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Friday, November 10, 2017

November 10, 2017 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"The PAX AMERICANA, PetroDollar and Coming CRISIS in the GULF"--Black Pigeon Speaks (15 min.). BPS discusses how a perfect storm of events involving demographics, falling or stagnant oil prices, and Saudi Arabia emptying the water aquifer that provides it with potable water will set off war in the Middle-East and create a vast flood of refugees to Europe. 

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
  • Greg Ellifritz at Active Response Training has been busy this week--here are a few of his articles and posts:
  • TGIF: Another Weekend Knowledge Dump. I would specifically note the article from Dave Spaulding on "What Really Happens in a Gunfight?"
  • Greg has penned a review of the book, Prepper Guns by Bryce Towsley. He describes the book as being much in the same vein as Boston's Gun Bible, and I would note that another author compared it to Mel Tappan's Survival Guns, except in each case, updated to current firearms and accessories. That is, the book is a review and recommendation as to various firearms that would be useful for a prepper, including accessories.
  • Greg has also posted three articles about self-defense in a church building, motivated, obviously, by the recent shooting in Texas. First of the articles is "Your Tactical Training Scenario…Violence at Church" which has a list of points or questions to ask yourself to help evaluate you and your family's risk while at church. Second is "Forming a Church Safety Team," a guest post written by Ron Borsch, a retired police officer and law enforcement trainer. This is a lengthy article (with links to additional resources) to advise on forming armed security volunteers at a church. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the author did not limit membership in such teams to LEO or military, but suggested congregation members with concealed carry licenses. Third, and finally, is "Church Safety," another guest post from Ron Borsche, which is a more general look at church safety vis-a-vis shootings than the prior article.
  • Here is the text of the Democrats' new "assault weapon" bill (PDF). As noted yesterday, it primarily goes after semi-automatic rifles or shotguns that use a detachable magazine and one or more features such as a pistol grip, threaded barrel, barrel shroud (basically, any free float front handguard), etc. It pretty much bans any pistol AKs, ARs, or any other pistol that does not use the grip as the magazine well. It bans magazines, whether detachable or fixed, of more than 10 rounds (except for tube magazines for .22 rifles).  Oh, and it prohibits "bump fire" devices. It also prohibits private sale of any grandfathered weapons or magazines. There is a list of specific weapons which are prohibited under the bill. It has even longer lists of exempted weapons. A stock, non-threaded Mini-14 or Mini-30 would still be okay, as would an SKS with the original stock and 10-round fixed magazine. Read the whole thing. I don't believe that the current public sentiment is such that this bill could be passed right now.
  • "Gun Review: Hudson H9 9mm Pistol"--The Truth About Guns. The H9 is a pistol that attempts to combine the best aspects of striker fired pistols with those of 1911 pistols, together with an enlarged front in order to lower the height of the barrel and put the recoil impulse of the recoil spring low enough that it won't cause muzzle climb. The author liked the overall finish of the weapon, and thought that the designers had achieved their goal of minimal muzzle flip, but the fitting of some parts was rather loose, and the accuracy was not very good.
  • "The Quest for A Hunting Rifle"--Real Life Survivor. A discussion of caliber, types of actions, stocks, and optics, for a hunting rifle. The author concludes: "My current taste in a deer rifle runs to a lightweight, composite-stocked, short-barreled bolt action chambered for a cartridge that shoots a 130- to 165-grain bullet into 1 MOA."
  • "Germany Suspects Apocalypse By 2040"--Anonymous Conservative. The author discusses an extensive 102-page report, called "Strategic Forecast 2040" published by the German Ministry of Defense at the end of February 2017, and which was subsequently leaked to Der Speigel. The Forecast predicts "a world in which the international order erodes after 'decades of instability', the value systems worldwide drift apart and globalisation is stopped." Anonymous Conservative adds:
         Never think the elites don’t know what is coming, and that they are not preparing for it now. ...
             People are going to die. Lots of them. That is beyond any doubt. And for every death, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, who will live in terror – terror for their lives and safety, terror of losing their homes, terror of failing to provision their families, and terror of being on the outside of the community they will need to survive.
                The elites will do whatever is necessary to not be among the terrified or the dead .... They are taking names, securing vital resources, and cementing their holds on power, all while the masses blissfully believe we will always have it as easy as we did yesterday.
                Are you preparing too? Start formulating your plans, figure out what you will need, and assume everything provided by government will go away. From disease outbreak, to security, to food, to medicine, whatever you can’t provide for yourself or get from your immediate community, you will probably have to do without. And whatever you acquire, do not, in any way, let others know you have gotten it.

