April 18, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"A US-China Trade War?"--China Uncensored (10 min.)

A look at the current war of words between the U.S. and China over trade, background and possible ramifications. He also discusses that, as an export nation, China has much more to lose.

• A new Woodpile Report for this week. 
• "Trump confirms that secretary of state nominee and CIA director Mike Pompeo made a secret trip to North Korea to meet Kim Jong-un"--Daily Mail. These meetings were apparently key to getting North Korea to consider officially ending the Korean War and denuclearizing. 
• New products: "AK Folding Stock Hinge and Triangle Stock by Circle 10 AK"--The Firearm Blog. 
• "Gang members admit to firebombing black families in Boyle Heights housing development"--Los Angeles Times. A case of Hispanics trying to drive blacks out of neighborhoods to make them racially homogeneous--i.e., all Hispanic. 
• "New Gun Video Site ‘GunStreamer.com’ Launches"--The Firearm Blog. With YouTube cracking down on "bad think," a lot of folks that produce firearm related videos are fleeing to other video hosting platforms. This is an attempt to build a firearms only platform. 
• "21 Point Prepper’s Checklist For Stocking Up at Walmart"--MD Creekmore. This article compliments nicely the MD Creekmore article I linked to yesterday on how to quick-start your food storage and other preparations. 
• For those of you that like table-top games: "CIA's training 'El Chapo' board game can now be yours"--Borderland Beat. It, and another game used to train CIA analysts--"Collection"--can be found and downloaded from this site in a PDF format.
• "THE KA-BAR AND THE FAIRBAIRN-SYKES: TWO FIGHTING CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT PHILOSOPHIES"--HROARR.
• "The Flipside of White Privilege: Black Entitlement -- A List of 50 Things Black People Have the Luxury of Taking for Granted"--Medium. 
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Scientists engineer plastic-eating enzyme that could help fight pollution"--Deutsche Welle. From the article:

         Scientists from Britain's University of Portsmouth and the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory "tweaked" the structure of the naturally occurring enzyme after they found that it was helping a bacteria to break down, or digest, plastic used to make bottles.

         "We've made an improved version of the enzyme better than the natural one already," said John McGeehan, a professor at Portsmouth who co-led the work. "That's really exciting because that means that there's potential to optimize the enzyme even further."

         The engineered enzyme could in future help in the fight against pollution caused by plastics, which can persist for hundreds of years in the environment and currently pollute large areas of land and sea worldwide.

         The team of scientists is now working on improving the enzyme further to see if they can make it capable of breaking down plastics on an industrial scale. Their initial goal had been simply to understand the enzyme's structure.