March 6, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around The Web

"Changes in Survival & Preparedness as you Grow Older"--FerFal (20 min.)

A discussion of changes to your prepping, including items to stock and types of firearms, for older preppers. Interestingly, in his book, FerFal was dead set against revolvers for a defensive firearm, but apparently more experience has tempered his opinion somewhat.

• Speaking of getting older: "Random Notes on Field Living"--Mountain Guerrilla. I'm pretty sure that I've never been in as good of shape as Mosby is currently, but age eventually impacts all of us. Mosby writes about putting together a get-home bag as he prepared to go traveling to teach a class:

          So, I packed my “spring/summer” ruck. Then, I stepped on the scale to see what it weighed. My entire load, from skin out (FSO) was 65#. That’s cake! Hell, I’ve carried rucks alone that weighed more than that! But, as I was standing there on the scale, looking at the quantifiable, inarguable number represented, my mid-40s back and hips were going, “Man, that feels like a lot more than 65 pounds! I bet you could dump some of that shit, and be okay.”

       So, I listened to the voice of experience, and managed to get my ruck weight down to less than 20# (this is the base weight…not counting water). That was a lot more manageable.

      I did that by thinking about what I was actually carrying, versus the mission set I could foresee needing to fulfill on the long trek home, if it came down to it. I’m not going to be “camping” for days at a time, leisurely loafing away my vacation. I’m going to be moving as fast as I safely can, for as many hours a night as I can, then racking out for a couple of hours before getting up and repeating it.

• "Tactical Training Scenario- Attacked While Seated"--Active Response Training. None of the martial arts classes I've attended ever discussed how to defend yourself if you were seated in a chair, although I have a book on Karate that spends a whole chapter on the topic. Greg Elifritz relates a news story of a man that was stabbed to death while seated, and then provides some tips on responding. These include practice drawing your pistol from a seated position and learning to target areas of the attacker's body that are more vulnerable to an attack from a seated position (e.g., the groin). He also notes that punches and other hand strikes will generally be weaker. Anyway, read the whole thing.
• "Pistol Mounted Lights--A Solution in Search of a Problem?"--Sensible Self Defense. The author discusses some of the problems with pistol mounted lights, including the possibility of a negligent discharge. His takeaway: "Is a light on a long gun a good idea? Absolutely. However, a pistol mounted light may be a solution in search of a problem. They are expensive, speciality lights designed for a single purpose. You can purchase a superb hand-held light for much less and it will serve for everyday use as well as for the rare emergency when you must engage a threat with your pistol under low light conditions."
• This looks interesting: "The Low-Recoil Space-Age MARS Rifle"--The Firearm Blog. It combines a recoiling barrel with a gas system to provide a low felt recoil system when using .308. It will work with .308 AR style lowers. 
• D**ned import restrictions! "Kalashnikov Concern to Make Civilian AK-12s called SAIGA-AK12"--The Firearm Blog.
• "What Would a Hybrid Civil War Look Like?"--Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. Fernandez argues that we are already in a civil war. First he comments about hybrid warfare:

        With conventional war rendered suicidal by the advent of nuclear weapons, a cocktail of lawfare, info war, deliberate population movement, and targeted physical intimidation is now the toolset of choice and the Russians, Chinese, jihadis, EU, and USA each have their versions.

* * *

        But since the resulting battlefields are waged inside the country, there is little reason why domestic political conflict should not resemble the international ones. Because victory is now attained by jailing opponents, silencing or financially sanctioning them, punitive prosecution, deplatforming, and universal surveillance are used alike in both cases and it is increasingly hard to tell them apart. 

He then reasons:

        If a civil war were actually underway it would take the form of hybrid warfare and look much like what can already be observed today. It would explain why, in an era obsessed with safe spaces and tolerance, there is little of either left; why no one is safe from offense, nothing is private; why everything is increasingly criminalized. That context would explain why each new restriction, whether on the use of cash, private transportation, or gun ownership can be perceived as a veiled threat. "Speaking to conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, diGenova summed up his best advice to friends: 'I vote, and I buy guns. And that’s what you should do.'"

