deal at the last minute. Kuwait's political opposition takes this as proof of the government's incompetence, while the government blames it on an opposition constantly calling everything into question.

 Assuming that an "Arab Spring" movement catches fire in Kuwait, it will probably end up the same as any other country--devolving into chaos and sectarian violence.

Can the Fed Keep the Peddle to the Metal?

CNBC reports:

Japan's blue-chip stock index has in May suffered its two sharpest sell-offs for the year and its high volatility is fueling concern about a spill over into other major markets.
The Nikkei stock index tumbled over 5 percent on Thursday to its lowest level in a month, knocked down by a strong yen and a fresh bout of profit taking on this year's double-digit gains.
Equity markets in Europe and the U.S. shrugged off the Nikkei's slide to close higher, but strategists say they're not so sure how long they will stand up.
"I don't know how much longer the U.S. markets can hold off [Japan volatility] and I was surprised we didn't open lower [Thursday]," said Mike Crofton, CEO at the Philadelphia Trust Company. "The market is obsessed with the Fed [Federal Reserve] and whether or not it will take its foot off the pedal and so we opened higher on the U.S. economic data," he said, offering a reason why markets had been able to withstand the Nikkei tumble.

Just another way of saying that the U.S. stock market is artificially inflated due to quantitative easing.

MERS Death Toll Rises

Three more people have died from MERS, the Middle Eastern respiratory virus that has now claimed the lives of 30 people.

The latest deaths occurred in Saudi Arabia, the country hardest hit in the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Symptom Coronavirus that health officials have dubbed “a threat to the entire world.”

Saudi officials said that the age of the three most recent victims ranged from 24 to 60, but that all suffered from a chronic health condition that made them especially susceptible to the virus.

So far, at least 50 people are known to have been sickened by the virus, and cases have been reported in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.

(Full story here). Small pox originated from the same region, and was spread by Islamic invaders across North Africa and thence to the rest of the world. I guess in a real sense, you can say that Islam killed off the Native Americans.

Ozymandias by Shelly

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

(Source)

Japan's Economy Flying Apart?

The Economic Collapse blog notes that Japan has reached that magical point where half of its tax revenue on debt maintenance, its attempt at quantitative easing has failed, and interests rates are creeping up. Read the whole thing.

100,000 Christians are Killed Each Year Because of Their Faith (Updated)

The Daily Mail reports:

Around 100,000 Christians are killed every year around the world because of their faith according to a top Vatican official.

Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi, a Catholic archbishop, cited the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the worst places for the deaths.

On Vatican radio, he was quoted on Tuesday saying the figures were 'shocking' and 'incredible'.

Update: I just saw this from the Examiner: 

Members of the Free Syrian Army reportedly attacked the Christian-dominated al-Duvair village in Reef on the outskirts of Homs on Monday, where they massacred its citizens, including women and children, before the Syrian Army interfered.

(H/t Weasel Zippers).

Shipping Valuables Safely Via UPS

A long time reader emailed me about a 4-part series at Western Shooting Journal offering some tips on how to label and ship firearms via UPS in order to avoid theft. However, most of these same tips will work for other valuables. Parts 1 and 2 are the most important for the majority of us. Parts 3 and 4 suggest some electronics to add to a package.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Copahue Volcano Warning

Chilean and Argentine authorities have declared a red alert and ordered the mandatory evacuation of a 15.5-mile radius around the active Copahue volcano, which straddles the border between the two Andean nations.
The volcano - located 310 miles south of capital Santiago, between Chile's Bio Bio region and Argentina's Neuquen province - has seen increasing seismic activity in recent weeks but has not erupted, Chilean authorities said. 

"This doesn't necessarily mean the volcano will start erupting. But according to the Sernageomin (National Geological and Mining Service), the volcano is now in a process that could culminate in an eruption, for that reason we've issued a red alert and the evacuation," Chilean Interior Minister Andres Chadwick told a nationally televised news conference. 

Authorities estimated that some 2,240 people will be evacuated in Chile.
In Argentina's Neuquen province, authorities also declared a "red alert," and ordered the evacuation of some 900 people in tourist-haven Caviahue-Copahue. The Argentine municipality had previously ordered the cancellation of school classes.

(Full story here).

