May 31, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Race abandoned! Eerie pictures show the slow decline of an deserted NASCAR track as nature reclaims the once-popular speedway"--Daily Mail.

• A new Woodpile Report is up. Many interesting links and commentary, as always. Out of them, there is one in particular that stood out to me: an article by Pat Buchanan entitled "The Great White Hope." The article touches on the controversial subject of white demographics, with Buchanan discussing that although white males only account for 31 percent of the population in the United States, it is not only legally permissible to discriminate against them, but mandated. He explains:

The world has been turned upside-down for white children. In our schools the history books have been rewritten and old heroes blotted out, as their statues are taken down and their flags are put away.

Children are being taught that America was “discovered” by genocidal white racists, who murdered the native peoples of color, enslaved Africans to do the labor they refused to do, then went out and brutalized and colonized indigenous peoples all over the world.

In Hollywood films and TV shows, working-class white males are regularly portrayed as what was once disparaged as “white trash.”

Republicans are instructed that demography is destiny, that white America is dying, and that they must court Hispanics, Asians and blacks, or go the way of the Whigs.

Since affirmative action for black Americans began in the 1960s, it has been broadened to encompass women, Hispanics, Native Americans the handicapped, indeed, almost 70 percent of the nation.

White males, now down to 31 percent of the population, have become the only Americans against whom it is not only permissible, but commendable, to discriminate.

When our cultural and political elites celebrate “diversity” and clamor for more, what are they demanding, if not fewer white males in the work force and in the freshman classes at Annapolis and Harvard?

What is the moral argument for an affirmative action that justifies unending race discrimination against a declining white working class, who have become the expendables of our multicultural regime?

• "AZ Health Dept: 11 confirmed cases of Measles"--Fox 10. "An outbreak of measles that began with an inmate at a federal detention center for immigrants in central Arizona has now grown to 11 confirmed cases."
• "EU Links Up With Twitter, Tech Firms to Combat Hate Speech"--AP. Ostensibly this is to crack down on terrorists using social media to spread jihad, but we know from the conversation between Merkel and Zuckerberg accidentally picked up last fall that the real target is anyone opposed to the EU's policy of welcoming refugees.
• "Prepping Items I Found at NRAAM"--Blue Collar Prepping. Among the items was a reloading kit for .22 LR priced at $74.95 (these kits were running more than twice that amount last year), and a kit (barrel and stock) for converting a Glock 17 into a carbine.
• "How to Remove Hard Water Buildup From Faucets and Showerheads"--Common Sense Homesteading. Using vinegar soaks to remove calcium deposits.
• "Things kids should learn before leaving high school — but don't"--Backwoods Home Magazine. Life skills like budgeting, balancing a check book, cooking, and so on.
• "The Bowline - Danish Style, part 1"--Neo-Survivalist. The author contends that most people don't know how to tie a bowline correctly; fortunately, he has a video showing how to do it right.
• "Locust swarms plague southern Russia"--CNN. From the article:

A vast area of at least 800,000 hectares is currently being affected as the swarms of insects, each measuring about 8 centimeters long, annihilate fields of corn and other crops.

It's been more than 30 years since this part of southern Russia suffered such a dense plague of locusts, according to local officials.

Officials say at least 10% of crops have already been destroyed, and the locust feeding frenzy is far from over, threatening to devastate the livelihoods of local farmers.

• "America’s ‘recovery’ is baloney — we’re actually broke"--New York Post. The author references a recent report from the Federal Reserve that found that the average American had less than $400 available to cover emergencies, and concludes that what the report really is saying is that Americans are broke. If true, then the current international trading system is in serious trouble, and the economies of China and other cheap manufacturing economies hang in the balance.
• "Venezuela Enters Phase II Of Apocalypse"--Anonymous Conservative. According to the author, this second phase is when the government, itself, runs out of money and resources to keep the government employees paid and fed. The author then projects what would happen in a similar situation in the United States:

... An r-strategist nation needs the government. An r-strategist nation will sacrifice to keep the government, in the hopes it will spread the misery equally. An r-strategist nation will do anything to have a government protect them from freedom.

I suspect large swaths of America will be different. Large swaths of America have no need for the government. Large swaths have begun to see the federal government as a refuge of scoundrels, and a producer of misery. From healthcare, to surveillance, to environmental regulations, to firearms restrictions, to government targeting based on political beliefs, to forced settlement of Muslim foreigners, much of the federal government these days is at best, a costly non-entity, and at worst a net-negative to freedom and happiness. ...

There was a Russian political scientist who postulated that America would eventually see a debt crisis, and that this would produce a sudden dissolution of the federal government akin to what happened to the Soviet Union in the late eighties. The federal government would not have the money to pay it’s employees, and thus the employees would have to drift away to seek a means of support elsewhere. Once it lacked employees, the authority of the federal government and its ability to act would disappear, and the government would dissolve, replaced by loose amalgamations of states into several regional mini-nations. I crossed paths with an American who lived in Russia for a long time, and he said the Russians all took this ultimate outcome for granted, having seen it themselves from the inside. Looking at Venezuela, and the magnitude of the collapse to come, it doesn’t look as if they were that far off.

This is the problem the r-strategists face. The more the rabbits panic as things head downhill, and the more onerous they make the government as the Apocalypse approaches, the more the nation will embrace its dissolution as the Apocalypse approaches phase two.