April 30, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

• "Iraqi protesters pour into Green Zone, storm parliament"--Los Angeles Times. The protesters were Shia (the majority Muslim sect in Iraq ... and Iran), allegedly protesting government corruption resulting from patronage. A couple points. First, in a tribal society, patronage (and its attendant corruption) is a given because of the duties and obligations owed in such societies to members of one's own tribe. (I don't necessarily agree that a professional civil service is better; in many ways, I think it is worse, because such systems are completely unaccountable to the electorate). Second, this appears, in many ways, to be a direct challenge to the government system designed by the Bush administration for Iraq (I merely note this because it is a challenge to the American order, not because I think the political system established by the Bush administration was workable or even advisable). 

This could turn much worse. From the article:

Iraqi security forces initially responded by tightening security across the capital, sealing off checkpoints leading to the Green Zone and halting traffic on main roads heading into the city, according to the Baghdad Operations Command.

But Iraq's elite counter-terrorism forces, who have in the past been called on to reinforce security in the capital, said they are standing down for now.

"We still view this as a demonstration," said Sabah Numan, spokesman for the counter-terrorism forces. "We aren't taking any part in this as it's not something regarding terrorism."

He added, however, that if the unrest escalates his forces may be forced to intervene to "protect the legitimacy of the government."

"The legitimacy of the government"--a term that should be familiar to those who have followed any of the writings on 4th Generation Warfare. It can be ephemeral in the age of You Tube and Twitter.

• More here: "Storming of the barricades: Hundreds of Shia protesters invade Baghdad's Green Zone, tearing down the blast walls and breaking into Iraq's parliament"--Daily Mail.

• "Latino activists vow more Trump protests as tensions heighten"--Los Angeles Times. Because riots and waving Mexican flags merely underscores the need for a wall. 

• Related: Ed Driscoll notes the connection between the Latino anti-Trump protesters/rioters and ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism)--an umbrella organization for anti-war and so-called civil rights organizations that has been described as an front organization for the Workers World Party. Essentially, they appear to be one of the various leftist organizations that fill the same purpose as the Nazi brown shirts. Of course, to intimidate voters, you need to make sure that voters feel defenseless. Thus, we see the left's continued push to restrict access to firearms and ammunition.  

• "Venezuelans Face a New Threat – a Beer Shortage"--Bloomberg. "Empresas Polar SA, the country’s largest privately-held company and biggest brewer, said Wednesday that it will be forced to stop producing beer because it can’t get the foreign currency it needs to purchase malted barley." Stratfor has a short article outlining some of the principle political players in Venezuela. 
• "Police arrest 400 left wing protesters after violent clashes erupt with the far-right in Germany as demonstrators burn tires and throw fireworks and flares"--Daily Mail. As we see elsewhere, it is the leftists that are violent in their quest to enforce conforming political opinions.
• "House defense policy bill would require women to register for draft"--Fox News. I'll probably get flak on this, but, given the current political and social state of the nation, I believe that requiring women to register for the draft is appropriate. The reason women have not been used for military service in the past comes down to two basic facts (both biological): (1) women are not as physically capable at fighting as are men (lower strength, less endurance, smaller bone structure, etc.); and (2) females are more valuable than men from the perspective of a species' reproductive strategy (crudely speaking, sperm is cheap, but eggs are expensive). However, neither of these are any longer factors. First, we now live under a legal and social fiction of physical gender equality where it is verboten to acknowledge that women are less physically capable than men. Second, given the low fecundity rates in the United States, women (speaking generally) are failing at their reproductive role. Thus, there is no reason to not draft women. 
• The natives are getting restless: "Fire ravages Muslim prayer hall in Corsica"--AFP. The article indicates that government officials believe it to be arson. The article also mentions that the area was the scene of anti-Muslim protests around Christmas. 
• "Americans haven’t gotten a raise in 16 years"--New York Post. The author writes:

This sort of statistical noise has been going on for years, mostly because the Great Recession threw off normal adjustments. And this will continue to happen. US economic data today is untrustworthy. Even worse, it is causing the Federal Reserve and others to make bad decisions.

This unpredictable, inaccurate data is causing politicians and others to incorrectly understand the mood of the nation.

Americans are angry because they don’t care about the statistical noise — they care about what they see with their own eyes.

True, there may have been 15 million new jobs created during the Obama administration — which, on the surface, is laudable. But that’s about half what was needed to both absorb newcomers to the workforce and those who were laid off over the past decade and would like to return.

And that drop in the unemployment rate that everyone likes to point to? Even the Fed doesn’t trust it and has formulated its own replacement gauge.

Here’s why: When you count all the workers who have been stuck with part-time employment or who haven’t searched for work in a year, the jobless rate is twice the official 5% level. And many of the full-time jobs created have been in the lower-paying service sector of the economy.

When you include those people who haven’t sought a job in more than a year, the unemployment rate jumps much higher.

How high? Washington doesn’t even bother trying to calculate what it is.

One last statistic, from Sentier Research. Median annual household income in the US reached $57,263 this past March, which was 4.5% higher than in March 2015.

But — and here’s where the anger comes in — this March’s figure is still slightly below the $57,342 median annual income in January 2000.

January 2000!

Americans haven’t gotten a raise in more than 16 years.

Another Glock Gadget Update

A new update from the Gadget Indiegogo page doesn't have any new information as to a deliver timeline, but does have a reminder to update your shipping address, if necessary. The link for updating your shipping address is here.

April 29, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Anti-Trump Protesters Faced Off Against Police Yesterday (Source: Daily Mail).

News and Opinion:

• "Protesters clash with cops at California Trump rally: Hundreds of Mexican flag-waving demonstrators smash up a squad car, punch a Donald supporter and scuffle with riot police amid angry scenes"--Daily Mail.
• "Protests rage outside Trump rally in Orange County; 17 arrested, police car smashed"--LA Times. From the story:

Holding a Mexican flag, Juan Carlos, 16, said his parents came to the U.S. from Mexico and that he was protesting to support others like him.

"Donald Trump is worthless," Carlos said. "There won't be no United States without Mexicans."

• "Consistent Surge of People Crossing Illegally"--KRGV-TV.
• "Unmasking the Men Behind Zero Hedge, Wall Street's Renegade Blog"--Bloomberg.
• "The Full Story Behind Bloomberg's Attempt To 'Unmask' Zero Hedge"--Zero Hedge.
• "Why Cruz Lost – Inferior Combativeness"--Anonymous Conservative. "One, Trump fought our enemies and Cruz didn’t." "The second reason Cruz lost was that when Donald’s rally was shut down because of leftist violence, Cruz took the side of the leftists and attacked Donald."

