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Saturday, August 3, 2019

August 3, 2019 -- A Quick Run Around the Web

"Blowback Versus Recoil Operated Pistols"--Lucky Gunner (8 min.)
A look at the difference between straight blowback and locked breach designs.

      Media accounts tend to focus on the peculiarities of prepping through extreme examples: reports of the Silicon Valley elite buying up bolt holes in remote New Zealand or the tin-foil hat wearing, forest-inhabiting eccentric. But prepping is not a marginal subculture, but a precautionary response people have to permanent crisis, as our research reveals. By analysing and engaging with online forums and speaking at length with a series of self-identified preppers, it became clear that most preppers aren't so out of the ordinary.
          Listening to preppers, you can begin to understand their reasoning. They often talk about their prepper lives as originating from some trigger or turning point—such as an insider seeing financial collapse firsthand and the house of cards it reveals, or the difficulties that come with illness or unemployment. After these realisations, our interviewees explained that they transition from being a woefully under-prepared to a prepared individual.
    • Related: "California quakes drive emergency supply sales"--Washington Examiner. From the lede: "Nothing prompts people to prepare for a natural disaster like a brush with one, a truism reinforced when a pair of earthquakes rattled southern California this month."
            Fredrik Qvarnstrom, is the owner of Sweden’s first online prepper store.
              Selling everything from knives, fire-starters, radios and pre-made bug-out bags, Frederik opened the store as a joke in 2013 after he lost his job and took up watching zombie films with his friends.
               But the changing political dynamic in the region has shifted his luck.
                  “In the first year, I think preppers were still regarded as a bit crazy,” he tells Dateline.
                    “But now, I think most people realise that it's not crazy to be prepared, it's more crazy to think that nothing is ever going to happen.”
                     He says the growing concern over regional politics is making the movement more mainstream.
                       “It's more or less, everyone (buying this stuff),” he adds.
                         “When I started, I thought the normal customer would be male, maybe fifty-something, living in the countryside. But a lot of customers are female, maybe 25-30 per cent. A lot of them live in big cities.”
                      The article also mentions that the prepper movement picked up in Sweden in 2018 after the government issued a booklet titled "If Crisis or War Comes" to 4.8 million households. According to the article, "the booklet includes tips on home preparedness and a checklist of essential ‘prepper’ items such as food, water, warmth and communications. It also contains information on the country’s warning systems for incidents such as air raids and instructions on how to find the nearest bomb shelter in the event of war." You can download an English language version of the booklet here.
                            Some of the best “Survivalist” oriented training I’ve ever done was during my weeks in “Deer Camp”. I hear from many people who tell me they don’t have an area to train in, and that they can’t carry a firearm in their State parks unless it’s hunting season. Then they ask how they should go about getting the experience needed for bad times. If they’ve mentioned the “hunting season” comment, I tell them they’ve answered their own question to a large degree. If they haven’t mentioned it, I advise them that they should go do the “Deer Camp” thing for 4-8 days every year.
                             “Why Deer Camp?” you ask. It’s simple really. First, Deer season in most States is during the colder part of the year, hence, harsher living conditions. Second, You get to go out and use you wilderness living gear in conditions that usually aren’t stellar in terms of comfort or convenience. Third, You get to actually experience carrying a weapon through the woods with support gear, all while trying to maintain a low profile. The low profile is necessary if you plan on actually seeing and killing a deer.
                        • "Fighting a superior force: Overmatch"--Loose Rounds. The author hates the term "overmatch" and believes that it is just a lazy excuse for not being inventive and flexible in tactics, and uses the example of what you could do with a 10/22 even to troops outfitted with body armor. He points out:
                          Some would say you ignore the enemies combat forces and only strike at their support equipment and supply lines. This article isn’t for those cowards. If a hostile force is in your neighborhood going into homes and dragging off your friends and families, are you going to wait till you could hit the supply lines some other day? Success comes from taking one of your strong points poking it into an enemy’s weak point. But you don’t always get to pick your best strength or the enemies weakness, so we must be as flexible as possible in tactics and employment.
                          • Related: "Home-Defense Buckshot: Which Size is Best?"--Shooting Illustrated. The author relates from tests he performed that "[i]f you are working with one of the tens of thousands of unchoked, 'cylinder-bore' police shotguns in current circulation, triple-aught buckshot will pattern tighter than the next closest contender, which is the more-common 00 buckshot." I would note, however, that 000 buckshot is 8 per shell. Greg Ellifritz has noted that shells with 8 double-aught (00) pellets shoot a tighter group than shells with 9 pellets. So, it might be the number of pellets rather than the size. 

                          "PLASMA COSMOLOGY"--Suspicious Observers (1 hr 9 min.)

