May 30, 2018 -- A Quick Run Around The Web

"UK: Descent into POLICE STATE"--Black Pigeon Speaks (6-1/2 min.)

Arrested and imprisoned because the UK authorities do not like his viewpoint. At the time of his arrest, he was live-streaming about a trial related to the Rotherham child rape gang. Remember that the gang was Pakistani Muslims, and that local government officials, including a police officer who passed information to the gang, had sex with girls "groomed" by the gang. See also this article from The Bookroom Worm, "England goes totalitarian on Tommy Robinson #TommyRobinson #FreeTommy."

• Grant Cunningham's Hump Day reading list for this week.
• "Calibers for Beginners: .380 ACP"--The Truth About Guns. The truth in this case is that, notwithstanding the compact 9 mm pistols available, .380 remains one of the most popular pistol rounds for concealed carry handguns.
• A good start? I remember when it was it was the end goal--to have enough money and enough guns to justify buying a safe. "Having a Gun Safe Isn’t Enough, But It’s A Really Good Start"--The Truth About Guns. Another opinion on how to stop school shootings, this one insisting that all guns and ammunition be stored in a safe "save a carry gun or a home defense gun." The basic take away from the author is that you cannot trust your children to have access to your firearms. Growing up, my father stored long-guns in his closet, and handguns (and most of the handguns were loaded) in his dresser drawer. No accidents, and no school shootings, either. He trusted us because he had taught us to use firearms. I guess I feel the same way about my kids. (Update: I'm not saying that my father's storage was best practices, but if you need a vault to keep your guns away from your kids, you have much greater problems than a gun safe is going to solve).
• "Gunshot Wounds: More Than Just Plugging Holes"--USA Carry. Pro-tip: "if you don’t isolate the source of the blood flow and stop or severely slow it, you’re not helping."
• "Reloading: Fine Tuning Powder Loads For MSR Accuracy"--The Truth About Guns. The author tried various powders and loads. The best groups were using H322 and Varget. I've been using 2230, but I hear good things about Varget, so perhaps I should give it a try. 
• "Long Read of the Week: The Mathematics of Countering Tyranny by JAMES WESLEY RAWLES"--American Digest. Short version: there are too many firearms in the possession of citizens for a government confiscation to be successful.
• "Stephen Paddock’s hotel records show three women registered in his room"--Baltimore Post-Examiner. The article reports:

       Lombardo said on Oct. 9, “We are trying to confirm his actions between the 25thand the 28th.”  “I’m under the belief he was not occupying the room between those dates.”

       The police also told the media that Marilou Danley’s name was also on the registration, however, they never stated that there were three females registered to Paddock’s room.

* * *

       All this indicates is that there were three females on the registration.  We do not know currently if anyone other than Paddock was in his rooms during his stay, however, this would indicate that other possible suspects were known to the police since October 1.

Another record indicates that the daughter of Marilou Danley (Danley was Paddock's girlfriend) had pro-ISIS postings on her Facebook page. 

• "A Silent Coup in Italy"--Commentary Magazine. The author of this piece summarizes the situation thus: "Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Sunday barred a coalition of euroskeptic parties from forming a government despite a clear mandate handed down by voters earlier this spring. The move amounted to nothing less than a bloodless coup d’état and laid bare the naked contempt for the vox populi among the Italian and European liberal establishment." 
• "Meanwhile in Sweden: Senior Citizen Faces 2 Years Jail Time For Factually Accurate Statement About Somali Immigrants’ Low IQ"--Investment Watch Blog. The statement that has put the man in risk of being jailed is: “Only every fifth Somalis have IQ over 70”. 
• "Gun-Free Britain: Drive-by Shooters Spray House with Bullets in Multicultural Manchester"--Breitbart. Quick! Disarm the populace even more! The issue is that if you are a criminal not interested in obeying the law, it is not difficult to obtain a firearm in Britain.
• I've seen several news reports about mysterious booms, including this one today: "Police: Over 20 Explosions Caused Mysterious Booms Reported In Bucks, Lehigh Counties"--CBS Philly. The article doesn't explain how they determined that the booms were from explosions rather than a natural phenomena. In any event, this is a follow up from this article of May 22, 2018, reporting that the FBI was investigating the booms. Mysterious booms are not actually all that rare (see, e.g., this list of articles at Science Frontiers).
• South Africa has been rocked by a different type of explosions:

• "9 robbers on the run after blowing up cash-in-transit van near Rustenburg"--News24.

• "Robbers blow up another cash-in-transit van, this time near Badplaas"--News24.