The Myth of the Noble Savage

Several months ago, I reviewed the book War Before Civilization which was premised on debunking the myth that primitive peoples are peaceful. I came across a review at Reason magazine about a couple other books tackling the same subject. From the review:

Modern anthropological research may be settling the great debate between the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Was the state of nature a “war of every man against every man” in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Hobbes wrote? Or did “savages” live in utopian bliss, thanks to “the tranquility of their passions and their ignorance of vice,” as Rousseau believed?
Two new books, Marlene Zuk’s Paleofantasy and Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday, examine the data on how hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers have eaten, loved, socialized, fought, reared children, and lived. Both side mostly with Hobbes.

* * *  

Both Zuk and Diamond are unconvinced by Rousseau’s notion of the noble savage. In his 1754 Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men, the Frenchman claimed that “more murders were committed in a single day of fighting and more horrors in the capture of a single town than had been committed in the state of nature during entire centuries over the whole face of the earth.” But archaeological and modern ethnographic data show that small-scale stateless societies—which were once called “savage” or “primitive”—are far more violent than are modern state societies. To the extent that they are a good proxy for Rousseau’s state of nature, they reveal Rousseau to be wrong.

Zuk cites archaeological and ethnographic work finding that 14 percent of deaths in ancient and contemporary pre-state societies resulted from human violence. Diamond notes that while the level of violence varies among traditional societies, it “usually ranks as either the leading cause or (after illness) the second-leading cause of death.”


These arguments jibe with the data reported by the Harvard neuropsychologist Steven Pinker in his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking). After examining evidence from 20 sets of archaeological data from all over the world ranging from 14,000 to 700 years old, Pinker reported that societies were very dangerous, with the percentage of human deaths attributed to violence ranging from 60 to 15 percent. Similarly, data from 27 stateless societies studied by modern ethnographers found war deaths averaged 500 per 100,000 people, whereas all deaths from wars, genocides, and man-made famines in modern societies in the 20th century amount to a mere 60 to per 100,000.

“It may astonish you readers, as it initially astonished me,” Diamond writes, “to learn that trench warfare, machine guns, napalm, atomic bombs, artillery, and submarine torpedoes produce time-averaged war-related death tolls so much lower than those from spears, arrows, and clubs.” So how can this be? Because “state warfare is an intermittent exceptional condition, while tribal warfare is virtually continuous.”

"Ghost Ship" Goes Missing

And now for something completely different....

The Daily Mail has the following story:

A rat-infested and toxic Russian cruise ship cast adrift in the Atlantic Ocean has apparently vanished. 

The MV Lyubov Orlova - named after a Soviet actress - broke free in January when it was being tugged to be scrapped. 

It was being tracked by US intelligence officials but has not been seen since March and there are fears it has sunk.
The luxury liner was being towed to the Dominican Republic from Newfoundland, Canada, when it slipped away as the crew on board the towing ship battled howling winds and 10ft waves to try in vain to reconnect the towing line. 

The so-called 'ghost ship' was located briefly in February as it floated aimlessly about 500 miles off the coast of Ireland.


Then, in March, the Canadian Coast Guard reported that one of the ship's emergency radio beacons, which activate after hitting the water or another object, flashed a location almost 800 miles off Newfoundland, according to the Vancouver Sun.
With no further sightings, some are speculating the ship has sunk.

Inflation or Deflation? Perhaps Both

Michael at the Economic Collapse posits that as the economy continues to decay, we will see deflation initially, and then inflation as the government intervenes to stop the crash. Read the whole thing.

Termite Swarms In New Orleans

Story and more photos at the Daily Mail.

"The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall"

The Art of Good Government has an interesting article entitled "The Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall," which provides a brief history of East Germany and the Berlin Wall, including photographs. I found the article engaging if for no other reason than the history. However, the article not only relates the rise of East Germany, but the failures that eventually led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the eventual merging of East and West Germany. The author provides a personal point of view by describing his own travel into East Germany prior to the fall of the Wall.