                          Increasingly, we live in a country that has become de facto little more than a mere geographical entity. True, it is still formally a nation, but a nation where there are in fact at least two very distinct Americas, with radically differing visions of what is real and what is not real, radically differing conceptions of what is moral and what is not, radically differing views about truth and error, and radically differing ideas about using whatever means are available to reach a desired and posited end. For all the talk of equality and racism, the revolutionary side in actuality seeks to replace one oligarchy—which it calls “white supremacist”—with another oligarchy of its own making, in fact, a brutal, vicious and soulless “utopia’’ that would make Joseph Stalin’s Communist state seem like a Sandals Retreat in the Bahamas.
                          Unfortunately, according to the author, there is no conservative movement capable of serious push back. Accordingly, he sees only three options for the country moving forward:
                          (1) Either there must be some large mass conversion of one side or the other (a ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion?), probably occasioned by some immense and earth-shaking event, war, depression, disaster; or (2) there must be a separation into independent jurisdictions of large portions of what is presently geographically the United States, including possible massive population exchanges—this separation/secession could be peaceable, although increasingly I think it would not be; or lastly, and worst, (3) the devolution of this country would continue into open and vicious civil and guerrilla war, followed by a harsh dictatorship. Disorder always abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum will be filled one way or another.
                          Vox Day has some insightful commentary on Cathey's article which I also encourage you to check out. But one thing he believes that Cathey got wrong (or, at least, didn't understand), is that this is not just a conflict between political ideologies, but between followers of Christ and followers of Satan.
                                While media outlets scream “hottest ever” for the world in June and July (it’s summer) and opportunistic climate crusaders use those headlines to push the idea of a “climate crisis” the reality is for USA is that so far most of 2019 has been below normal, temperature-wise.
                                 Little known data from the state of the art U.S. Climate Reference Network (which never seems to make it into NOAA’s monthly “state of the climate” reports) show that for the past nine months, six of them were below normal[.]
                                    Governments are increasingly depending on private businesses and philanthropic groups to help manage human waste in cities that were never planned to handle so many people.
                                     One of the fastest-growing cities in the world, Kampala is home to at least 1.5 million people but authorities say over 3 million pass through daily, usually for work. Yet there are fewer than 800 pay toilets and only 14 free ones, many of them dilapidated with walls often smeared with feces.
                                       Many people rush to malls to relieve themselves. Even in the buildings of government agencies the toilets are often kept under lock and key, apparently to discourage intruders.
                                    The article describes effluent washing down streets in rain storms, pollution of water sources, and notes that outbreaks of cholera and other water-borne diseases are common.
                                    Tijuana sits on the U.S. border with California, approximately 17 miles south of San Diego. The cartel violence is attributed to a resurgence of remnants from the Cártel de Los Arellano Félix, which has aligned with Cártel Tijuana Nueva Generación (CTNG). These two criminal groups are engaged in a turf dispute with the Sinaloa Cartel. In some areas, rival factions within the Sinaloa Cartel are fighting for control of the lucrative street-level markets and valuable routes leading into the United States. Those involved in the killings are primarily low-level street dealers, lookouts, customers and enforcers for these individual criminal gangs. Many of these street-level dealers are targets of rip-crews looking for cash and drugs.
                                             FUPCEG is an alliance of civilian autodefensas, or self-defense groups, that boasts about 11,700 fighters across 39 municipalities in Guerrero, meaning they’re now present in about half the state. Similar communitario movements have sprung up across Mexico over the last decade, but FUPCEG is by far the largest of its kind.
                                              The spike in vigilante militias has polarized public opinion. Some observers see them as noble freedom fighters who succeed where traditional law enforcement has failed. Critics claim the autodefensas and comunitarios (the words are often used interchangeably in Mexico) are at best undisciplined mobs and at worst cartel patsies who do the criminals’ grunt work for them. 
                                               Either way, their power is growing. A new study by Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission suggests vigilante activity is up by more than 300 percent since the start of 2018, and blames the increase on “insecurity, violence, and impunity.”
                                            I can remember reading articles a few years ago about the autodefensas groups just forming in many areas, and they often had a very poor selection of weapons because of the strict gun laws. But the group highlighted in this article seem to be well armed with automatic weapons and have plenty of ammunition.
                                                     The problem with a race-based, victim-washed vision of 2019 America is that being white is not enough, and never has been. I was a diplomat for 24 years, about as privileged a job on paper as you can get. But inside the State Department, being white was only a start. The real criteria was “pale, male, and Yale.” Being white (the pale part) was great, but only if you were also a man; women were stuck in less desirable jobs (girls are nurses; boys are doctors). No surprise, then, that the State Department has been sued over the years by its women and black diplomats.
                                                      But white and male got you only to the door. The “good” jobs required the right background, preferably via an Ivy. A sort of proud graduate of The Ohio State University, my privilege only went so far. I couldn’t fake it. They knew each other. Their fathers knew each other. They had money—well, parents with money. We Big Ten alums never got our class action together and so muddled mostly at the middle levels.
                                                  Back in my college days, I attended a presentation to soon-to-be graduates by someone from the State Department to discuss applying for jobs. He was honest and frank that there was no chance that any of us, as graduates from a state school, could obtain a diplomatic job as those all went to graduates of a handful of Ivy League schools and Georgetown. The jobs available to us would be low and middle level administrative work.
                                                           Many wealthy Americans — already reaping most of the benefits of the last decade’s economic growth — have weathered the dramatic increase in deductibles in recent years in part by putting away money in tax-free Health Savings Accounts.
                                                            Very poor Americans, millions of whom gained coverage through the 2010 Affordable Care Act, can see a doctor or go to the hospital at virtually no cost, thanks to Medicaid, the half-century-old government safety-net program.
                                                             Squeezed in the middle are legions of working Americans who face stagnant wages, insurance premiums that take more and more of their paychecks and soaring deductibles that leave them with medical bills they can’t afford.
                                                          As a part of a military initiative called the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWP), the project aims to create laser weapons that can transmit clear snippets of human speech across long distances. To accomplish this task, the weapon uses a principle called the Laser Induced Plasma Effect, which involves firing an incredibly powerful laser to create a ball of plasma, then shooting a second laser to oscillate the plasma, creating sound waves. With enough laser bursts fired at the right frequencies, the plasma vibrations can actually mimic human speech.
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