March 17, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"What's Best for Home Defense: AR, AK, or Pistol?"--Reid Henrichs (26 min.)

Some tests of penetration of interior walls through an actual house. Of course, just as shooting through the body of an animal or person, there are going to be substantial differences between the round encountering a stud or frame versus drywall. 

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

• TGIF: This week's Weekend Knowledge Dump from Active Response Training.
• "The SWAT Team Technique They Don’t Talk About. Should You Consider It Too?"--The Truth About Guns. The "technique" is the contact or close-contact shot. The author notes two advantages:

       First, you’re less likely to miss. The possibility of collateral damage due to “stray” rounds or over-penetration (bullets penetrating walls and such and hitting friendlies) is reduced if not eliminated.

       Second, again, close-range shots pack an extra special punch. As wikipedia.org points out, “Wounds caused by contact shots are very devastating, as the body absorbs the entire discharge of the cartridge, not just the projectile.”

• A couple tips from Jonathan Low:

1. One of the nuggets in the ALICE course is how to break a window to escape.  Take a hard object and hit the glass in the upper right or upper left corner, so the glass falls away from you. Then take the hard object and use it to clear the sharp edges before going through the window.
2.  One of the nuggets of wisdom I picked up was Bob saying, "Don't point a gun at a criminal if you're not willing to shoot, because he can see it in your eyes and he will take your gun from you, and now he has the tool to kill you and everyone else around you."  The other side of the coin is that if you are trained, you can't hide the fact, and the criminal will know it.  He may not care, but sometimes it matters. 

• "Spanish Police Seize HUGE Number of Illegal Firearms from Traffickers in Northern Spain"--The Firearms Blog. According to the article, "[t]he raids recovered about 10,000 firearms including pistols, rifles, assault rifles, submachine guns, and machine guns, plus about 400 grenades, bombs, and other explosives." Looking at the photographs, there were a lot of CETME C select fire rifles.
• "Top 3 Reasons You Should Buy a Hi-Point"--The Truth About Guns. Lately, I've seen several articles and a couple videos pop up on my radar about the lowly Hi-Point handguns and carbines. While they are ugly, they are inexpensive and, apparently, reliable. 
• "Prepping 101: Testing Military Field Telephones for Off-Grid Communications"--Guns America Blog. Going low tech to maintain operational security.
• "John Farnham: Be Realistic About Your Defensive Ammo"--The Truth About Guns. Something you may have noticed in some of the videos I've linked to recently involving someone who died from injuries (including the stabbing victim in the Philippines' mugging):

       Rapid and permanent de-animation has always been our goal when confronting a close-range threat, and attacking the supply side of the felon’s circulatory system has always been the most reliable, and achievable, vehicle for doing so. Even so, most cardiologists agree with the “five-second rule.”

       When blood pressure drops to near zero, even within a very few seconds, most people will still remain animated, for at least five more seconds, before becoming comatose.

       And, “five seconds” is the minimum. Some cardiologists insist the real figure is closer to ten seconds, or more!

• The vagaries of the criminal justice system: "Astonishing bystander footage captures Good Samaritan about to shoot and kill man who was beating up cop in middle of the road"--Daily Mail. This was an incident from Florida. Short story: a deputy sheriff had pulled over a speeding motorist, who then attacked the deputy; while pinning the deputy to the ground and beating him, the perpetrator was shot and killed by a passerby wielding a handgun. The Florida Attorney General office found that the passerby had acted in valid self-defense of another, and will not be pressing charges. However, please note that, other than the involvement of defense of another, this really does not present facts all that different from the Zimmerman shooting of St. Skittles.

Other Stuff:

• For all of you complaining about a late snowfall, it is just your imagination: "The End of Snow?"--New York Times (Feb. 7, 2014).
• Elections have consequences: "Dutch elections: Turkish minister claims 'holy wars will soon begin in Europe' after Geert Wilders beaten"--The Independent.