Self-Defense/Firearms:

• Active Response Training's "Weekend Knowledge Dump" for this week. Lots of good articles, of course, but one stuck out in particular to me: "10 Tips to Properly Conceal Carry when wearing a Men’s Suit, Blazer, or Sport Jacket"--A Tailored Suit. These are modifications to a suit coat or blazer to make it easier to conceal and draw a concealed weapon, or modifications to how you dress. 
• "Effectiveness of Old Firearms - III"--Firearms History, Technology & Development. This is part 3 of a series comparing the effectiveness of antique, black-powder firearms versus modern firearms. This particular article discusses penetration against various materials. From the article:

As the chart shows, the pistols, whether modern or ancient, all have similar penetrative properties at 30 meter range. Although the modern Glock had the best penetration on both steel and wooden targets, it didn't outperform the ancient pistols by that much in the penetration tests. On the other hand, it has a much longer range than the other pistols (and even the ancient muskets). This is because the tapering bullet does not lose velocity as quickly as a spherical ball does. 

On the other hand, the modern rifles simply outperformed the ancient muskets by a large margin in the penetrative tests, as well as the maximum range test. The AUG firing the NATO 5.56x45 cartridge penetrated about 2x to 3x the depth of the ancient muskets and the FAL firing the NATO 7.62x51 cartridge penetrated about 3x to 5x the depth of the ancient muskets. The maximum range of the modern rifles also far outperformed the ancient muskets.

However, there are other interesting results that became apparent by this series of tests.

Since the ancient weapons all fire larger spherical balls, (the calibers are listed in our previous post) they left larger volumes of wound cavities at shorter ranges. This is because, at close distances, the spherical balls were moving fast enough to do some serious damage. For instance, the flintlock musket that was made in Suhl in 1686, fires a 17.8 mm. diameter ball weighing 30.93 grams and at 9 meter distance (about 30 feet), it left a cavity of 530 cm3. Similarly, the flintlock musket from Austria that was made in the second half of the 18th century, fires a 16.4 mm. diameter ball weighing 26.73 grams and left a cavity of approximately 369 cm3 at a distance of 9 meters.

By contrast, modern weapons fire much smaller tapered bullets, which generally do less damage. At the same 9 meter distance, a modern Steyr AUG rifle firing a 5.56x45 mm. cartridge only left a cavity of 101 cm3.

On the other hand, as the distance increased, the tests showed that the wound cavity made by spherical balls decreased much more significantly. The same musket that made a 369 cm3 cavity at a distance of 9 meters, made a 155 cm3 cavity at 100 meters distance. In contrast to this, the Steyr AUG rifle which made a a cavity of 101 cm3 at 9 meters range, left a cavity of 70 cm3 at 100 meter range. This means that the modern rifle only lost approximately 30% of its penetrative powers at this distance, whereas the older weapon lost about 60%. Still, the older weapon left a much larger cavity, even at 100 meters distance. This explains the extremely horrific wounds experienced by soldiers in the 16th to 18th centuries.

Additionally, the tests showed that the shapes of the wound cavities are also different. Spherical musket balls leave trumpet-shaped wounds. They are widest at the point of entry and taper steadily down in diameter as the ball slows down and loses energy. By contrast, modern bullets leave cavities of a completely different shape: ...

Read the whole thing.

• "How Stiff is Stiff Enough for a CCW Belt?"--Jerking the Trigger.
• "Rifle Mags Measured In 'Footpounds'"--Mason Dixon Tactical. A comparison of weight between loaded polymer and steel magazines. The author writes: 

Well, for something like the M1A, it means if you go with polymer, you can carry two extra 20 round mags (since the steel mags weigh 1.5 pounds, and the total polymer weight of the basic load is 3 pounds lighter), or 80 extra loose 7.62 Nato rounds. For the AKM rifle, you can carry one extra 30 round mag (since the steel mag “Basic load” total was two pounds heavier, and the polymer mags weigh 1 1/3lbs.) or 80 extra loose 7.62x39S rounds.

The Demographic Decline Continues

The Huffington Post reports:

The national teen birth rate has fallen to a record low, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  

From 2006 to 2014, the teen birth rate declined 41 percent. In 2014, there were 24.2 births for every 1,000 adolescent females — the lowest rate ever recorded. 

Either the Huff Po reporter didn't read the CDC news release, or is not aware of the meaning of "adolescent." From the CDC's statement:

In the new report, CDC researchers analyzed national- and state-level data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to examine trends in births to American teens ages 15 to 19 years between 2006 and 2014. County-level NVSS data for 2013 and 2014 also offer a point-in-time picture of local birth rates. To better understand the relationship between key social and economic factors and teen birth rates, researchers examined data from the American Community Survey between 2010 and 2014. 

(Underline added). Unfortunately, the CDC statement didn't give a further breakdown of the ages, so we don't know what percentage of the decline was from adults (i.e., the 18 and 19 age bracket), or from the lower age brackets. However, since more and more women are delaying marriage and having children, I would expect that the decline is probably concentrated in the 18 and 19 year old age bracket.

Related: "Latino, black teen birth rates fall to all-time low – though still twice the rate of whites"--Fox News.

Video: "What It's Really Like to Fight for the Islamic State"--Vice News.

This video is freaking hilarious:

April 28, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Abandoned Synagogue (Source: Daily Mail). 

Self-Defense/Firearms:

• "Triggering a Lockdown"--Active Response Training. Thoughts on when school lock downs can be effective, and the best method for announcing a lock down to students and staff. Basically, the author notes that to be effective, locking doors to class rooms must actually provide protection to the children and staff, and that there should be a means of escape. The author also suggests that rather than using code words or phrases to announce lock downs (or the types), announcements should include concise but clear descriptions of the type of lock down, the reason for the lock down, and any instructions. This is a just a brief overview of a couple points--read the whole thing.
• "Difference Between Rifle and Handgun Red Dot Systems"--Suarez International. Tips on quickly acquiring the dot when using a pistol (hint: use the iron sights as an assist).
• "Pistol Optics: The Trouble with the Dot"--Breach Bang Clear. Discussing issues with picking up the dot when using a red dot sight with a handgun, and some tips to make it easier and quicker. The take away I get from these two articles is that the red dot is best used to augment your iron sights, not replace. Use the iron sights (or some other fixture on your hand gun) to get your eye roughly in position, then use the dot for fine tuning.
• "4 Effective Ground Submissions That Every Man Should Know"--The Return of Kings. 4 ways of ending the ground fight. 
• "Concealed Carry With A Tucked In Shirt."--Alien Gear Holsters Blog.  
• "Self-Defense Myths That Just Won’t Die: 11 Experts Weigh-In"--Lucky Gunner.

