December 2, 2016 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Platoons - a natural unit size for a modern army"--Lindybeige 

• When seconds count, the police are only minutes away: "Quick-thinking Utah parents disarm their 15-year-old son in school after he took a handgun and shotgun to class and opened fire - while more than 100 cops arrive outside"--Daily Mail. My interest in the article is not so much what the parents did, but the response time for the police. Per the article: "The first cop to arrive - a Bountiful police officer who was nearby when the call went out - came within two minutes, taking the boy into custody soon after, police said."
• If it bleeds, it can die: "Terrorists Are People, Too"--National Review. The article discusses that not all terrorists are fanatics willing to die as martyrs for the cause. Rather, their hope is that Western nations will give in before the terrorists give up. Another interesting point from the article is how Bush's response to 9/11 took al-Qaeda by surprise. From the article:

     Terrorists attacked America expecting that we’d respond as we traditionally had, by treating terrorism primarily as a law-enforcement problem, with the military response limited to cruise-missile attacks like Bill Clinton’s ineffective 1998 strikes in response to the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Instead, Bush chose a different course.  

     Writing in the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen quotes from Mitchell’s account: 

“Then he [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law-enforcement matter [as was standard procedure at the time], he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

• "Get ready for the big freeze! Western half of US to be hit with temperatures of up to 30 degrees colder than normal after Alaska experiences bone-chilling lows of minus 41F"--Daily Mail. Don't get too excited, though. Remember that if temperatures are higher than normal, its evidence of man-caused global warming; if temperatures are lower than normal, its just weather.

• Related: "NOAA forecasts major December cold blast for nearly all the USA"--Watts Up With That.

• "When is it Okay to Pull Your Gun?"--Alien Gear Holsters. A discussion of what constitutes brandishing, when you can draw your weapon, and the importance of de-escalation. While de-escalation is great, however, as a private citizen, if events have reached a point where you need to draw your weapon, its probably past a point of de-escalating the situation prior to employing the weapon. However, if the assailant ceases to be a threat (e.g., by running away), it is time for you to de-escalate. Even that may not be a hard and fast rule, as shown by a recent incident Denver, where an officer shooting of a fleeing suspect was justified because the suspect was armed and the officer believed that the suspect might turn and shoot him (the officer). However, as a private citizen, you probably shouldn't be chasing after a suspect and you definitely should not expect the deference given to police officers involved in shootings.
• "The Neighborhood Protection Teams And Ignorant, Defeatist 'Know It Alls'"--Mason Dixon Tactical. A discussion of the importance of a Neighborhood Protection Team (NPT) in a WROL situation, and criticism of those naysayers that contend that you are SOL if you aren't training with a team before SHTF. He goes on to write:

As I’ve said many times, “You are not a commando, but you don’t have to be.”. Are you screwed if you don’t have an NPT right now? No. You might be behind the curve somewhat, but you are not screwed (you do need to get squared away though) unless you give in to the defeatists out there. Having a small cadre of people in your neighborhood (a friend you’ve trained with, two or three vets, etc.) is all you need to set up the beginnings of an area defense.

• "Automatic vs. Semi-Auto: How Government Regulations Hold Back Progress"--All Outdoor. The article links to a couple videos on full auto versus semi-auto fire, plus has some commentary on how full auto systems would have benefited from the competition of an open market, and arguing that we, as gunowners, should not be striving to maintain the status quo on firearms laws, but actively seeking to roll back restrictions. And this, concerning full-auto:

Automatic fire allows spreading of recoil over time. Instead of a dozen pellets of 00 buckshot exiting at once and bruising the shooter’s shoulder, a dozen .32 bullets exit over a second with no ill effect on the defender. With properly designed launch platform, they have no more spread than buckshot. Automatic weapons aren’t the solution to all tasks, but they have a definite place in the tool kit of the lawful people. 

As has been pointed out by others, the role of full-auto for a civilian is to mimic the effect of a shotgun, but with better ballistics.

• "Prepper movement, while not mainstream, no longer just for doomsday outliers"--Chicago Tribune. Opening line: "'I wouldn't call myself a survivalist, just a realist,' says 'Craig,' a financial analyst in Cincinnati."
• The consequence of bad OPSEC and lack of an alarm system: "Doomsday preppers in Cleveland robbed of guns, body armor and machetes"--Fox 8 Cleveland. From the article:

The family, who recently moved from New York to Cleveland, said burglars broke into their home off of St. Clair Avenue early Monday morning while they were asleep. The thieves cleaned out two of their gun cases. They also got away with a bag of machetes, ammunition and food rations.

The victims believe that the thieves may have seen the family carrying their firearms into the home when they moved in.