• Related: "Turkey Prepares To Unleash A Migrant Wave"--Anonymous Conservative. Quoting another article: "Which means that one year after it collected $3 billion for the migrant deal, Turkey has just voided the agreement, and the next step would be that Turkey is about to flood Europe with refugees currently held inside Turkish borders."

• Related thought: "Grazing fire is so named because it cuts the vegetation low as though a herd of cattle had been grazing there. The optimal height of fire should be at knee height. In addition to keeping the enemy pinned down, anybody wounded or going to cover will fall into the line of fire not out of it."

• Kleptocracy in action: "Hunger on the Horn of Africa is not caused by climate change"--DW. From the article:

       This current hunger crisis, like previous ones, will pass. The machinery of international aid, a well-established multi-billion dollar industry in the donor countries, has already sprung into action.  Temporary clinics for undernourished children have been set up and high nutrition biscuits are being handed round. But in a few years time, there will be another hunger crisis. And local people, livestock and the soil will have less and less time to recover as the cycles become shorter.

       There is a myth in circulation which says that hunger in Africa is a climate phenomenon. It is really a myth, nothing else. Hunger, especially on the Horn of Africa, is man-made. It is the work of politicians and elites. Policymakers in 2017, the year of Germany's G20 presidency in which Africa is to play a big role, should respond accordingly.

• "Blue-Collar Marriages Are Disappearing as Quickly as Blue-Collar Jobs"--Mel Magazine. No reason to stick by your man when you can turn to Big Daddy Government.
• "Prostitutes, vacations and cash: The Navy officials ‘Fat Leonard’ took down"--Washington Post. Some new indictments have been handed down in the "Fat Leonard" scandal. The article notes that "Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian defense contractor, has pleaded guilty to bribing 'scores' of Navy officials with cash, prostitutes and other gifts — such as hotel stays, airfare and electronics — so that they would feed him classified or inside information, which he used to defraud the Navy." And, I have no doubt, was probably sold to hostile powers. For background, read "How a Malaysian Playboy Controlled the Most Powerful Naval Force on the Planet: Fat Leonard’s hookers and cash seduced the U.S. Seventh Fleet … and soaked taxpayers for millions" at War Is Boring; or this article at Wikipedia.
• "Trump’s Second Travel Ban Blocked by Hawaii Judge Derrick Watson"--NBC News. This is a good case for eliminating judicial immunity: if someone gets killed or injured as a result of this mad judge's decision, the judge should face liability.

• Related: "Hawaii Judge's Ruling Could Lead To Constitutional Crises"--Powerline.

• Evolution in action: "Man suspected of murdering British woman in Goa is taken to a police station with a bag over his head as police confirm the 28-year-old was raped before being strangled"--Daily Mail. She thought all cultures were the same. She thought wrong.
• "Secularism's pyrrhic victory"--Vox Popoli. The Godless Left were just reveling in their victory in the cultural wars, when some suddenly realized that there was a problem: "Secularism is indeed correlated with greater tolerance of gay marriage and pot legalization. But it’s also making America’s partisan clashes more brutal." Vox Day responds:

       What were they expecting? Did they know NOTHING of the history of pre-Christian cultures? Christianity has transformed EVERY culture with which it has come into contact, from Aztec to Viking, and reliably transformed it in the direction of what we consider to be civilization.

       Not only that, but for all the dancing and No True Atheism on the part of the atheist apologists, it is a historical fact that non-Christian modernists have slaughtered people on a scale that no Christians ever have. From Genghis Khan and Zhang Xianzhong to Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, and Mao, the great murderers of history have never been Christian.

       Like Voltaire or diaspora Jews who prefer living in someone else's homeland to their own, many secularists are beginning to discover that they would rather live a godless life in a Christian society than do so in a godless one.

• "Why Is Iran Wrecking Its Economy to Fund War in Syria?"--David Goldman at PJ Media. Because, he explains, of Iran's dependency on China and Russia, and that "Russian and Chinese strategists viewed the American approach to regime change in Syria as an effort to destabilize Russia and China." Read the whole thing.
• Bored with all the winning? Try something new: "Epic Amygdala Trigger Discovered – 'Fake American'"--Anonymous Conservative.
• "Obama's Third Term is Here"--Sultan Knish. About that soft coup and wiretapping:

       Obama Inc. had targeted Trump from the very beginning when it was clear he would be the nominee. 