      It might shed light on why so many people already feel like psychological refugees with the strange sense they have been evicted from their homes and wondering: what happened to my country? To the church on the corner? To family gatherings? Trust networks? Why have they been turned into battlegrounds?

My pet theory is that we have been in a civil war since the 1960's and 70's, and the left won. (Else, why would leftist terrorist now enjoy cushy jobs as professors at top universities). Now they are frustrated as they turn on each other, but can't quite complete their mopping up of the right.

• "Man and Dog Survive Five Days Trapped in Car by Consuming Taco Bell Sauce Packets"--Breitbart. I'm not impressed. The average American is fat enough to probably survive a whole month without food.
• "Night Vision vs. Thermal Vision – What You Can’t See CAN Hurt You!"--Guns America Digest. Although this article is from 2010, it provides a nice overview of the difference between the two technologies.

• Related: "How to Choose Between Night Vision Or Thermal Optics"--Grand View Outdoors. This 2018 article has information on newer, high-end optics.

• "Emergency Fund: A Top 5 Critical Prep"--Beans, Bandages, Bullets and You. The authors note that "most Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF) events are not The End Of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI), but rather they are personal crisis situations and local / regional disasters." As such, the author advises that a cash reserve be among your top preps, "[b]ecause chances are early on in an emergency, it can help you get water, food, shelter and transportation."
• "The Best City Garden"--Backwoods Home Magazine. Tips and tricks on planning and growing a garden in the city.
• "Recipes for Flavor Enhancers, Condiments, Spicing up Boring Food…"--Modern Survival Blog.
• "Kelly Ketle Hack No. 9 - Carbide Punk"--Dreaming of Sunset Over Ochre Dunes. If you have a carbide lamp, you know that water dripped onto carbide produces acetylene gas. The author describes how to use this same chemical reaction to fuel a cooking stove. 
• I think David French is a cuck, but he can and does raise some good points at time, such as his latest at The National Review, "Why the Left Won’t Win the Gun-Control Debate." To sum up his article, he explains "that the individual decision to purchase and carry a gun isn’t rooted in some sort of strange gun fetish or Wild West swagger but rather in the fundamental desire (and right) to protect your loved ones from harm. If arguments for gun control don’t grapple with this reality, then they’re destined to fail." I would not read his article as "there is nothing to worry about," but as demonstrating techniques to successfully argue against gun control. Read the whole thing.
• Another reason gun control will fail: "It Has Come to This, Deny, Defy, Deceive, Evade, Resist, Smuggle, Defend"--Ammoland. The author observes: "Once the government changes the rules to make you a felon today for what was legal yesterday, then what does another paper felony mean? NOTHING!"
• "Abrupt global events in the Earth’s history: a physics perspective" (PDF)--by Gregory Ryskin of the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. From the abstract:

... I propose that a single mechanism is responsible for all three types of such events: mass extinctions, geomagnetic polarity reversals, and sea-level fluctuations. The mechanism is fast, and involves a significant energy release. The mechanism is unlikely to have astronomical causes, both because of the energies involved, and because it acts quasiperiodically. It must then be sought within the Earth itself. And it must be capable of reversing the Earth’s magnetic field. The last requirement makes it incompatible with the consensus model of the origin of the geomagnetic field – the hydromagnetic dynamo operating in the Earth’s fluid core. In the second part of the paper, I show that a vast amount of seemingly unconnected geophysical and geological data can be understood in a unified way if the source of the Earth’s main magnetic field is a ~200-km-thick lithosphere, repeatedly magnetized as a result of methane-driven oceanic eruptions, which produce ocean flow capable of dynamo action. The eruptions are driven by the interplay of buoyancy forces and exsolution of dissolved gas, which accumulates in the oceanic water masses prone to stagnation and anoxia. Polarity reversals, mass extinctions, and sequence boundaries are consequences of these eruptions. Unlike the consensus model of geomagnetism, this scenario is consistent with the paleomagnetic data showing that “directional changes during a [geomagnetic polarity] reversal can be astonishingly fast, possibly occurring as a nearly instantaneous jump from one inclined dipolar state to another in the opposite hemisphere”.