Other Stuff:

• "Venezuela Declares 5-Day Weekends Due to Electricity Shortage"--PJ Media. The government cuts the work week for its workers, figuring its better for them to wait out the blackouts at home than in a government office building. From the article:

This is socialism at its best: trying to share scarcity and failing miserably. The country is close to a total implosion because the huge Guri Dam that supplies 60% of electricity for the country is barely operating due to the El Nino-caused drought. Venezuela is sitting on an ocean of oil but long ago decided to invest in hydroelectric power instead.

But lack of maintenance of its infrastructure and the drought have combined to produce a critical situation that may actually plunge the country into darkness in a few weeks unless the rains come.

• "The Surprising Weakness of Invincible Institutions"--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. Eventually, even the largest, most powerful institutions, run out of other people's money. Although he begins with the public pension mess, he moves on to address the issue more generally, including a reference to Venezuela:

Venezuela is a country floating on oil with a climate where anything grows and yet it is doomed. Yet even that agony has been eclipsed by the crisis in Brazil, where a presidential impeachment is in progress. "Founded by Portuguese monarchs who moved their court to Rio de Janeiro in 1808, Brazil has experienced almost every conceivable sort of rule over the past two centuries. Its leaders have run the gamut from emperors and dictators to democrats and former Marxists. Regardless of their politics, however, almost all of them have shared a commitment to the Leviathan state as the engine of progress."

“The problem is, from time immemorial, Brazil’s political leaders only see one way forward, the growth of the state,” said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former leftist intellectual.  The European Union saw the march of progress through the prism of institutional expansion also. And they too are running out of money.  Recently the EU told Palestine that its stipend will wind down though Brussels expressed the hope that Israel would pick up the slack.

He goes on to explain why nation after nation repeatedly falls into this same trap:

When Barack Obama recently endorsed Angela Merkel's proposal to admit more refugees into Europe he justified it with a curiously Marxist phrase. "She's on the right side of history on this," Obama said.  Perhaps the key to understanding why leaders repeat the same mistakes lies in Obama's remark.   Leaders live within their own mythical histories and climb hierarchies within them.  The phrase "I have had a dream," was uttered long before Martin Luther King -- by King  Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible.

“I have had a dream that troubles me and I want to know what it means,”  said Nebuchadnezzar and he sent far and wide for someone to explain things.  It comforted him greatly when Daniel told him the dream meant he had a place, albeit a transient one, in cosmic history.

Read the whole thing.

• "Mexican Liberation Flag Flown Over San Diego Public Park"--Independent Sentinel. 

There are numbers of immigrants, many here illegally, who have no interest in assimilating. Their interest is taking over.

At Chicano Park Day, flags are raised for the mestizo race (La Raza) and for Aztlán, the part of the U.S. claimed for the Chicano (Mexican) people.

Chicano-ism is a neo-Aztec, pagan, Mexican nationalist, brown-supremacist movement. It is a cultic mixture of Marxism and ethnic nationalism.

Chicano Park is on State land, maintained by San Diego.

• "Trump's Foreign Policy Address: Not Bad"--The Diplomad.

The Ongoing Decline of the West--University of Washington Edition (Updated)

The Daily Mail reports today, "Flattering eye shadow - but no tattoos: Outrage at University of Washington's checklist for budding cheerleaders that 'objectifies women'." The outrage is over a poster published by the cheer-leading squad to provide tips on personal appearance for women interested in trying out as a cheerleader:

The poster that offended the ugly racist snowflakes at UW (Source: Daily Mail).

Apparently the Social Justice Warriors would prefer that cheerleaders look like what is shown below (warning: you may want to poke out your eyes after viewing):

Jabba the Hutt Feminist protesting a conservative speaker (Source: Instapundit)

Update: Apparently the people upset by the poster are racists; the "problem" is that the poster featured a white woman. From The Huffington Post:

“I can’t believe this is real,” UW student Jazmine Perez, who is director of programming for student government, told the Seattle Times. “One of the first things that comes mind is objectification and idealization of Western beauty, which are values I would like to believe the University doesn’t want to perpetuate. As a student of color who looks nothing [ed: a lot] like the student in the poster, this feels very exclusive.”

Poor, whiny rich girl: cheer squad is supposed to be exclusive. Otherwise, we would have people like Feminist the Hutt, pictured above, jumping up and down on the football field (well, a few times before they were exhausted and collapsed to the ground) and yelling expletives at everyone.

Video: "The #1 Risk to Earth"--SuspiciousObservers

SuspiciousObservers publishes daily reports on space weather. The author of the reports, Ben Davidson, believes that solar storms can affect storms or cause earthquakes on Earth. (FYI: The USGS indicates that solar activity has no impact on earthquakes). But mostly his reports pertain to whether there are any solar flares or coronal mass ejections that might impact radio, electronics, or the power grid.

The video linked to below--The #1 Risk to Earth--discusses the danger of a significant solar storm, such as the Carrington Event, and the interplay between the strength of the earth's magnetic field and its ability to protect the earth from these solar storms. Davidson also discusses the shift in the magnetic poles, overall weakening of the earth's magnetic field, and the result that, because our "shields" are down, smaller storms may have a disproportionate impact. The video is 21 minutes long, but worth your time.

April 26, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

News Items:

• "Cartels Help Terrorists in Mexico Get to U.S. to Explore Targets; ISIS Militant Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir Among Them"--Judicial Watch. From the article:

Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks, according to information forwarded to Judicial Watch by a high-ranking Homeland Security official in a border state. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided by JW’s government source.

Now Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by JW’s source reveals. Staking out U.S. targets is not difficult and Khabir actually brags in an Italian newspaper article published last week that the border region is so open that he “could get in with a handful of men, and kill thousands of people in Texas or in Arizona in the space of a few hours.” Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz, Mexico’s top diplomat, says in the article that she doesn’t understand why the Obama administration and the U.S. media are “culpably neglecting this phenomenon,” adding that “this new wave of fundamentalism could have nasty surprises in store for the United States.”

• "Shocked police reveal blood, urine, faeces and semen smeared over surfaces in asylum centre which is now a cockroach-infested slum since it was used for migrant housing in Germany"--Daily Mail. Basic story is that a group of police, called up to provide extra security for Obama's visit, were told to use a recently emptied immigrant shelter for their quarters. What they discovered was that it was unusable because the immigrants had pissed, shat, vomited, and who-knows-what-else, on the floors, bedding, etc. 
• "'We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses and enslave your women by the permission of Allah': Christian Church website gets hacked by ISIS"--Daily Mail. They keep saying it, but our leaders do not believe them.
• "The Chernobyl Conundrum: Is Radiation As Bad As We Thought?"--Der Speigel. Low levels of radiation apparently is not detrimental, and may actually be beneficial to people that suffer from chronic inflammation. 

