May 13, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

Source: "All washed up: The haunting pictures of an abandoned water park reclaimed by nature (including crocodiles)"--Daily Mail. Photos and an article about the Ho Thuy Tien water park in Vietnam. Construction was abandoned in 2004, according to the article. More photos at the link.

• First up, it's Friday and time for another "Weekend Knowledge Dump" from Active Response Training, chock full of self-defense goodness, including a link to an article detailing the methods that criminals use to get your credit card number. Check it out.
• "Fears for the Olympics as Brazil plunges into political chaos: Riot police clash with activists on streets as acting president installs SECOND sports minister in two months"--Daily Mail. And don't forget the zika virus.
• Hmmm. "Marcus Luttrell's Savior, Mohammad Gulab, Claims 'Lone Survivor' Got It Wrong"--Newsweek. Gulab is the Afghan tribesman that sheltered Luttrell until he was recovered by U.S. troops. He claims that Luttrell has some details wrong, including that: it was the noise of helicopters that drew Taliban to the location not the goat herders alerting them (I linked to an article the other day where the SEALs had been warned against a direct insertion by the Marines because of that very issue); that it was only a handful of Taliban, not over a hundred as Luttrell claimed; and that Luttrell still had most or all of his magazines. 
• "U.S. special forces wage secretive 'small wars' against terrorists"--CNN. (Warning: video automatically plays). This is just a summary of the many conflicts started by the Obama administration; and a lesson on why the authority to declare war was originally vested in the Congress. 
• "Iran's Unstoppable March Toward Dominance"--The National Interest. From the article:

Compared to its Middle Eastern neighbors, Iran has made impressive strides in space technology in the past few years, putting the first satellite into orbit in February 2009; has emerged as a cyber power on the level of China or Russia; and has achieved significant advances in military hardware production, including sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles, main battle tanks, and medium and long-range ballistic missiles. The Iranian defense industry is making gradual inroads into global armament markets, with Iraq, Syria and Lebanon already receiving regular arms shipments to fight Islamic State and other rebel forces. The Iranian state is capable of projecting force in the Gulf and the Levant, and has often challenged the United States—successfully or not—to stay out of the Gulf region, showing a high degree of foreign-policy independence.

Furthermore, traditional elements of Iranian power, such as its strategic location with unfettered access to the Indian Ocean and considerable control over the Strait of Hormuz in the southern entrance of the Persian Gulf, through which one-third of the world’s seaborne oil shipments passes; its long shorelines on the Caspian Sea, connecting Tehran to the Central Asian states and Russia; a large and educated population; huge reserves of oil and gas; and an expanding industrial base contributing to nearly 40 percent of GDP, despite Western sanctions—all these buttress Iran’s bid for a major power role in the Middle East.

• "Report of Israeli Strike on Convoy Highlights Ongoing Iranian Build-Up of Hezbollah"--The Tower.
• "Arson probe launched as officials say deadly fertilizer plant blast was criminal"--Fox News. The fertilizer plant that exploded in West, Texas, on April 17, 2013, killing 15 and injuries hundreds of others, was the result of a deliberately set blaze. (More here).
• SJWs always double down: "Target CEO Defends Pro-Transgender Policy, Stocks Crash Down Another $2 Billion"--Breitbart. Putting his personal ideology ahead of the interests of the shareholders.

• The Decline of the West:

• "How Advertising Shows The Decline Of American Culture"--The Return of Kings. The trend from reflecting our ideals to pushing political correctness.

• "In 9 Out Of 10 Cities, Middle-Income Families Are Slipping Away"--NPR. The middle is not holding.

• The Obama administration orders all public schools to allow "transgender" students to use restrooms corresponding to their "gender identity." Letter (PDF) located here.

• "The Wages of Sin: How the Discovery of Penicillin Reshaped Modern Sexuality"--Archives of Sexual Behavior (2013). Promiscuity increased after penicillin made it possible to successfully treat syphilis.

• "Quarter of 'straight' young women admit to having a same-sex fling while HALF believe gender isn't 'fixed' - thanks to celebrities being open about their experiences"--Daily Mail. From the article: "Only a third of the age bracket - described as The Pioneers, 'the new generation of sexual fluidity' - think marriage is relevant to their lives, and 45 per cent would consider having a baby without a partner." And: "A quarter of 18 to 24-year-old women admit to having a fling with someone of the same sex, and a third confess they have been attracted to someone outside of their defined sexuality."

• "Poll: Millennials more open to idea of slavery reparations"--AP. "The biggest shift comes with millennials, with a majority — 51 percent — saying that reparations should be paid or they were unsure of whether reparations should be paid."

• "'Screw the next generation' and 'Harry Reid's a pompous a**': Democratic congressman writes Anonymous tell-all book slamming 'nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep' as he admits he never reads bills he votes on"--Daily Mail. Just one quote: "'Fundraising is so time-consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on,' the anonymous legislator admits. 'I don't even know how they'll be implemented or what they'll cost.'"

• "Britain ‘sleepwalking to catastrophe’ over race: Trevor Phillips"--The Telegraph. The article begins: "Britain risks 'flames' of racial and religious conflict because of a 'liberal self-delusion' over the impact of mass immigration, the former head of the equality watchdog [the  Equality and Human Rights Commission] Trevor Phillips claims today."

• Related: "Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech"--The Telegraph. The full text of Powell's prophetic 1968 speech on the consequences of open immigration.

• "The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation"--JASS. From the abstract:

Recent agent-based computer simulations suggest that ethnocentrism, often thought to rely on complex social cognition and learning, may have arisen through biological evolution. From a random start, ethnocentric strategies dominate other possible strategies (selfish, traitorous, and humanitarian) based on cooperation or non-cooperation with in-group and out-group agents. Here we show that ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates. Selfish and traitorous strategies are self-limiting because such agents do not cooperate with agents sharing the same genes. Traitorous strategies fare even worse than selfish ones because traitors are exploited by ethnocentrics across group boundaries in the same manner as humanitarians are, via unreciprocated cooperation. By tracking evolution across time, we find individual differences between evolving worlds in terms of early humanitarian competition with ethnocentrism, including early stages of humanitarian dominance. Our evidence indicates that such variation, in terms of differences between humanitarian and ethnocentric agents, is normally distributed and due to early, rather than later, stochastic differences in immigrant strategies. 

• "Department of Homeland Security released nearly 20,000 criminal immigrants last year, it's revealed"--The Daily Mail.

• "FBI Tells Police To Hide Phone Tracking"--Vocativ. Police are instructed to conceal use of stingray devices, and use other evidence to build a parallel case against a suspect, i.e., "parallel construction."

• "Thirty Percent of Euro Cash Is Off Radar"--Anonymous Conservative.

• "The Phrase of the Day"--The Silicon Graybeard. The word is "Hypertrophy"--as in uncontrolled growth. The author writes: "When you can show that since 2007 trade in physical goods and services increased 36 % while currency trading increased 160 %, it's easy to see which sector is making money.  The Too Big to Fail Banks are at the heart of this, making their 'arbitrage and leverage' fees on every one of these trades." Read the whole thing--this is important to understand.