The author describes a 1985 journey into East Germany:

As we drove the short distance towards Eisenach in East Germany our hearts began to sink as the dismal socialist scene gradually unfolded before us. The main road leading into the town was of prewar cobbles, full of potholes, the road edges overgrown and untidy, with rusted and leaning street lights many with their light fittings missing. Eisenach itself presented a scene straight from the aftermath of World War II. The buildings were crumbling, the dusty, dirty and long-unpainted facades almost obscured by a thick pall of sulphurous coal-smoke, and the blue fumes from the 2-stoke cars which, incidentally were only for model workers after a wait of up to 21 years. The yellow coal smoke, we later learned, was produced by the ubiquitous yellow-dust coal briquettes which seemed to be the only form of domestic heating fuel. It came from enormous open-cast mines which in their relentless expansion had consumed whole villages.
All the buildings were dirty and grimy, the streets and pavements in disrepair, the few shops dowdy, and small crowds of people seemed to be standing around on street corners as if with nothing to do. In the back streets whole blocks of houses were simply falling down, some boarded up, some lying as piles of rubble which nature was already camouflaging with grass and small bushes. To call our reaction "a culture shock" after West Germany would be a totally inadequate description, despite our familiarity with other East European countries.
The more we travelled through East Germany, the more evidence we saw of a country close to economic breakdown. The roads were all full of holes – though there was little traffic even on main roads, for private motorists could not travel outside their towns without a permit. The air was polluted everywhere, even in the forest where we had thought we might enjoy a brief refreshment with nature. The few relatively modern industries belched out clouds of polluted gases while the many older factories seemed to be surviving in partly ruined premises. Urban streets were everywhere in decay and not a touch of paint had been put on the former private houses, each now assigned to several families, since before the War.


Wittenberg was a town we hadn't planned to visit – we had been directed there by the almighty State Tour Planners. But it was, we were to discover, the home of Martin Luther, so at least we were able to learn more about him and to see the famous church door on which he had nailed his 95 Theses which sparked the Reformation. It was a sunny afternoon, so after a morning of Luther-study, we walked the short distance out of town to the banks of the Elbe River – the great artery which is to East Germany what the Rhine is to the West. We sat down at the edge of a field a few yards from the river, looking across to the opposite bank where there was a large and active Russian army barracks.
After a few moments we became aware of an overwhelmingly foul odour. Surprised, we got up and looked closely at the river. The water was thick and black, its surface solid with pollution of every kind imaginable, glistening multicoloured globules of oily petroleum products, lumps of industrial waste, yellowish foam, solid human effluent and domestic garbage. Following the universal instructions on fireworks – we retired immediately! Simple fact: environmental protection was a luxury East Germany could not afford, and didn't even care about.

 Could almost be a description of Detroit....

Mountain Lion Killing Pets in Idaho

From NBC News:

A southeast Boise neighborhood is on alert after a mountain lion attacked two dogs in someone's backyard, killing one. We're also learning that this isn't the first time pets have been attacked in that neighborhood in the past couple weeks.

It happened on South Horseshoe Place in southeast Boise, just below the cliffs. The neighborhood backs up to some huge power lines and undeveloped desert, which Idaho Fish and Game officials say acts like a "wildlife corridor" for foxes, mule deer, and apparently, mountain lions.

"It's definitely scary to think that this huge animal can come into your backyard. And so, you feel a little unsafe," said Loralee Bafford.

Bafford got the shock of a lifetime Tuesday morning, at about 5:30 in her own backyard. It started when she let out her two little yorkies, Buddy and Holly. "I heard this noise, it was just this little yelp. It was real quiet. There wasn't anything else. I just knew something had gotten her."

Bafford grabbed a bat and ran outside. "All of a sudden, just very quickly and quietly, an animal, a huge animal leapt up on the fence."

It then pounced on Buddy.

"It came from my neighbor's yard, and just down on my dog," said Bafford. "My little dog was laying on its back with its legs up. I just started screaming and yelling, and hitting the fence with the bat."
That eventually scared the cat away. Loralee called police, and took Buddy to the vet immediately.

 Dangerous wild animals are becoming all too comfortable living around people.

Aim Surplus Has 30-Round Magpul PMags in Stock...

... for 12.95 each.

Luxury Bomb Shelters

Photos and story, mostly featuring Atlas shelters, at the Daily Mail.

Why Bailouts Are Bad

Todd Zywicki reviews Financing Failure: A Century of Bailouts by Vern McKinley and makes the following observation:

What is a “bailout” and why are bailouts bad? McKinley argues that a “bailout” of an insolvent institution is the corruption of an arguably sound idea, going back to the Nineteenth-century British economist Walter Bagehot, that a central bank may be a useful institution to preserve the soundness of the financial system in a time of panic. But Bagehot’s core distinction was between what today would be called illiquid versus insolvent institutions. It is crucially important that the distinction be preserved—saving an improvident and mismanaged failed institution from its day of reckoning undermines incentives for prudent operation, weakens public confidence in the financial system by propping up failed institutions, provides unfair economic advantages to the disadvantage of responsible banks, risks taxpayer dollars, and typically produces larger losses in the end than would have otherwise been the case (as evidenced most strongly by the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s).

