Friday, December 2, 2016

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


     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.”
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.
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.
     [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%).
    • 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.
                   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. 

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