"PRIVILEGE, Victim & Oppressor Culture: EXPLAINED"--Black Pigeon Speaks (14 min.)

Although BP does not raise this point, the rise of "victim culture" fits neatly in with Anonymous Conservative's r/K political theory, with the atrophied amygdala and constant need for a dopamine rush explaining a lot of the freakishness on the Left. 

• Just an FYI, but several of Marcus Wynn's novels are on sale (and a few are being offered for free) for a limited time at Smashswords. I've read a few of his books--Warrior in the Shadows, No Other Option, and The Sword of Michael--and enjoyed them. I'm currently reading the first of his Wylde series of books, and really enjoying it as well. So check 'em out and see if anything appeals to you.
• "Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python"--John Wilder at Wilder, Wealthy & Wise. Yeah, we all know that the Romans ended up decadent and weak in the late Empire, but they didn't start out that way. The Romans during the Republican era had strong principles--so strong, that they were probably a major reason that the Romans finally decided to utterly destroy the child-sacrificing Carthaginians. 

       The Carthaginians were evil on a biblical level.  Everything about their religion and public life was against the Roman ideals of virtue, and Roman virtue was a big deal.  In Rome, virtue acted hand in hand with two other pillars:  the law and religion.  Each of them were a leg that helped make Roman society stable enough to last and thrive for hundreds of years, until they discovered Netflix®.

       Roman law and Roman virtue are foundational to all of Western Civilization.  What were the Roman virtues?  This list is based on the Wikipedia entry:

• Fides – the root for fidelity, and really covered by the word faithfulness, to gods, country, and family. You’ll see that trio again.

• Pietas – respect to gods, country, and family. Told ya.

• Regilio – following traditional religious practices.

• Disciplina – this one is pretty straightforward.

• Gravitas/Constantia – dignified self-control and perseverance.

• Virtus – ideal male values, knowing good from evil, shame from dishonor, pilsner from bock.

The end goal was Dignitas and Auctoritas.  Dignitas was a reputation for worth, along with the honor and esteem it brought.  Auctoritas was the prestige and respect that came from being virtuous...

•  "What Killed the Middle Class?"--Charles Hugh Smith. Basically, it is what we've seen happen at other times in our country: the real wages and relative wealth of the middle class is in decline, while wealth is increasingly concentrated among an oligarchy of elites. A big reason for this concentration of wealth is wage depression as the result of a flood of cheap, foreign labor. We saw a similar situation in the late 19th and early 20th Century. However, faced with social unrest, bombings targeting the wealthy and powerful, and increasing hostility toward capitalism, the wealthy elites caved. The income tax (which originally only applied to the wealthy) was enacted. Immigration was, for all intents and purposes, shut down. Labor unions were formally recognized and the federal and state governments enacted other reforms to protect workers. As a consequence, while the real wealth of the top elites declined over the next few decades, the strong middle class on which we reflect so fondly was born. That began to change again in the 1970s as a result of changes to the law in the 1960's that flooded the workforce with cheap labor, both from the mass entrance of women into the workforce, but also throwing open the doors of immigration. Tax laws also were changed which favored those who inherited their wealth.

• Related: "Michelle Malkin: ‘Establishment GOP Ruling Class’ Doesn’t Want Americans Questioning Legal Immigration"--Breitbart.

• It's an invasion: "Number of immigrants detained trying to cross the U.S. border from Mexico soared to a RECORD 76,000 in February a 100 PERCENT increase year-on-year"--Daily Mail. 

• Related: "'At the breaking point': Huge surge in illegal migrants crossing the southern border in large groups of more than 100 people overwhelms authorities"--Daily Mail.