Survival/Prepping:

• "Firewatch"--Wilderness Survival Skills. The author writes:

Unless you've built a Teepee, it's usually impossible to build a fire inside your shelter. Ring your campfire with grapefruit sized rocks. You can't take the fire into your shelter with you, but you can wrap hot rocks in spare clothing and use them inside your shelter or bedroll like hot water bottles. You can also bury 3 or 4 of them directly under your bedroll to heat the ground. That gives you several hours of continuous heat and a good night's sleep. Exchange them for hot ones as they cool off. Be cautious not to use rocks from stream beds or lakes. Those are waterlogged and can explode if you heat them, sending sharp rock shards flying thru your campsite like shrapnel. ...

• "Armageddon Wok"--Neo Survivalist. Using a small vertical log fire with a cast iron wok for cooking.
• "Is a Russian SF AK really an AK?"--John 1911. A look at the modifications that Russian special forces make to their AKs, and which you might want to consider.
• "How To Quickly Force Open a Padlock Using a Pair of Nut Wrenches"--Laughing Squid (h/t Breck Ellison on Pinterest). Video at the link. I have an old padlock to which I've lost the key that I may try this on--so far, it has resisted my bolt cutters, and I haven't bothered to try and cut it with a saw.
• "Radiation Doses for Dummies"--Blue Collar Prepping. Another in their "Radiation for Dummies" series, this time discussing the acute versus chronic exposure, and the impact of shielding and distance.
• "How to Make a River Cane Fish Trap"--Survival Sherpa. You've probably seen a basic illustration and, perhaps, bare bones instructions on these before. Basically, you have a larger cone made of canes, and a smaller funnel set within the opening of the large cone. The fish swim through the funnel into the larger body of the trap, but, because of the narrow opening on the funnel, can't find their way out. The author has not only detailed written instructions and photographs, but also includes an instructional video. 
• "An $89 backup generator"--Backwoods Home Magazine. The author writes:

While a generator rated at 1000 watts or less may not be able to power your toaster, coffee pot, or microwave oven, they can keep a residential refrigerator operating by running about two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening (while also powering your television, radio, a few LED lights, and perhaps recharging a few battery-powered devices) with only one gallon of gas per day. The larger contractor and whole-house generators may have the capacity to power all of your electrical loads, but this is little comfort if your fuel supply only lasts a few days. At a one-gallon consumption per day, a 1000-watt backup generator can operate an entire week on the fuel a larger generator would use in less than a few hours — something to think about when facing a potential grid-down event.

In this under 1000-watt size range, there is a small gasoline generator being marketed by Harbor Freight. The Storm Cat 800-watt (900-watt peak) generator has a huge following on YouTube with videos describing their operation and suggested modifications to make as soon as you open the box. Many owners feel its extremely low price is the reason several needed features were left off, while others have a love-hate relationship with this little generator. While I am not going to recommend readers run out and buy one tomorrow, I do think it might be worth a closer look, especially for those with limited cash.

I actually paid only $89 for this generator, which normally sells for $135, using a magazine coupon at a Harbor Freight store located in a nearby city, which saved the shipping cost.

• "Natural Spider Repellents – 8 Ways to Get Rid of Spiders"--Common Sense Homesteading. The author recommends certain herbs be included in a garden (or gardens) around the perimeter of the house, as well as certain essential oils; but she also mentions some basic hygiene and other steps to reduce spiders.
• "Beginner Fitness Exercises for SHTF Survival (Part One)"--GeekPrepper. This first part of the series focuses on drills and exercises for the beginner--i.e., someone that is out of shape. The author promises future posts with more advanced exercises.

April 25, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

• "We Aren't The World"--Pacific Standard Magazine. An article about the ground-breaking research by anthropologist Joe Henrich, challenging long-held assumptions of human psychological universality, but that how we perceive and think about the world is strongly influenced by culture. From the article: 

... It is not just our Western habits and cultural preferences that are different from the rest of the world, it appears. The very way we think about ourselves and others — and even the way we perceive reality — makes us distinct from other humans on the planet, not to mention from the vast majority of our ancestors. Among Westerners, the data showed that Americans were often the most unusual, leading the researchers to conclude that “American participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners — outliers among outliers.”

Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.

• "The Anomaly of Barbarism"--Lapham's Quarterly. From the article:

... In our own day, both neoconservatives and progressives have accepted the view propounded by Francis Fukuyama that only “democratic capitalism” can satisfy modern needs—a prognostication that is likely to prove no better founded. Modernity in politics is a species of phantom, constantly elusive because it is continuously mutating.

A pursuit of this ghost has shaped the ruinous “war on terror.” The course of the Iraq war illustrates some of the consequences. The effects on the West, which included a colossal waste of resources and the rehabilitation by the Bush administration of the barbarous practice of torture, are by now well known. Less well understood is the fact that disaster in Iraq flowed not only from mistakes in policy (grotesque as some of these were) but also from the attempt to remake the country as a democracy. The state of Iraq was built by the British from provinces of the Ottoman Empire by applying a divide-and-rule strategy that meant Iraq’s governance could never be democratic. One of the state’s chief architects, the British colonial officer, archaeologist, and scholar Gertrude Bell, wrote: “I don’t for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority. Otherwise you’ll have a mujtahid-run theocratic state, which is the very devil.” Formulated some eighty years before the American-led attack, Bell’s analysis has been amply confirmed by events.

The invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in April 2003 destroyed the state of Iraq. Partly this was because of the policies of the occupying power, such as disbanding the Iraqi army in May 2003, a bizarre exercise that had far-reaching consequences. A more fundamental reason was the fact that the integrity of the state rested on Sunni hegemony, which the occupation undid. Iraq was a multiethnic and multisectarian state held together principally by force. Self-government for “the Iraqi people” was impossible, since nothing of the kind had ever existed. The only realistically imaginable outcome of regime change was the violent disintegration of the state.

Since the American-led invasion, three new states have emerged in Iraq: the Islamic State (as the territorial unit of ISIS is sometimes called), which is ruled according to ISIS’s extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam; a de facto Kurdish state in the north of the country; and a Shia state headquartered in Baghdad that operates in an expanded zone of Iranian influence in what remains of the historic state of Iraq. Of the three, only that of the Kurds can claim to be anything like the modern secular democracy that regime change was supposed to install. In most of Iraq, the result of attempting to install democracy has been to empower theocracy—just as Bell predicted.