• "Hawks not ruling out syndicate in late night Joburg attempted cash-in-transit heist"--News24. (Note: "Hawks" is in reference to a special police unit).

• "Poll: Mexico's left-leaning presidential candidate Lopez Obrador widens lead"--Dallas News. Obrador now has 52% support in the polls; his closest competitor only has 26%. His election may be disastrous for the United States because Obrador may do to Mexico what Chavez did to Venezuela; and the natural consequence of that would be increased illegal immigration.
• Like a dog returning to its vomit: "Brazil faces calls for return to military dictatorship amid truckers' strike"--The Guardian. From the article:

         As a nationwide truck strike reaches its 10th day, gas stations have finally begun to receive fuel deliveries and truckers have started drifting back to work – some unwillingly.

         But hundreds of demonstrations have continued on highways across Brazil – and many of those still protesting are calling for a return to the rightwing dictatorship that ran Brazil for two sombre decades until 1985.

         "We need help from the military to resolve our problems in Brasília, to remove the bandits from there and to put the house in order,” said one driver, Gabriel Berestov, 44.

         What began as a nationwide truck strike over rising fuel prices has spiralled into a broader protest over a range of issues including Brazil’s healthcare, education, roads, increasing violence and political corruption. 

• Heh. "Disney Shares Drop 2.4 Percent Following Poor ‘Solo’ Box Office, ‘Roseanne’ Cancellation"--The Wrap. As Vox Day has pointed out, the media executives aren't interested in making money as much as they are in molding the culture.
• "The Long March: Reckoning With 1968's 'Cultural Revolution,' 50 Years On"--PJ Media. Roger Kimball writes:

In democratic societies, where free elections are guaranteed, political revolution is almost unthinkable in practical terms. Consequently, utopian efforts to transform society have been channeled into cultural and moral life. In America and Western Europe, scattered if much-publicized episodes of violence have wrought far less damage than the moral and intellectual assaults that do not destroy buildings but corrupt sensibilities and blight souls. Consequently, the success of the cultural revolution of the 1960s can be measured not in toppled governments but in shattered values. If we often forget what great changes this revolution brought in its wake, that, too, is a sign of its success: having changed ourselves, we no longer perceive the extent of our transformation.

• "Pope Francis' cunning long game"--The Week. Damon Linker explains:

        Pope Francis' stealth reform of the Roman Catholic Church shows no sign of slowing down — and may even be accelerating.

         Stealth is key here. If the pope had declared earlier this month that henceforth the Roman Catholic Church would authoritatively teach that homosexuals should be happy being gay, that God made them homosexual, and that God himself (along with the pope) loves them just the way they are, it would have been a massive story in the history of Catholicism — and one that quite likely would have precipitated a major schism, with conservative bishops and priests (mainly in North America and Africa) formally breaking from Rome.

         But because word of the pope saying these things comes to us second hand, in a report of a private conversation between Francis and a gay man named Juan Carlos Cruz who is also a victim of the clerical sex abuse crisis in Chile, the utterance will go down as just the latest example of the pope making unorthodox statements in settings in which he has plausible deniability and in which he can claim he was speaking as a pastor rather than as an expositor of the church's official dogmas and doctrines.

* * *

        ... Instead of acting as an expositor of these core teachings of the church, the pope selectively diverges from them in his actions and statements without deigning to change the teachings themselves. The implicit message is the same in every case: The pope himself thinks it's possible to be a member of the church in good standing while failing to abide by all of the institution's rules.

         This is significantly different than the pope acknowledging that everyone is a sinner and will therefore break the rules from time to time. That standard view presumes that the divergence from the rule is a failing that requires repentance and reconciliation (the sacrament of confession), along with the intention on the part of the sinner to do better next time. Francis' position is different — implying that the lack of conformity to church teaching is acceptable, requiring no change or improvement in behavior.

        Juan Carlos Cruz is gay, that's how God made him, and there's nothing wrong with that.

         But of course church teaching contradicts this. Which puts Pope Francis in the position of effectively promulgating two truths — implicitly affirming the official, harsher doctrine while subtly undermining it with a less stringent pastoral teaching. Instead of seeking to change the underlying rules, which would risk divisiveness and even schism, he shows that it's perfectly alright for a priest or layperson to diverge from or ignore the rule in the name of welcoming as many people as possible to Christ's church.

Something to watch for in all our churches. 

• For my LDS readers: "A Note on Book of Mormon 'Trinitarianism'"--Ploni Almoni. A scholarly discussion as to why trinitarian passages in the Book of Mormon are not anachronistic.