February 26, 2017--A Quick Run Around the Web

"How to Quad Load Your Shotgun Ep 1514"--Learning Firearms.

The video is focused on competition (and relies heavily on the equipment), but the positioning of the weapon and general technique may have some application to self-defense or combat.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• "Tactical Pens"--Modern Survival Online. The author discusses some characteristics he believes are useful in a tactical pen, offers some thoughts on particular brands/models, and discusses the use for self-defense.
• "Foam Armor Defeats 30-06 AP Rounds"--Anonymous Conservative. The foam was 1 inch thick foamed metal.
• "Emergency Water Filtration"--Dreaming Of Sunsets Over Ochre Dunes. Ingenious method using a strip of fabric. Easier to show with a photograph than explain, but you put a strip of cloth leading from the container with the contaminated water (which is at a higher level) to the container to collect the filtered water (sitting somewhat lower than the other container). Capillary action and gravity work to move the water from one container to the other.
• Video: "Bow Drill Lesson Learned The Hard Way"--Survival Lilly (about 7 min.). Don't use too hard of wood. Watch the video to see technique, and note that she uses a wheel from on inline skate to help hold the upright stick in place.
• "CDC: Bullets Can Cause Lead Poisoning"--The Truth About Guns. If left in the body for a substantial period of time.
• "Didn’t Col. Colt And John Moses Browning Take Care Of This Over A Century Ago?"--Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds points out a technology prize is being offered for the development of a device to protect women against sexual assault. The problem? “The winning team’s solution will autonomously and inconspicuously trigger an emergency alert while transmitting information to a network of community responders, all within 90 seconds.” 
• "What’s The Number One Prepper Mistake?"--Prepper Journal. The author writes:

From my perspective, the single biggest mistake made by people engaging in disaster preparedness is they follow the wrong advice and adopt a bunch of tactics and related equipment simply because people are chatting/blogging about them. But that’s not how it’s done; you must adopt a survival strategy first, and then comes the tactics, equipment and supplies that support the strategy, not the other way around, as I see done all too frequently by a lot of misinformed people.

For those that saw my post yesterday that included links to articles on using a sailboat for prepping, the author of this piece also discusses some of the advantages he sees in using a boat as a mobile "retreat."

• "Deconstructing 'Assault Rifle': The Quest for Universality in Modern Infantry Warfare"--Nathaniel F. at The Firearms Blog discusses how the modern select-fire rifle became a universal or generalist weapon with its primary benefits being described as standardization of training and simplifying logistics. As I've discussed before, that was not its original intention, which was to allow infantry to lay down automatic fire while assaulting or storming an enemy position. This dream of "assault" seems to have stayed strong notwithstanding the lessons of the First World War. My father related his training in the Army (Korean War era) that included advancing while firing the Garand from the hip, and I would note that the AR-10 was originally touted as allowing automatic fire while advancing (presumably, this would be advancing under cover of a rolling artillery barrage). That is not how the ultimate use turned out, at least in the West, but we are nevertheless still left with the phrase "assault rifle."

Other Stuff:

• No, not a sick joke: "It’s Time To Stop Talking About A Border Wall And Start Stabilizing Mexico"--The Federalist. The author contends that out border problem with Mexico is because of "the decay of civil society in Mexico and the virtual absence of the rule of law," and that the solution is not a wall or expelling illegal aliens, but military intervention in Mexico--in other words, nation building as we've attempted in Iraq and Afghanistan (the latter, in particular, being an abject failure). Incredulously, the author actually cites to General Pershing's 1916 expedition into Mexico to apprehend Pancho Villa (which, itself, was a complete failure). Yet the author has the gall to seriously propose:

The cartels won’t be deterred by a wall, but they might be deterred by U.S. forces on their side of the border. Trump reportedly mentioned the possible deployment of American troops to Mexico in a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto earlier this month. But of course troops alone wouldn’t be enough. The U.S. would have to get serious about investing in Mexico’s long-term stability. That means more trade, not less, and better coordination with Mexico’s military and law enforcement agencies. After all, a stable and secure Mexico is in America’s best interest.

I don't know if the author knows anything about Mexico, but despite the drug trade and rampant corruption, Mexico is not a failed state; and being the 11th largest economy in the world, it does not need the United States to rebuild it. 

• "Support: MOUT For The 21st Century"--Strategy Page. Training for near-peer combat in cities. It should be interesting: mega-cities could literally swallow up the entire armed forces of the largest nations, let alone smaller army, battalion, or brigade sized elements. Think of the Russian plains that swallowed up the German army compressed to one or two hundred square miles.
• "Tom Cotton: ‘The Powerful and Elite Reap the Benefits of a Constant Influx of Low-Skill Labor’"--Breitbart. Well, who else will they get to mow their lawns or clean their houses. More seriously, though, the problem is not low-skill labor but low-cost labor, whether low skilled illegal aliens or the modern "indentured servents" brought in via the H1b visa program to fix the non-existent STEM crises.
• "Would Jesus Scold Trump on Refugees?"--American Thinker. The author sums up:

To say that Christians have a duty to care for widows, orphans, the impoverished, and the endangered is unquestioned (by anyone) Biblical truth. To say that such care can only be provided by enacting open-door refugee policies that may or may not compromise the security of citizens (including widows, orphans, and the impoverished here at home) is an entirely different proposition. It’s a proposition that, to this point, does not appear to be supported by Scripture.

• "Why Are Women in Combat?"--American Conservative. The author suggests it is so the DoD has enough recruits to sustain our current practice of endless war. Perhaps. But the simpler explanation is that the Pentagon has succumbed, to some extent, to the same stupidity that cultural Marxism has introduced to other government institutions.
• The purpose of war is to destroy the will of the enemy to fight: "War and the reshaping of societies" by Donald Sensing--a repost of a 2002 article at the Sense of Events. The article discusses the role of mass terror bombing of the populations of Germany and Japan during World War II and the subsequent occupations had in "reshaping" German and Japanese public attitudes toward war and militarization. 
• The science is never settled: "Most scientists 'can't replicate studies by their peers'"--BBC. I've posted before how the majority of social science experiments can't be reproduced; and, of course, some of the fake science that underlie nutrition studies in the 1960s and '70s. The same problem has cropped up in landmark cancer studies.
• "The Danger of Metastasis"--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. He writes:

       The imminent expulsion of ISIS from its geographical strongholds in Syria and Iraq may signal not its excision but metastasis.  Michael Flynn, before his resignation, used to show "visitors a map predicting what will happen to the Islamic State after its stronghold in Mosul is captured. It shows menacing black arrows reaching west toward other, future battlefronts in Iraq, Syria and beyond." He feared metastasis.

       After Raqqa, some jihadis will head back to Europe, which thinks it can absorb them. "A programme to rehabilitate former Isis fighters and other extremists with housing, employment, education and financial support is being trialled in Sweden. Local authorities in the city of Lund say the controversial measures aim to reintegrate returned jihadis into society and prevent them reverting to their former networks." Others are going back to Muslim majority countries where they are rather less welcome.

* * *

       Still others are headed for African failed states where their skills, ruthlessness and ideology will make them the new Dogs of War. But as John E. McLaughlin of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University explained before Congress, history itself may be preparing the soil for ISIS to take root. It will encounter extraordinarily favorable conditions in the next decades as burgeoning non-Western populations flock to megacities in the Third World, if not to Europe, perfect for their style of fighting.

Read the whole thing.