• "Navel-gazing about gender while the world burns"--MercatorNet. An interview with feminist guru Camille Paglia. Even the progressives have noticed that the Apocalypse cometh. Discussing today's college students, she says:

“They have no sense of the great patterns of world history, the rise and fall of civilisations like Babylon and Rome that became very sexually tolerant, and then fell. If you’ve had no exposure to that, you can honestly believe that ‘There is progress all around us and we are moving to an ideal state of culture, where we all hold hands and everyone is accepted for what they are … and the environment will be pure…’ – a magical utopian view that we are marching to perfection. And the sign of this progress is toleration – of the educated class – for homosexuality, or for changing gender, or whatever.

“To me it’s a sign of the opposite, it’s symptomatic of a civilisation just before it falls: ‘we’ are very tolerant, not passionate, but there are bands of vandals and destroyers circling around the edge of our civilisation who will bring it down.”

• "In the City of the Decadents"--Sultan Knish. Daniel Greenfield writes:

The barbarian has no morals. He obeys tribal codes that he does not understand, but accepts. Fairness exists only relative to his own interests. Empathy is foreign to him. He holds life cheaply and kills casually. He loathes outsiders and obeys no universal laws. His tribe is ruled by hierarchies which gain their position through brutality and trickery. And he assumes the world works the same way.

He cannot and will not interact with a more advanced civilization on any terms other than these. Cunning barbarians may learn the languages of more advanced civilizations and even ape their values for their own purposes, but they never adopt them. When a barbarian speaks of democracy, he means power. When he talks of religion, he means the worship of his own power. When he prattles of morality, he does not mean universal laws, but anything that impinges on his own power.

To the barbarian, all values are reducible to power. They are his gods, his religions and his laws.

• "The 1%"--West Hunter. The author explains why we don't see modern people with Neanderthal Y chromosomes or mtDNA:

... A slight disadvantage is all that would be required to totally eliminate Neanderthal Y-chromosomes or mtDNA.

Imagine that a Neanderthal Y-chromosome reduces the bearer’s fitness by 1%, and that the original frequency of Neanderthal Y chromosomes (after admixture) was 2%.

It’s been something like 1500 generations. The expected frequency is 5.67 x 10-9. In real life it would probably have fluctuated to zero, and of course stayed there.

• "Germany To Strip Job Protection From Citizens To Make Room For Refugees"--The Daily Caller.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition announced new “integration” reforms Thursday that will remove worker protections from European Union and German citizens so refugees can compete with them for jobs.

The draft measure would suspend a law preventing companies from hiring non-EU citizens, unless there is no EU citizen willing or qualified to take the job. The new law would allow those companies to also hire refugees.

According to the article, companies would be allowed to pay the refugees as little as one or two Euros per hour.

 (Updated 4/25/2016: Corrected typo).

Ghettos or Death Camps?

This past Saturday, I cited to an essay by Fred Reed discussing the issue that technological advancement is resulting in more and more people being unemployable: that they lack not only the skills necessary for the modern workforce but, increasingly, the basic IQ necessary to learn those skills. The problem is exacerbated in the West by not only advances in robotics and automation, but by the fact that the jobs remaining to such persons are being gobbled up by immigrants, illegal or otherwise.

Reed's essay has received a lot of attention, including a good discussion of its implications by Vox Day. Day concludes:

The feudalism of the Middle Ages required peasants for agriculture. But the technofeudalism of the future doesn't appear likely to require peasants for anything. So what will be done with them? What will be done with us? The long and bloody history of Man does not suggest an optimistic answer.

I have briefly addressed this topic at various times, including a post from last July on "The Coming Surplus Population Boom."  While current thinking seems to be expansion of welfare to include a guaranteed income, my belief last year was that "[t]he wealthy and the elites are already thinking about this, and I would be willing to bet that a whole lot of their thinking will be around how to get rid of the surplus."

In his novel, Hegemony, Mark Kalina imagines that the surplus population will be walled away in ghettos located some distance away from the metropolises, made docile by sufficient food and entertainment, with limited access to the outside world and, absent extraordinary effort on their part, having only a limited education. The society he imagined would be very class structured based on intelligence and ability, with the top elite ruled by nearly immortal transhumans. Testing and monitoring would allow the elite to cull those few from the ghettos that had the intelligence and drive to succeed in the transhuman Hegemon.

So, two possibilities: ghettos or death camps. Which is more likely?

April 23, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Video: "Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?"

• "Russian Wheat Harvest Rising to 8-Year High as Weather Helps"--Bloomberg. "Russia is set to harvest the most wheat in eight years after the warmest winter on record protected crops and as planting conditions remain favorable for spring grains, according to researchers."
• "BOMBSHELL REPORT: Berlin ‘Lost To Arab Clans’ Now Recruiting ‘Physically Strong Young Migrants’"--Breitbart. "The report, which reveals how Arab migration has transformed Berlin’s entire criminal landscape, exposes how extended migrant families, now recruiting new migrants, run the entirety of the city’s organised crime."
• "Migrants versus the MAFIA: Cosa Nostra 'declares war' on refugees as mayor says Sicily capital feels more like Istanbul or Beirut than Europe"--Daily Mail. From the article:

The feared Cosa Nostra are desperate to maintain supremacy after African crime gangs arrived with the migrants - and they are engaged in a deadly turf war.

An innocent Gambian man was shot through the head by an assassin in broad daylight sparking fears of a wider bloodbath. 

Mayor Leoluca Orlando told MailOnline: 'Palermo is no longer an Italian town. It is no longer European. You can walk in the city and feel like you’re in Istanbul or Beirut.'

• "'El Mencho' the deportee who became the bloodiest narco trafficker"--Borderland Beat. An illegal that was arrested in Sacramento at age 25 for distributing heroin. After his release and deportation, he reportedly reentered the United States many times, was detained on numerous occasions, using different aliases, and released. He now leads the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), which traffics drugs not only into the United States, but also Europe, Asia and Australia, and is described as Mexico's most powerful crime boss. He is also a bloody man: "One of the most heinous acts that will be remembered in the history of drug trafficking, and was attributed to CJNG, was on September 20, 2011, when they left the bodies of 12 women and 23 men outside a shopping center in Boca del Rio, Veracruz, as a message to the rival group Los Zetas." The article also mentions: "Another violent episodes was an attack by 'El Mencho's' hitmen on May 1, 2015, when the city of Guadalajara (the country's third largest) was besieged by the CJNG where vehicles, banks and gas stations were set on fire to block roads and prevent a military operation. On that occasion they also shot down an army helicopter with a grenade launcher, killing three soldiers."
• "Venezuela cuts power for four hours a day to save energy"--BBC. The article indicates that "[t]he cuts will last for 40 days as the country struggles under a severe drought limiting hydroelectric output."
• "China’s President, Xi Jinping, Gains a New Title: Commander in Chief"--New York Times. From the article:

Mr. Xi, who is general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, is also chairman of the Central Military Commission, which runs the country’s armed forces. After his visit on Wednesday, a new title was unveiled in the state and party news media: commander in chief of the joint battle command center.