The real concern is to protect the operations of solvent institutions confronting a bank run because of loss of public confidence in the banking system and the uncertainty whether a particular bank is also insolvent. Similarly, the purpose of deposit insurance is to provide confidence that depositors will be made whole in the event of a failure, thereby relieving the ordinary depositor of the risk of leaving their deposits in a particular institution.

The role of a central bank, therefore, is not to provide capital to insolvent banks during a time of crisis, but to provide capital to solvent but illiquid banks. So—to state the glaringly obvious point widely ignored throughout the financial crisis—if Citibank is insolvent, the Federal Reserve should not lend to Citibank to prop it up. Instead, it should lend to banks other than Citibank that are solvent, but which could suffer a confidence-induced bank run if Citibank were to fail. A bailout occurs, therefore, when the Federal Reserve or Treasury provides funds to insolvent institutions, thereby propping them up, with all the negative consequences that entails. 

As McKinley demonstrates, this failure to remain focused on the central justification for government intervention in crisis periods has led to increasing numbers and cost of bailouts in each succeeding financial crisis.

Continued Attacks Against Coptic Churches in Egypt

A growing body of Christian martyrs:

The Egyptian Coptic community faces a new escalation of attacks by Islamists. On 17 May, two churches were attacked with Molotov cocktails in the district of Dakhela, west of Alexandria, Egypt, and Menpal in Upper Egypt.

In Alexandria over 20 thousand Muslims attacked the church of St. Mary setting fire to the entrance of the building and shattering windows. A man died of a heart attack in the attack. In response to the violence, hundreds of Copts left their homes to create a human wall around the building. According to witnesses some Islamists armed with pistols and knives fired on the crowd, causing some injuries.
At the origin of the clashes is a dispute between two neighbors. Basem Ramzy Michael, a Coptic Christian, is reported to have behaved inappropriately towards the sister of Alloshy Hamada, a Muslim with a criminal record. In a short time the dispute between the two erupted into a sectarian clash.

A similar incident occurred last May 13, in the village of Menbal, Matay district, north of the province of Minya, where a Muslim mob stormed the church called the Tadros el-Mashreki and assaulted one person inside. The assailants threw stones at the building, looted Christian shops nearby and burned cars. The Coptic minority has been threatened with expulsion from the village. Once again the violence was sparked by a trivial quarrel between two young people. Some young Muslims are reported to have made advances to a group of Coptic girls, as they entered the church. Irritated at having been ignored the group waited for the young Christian girls to leave the Church and threw bags filled with urine at them. The young people were rescued by some Christians peers who have started a heated argument with Muslims. As in other cases, the news spread across the village. In a short time a crowd of Islamists rallied in front of the church, forcing young people to take refuge inside.

 Full story here.

Sweden and Finland Facing Next Housing Crash?

Germany's Commerzbank warns that the property boom in Sweden and Finland are nearing their end, and their is a risk of housing prices falling.

The Failure of the Arab Spring and Other Delusions of Spreading Democracy

David Goldman discusses the catastrophe by consensus that marks our Middle-Eastern policy, headed by coalition of the delusioned that supported overthrowing Mubarak in Egypt, destroying Libya, and wants to intervene in Syria, all based on the irrational belief that, at their core, everyone is an American and free elections can fix everything. Best line:

Large portions of the Arab world have languished so long in backwardness that they are beyond repair. After the dust of the popular revolts dissipated, we are left with banana republics, but without the bananas.

Partly I blame the myth making behind the formation of America--that America rose, wholly formed, from the cruel tyranny of the British monarchy.  Those who believe that we can freely export "democracy" forget the centuries old traditions that underlay our society and government: the democracy of Athens, the Republic of Rome, Anglo-Saxon traditions, the Magna Carta, the fact that the American colonies were largely self-governed. It is no accident that the most stable democratic nations are those birthed by the British, or that other nations struggle with "democracy" because the foundations have not been properly laid.