• "Surveillance video shows a masked gang storm a Florida guns and ammunition store and make off with at least 40 weapons"--Daily Mail. A classic smash-and-grab: the thieves smashed through the front of the store with a vehicle, and then plundered the store.
• This is from earlier last month, but still interesting: "APOCALYPSE NOW? British ‘preppers’ are stocking up on radiation suits and gas masks after Donald Trump was elected US president"--The Sun. I would offer this caveat: the reporter apparently only spoke with the proprietor of a single shop in Bedfordshire, so it is not clear how representative was this "spike" in sales.
• I'm sure that Sweden and Germany will take them: "Even more conflicts looming in the middle east as tens of millions of youth are tribal, unemployed and violent"--Next Big Future. From the article:

     [A]lthough home to only 5% of the world’s population, in 2014 the Arab world accounted for 45% of the world’s terrorism, 68% of its battle-related deaths, 47% of its internally displaced and 58% of its refugees. War not only kills and maims, but destroys vital infrastructure accelerating the disintegration.

     The Arab youth population (aged 15-29) numbers 105 million and is growing fast, but unemployment, poverty and marginalisation are all growing faster. The youth unemployment rate, at 30%, stands at more than twice the world’s average of 14%. Almost half of young Arab women looking for jobs fail to find them (against a global average of 16%).

• The rabbit-hole goes even deeper: "Pizzagate – Refugee Charity “El Pida” Uses Pedofile Logo, And Is Owned By Clinton Foundation Director"--Anonymous Conservative.

• Related: "Breitbart Was Probing Pizzagate When He Mysteriously Died?"--Anonymous Conservative. The Anonymous Conservative cites a report stating that Mr. Breitbart tweeted on February 4, 2011: “How prog-guru John Podesta isn’t household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me.” 

• "Progressivism Goes Global" by John Fonte & John Yoo at the Hudson Institute. The article is about how transnational progressives seek to undermine national sovereignty, including the U.S. Constitution's requirement of Senate approval of treaties. The authors start with an example of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibits all testing of nuclear weapons:

     The scheme works like this: The Obama administration (according to a State Department letter) will submit a Security Council resolution according to which any testing of nuclear weapons by any treaty signatory (including the U.S.) would “defeat the object and purpose of the CTBT.” If the resolution passes, international law prohibits the United States from doing anything to defeat “the object and purpose” of a treaty that it has signed but not ratified. American nuclear testing would obviously violate the rule. Presto! The U.S. will adhere to the CTBT.

The authors then go on to explain the process more generally:

     The regulatory regime of a “global” administrative state would most likely be implemented through treaty monitors (comprising various nation-state and U.N. bureaucrats) in areas such as human rights; women’s and children’s rights; refugee rights; the environment; climate; sustainable development; arms control; small-arms (gun) control; hate speech, xenophobia, and racism; and the laws of war. Central to the transnational-progressive idea is the concept of the “global rule of law,” under which nation-states cede judicial authority to supranational courts [such as the International Criminal Court (ICC)].

     ... Secretary Clinton’s chief intellectual strategist at the State Department, the head of the office of policy and planning, was Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter. She has outlined in detail how the global administrative state would work through the “coercive power of vertical [government] networks”:

Vertical government networks pierce the shell of state sovereignty by making individual government institutions — courts, regulatory agencies, or even legislators — responsible for implementation of rules created by a supranational institution. . . . Vertical government networks make it possible for a supranational court, regulatory entity, or parliament to create a relationship with its national counterparts to make those rules directly enforceable.

Another leading transnational thinker and key Clinton lieutenant is Yale law professor Harold Koh, who was the State Department’s chief legal officer. Koh advocates a “transnational legal process” that engages “nation-states, corporations, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations” in “a variety of forums, to make, interpret, enforce, and ultimately internalize rules of international law.” Lawyers “should trigger transnational interactions, which generate legal interpretations, which can in turn be internalized into the domestic law of even resistant nation-states.”

     Clinton, Slaughter, and Koh welcome a post-American global administrative state and transnational legal system that are light years away from such quaint notions as the supremacy of the Constitution, representative democracy, and government by consent of the governed.

• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "A diamond battery made from nuclear waste could last more than 5,000 YEARS"--Daily Mail. The article reports:

     Unlike the majority of electricity generation technologies, which use energy to move a magnet through a coil of wire to generate a current, the man-made diamond produces a charge simply by being placed in close proximity to a radioactive source.

     'There are no moving parts involved, no emissions generated and no maintenance required, just direct electricity generation,' said Tom Scott, Professor in Materials in the University of Bristol's Interface Analysis Centre.

     'By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy.'

     The researchers created a prototype 'diamond battery' using radioactive isotope Nickel-63 as the radiation source.