Although predecessors like President Hu Jintao delegated operational responsibilities to professional soldiers, the new title reflects Mr. Xi’s desire to have a more direct role, said You Ji, who oversees the department of government and public administration at the University of Macau.

• "The Unpleasant Truth About Chinese Espionage"--The Observer. The author writes:

Chinese espionage against the United States is in the news again. Recently in this column I explained the sensational case of Edward Lin, the Taiwanese immigrant turned U.S. Navy officer who stands accused of committing espionage against his adopted homeland. This story raises many troubling questions about the dismal state of security in our navy, which seems unable to keep secrets anymore.

Although the navy is staying tight-lipped about Lieutenant Commander Lin, it’s already evident that the damage he perpetrated—thanks to his high-level access to some of the navy’s best-guarded secrets—is daunting. Damning, too, is the news that Mr. Lin was arrested while boarding a flight bound for China, the beneficiary of his alleged betrayal. No wonder top admirals want to keep as much of his impending trial classified as possible, to prevent public discussion of how much damage this traitor wrought on our national security.

Yet this is no isolated incident. In the two weeks since the Lin story broke, we have still more cases of Chinese immigrants accused of spying against their adopted country on behalf of their ancestral one. Szuhsiung “Allen” Ho, a Chinese immigrant and naturalized American, faces a raft of charges for running an espionage ring aimed at stealing nuclear secrets for Beijing. According to the Federal indictment, at the direction of a Chinese state-owned nuclear power company Mr. Ho recruited a half-dozen engineers to get nuclear secrets that Beijing wanted but could not obtain legally from the United States.

The article describes how the Chinese prefer to use ethnic Chinese for their spying. Read the whole thing.

• "Indian Army Debates New Gun: Kill (7.62) or Wound (5.56)?"--The Truth About Guns. You would think that this debate (and the idea of "bigger is better") would be dead by now. Tests and battlefield evidence show that the tendency of the FMJ 5.56 to yaw when striking a target makes it deadlier than the fairly stable 7.62 in FMJ--at least at ranges where the velocities of the 5.56 result in it "tumbling" upon striking soft tissue. If you want the 7.62 to live up to its potential, you need to use a soft-point or expanding bullet of some type. There is a military manual on field medicine which features an illustration of a significant wound channel from a .308 bullet, which I've seen used as an example of how much deadlier the 7.62 NATO round is, but the caption indicates that it was from a soft-point bullet, not a full metal jacketed (FMJ) bullet. 
• "Do Genes Time One's Loss of Virginity? A U.K. study links the varying onsets of sexual activity to genes and personality traits"--Scientific American. From the article:

The team found that 38 specific regions of the genome contributed to the age at which people first had sex. Those regions roughly fell into two groups, Perry says: genes that act on reproductive biological processes such as estrogen signaling and genes that appear to play a role in behavior and personality. One gene that the team associated with early sexual behavior, CADM2, influences risk-taking behavior, and another, MSRA, leads to irritability.

• Related: The researchers' abstract at Nature Genetics.

• Related: "A Gene Mutation Might Explain Why Some People Are 'Angry' Drunks"--Men's Fitness (2015). "People with a mutated form of the HTR2B gene have a tendency to become more impulsive, violent, and reckless when they drink, according a study published in the Nature journal Translational Psychiatry." See also this ABC article.

• Related: "Scientists discover genes linked with 'extremely violent' behaviour"--The Independent (2014). From the article:

A study looking at the genetic makeup of 895 criminals in Finland has discovered a pair of genes linked with extreme violent behaviour. 

The research, carried out by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and published in the journal Molecular Pyschiatry, compared the genes of non-violent offenders with a group of 78 individuals convicted of violent crimes.  

Experts involved in the study say that the majority of violent crime in any society is usually carried out by a small group of repeat offenders who resist attempts at rehabilitation. 

The group of 78 were responsible for a total of 1,154 murders, manslaughters, attempted homicides or batteries and the geneticists concluded that between 4 and 10 per cent of all violent crimes in Finland could be traced back to individuals with these genotypes. 

All those in the study that had committed murder (including a secondary group of 114 individuals who had all killed at least one person) possessed the MAOA gene, with a variant gene of cadherin 13 or CDH13 also found to be common among violent offenders. 

The MAOA gene is sometimes known as the “warrior gene” and is associated with higher levels of aggression in response to provocation, while studies into CDH13 have associated it with substance abusers and low impulse control. The "warrior gene" is controversial because it is more common among black men--almost 10 times as many black men have the gene than whites. See also the following article at Conservative News.

• Related: "Male Impulsivity & Addiction Linked to One Gene"--Live Science (2011). "The gene, a snippet of DNA called NRXN3, has previously been linked to nicotine dependence, as well as alcohol dependence, opiate addiction and obesity. The new research suggests a common denominator of impulsivity underlies all of these troubles."

(Source)

• "NASA's 'impossible' EM Drive works: German researcher confirms and it can take us to the moon in just 4 HOURS"--Astronomy-Physics.com. "... Martin Tajmar, a well-known professor and chairman for Space Systems at Dresden University of Technology in Germany, has worked with his own EM Drive, and has once again revealed that it produces thrust - although for reasons he can't clarify yet." Tajmar had done some testing last year, which had been criticized for potential measurement problems.  I had linked yesterday to an article which set out a possible explanation of how the drive works.

Looking at the photographs and diagrams of the drive, I can't help but observe a similarity to something else:

An artist's conception of the semi-mythical "Nazi Bell" (Source)

April 22, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Self-Defense:

• First up, Active Response Training's Weekend Knowledge Dump. A whole slew of interesting articles.
• "Deep Concealment Options for the 'Non-Permissive Environment'"--Active Response Training. Greg Ellifritz describes how he carried weapons past security at venues in jurisdictions where it was legal to carry, but the property owners (or event operators) prohibited carrying of weapons. Although the author of The Captain's Journal could not understand how this could be "legal," it is an issue of semantics. Many jurisdictions do not have laws making it criminal trespass merely to enter onto private property with a concealed weapon when the owner has posted a "no weapons" sign--in such jurisdictions, it may be "illegal" in the sense of being a tort, but not constitute a crime. 
• "The Complete Guide to Bolt Manipulation, Part 1: Fundamental Principles"--Art of the Rifle.
• "The Complete Guide to Bolt Manipulation, Part 2: Specific Theory"--Art of the Rifle.
• "The Complete Guide to Bolt Manipulation, Part 3: Technique"--Art of the Rifle.
• "The Complete Guide to Bolt Manipulation, Part 4: Delving into Finer Points"--Art of the Rifle.
• "The Complete Guide to Bolt Manipulation, Part 5: Advice and Practice Tips"--Art of the Rifle.
• "The Complete Guide to Bolt Manipulation, Part 6: Avoiding Problems and Pitfalls"--Art of the Rifle.
• "Butterflies and Standing Hair"--Schafer's Self-Defense Corner. The physiology of why we get "butterflies in our stomach" or our hair may "stand on end."
• "Handgun Selection"--S.P. Wenger's Defensive Use of Firearms. Much better and more thorough than the run-of-the-mill articles I generally come across on this topic.