"It Can Happen Here"

Victor Davis Hanson has some thoughts on the bevy of scandals plaguing the Administration and what it means, including some discussion of how the Administration has abandoned the rule of law in favor of political correctness. He concludes:

Government has become a sort of malignant metasisizing tumor, growing on its own, parasitical on healthy cells, always searching for new sources of nourishment, its purpose nothing other than growing bigger and faster and more powerful—until the exhausted host collapses. We have a sunshine king and our government has become a sort of virtual Versailles palace. 

I suppose that when a presidential candidate urges his supporters to get in someone’s face, and to take a gun to a knife fight, from now on you better believe him.

Santa Muerte Declared Blasphemous

The Telegraph reports:

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi says worshipping such an icon is a degeneration of religion.
"It's not religion just because it's dressed up like religion; it's a blasphemy against religion", Cardinal Ravasi said.
The Santa Muerte is a skeletal figure of a cloaked woman with a scythe in her bony hand. It is worshipped both by drug dealers in Mexico and by the terrified people who live in drug-torn neighbourhoods.

In his book, El Narco--Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, Ioan Grillo devotes an entire chapter to discussing the strange interaction and mingling of faith and the drug war. For instance, he writes:

The most virulent expression of narco religion is by La Familia Cartel in Michoacan. La Familia indoctrinates its followers in its own version of evangelical Christianity mixed with some peasant rebel politics. The gang's spiratual leader, Nazario Moreno, "El Mas Loco," or the Maddest One, actually wrote his own bible, which is compulsory reading for the troops. ...

But La Familia is only the most defined voice in a chorus of narco religion that has been rising in volume for decades. Other tones of the choir include some morphed rituals of Caribean Santeria, the folk saint Jesus Malverde, and the wildly popular Santa Muerte, or Holy Death.

Grillo is careful to note that not all believers of these cults are narcos, but that "gangsters definitely feel at home in these new sects and exert a powerful influence on them.... Kingpins now fight for souls as well as turf."

Writing about Santa Muerte, Grillo says:

Her rise in popularity has been meteoric. Within a decade, Santa Muerte shot from an obscure symbol only a few people had seen to being in almost every city and neighborhood in Mexico, across Mexican communities in the United States, down in South America, and as far away as Spain and Australia. But the heart of her faith is in Tepito, in the center of Mexico City.

One Santa Muerte religious leader, David Romo, claims 2 million faithful, and to be  setting up affiliated churches throughout Mexico and the United States.

“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee..."

David Goldman makes some interesting observations between the health of Christianity and support for Israel:

Ethnocentrism is the snake in Christianity’s garden, and last week it slithered into the Church of Scotland. It took the form of a screed denying the special claim of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. 

By no coincidence, the most successful Christian communities embrace the State of Israel, while the least successful ones abhor it. Almost four-fifths of Americans identify themselves as Christians, for example and two out of five worship every week. Less than two-fifths of Britons say they believe in God, by contrast, and only one out of eight attends weekly services. More than half of Britons never go to church, against only 18% of Americans. 

This division is mirrored in attitudes towards the State of Israel. By a margin of nearly five to one, Americans say their sympathies are more with Israel than with the Palestinians, and the proportion is at an all-time high. Britons view Israel negatively by a margin of 65 to 17, and the numbers are similar across the European continent, according to a BBC poll. 

We observe eruptions of unabashed Jew-hatred in the European nations most likely to become extinct, notably in Hungary, where the ethnic Hungarian total fertility rate is just 0.83 per female, barely a third of the replacement rate. The third-largest party in the Hungarian parliament, Jobbik, wants to list all Jewish officials of Jewish origin as a national security risk and blames the country’s economic problems on a “Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy”. The party demonstrated on May 5 in Budapest to denounce the World Jewish Congress, which held its annual meeting in the Hungarian capital. 

Hungary’s demographic disaster and Jobbik’s Jew-hatred are extreme cases, to be sure, but existentially challenged nationalities elsewhere in Europe evince a special animus against Jews and the Jewish State. Last week the Church of Scotland issued a report rejecting the notion that the Jewish people had any special claim on the Land of Israel, excoriating Zionism in general and the actions of past and present Israeli governments. 

Both the Church of Scotland, the bearer of the Scots Calvinist tradition, and the country itself are a shadow of their former selves. The number of births per year has fallen by half since 1950 (and the number of births to married couples has fallen by four-fifths). 

The Church of Scotland is shrinking; it had just 446,000 members in 2010, down from 1,319,000 in 1956. Its numbers shrunk by a quarter between 2001 and 2010, and are now shrinking even faster, by about 5% a year. At this rate its membership will fall by three-quarters in a generation.