          Other Stuff:
          • More on Saudi Arabia:
                  ... Kuwait's Foreign Ministry also ordered its nationals to leave Lebanon immediately, according to a statement carried by Kuwait News Agency (KUNA).
                     The Saudi and Kuwaiti positions come six days after the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Saad Al-Hariri. He announced his resignation from Riyadh on Saturday.
                       Al-Hariri accused Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, of “controlling the Lebanese state,” and pointed out that he sensed that something was being plotted covertly to target his life.
                          Lebanon had already been drawn into the crisis in two ways: After a rocket was fired from Yemen at the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on Saturday, Saudi officials accused Hezbollah and Iran of aiding in the attack. And they declared that the attack amounted to a declaration of war by Lebanon, a leap given that the weak Lebanese state does not control Hezbollah.
                            At the same time, the Lebanese prime minister, Saad Hariri, unexpectedly flew to Riyadh and declared his resignation there on Saturday. Suspicions were growing among officials and diplomats in Beirut on Thursday that he had not only been pressured to do so by Saudi Arabia but was being held there against his will.
                               Despite the worries, analysts, officials and diplomats said that although they were not privy to the thinking of the Saudi crown prince, it was far-fetched that Saudi Arabia would launch a military action against Lebanon, since it is already overstretched in a war it started two years ago against Iran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen.
                               And Saudi Arabia has expressed displeasure with Lebanon this way before: This was at least the fourth time in five years that it asked its citizens to leave Lebanon.
                      • "US Air Force official: Missile targeting Saudis was Iranian"--AP. Per the report: "Iran manufactured the ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Shiite rebels toward the Saudi capital and remnants of it bore 'Iranian markings,' the top U.S. Air Force official in the Mideast said Friday, backing the kingdom’s earlier allegations."
                        There’s a particular reason he’s trying to control the DAs in major cities. That way you control what is prosecuted and what is not. He’s trying to change the nature of law enforcement by buying the prosecutors. He’s investing millions to do it and he’s succeeding because conservatives are not calling it out loudly enough to stop it.
                        • Some local (for me) news: "Wildlife moving into foothills"--KTVB. Wolf tracks have been found in the hills just a few miles north of the city. The article cites the Idaho Department of Fish & Game warning that as winter comes, deer and other game will move into the valleys, and will be followed by predators such as wolves and mountain lions. 
                        • "Monsanto Faces Blowback Over Cancer Cover-Up"--Der Speigel. Internal documents show that Monsanto tried to ignore warnings that Round Up pesticide could cause cancer or other health issues, and refused to do any research to verify it one way or another. Also, not only has some research linked the primary chemical in Round Up to lymphoma, but there is also this:
                          Glyphosate appears not to be as harmless as the industry likes to claim, in part because it also kills many microorganisms in addition to plants. Although this is unlikely to directly affect humans and animals, it does apparently affect the millions of bacteria in the intestinal flora known as the microbiome.
                            Mexican TCOs maintain the greatest drug trafficking influence in the United States, with continued signs of growth and expansion. By controlling lucrative smuggling corridors, primarily across the SWB, Mexican TCOs export significant quantities of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, marijuana, and possibly fentanyl into the United States annually. Once these illicit drugs are smuggled into the U.S., they are delivered to user markets in the United States through transportation routes and distribution cells that are managed or influenced by Mexican TCOs.
                            • "Border Patrol losing agents faster than it can hire them"--Washington Times.
                            • You may not have seen much in the media about it, but there is a big scandal developing over a dump of some 13 million documents called the "Paradise Papers" which provide insights to how the wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations use offshore banking accounts to shield their money from taxes. An article from The Guardian on it, as well as one from Deutsche Welle. As the latter notes, this tax avoidance is mostly legal, but "ethical and moral issues ... arise when powerful figures — particularly politicians or those with influence in the political world — are seen to be shepherding often obscene amounts of wealth out of the reach of their own national exchequers, whilst supposedly asking others to act in the national interest."
                            • Some inconvenient truths for climate scientists:
                            The inconvenient truth about climate change is that we lack the data to properly understand what weather was like over most of the planet, even in the recent past. Without a good understanding of past weather conditions, we have no way of knowing the history of the planet’s average condition -- the climate. Despite the confident pronouncements of politicians and climate activists, we cannot compare today’s climate with the past. Meaningful forecasts of future climate change are therefore impossible.
                              The author also notes that every single climate model based on the proxy data on which climatologists rely have been wrong. Read the whole thing.
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