       Trump had locked down the GOP nomination in May. Next month there was a FISA request targeting him. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court denied the request, and it is still unknown whether the request targeted Trump, or only his associates, but it’s silly to pretend that the submission of such a request a month after he became the presumptive GOP nominee was apolitical. 

       The second, narrower, FISA request came through in October. This one was approved. The reason for getting a FISA request in October was even more obvious than June. October is the crucial month in presidential elections. It’s the month of the “October Surprise” when the worst hit pieces based on the keenest opposition research is unleashed. Obama’s opposition research on Trump involved eavesdropping on a server in Trump Tower. Nixon would have been very jealous. 

        After the election, Obama Inc. began to spread out its bets. Some of his people migrated into his network of political organizations. Others remained embedded in the government. While the former would organize the opposition, the latter would sabotage, undermine and try to bring down Trump. 

       An unprecedented campaign for full spectrum dominance was being waged in domestic politics. 

        Political opposition wasn’t a new phenomenon; even if a past president centralizing control of the organizational and activist arms of his party to wage war on his successor was unprecedented. But weaponizing unelected government officials to wage war on an elected government was a coup. 

        Obama Anonymous conducted its coup in layers. The first layer partnered congressional Democrats with OA personnel to retain control of as much of the government as possible by the Obama Deep State. They did it by blocking Trump’s nominees with endless hearings and protests. The second layer partnered congressional Democrats with the deeper layer of Obama operatives embedded in law enforcement and intelligence agencies who were continuing the Obama investigations of Trump. 

         This second layer sought to use the investigation to force out Trump people who threatened their control over national security, law enforcement and intelligence. It is no coincidence that their targets, Flynn and Sessions, were in that arena. Or that their views on Islamic terror and immigration are outside the consensus making them easy targets for Obama Anonymous and its darker allies. 

         These darker allies predate Obama. The tactics being deployed against Trump were last used by them in a previous coup during President Bush’s second term. The targets back then had included Bush officials, an Iran skeptic, pro-Israel activists and a Democrat congresswoman. The tactics, eavesdropping, leaks, false investigations, dubious charges and smear campaigns against officials, were exactly the same. 

         Anyone who remembers the cases of Larry Franklin, Jane Harman and some others will recognize them. Before that they were used to protect the CIA underestimates of Soviet capabilities that were broken through by Rumsfeld’s Halloween Massacre and Team B which helped clear the way for Reagan’s defeat of the Soviet Union. 

          Under Bush, the Deep State was fighting against any effort to stop Iran’s nuclear program. It did so by eliminating and silencing opposition within the national security establishment and Congress through investigations of supposed foreign agents. That left the field clear for it to force a false National Intelligence Estimate on President Bush which claimed that Iran had halted its nuclear program. 

       Obama broke out the same tactics when he went after Iran Deal opponents. Once again members of Congress were spied on and the results were leaked to friendly media outlets. Before the wiretapping of Trump’s people, the NSA was passing along conversations of Iran Deal opponents to the White House which were used to coordinate strategy in defense of the illegal arrangement with Islamic terrorists. 

        The same wall between government and factional political agendas that Nixon’s “White House Plumbers” had broken through on the way to Watergate had been torn down. NSA eavesdropping was just another way to win domestic political battles. All it took was accusing the other side of treason. 

       And worse was to come. 

       During the Iran Deal battle, the NSA was supposedly filtering the eavesdropped data it passed along. 

        In its last days, Obama Inc. made it easier to pass along unfiltered personal information to the other agencies where Obama loyalists were working on their investigation targeting Trump. The NSA pipeline now makes it possible for the shadow White House to still gain intelligence on its domestic enemies. 

       And the target of the shadow White House is the President of the United States. 

       There is now a President and an Anti-President. A government and a shadow government. The anti-President controls more of the government through his shadow government than the real President.