• Related: "The Emergency At The US-Mexico Border"--Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. He muses:

What happens when one political party is more or less for open borders because it strongly stands to benefit them? This is a more dangerous situation than I had realized, because ti [sic] amounts to one party turning a blind eye to a peaceful invasion that stands to change the political and cultural balance in this country to benefit their own side. These migrants are poor, desperate people. But if their poverty and desperation is all that it takes to give them the right to live in the United States, why do we have borders at all?

• Flashback 2012: "Feds Let Mexican Cartel Hit Men Kill in U.S., Senior Lawman Told Stratfor"--New American. Most of us have forgotten about the email hacks of Stratfor, but it revealed a lot of interesting stuff. From the article:

Even more importantly, perhaps, are accusations that the U.S. federal government is actually at the heart of the drug trade itself — allegations made by top officials and analysts on both sides of the border as well as by criminal operatives. The Obama administration continues to stonewall congressional investigations into DEA drug-money laundering, ATF gun running in Fast and Furious, and more. The CIA, meanwhile, has also been accused of deep involvement in the drug trade for decades, and even recently.

CIA involvement in the drug trade has to be one of the worst kept secrets of all time.

• Diversity is our strength:

• "UK: Supporters of Muslim rape gang threaten to rape female court prosecutors"--Jihad Watch. Threats against the prosecutors handling the prosecution against Muslim rape gangs.

• "Somali Gangs Battle in Minneapolis; Somalis Demand That Cops Do Something"--Michael Walsh at PJ Media. Little Mogadishu, located in Minneapolis, is living up to its name.

• Illegal immigrants just want to make an honest living: "Thousands of fake government IDs made in covert Oregon lab were sold across U.S., prosecutors say"--The Oregonian. From the article:

       A Woodburn man pleaded guilty Tuesday to participating in a conspiracy that produced more than 10,000 fraudulent government identification cards, including driver’s licenses from Oregon and more than 25 other states, U.S. Social Security cards, false immigration records, birth certificates, marriage licenses and vehicle titles.

      Miguel Merecias-Lopez, 24, and unidentified conspirators worked out of a secret photo lab in Woodburn, using digital cameras, computers, scanners, laminators and a high-resolution printer to produce bogus documents that they sold and distributed in Oregon and mailed across the United States, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Sax.

• Global warming update: "In like a lion: Historically cold March temperatures are freezing a large part of the U.S.: Temperatures range from 88 in Florida to -44 in Montana"--Mercury News. The article reports:

        Widespread temperatures in the minus-20s to minus-30s or colder invaded the northern tier on Sunday morning, sending wind chills below minus-50 in spots. Including Monday, below zero readings have been recorded as far south as the southern portion of the Central Plains and into the lower Midwest and Great Lakes region.

       Sunday also featured a coldest low of minus-44 degrees in Montana and a warmest high of 88 in Florida. That made for a remarkable 132 degree temperature difference across the Lower 48.

       When this freakish cold spell is done, several hundred new record low maximum and record low temperatures will have fallen. In the last seven days alone, cold records are outpacing warm by about four to one across the nation.

• Reviews of the new Captain Marvel movie are coming in and they are everything we expected. The New York Post says that the movie is aimless and half-baked. The National Review says that the main character, Captain Marvel, is "an invincible bore" and says of the actress that portrays her: "Larson, who became a star in 21 Jump Street seven years ago and has not done anything better since (especially not her Oscar-winning turn in the appalling film Room), has quickly become one of Hollywood’s most humorless and insufferable actresses, and her personality rubbed off on the character. There isn’t an ounce of self-deprecation in her." Even the review from Slate damns the movie with faint praise, observing that the movie is formulaic and mediocre, but that we need to support the movie because it has a female lead. CNN's critic writes that "'Captain Marvel' ultimately feels more obligatory than inspired, a movie that basically gets the job done and little more." Lindsey Bahr, writing for the Associated Press, relates: "I spent over two hours with Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers and I still have no idea what her personality is." The reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter had this to say: "The picture is not dull, exactly, just mundane, marked by unimaginative plotting, cut-rate villains, a bland visual style and a lack of elan in every department." Unfortunately, we will be seeing more of the man-hating Brie Larson and her character in upcoming Marvel films as she is slated to be the new leader of the Avengers and purportedly signed a contract with Disney for up to seven (7) total films.
• "Why Social Justice Is Killing Synagogues and Churches"--Tablet Magazine. An excerpt:

        However satisfying to its practitioners, the emphasis on social justice is clearly not attracting more worshippers. Almost all the religious institutions most committed to this course are also in the most serious decline, most notably mainstream Protestants but also, Catholics and Reform and Conservative Jews. The rapidly declining Church of England, which is down to 2 percent share among British youth, is burnishing its progressive image by adding the use of plastics to its list of Lenten sacrifices, but seems unable to serve the basic spiritual and family needs of their congregants.

       In contrast, more conservative faith organizations generally enjoy better growth, and higher birthrates, particularly in the developing world . The University of London’s Eric Kaufmann explains in his important book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? that if current trends continue, the more fundamentalist family-centered faiths seem most likely to survive. Already, for example, Orthodox Jews, historically a small subgroup, are projected to become the majority of the Hebraic community in Britain by 2100, and already constitute some three-fifths of Jewish children in New York.

      Orthodox Jews and evangelicals may be finding common ground, then, but the future of religion overall does not seem a bright one. It’s hard to imagine most young Jews becoming Orthodox, or casual Christians embracing en masse Mormonism or evangelical Christianity. Instead, the future seems to point to a smaller, more conservative religious community, isolated amidst an increasingly secularized culture.

      To survive, less traditionalist faiths need less “virtue signaling” and more emphasis on serving the needs of congregants. Marshall Toplansky, who advises Church World Services, a major Protestant aid group, suggested that groups like Mormons and evangelicals who focus on providing services for families and their local communities fare far better than those more tied to strictly a social gospel. Toplansky said that many mainstream churches “have overlooked the value of building grassroots relationships with their donors,” who sometimes do not share the progressive ideology of the clerical class. Without engaging the faithful and addressing their needs, he noted, “people stop identifying with their local institution and stop participating in the local activities that defined them to begin with.”

Social justice warriors are too busy worshiping themselves to have the time or room for God.

• Some good news for mice and round worms:

• "Young bone marrow transplantation preserves learning and memory in old mice"--Nature.

• "Fountain of youth? Scientists switch-off gene to DOUBLE lifespan"--Daily Star. The gene is known as DAF-2.

• Evolution in action: "SCARED BY ENVIRONMENTALISTS: Women's Group Says They Won't Have Children Because Of Climate Change"--Daily Wire.
• The other day, I was talking with my eldest son that "Lucifer" means "morning star" and is reference to the planet Venus, and jokingly suggested that since Venus is associated with women, perhaps Satan is a woman. I'm apparently not the first to consider Lucifer as feminine, as evidenced by this book from Oxford University, by Per Faxneld, entitled Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture (read online at the link) and the book Lucifer Revisited: She's Not Who You Think He Is by Travis Yates, (Note: I haven't read these books, but am simply relying on the descriptions). I also found a comment on Quora interesting, in answer to a question of whether Satan is male or female:

Female. Lucifer is Venus. In the Bible, that's the goddess Ashtoreth and the one called “the queen of heaven “. She was also called the mother of the gods. In the Bible false gods are called abominations. That makes her the mother of abominations. She was also the mother of harlots due to her connection to sacred prostitution. She was the Great whore of Babylon. There's also the spirit of whoredoms mentioned twice in the Bible, and a woman called wickedness in Zechariah 5. Also, the queen of heaven has the same meaning as the prince (ruler) of the power (authority) of the air (heaven).