Other Stuff:

• "Think You Can Drive Fast Enough to Escape an Erupting Volcano?"--Wired. From the article:

... If the Silver Creek Caldera erupted for 2.5 to 10 hours at a sustained rate of 38 to 150 million cubic meters per second, then these flows could move blocks even moving at only a few tens of kilometers per hour. Now, that eruption rate is huge, tens to hundreds of times more than Pinatubo, Tambora or Novarupta, some of the biggest eruptions of the last few centuries.

This means that the eruption of the Peach Springs Tuff was at least as large if not larger than the super-eruptions like Toba or Taupo. Yet, if you were 150 kilometers from the eruption, you might have upwards of 10 hours to get out of harm’s way (well, at least out of the way of the massive pyroclastic flows—the resulting ash fall and climate cooling is a little trickier to handle).

• "Public Utility Companies Stockpile Equipment For Possible Apocalyptic Disaster"--Daily Caller. "Utility companies such as American Electric Power Co. and Exelon Corp. are helping fund the creation of a Delaware company called Grid Assurance LLC, which will be used to store massive power transformers and circuit breakers in unidentified places throughout the country."
• "No One Works in 1 in 5 U.S. Families"--The Washington Free Beacon.

• Related: "Capitalism and the Minimum Wage: 'I Got Mine, Screw You.'"--Fred On Everything. "An economic system that works reasonably well when there are lots of simple jobs doesn’t when there aren’t. In particular, the large number of people at IQ 90 and below will increasingly be simply unnecessary."

• "Where are America’s Drowned Cities?"--Robert Zubrin at The American Thinker. The globe has been warming for the past 400 years, yet there is no evidence of rising sea levels.
• "In proof we trust: Blockchain technology will revolutionise far more than money: it will change your life. Here’s how it actually works"--Aeon Magazine. A taste:

If a company or a government department were in charge of the record, it would be vulnerable – if the company went bust or the government department shut down, for example. But with a distributed record there is no single point of vulnerability. It is decentralised. At times, some computers might go awry, but that doesn’t matter. The copies on all the other computers and their unanimous approval for new information to be added will mean the record itself is safe.

This is possibly the most significant and detailed record in all history, an open-source structure of permanent memory, which grows organically. It is known as the blockchain. It is the breakthrough tech behind the digital cash system, Bitcoin, but its impact will soon be far wider than just alternative money.

• "The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the 'Impossible' EmDrive Thruster"--MIT Technology Review. A new theory may explain both: 

McCulloch’s idea is that inertia arises from an effect predicted by general relativity called Unruh radiation. This is the notion that an accelerating object experiences black body radiation. In other words, the universe warms up when you accelerate.

According to McCulloch, inertia is simply the pressure the Unruh radiation exerts on an accelerating body.

That’s hard to test at the accelerations we normally observe on Earth. But things get interesting when the accelerations involved are smaller and the wavelength of Unruh radiation gets larger.

At very small accelerations, the wavelengths become so large they can no longer fit in the observable universe. When this happens, inertia can take only certain whole-wavelength values and so jumps from one value to the next. In other words, inertia must quantized at small accelerations.

McCulloch says there is observational evidence for this in the form of the famous fly by anomalies. These are the strange jumps in momentum observed in some spacecraft as they fly past Earth toward other planets. That’s exactly what his theory predicts.

Testing this effect more carefully on Earth is hard because the accelerations involved are so small. But one way to make it easier would be to reduce the size of allowed wavelengths of Unruh radiation. “This is what the EmDrive may be doing,” says McCulloch.

The idea is that if photons have an inertial mass, they must experience inertia when they reflect. But the Unruh radiation in this case is tiny. So small in fact that it can interact with its immediate environment. In the case of the EmDrive, this is the truncated cone.

The cone allows Unruh radiation of a certain size at the large end but only a smaller wavelength at the other end. So the inertia of photons inside the cavity must change as they bounce back and forth. And to conserve momentum, this must generate a thrust.

Up on the Soap Box: A Case of Regret Equals Rape?

Apparently college women are being taught that “regret equals rape”--i.e., "that what first passes for a consensual sexual experience later can be called a rape by a woman who has second thoughts." Which brings me to this story from The Daily Mail: "BYU student says the Mormon school started investigating her for 'honor code' violations after 'she was raped'." To save you from having to read the whole story, here are the essential facts:

• 20 year old Madi Barney decided to have a tryst with Nasiru Seidu, a Ghanian immigrant whom she believed to have been in his late 20s and unmarried. 
• Barney claims that while at her apartment, Seidu raped her. She came to this conclusion after learning that Seidu was actually 39 years old and married. Specifically, the story states:

After the incident, Barney says she hesitated to report the rape, fearing that the school would find out and it would ruin her reputation at the conservative institution. 

But when she learned that her attacker had lied about his identity, she became convinced that the rape was premeditated and decided to file a police report. Soon after, a cop turned her case file over to the school without her permission and her fears were realized.

(Underline added). 

• A sheriff's deputy provided a copy of the case file to BYU for reasons that are not clear. 
• BYU began an investigating Barney for a possible violation of its Sexual Misconduct Policy. (Seidu is not a student at BYU, so obviously it isn't conducting an investigation of him).
• Barney has now filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, "claiming the school has violated Title IX by failing to aide her as a victim of sexual assault."

Because BYU regulates what apartments single students can rent (yes, even the off-campus housing is regulated by the school), she would necessarily have been sharing an apartment with other young, single women. This strongly suggests that she took Seidu into her bedroom in violation of the moral code that the students are required to follow (the news reports are strangely silent as to the actual facts surrounding her alleged rape).

With that in mind, it seems very likely that she violated the moral code--a code that is in place for her safety. As a result of the violation, she allegedly was sexually assaulted. Her argument is that because she claims to be the victim of a sexual assault, she ipso facto could not have violated the moral code, even though she clearly violated the code if she invited the man into her bedroom. In other words: "I was hurt so I didn't do anything wrong." Typical rabbit logic. And her filing a complaint against the school is yet another example that SJWs always double down.

