March 20, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Saving California"--Bill Whittle (4 min.)

Whittle makes an argument that readers should recognize from the Pride Cycle and/or r/K theory: that California's current liberal mess is the result of life being too good and easy in the past.

• A new Woodpile Report is out.
• "Bolt-together AR-15 lower receiver: no 3D printer necessary"--Guns.com. The lower in this case is made of machined sheets of aluminum that are bolted together to form the whole of the lower receiver. The article contains links to a PDF file with the mechanical drawings. Frankly, it doesn't look any easier than would using an 80% lower, but I think the purpose is to provide an alternative should even the 80% lowers be unavailable.
• The Firearm Blog reports that "Norwegians to lose their semi-automatic hunting rifles. Scrap or Export!" This includes the Mini-14 and Mini-30 rifles, and M-1 Garand rifles (there is a more extensive list at the link). Under the new legislation, owners of prohibited firearms would have 3 years in which to either sell the firearm to a foreign buyer, or to scrap the firearms. 
• "TFB Book Review: Long Range Precision Rifle: Expanded Edition." A favorable review of Anthony Cirincione's Long Range Precision Rifle; Expanded Edition. The reviewer writes:

         For more experienced shooters, there is a wealth of advanced data and techniques laid out in other chapters.  One of my favorite sections deals with shooting over or under obstructions.  This concerns the techniques to use should there be power lines, window sills, bridges, or more commonly in my experience, tree branches in the line of one’s long-range shot.  This could make all the difference between a solid hit or an ineffective hit/miss.  It is a subject I’ve not seen well covered at shooting schools or in other literature.  Once again, Cirincione’s clarity shines through the murky waters on this subject.

         Have you ever encountered high angle shots?  On a recent hunt, I was at such an extreme angle that it almost felt like I was going to slide off a cliff. I’ve been shooting at extreme angles for a while and received instruction in such situations. I do believe that the section on high angle shooting in this book is probably one of the simplest and easy to understand outlines of what one needs to take in account to achieve long-range hits at extreme angles.

• "Safety is Not the Reason Democrats Are Pushing Gun Control"--American Greatness. From the article:

         In his highly acclaimed book on the Left’s Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, Twelve Who Ruled, the late Yale historian Robert Roswell Palmer described the machinations of its demagogues. They were “less concerned to cure poverty than to exploit it,” “breathers of fire” who were “more inclined to love action for its own sake than to speculate on consequences,” and who thought their ideas should be imposed simply because they said so or because “evident truths needed no lengthy discussion.”

         The same could be said about today’s gun control advocates who, since the multiple murder at a high school in Florida last month, have been demanding that Americans acquiesce to restrictions on the right to arms without regard for the restrictions’ practical, legal, and constitutional shortcomings.

The author goes on to note why most of the left's favorite gun control propositions will not work as they argue they will, and/or are violative of the Second Amendment.

            One thing not discussed in the article that bears some note is the left's use of the term "gun violence" which is a magical term lumping suicides with homicides. The left likes to argue that restricting guns will reduce gun violence, which it can do by making it more difficult for someone with suicidal tendencies to obtain a firearm. But ... and this is the big lie advanced by the left ... it doesn't reduce suicide rates. What happened in Australia is that people wanting to kill themselves simply shifted to other ways to do so. 

• "Despite Heightened Fear Of School Shootings, It's Not A Growing Epidemic"--NPR. From the article:

         "Schools are safer today than they had been in previous decades," says James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University who has studied the phenomenon of mass murder since the 1980s.

         Fox and doctoral student Emma Fridel crunched the numbers, and the results should come as a relief to parents.

         First, while multiple-victim shootings in general are on the rise, that's not the case in schools. There's an average of about one a year — in a country with more than 100,000 schools.

        "There were more back in the '90s than in recent years," says Fox. "For example, in one school year — 1997-98 — there were four multiple-victim shootings in schools."