Homemade Soap Helps

My wife has been experimenting with homemade soaps and lotions recently. One of the web-sites she has found that has given her a lot of ideas and help is Humblebee & Me.

Christianity Declining in Britain At Faster Rate

From the Telegraph:

[The UK's Office of National Statistics] disclosed that there were in fact 5.3 million fewer British-born people describing themselves as Christians, a decline of 15 per cent in just a decade. 

At the same time the number of Muslims in England and Wales surged by 75 per cent – boosted by almost 600,000 more foreign born followers of the Islamic faith. 

While almost half of British Muslims are under the age of 25, almost a quarter of Christians are over 65. 

The average age of a British Muslim is just 25, not far off half that of a British Christian.
Younger people also drove a shift away from religion altogether, with 6.4 million more people describing themselves as having no faith than 10 years earlier. 

... Dr Fraser Watts, a Cambridge theologian, said it was “entirely possible” the people identifying themselves as Christians could become a minority within the next decade on the basis of the figures. 

“It is still pretty striking and it is a worrying trend and confirms what anyone can observe - that in many churches the majority of the congregation are over 60,” he said. 

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said the long-term reduction of Christianity, particularly among young people, was now “unstoppable”. 

“In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” he said.

The problem is that Christians are an open target for both official and unofficial discrimination. At some point, British Christians will either have to flee the country or abandon their faith.

Taking a Break...

Sorry about this, but because of some projects at work, I'm probably not going to be able to post anything for the next 2 or 3 days. I'm hoping to be back to posting by Thursday.

Peak Oil Update--U.S. Production Overtaking Imports

U.S. oil production is expected to have surpassed imports in March.

The amount of oil produced in the U.S., now at a 21 year high, is nearly even with the amount being imported, and the gap is narrowing.

... Andrew Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates expects the government data to show that U.S. production actually surpassed imports in March, when it releases its final March data at the end of the month.

The bottle-neck is distribution--that is, insufficient pipelines to transport the oil to refineries.

Argentina's Rediscovered Ghost Town

The Daily Mail has a new set of photos and story of modern ruins--this time, the small town of Epicuen, Argentina. Epicuen was flooded and submerged in 1985 after heavy rain caused a salt lagoon to overwhelm retaining walls. Although the story is not clear as to when the water receded, it gives the impression that it was only in the last several years.

TTAK Review of the CRKT Otanashi Noh Ken Tactical Folder

Full review (with video) here. Short description: "This big tactical folder has a 4.5″ clip point blade of AUS8 steel and grips of black stainless and textured G10."

Israel Steps Up Air War

From the Daily Mail:

Israeli military jets have bombed a military facility in the Syrian capital of Damascus, a U.S. official confirmed to NBC News. 

Syrian TV had reported that explosions shook the city early on Sunday, saying Israel had struck the facility on the outskirts of the capital. 

Footage and photographs shared on social media, reportedly of an explosion near the Jamraya military research facility, shows flames shooting into the sky after an attack.
The blasts occurred a day after an Israeli official said his country had carried out an air strike targeting a consignment of missiles in Syria. The research center hit on Sunday was also targeted by Israel in January. 

The Israel Defense Forces declined to comment on the report of the Sunday attack.
'We don't respond to this kind of report,' an Israeli military spokeswoman told Reuters.
'The new Israeli attack is an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups which have been reeling from strikes by our noble army,' Syrian television said, referring to recent offensives by President Bashar al-Assad's forces against rebels. 

The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment and the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined comment. 

A Syrian activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported large explosions in the area of the Jamraya research center early Sunday.
If confirmed, Sunday's strike would mark the third Israeli attack inside Syria this year. Israel has said it will not allow sophisticated weapons to flow from Syria to the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, an ally of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. 

On Saturday, Israeli officials confirmed that a day earlier Israeli aircraft targeted a weapons shipment apparently bound for Hezbollah.

Basics of Composting

I subject I was thinking about as I cleared weeds and roots out of old raised garden beds, and set up a new garden bed. Backwoods Magazine has a story the covers the basics of composting:

It's the action of those unthanked microbes that are responsible for successful composting. Microbes break down larger things — banana peels, cow manure, ageing lettuce — while digesting them. This digestion process results in the release of elements in a form that plants can use. That's why rot is such a critical component of the natural cycle. Animal and vegetable materials all contain critical nutrients, but not in a form usable to plants. But if the material is decomposed and mixed with soil, then the nutrients are released into a form plants can use.