America's Insurgency

Overshadowed by the events in Europe is America's own immigration crises, which is a cause of discontent and social upset in the United States. It is largely an issue to which our leaders seem blind, but not everyone is ignoring the reality on the ground. From Small Wars Journal, an essay entitled "America’s Unacknowledged Insurgency: Addressing Street Gangs as Threats to National Security."

The author warns:

The United States faces an insurgency within its borders. While it contends with the Islamic State and al-Qaida – which seek to export violence to the homeland – an insurgency, intent on challenging the sovereignty of the U.S. government is already here. Furthermore, that same insurgency provides a conduit by which state and non-state threats can gain access to the United States. Finally, the insurgency threatens U.S. interests abroad by facilitating the operations of threat actors beyond the country’s borders. This multi-front assault against the United States is the work of street gangs – organized nationally and locally – which do nothing less than challenge U.S. sovereignty (regardless of whether they can spell “sovereignty”).

Read the whole thing.

April 18, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Forgotten Weapons: "Brun-Latrige Model 1900." A video of an interesting design for a pocket self-defense pistol.

Survival/Self-Defense:

• "4 Effective Throws That Every Man Should Know"--Return of Kings. Part of a series focusing on a handful of simple defensive/fighting techniques.
• "ATF Approves Modified X-Products Can Cannon: No Longer a NFA Weapon"--The Truth About Guns. I wonder if it could be used for this.
• "Post Disaster Violence"--SHTF School. The author begins: "You may have experienced bar fights, or home invasions maybe, shooting somewhere and similar, and those events can be life changing situations for sure (or life taking) but I am talking here about violence so large scale and long lasting that it brings something like a ‘new way of living’, overwhelming violence that demands a complete change of mindset." A couple of points: the author emphasizes that you will need to be part of a group to survive, and competition within the group may be intense. Read the whole thing.

• Related: Articles from Lizard Farmer on building and developing tribe.  

• "Strategies for Dealing with Those Who Aren’t Prepared"--Modern Survival Online. The author offers some ideas for encouraging others to prepare before a disaster, and offers four strategies during and/or following a collapse: (1) using force to defend your preps; (2) sharing with others; (3) hiding your preps/supplies; and (4) staying mobile. The fourth strategy, in my mind, should be right out: it requires you to be a refugee with little or no supplies. The other three strategies are not necessarily viable taken individually. I believe that it will take a mixture of these strategies, together with being part of a "tribe." 
• "Survival Supplies: What do refugees need?"--The Modern Survivalist. FerFal provides lists of supplies and materials that have been needed or requested by refugees currently in Greece. Useful information. Obviously, the categories break down into hygiene needs (soap and feminine products, for instance), food and other supplies (including entertainment/distractions for children and access to the internet for news and communications), and medicines. The list of medicines is fairly specific.
• "Bugging Out 101 - 'This boots are made for walking'."--Neo-Survivalist. I (and others) have discussed that the holster and shooting belt are the foundation to a good carry system. The author of this article takes the same approach to bugging out: that the basis of any strategy for bugging out (or even having to walk a lot) are good quality boots. He also gives some ideas and suggestions in that regard.
• "My Mother's Peasant Bread: The Best Easiest Bread You Will Ever Make"--Alexandra's Kitchen. (H/t SHTF Preparedness). Bread is the staff of life.

Other Stuff:

• "Mormon Leader Brigham Young’s Colt Pistol for Sale"--The Truth About Guns. The article is about the sale of a specially engraved Colt open top revolver that had been presented to Brigham Young.  The article indicates that the engraving was executed by Gustave Young, "the most prominent 19th Century firearms engraver." However, it isn't the beauty of the piece or its historical interest that caught my attention, but the anti-Mormon comments to the article made by a few people. Just a reminder to my LDS readers that there is still strong anti-Mormon sentiment out there that will express itself in unpleasant ways when the going gets tough.
• "A funny thing happened on the way to the matriarchy."--Dalrock. A sad commentary: "What Millet’s co conspirators couldn’t have imagined back in 1969 was how eager Christian conservatives would be to assist them in their destruction of the family. Instead of fighting back, conservative Christians jumped on the anti father bandwagon with a zeal that even makes the liberal elite uncomfortable." 
• "How US covered up Saudi role in 9/11"--New York Post (h/t SNAFU!). From the article:

Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

Case agents I’ve interviewed at the Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Washington and San Diego, the forward operating base for some of the Saudi hijackers, as well as detectives at the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department who also investigated several 9/11 leads, say virtually every road led back to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, as well as the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

Yet time and time again, they were called off from pursuing leads. A common excuse was “diplomatic immunity.”

9/11 wasn't a mere crime, it was an act of war against the United States; and those covering up the involvement of Saudi Arabia or any of its rulers or subjects are acting to protect enemies of the United States and are, therefore, traitors (see 18 U.S.C. § 2381, defining "treason").

• "The Spring Offensive"--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. Our enemies are mustering their forces as we head into the fighting season. The turn to physical aggression may be the loss of financial leverage. In "The Global World Hits A Snag," Fernandez writes:

... Unlike Venezuela or Brazil who are only threatened by financial ruin the Saudis risk physical extinction if the neighboring swathes of terror and war, much of it their own making, are not held back by the United States.

Therein lies the rub.  They don't have the money to buy protection anymore.  The decline in the Saudi bank balance has made them less influential in American political circles.  Faced with a bill that would allow victims to sue the KSA for 9/11 "Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if " this were allowed.  A threat that once might have stopped Congress cold is as Tim Worstall at Forbes notes no longer important enough to be decisive.

But it's not only the petrostates that are losing their former influence. China announced it will lay off 1.8 million "steel and coal workers" as it "aims to eliminate production capacity of as much as 500 million metric tons of coal and 150 million tons of steel by 2020."  The Chinese are bust too.

That the Saudis are losing their influence over Congress may explain their sudden rapprochement with Israel and strengthening ties with Egypt.

• "The Federal Takeover of State Debt is About to Begin…"--Chicago Boyz. The author observes:

One very subtle item that is about to occur is the nationalization of state debt (and likely debts of individual cities) by the federal government. At the highest level, states and cities have made promises (mainly pensions) to their employees that are un-payable without raising taxes to extortionate rates. Detroit cracked first but since it was a city and there was some state framework they were able to use bankruptcy, but many more are to follow, including Puerto Rico (right now) and soon thereafter likely the City of Chicago or its teachers’ pensions as well as the state of Illinois.

"Sounds Like Silence"

This is a powerful video that I recommend that you play for anyone that seems on the fence about the issue of the threat of fundamentalist Islam.

Video: "Sounds Like Silence"