        Second, the overall number of gunshot victims at schools is also down. According to Fox's numbers, back in the 1992-93 school year, about 0.55 students per million were shot and killed; in 2014-15, that rate was closer to 0.15 per million.

• At the intersection of diversity and a disarmed populace: "As a Rotherham grooming gang survivor, I want people to know about the religious extremism which inspired my abusers"--The Independent. The author begins her article:

         I’m a Rotherham grooming gang survivor. I call myself a survivor because I’m still alive. I’m part of the UK’s largest ever child sexual abuse investigation.

         As a teenager, I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England, to be beaten, tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a “white slag” and “white c***” as they beat me.

          They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn’t dress “modestly”, that they believed I deserved to be “punished”. They said I had to “obey” or be beaten.

        Fear of being killed, and threats to my parents’ lives, made it impossible for me to escape for about a year. The police didn’t help me.

Note well that last line: "The police didn't help me." When government is the problem, the solution is never going to include "going to the police."

         The author believes that generalized animosity against Muslims is not justified, and would exacerbate the situation. I'm not so sure. Hostility or distrust toward outsiders is a type of Darwinian defense mechanism to prevent the slow invasion and replacement by an outside group. If there had been a general hostility to Muslims immigrating to the United Kingdom, the victim-author of this piece would not have been subject to a "grooming gang" because the perpetrators would not have been admitted, or would have been too afraid to engage in such activity lest there be a backlash; at the least, the police would have been more than happy to help the victim. It is the acceptance of Muslims--even a "need" to please Muslims--that created the situation where this victim was abused with no hope of succor by her government.

          While some argue that the Lord expects us to welcome the stranger, and that such welcome should be unconditional, I'm again somewhat hesitant to agree. Although the scriptures talk about not oppressing the stranger and we are encouraged to be hospitable to our guests, there is certainly nothing that indicates that we are to welcome a stranger as a permanent resident with full and unconditional acceptance of their customs. In point of fact,  one of the clear messages from Jeremiah and Ezekiel is that Israel and Judah sinned by adopting the beliefs and customs of foreign peoples (the result of welcoming aliens into Israel that began under the reign of Solomon); and, in Ezekiel, God goes further and condemns Judah for having turned over the operation of the temple to foreigners! It is also relevant that the Jews were, in general, not to marry outside the covenant; and, in that vein, it is notable that one of the primary reasons given for the Great Flood was intermarriage with outsiders. (See Genesis 6:2: "the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose"). In short, there is a great spectrum between "do not oppress the stranger" and "admit the stranger unconditionally." 

• Dreams of Empire: "Erdogan Vows to Extend Offensive to East Syria, North Iraq"--Bloomberg. From the article:

         Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, buoyed by his army’s capture of a Kurdish stronghold in northwest Syria, threatened to extend the offensive against separatist Kurdish militants to eastern Syria and northern Iraq.

         Turkey’s military will shift their campaign to several towns under the control of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, including Manbij, Kobani, Tal Abyad, Rasulayn and Qamishli, “until this terror corridor is fully eliminated,” Erdogan said Monday. Turkey’s threat to attack Manbij, where U.S. troops are based, has put Ankara at loggerheads with Washington, and talks between the NATO allies have so far yielded no agreement. The U.S. also has a diplomatic presence in Kobani.

Erdogan can characterize this as an anti-terror operation all he wants, but this is less about controlling Kurdish separatists fighting against Turkey, and more about gobbling up bits and pieces of Syria. 

• As the media currently hyperventilates about Cambridge Analytica data mining Facebook, it is wise to look back at what the Democrats have done: "Ex-Obama Campaign Director Drops Bombshell Claim on Facebook: 'They Were on Our Side'"--IJR. From the article:

A former Obama campaign official is claiming that Facebook knowingly allowed them to mine massive amounts of Facebook data — more than they would’ve allowed someone else to do — because they were supportive of the campaign.

It goes on to explain: 

          That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the [Facebook-based app] gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly 85% of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded friend lists. What’s more, Facebook offered an ideal way to reach them. “People don’t trust campaigns. They don’t even trust media organizations,” says Goff. “Who do they trust? Their friends.”