But microbes can't work in a vacuum. They need certain conditions in order to survive and do their job. Specifically they need four things: 

• Energy (in the form of carbon). Microbial carbon is supplied through whatever dry, bulky vegetative waste you have on hand: leaves, straw, cornstalks, even sawdust. 

• Protein (in the form of nitrogen). Nitrogen (sometimes called an Activator) is what stimulates the microbes, and is found in grass clippings, green vegetation, and such additives as kelp meal or blood meal. (Microbes need much less nitrogen than they do carbon, so don't overdo the protein.) 

• Oxygen. Oxygen merely means that microbes must operate in an aerobic (as opposed to an airless anaerobic) environment. Occasionally turning your compost pile provides this; alternately, the actions of worms and other soil dwellers help aerate the compost as well, though it will take longer. 

• Moisture. Moisture is necessary for rot to happen. In fact, reducing moisture (dehydration) is an ancient form of food preservation, since microbial action requires some moisture in order to work. But too much moisture — a waterlogged compost pile — will slow down microbial action as well, since it contributes to an anaerobic environment. That's why adequate drainage is necessary for compost piles.

The author goes on to explain:

 Ideally, a compost pile consists of a ratio of two parts vegetable matter (leaves, grass, straw) to one part animal matter (manure). The ratio of carbon to nitrogen should be about 30:1, meaning you should have 30 times more dry bulky vegetative waste than nitrogen-rich sources such as grass clippings or sea kelp. 

Materials should be mixed rather than thickly layered; or at least layered thinly. If you pour several cubic yards of grass clippings onto your compost pile, for example, it's likely to compress into a stinky anaerobic sludge. However if you first dry the clippings (or take the green clippings and mix them thoroughly with leaves) before adding them to the compost pile, the materials will break down more efficiently and with less smell. Avoid grass clippings or other materials that have been heavily sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. 

Leaves are particularly useful. Here in north Idaho we're surrounded by almost pure conifers; but for those lucky souls who live in deciduous areas, leaves are one of your greatest assets. Left alone, leaves compost very slowly; but decomposed leaves are one of the best possible natural composts. The richness of eastern gardens grown in "humus" illustrates this. 

So rather than complain about the massive volume of leaves you have to rake each fall, instead layer those leaves into your compost pile and wait for the goodness to come forth. If possible, chop or shred the leaves first. This will reduce matting and speed up the decomposition. Mix the chopped leaves with other stuff and the leaves will decompose about four times faster than if they were simply piled and left alone.

Review of the CRKT M16-12ZER Folding Knife

Long time readers may remember that about 1-1/2 years ago, I lost my EDC knife, which at that time was a Benchmade AFCK knife. I fell back on using a couple older knives, while I tried to find something comparable to the AFCK, which was a slim design, yet still carried a blade nearly 4" in length. I finally had to concede defeat, however. The models I could find and look at that had a 4" blade were all very bulky.

So, a little over a year ago, I finally bit the bullet and purchased the CRKT M16 folder. I purchased mine at REI, but since I couldn't find it at their website, here is a link to one at the Amazon Website, together with a photo from the same website:

Features:

The specific model is the M16-12ZER. As you can see, it has a combo edge (partially serrated and partially straight), which in my opinion is the best for an EDC knife. The blade is 3" and made of  AUS-4 stainless, which has done a good job of keeping an edge. The grind shape is a hollow grind. Total weight is listed at 2.4 ounces. Closed, the length of the knife is about 4-1/2 inches, while open it is 7.25 inches. The blade has a tanto-style point. The handle is, in this case, orange colored Zytel, although other colors are available for the M16 line. It has a steel liner on both sides.

It uses a liner lock mechanism, with good lockup, meaning that the liner fully engages behind the blade. It has a "Carson flipper," which acts as a finger guard when open, and the AutoLAWKs feature which locks the liner lock open to prevent accidentally disengaging the liner lock while in use. I've never had an issue with this on well-made liner lock mechanisms, but I understand it is a concern for some people. It does require you to push the liner over and, at the same time, pull the AutoLAWK lever back in order to close the blade, but after a few practice tries, I got use to the system, and found it doesn't slow you down at all--if you are using the knife right-handed. To close it (again, assuming you are using your right hand), you hold it with you thumb over the liner lock and your pointer-finger over the AutoLAWK lever. Pull the AutoLAWK lever back with your finger, and then push the liner to the left with your thumb. With practice, it becomes one movement.

Opening merely requires the use of the thumb stud. You could also use the Carson flipper to open the blade, but doesn't provide enough leverage for me to get the knife to open all the way or do so solidly. It may just take some practice, but I'm happy to just use the thumb stud.

The knife comes with a steel pocket clip, which is on the opposite side from that shown in the photo.

The large black "dot" on the blade pivot in the photo is the pivot screw which is easily adjustable for tension.

Experience: What I want out of an EDC knife is comfortable carry, easy access, can be used for a variety of common cutting or slicing chores, yet can be deployed quickly and easily using one hand, and could, in a bind, serve as a defensive weapon or survival knife.

After using the M-16 for a little over a year, here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

1.  I sort of like the orange color. I went with orange because my prior knife had been lost on a hunting trip, and part of me believes that if it had been a bright color, I might have been able to find it.

2. I still prefer the thumb holes from Sypderco and a few others which used them under license. However, the thumb stud on this knife is great, giving it easy access. Similarly, the locking mechanism make the knife very secure it is open position.With just a little practice, you can get so you don't even have to think about disengaging the AutoLAWK.

3.  I don't like the shape of the handle. It is too small, and too straight, to provide a good grip. It makes the knife easier to carry I suppose, but I would have gladly paid a bit more to have a slightly larger handle that was more ergonomic.

4. The quality of the knife is good. The blade steel is excellent and the grinding appears to have been done well. Assembly work was very nice.The blade was very sharp.

5. I thought the blade was little short at 3", and would have liked to see it be 3.5 or 4 inches long.The extra length doesn't seem like much, but it makes it much nicer to cut rope, cut a slice of pizza, on intimidate someone with a longer knife blade.

6. Tanto points really suck. I haven't had to sharpen it yet, but I can already foresee issues in having to stop and readjust the knife to sharpen two independent edges. I'm sure that the design makes sense on larger knives where you may have to drive it into thick heavy material. However, I need it to cut upon packaging, including zip-ties, and its a lot harder to slip a useful amount of a tanto blade under a string, edge of a blister pack, or under a zip-tie, than a regular pointed knife. Maybe it looks cool, and it is better for cutting shapes our of paper, but , overall, the tanto blade design is more difficult to work with for most everyday tasks.

Pentagon May Court Martial Those Who Proselytize

Breitbart reports that the Department of Defense has released a statement indicating it could prosecute service members that proselytize. The problem, as with many other vaguely worded criminal issues, is the general creeping expansion of definitions. A perfect example is the concept of "deadly weapon" under Federal law which has expanded from being limited to using an item intended to be a weapon and deadly, to practically anything that could draw blood, including fingernails and keys.

Definitions are the issue here as well:

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion. 

In response to the Pentagon’s plans, retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), said on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning: 

It’s a matter of what do they mean by "proselytizing." ...I think they’ve got their defintions a little confused. If you’re talking about coercion that’s one thing, but if you’re talking about the free exercise of our faith as individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, especially for the chaplains, they I think the worst thing we can do is stop the ability for a soldier to be able to exercise his faith.”

Cleaning Up After Corrosive Ammo

Corrosive ammo (generally limited to corrosive primers) is the bane of anyone that shoots military surplus ammo, whether it be old G.I. surplus, or some of the ammo from the former communist bloc. (The reason that the Russians stuck with corrosive primers for so long is that they are more reliable in cold conditions).

In a recent comment to my posting about an extraction issue with my AK 74, a reader noted:

The most important thing to use on your AK74 for cleaning is sudsy ammonia. Ammonia will instantly counter-act the salts from the corrosive Berdan primers. 

I use "Fantastic" which I pick up in bulk at Costco, but the cheaper stuff that you get at Walmart is just as good.

Spray the ammonia cleaner down the barrel, the gas tube, and the muzzle device. Scrub what you can with a plastic bristled, tooth brush, and use the rifle bore brush to scrub the barrel. Then rinse with lots of hot water.

Pay special attention to the bolt, bolt carrier and chamber. The ammonia cleaner will also take off any built up lacquer from the casings.

In a grid down situation, where ammonia is not to be found, you could use urine to counter-act the corrosive primer salts.