          The campaign called this effort targeted sharing. And in those final weeks of the campaign, the team blitzed the supporters who had signed up for the app with requests to share specific online content with specific friends simply by clicking a button. More than 600,000 supporters followed through with more than 5 million contacts, asking their friends to register to vote, give money, vote or look at a video designed to change their mind. A geek squad in Chicago created models from vast data sets to find the best approaches for each potential voter. “We are not just sending you a banner ad,” explains Dan Wagner, the Obama campaign’s 29-year-old head of analytics, who helped oversee the project. “We are giving you relevant information from your friends.”

If you want to know how to identify and disable apps that have access to your Facebook account, you can read this article from Quartz Magazine.

• Big Brother is watching: "To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google"--WRAL. The article reports:

In at least four investigations last year – cases of murder, sexual battery and even possible arson at the massive downtown fire in March 2017 – Raleigh police used search warrants to demand Google accounts not of specific suspects, but from any mobile devices that veered too close to the scene of a crime, according to a WRAL News review of court records. These warrants often prevent the technology giant for months from disclosing information about the searches not just to potential suspects, but to any users swept up in the search.

It goes on to explain:

         Most modern phones, tablets and laptops have built-in location tracking that pings some combination of GPS, Wi-Fi and mobile networks to determine the device's position.

* * *

         Users can switch location tracking off to prevent the device from pinging GPS satellites. But if it's on a cellular network or connected to Wi-Fi, the device is still transmitting its coordinates to third parties, even if they're far less accurate than GPS.

         In the past, at least, turning off that technology has been no guarantee of privacy.

         Business and technology news site Quartz discovered late last year that Google continued to track devices even when all GPS, Wi-Fi and cell networks were supposedly disabled. The tech giant says it has updated its software to stop the practice.

And, according to this Quartz story, Google can even track your Android phone if the SIM card has never been installed or has been removed.

• Some news from Germany: "Police Uncover Antifa-Linked High-Explosives, Chemicals, and Mobile Bomb Factory"--Breitbart. 
• Diversity is our strength: "Illegal immigrants made 1.3 million identity thefts and IRS isn’t sure if cases were prosecuted"--The Blaze. Coming across the border is merely the first in a long line of illegal activities in which illegal aliens will engage.
• "Meet Hillary Clinton’s Other, Much More Powerful and Shadowy Oppo Research Firm"--Polizette. "Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co., founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums."
• Tales from the apocalypse: "Community Leaders Call For Action Amidst Milwaukee HIV, Syphilis Outbreak"--WUWM. The article states:

         Community leaders called for an “all hands on deck” approach Tuesday to an outbreak of HIV and syphilis in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Health Department says more than 120 people, including some high school students, have been affected. 

          Nearly two dozen community leaders packed into a room at Milwaukee City Hall to offer solutions.

           Angela Hagy, director of disease control for the Milwaukee Health Department, broke down the numbers. She said health officials are still tracing the roots of the sexually transmitted infections. But, they’re calling the outbreak a cluster because the patients appear to be connected.

            “We have a social network of 127 individuals that we identified late last year – and that network included 76 people who tested positive for syphilis, HIV or both,” Hagy said.

            Hagy said the number of newly diagnosed HIV and sexually transmitted infection cases has increased nationally, as well as in Milwaukee. Last year, she explained, the city saw 117 cases of HIV and 53 cases of syphilis. She also said that Milwaukee has the highest number of cases of gonorrhea in the nation at more than 4,400.

•  News you probably DON'T want to know: "Signs Of Apocalypse – Jenkem"--Anonymous Conservative. The Collier County Sheriff's Department has issued an bulletin warning of a new street drug called, among other things, "Jenkem." Jemkem is an inhalant gas created by fermenting human waste. I suppose that this means that all of the obnoxious hurdles to purchasing various chemicals supposedly used for huffing must be working. But seriously, how are they going to ban the "precursors" to this!?!