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Sunday, December 15, 2019

A Quick Run Around the Web (12/15/2019)

The Decline of the West | Oswald Spengler (11 min.)

      War has recently broken out in the Right.  The Zoomers (say, 1995 births to 2015 births) are now beginning to have their voices heard on the Right as well as the Left.  On the Left, they make up some portion of AntiFa, but on the Right they’re called “groypers.”  Don’t ask why they’re called that, it’s ultimately as meaningless as Madonna’s purity ring.
          What the groypers are doing is rejecting the Leftist-friendly premanufactured conservatism that is being pushed at them by Conservative, Inc., as exemplified by Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA®.  At one point, Charlie Kirk said, more or less, that a green card should be stapled to every diploma earned by a foreign student in the United States.  In November, after attacks by the groypers, Kirk relented:
            “I said something a couple weeks ago that was not an opinion I still currently hold where I said something about F-1 Visas where I said that F-1 Visas should be given out basically to every single person who goes through the college education system. I was wrong when I said that.”
              When asked if he would support a policy that was good for the United States, but not good for Israel, Kirk refused to answer. 
          Read the whole thing.
                 Smartphones are playing an increasingly central role in our lives. They are ubiquitous, as we carry them nearly everywhere, and entrust them with sensitive and sometimes deeply personal information. We use them to carry out day-to-day tasks from communicating with family members and socialising on social media apps to tracking our health and taking care of our finances on banking apps.
                   But it is also a device with a camera, a GPS and a microphone that you have next to you at all times. Unfortunately, mobile phones were not designed for privacy and security. Turning this hardware into a surveillance tool is much easier and effective than you think. Not only they do a poor job of protecting your communications, they also expose you to new kinds of surveillance risks.
                      Surveillance is always an enactment of power in the sense that it is an imparting technique in practices of governance. It is an external influence to an individual, which seeks to control and discipline, entailing a risk of exploitation and privacy invasions.
                       Here, we will describe all the ways that smartphones can aid surveillance and undermine their users’ privacy. So, prepare yourself for an in-depth read, as we attempt to go over each and every aspect of smartphone surveillance.
                    The article then continues into specific ways in which smart phones can be used to monitor you. And don't think that by using a basic, no-frills cell phone that you have eliminated your risk. The Feds have had the technology to turn on cell phones remotely to use as listening devices since the early 1990s.
                    • Related: "How They Hunt"--Lizard Farmer.  I've linked to this before, but it is always good to review. A look at analyzing networks of people.
                    •  "The .44 Special - A Reappraisal by Charles A. Skelton"--A reprint of an article from the August 1966 Shooting Times. Even though the .44 Magnum had been released years before, Skelton was arguing for what today we might refer to as a .44 Special +P.  From the article:
                          The .44 S. & W. Special is simply a longer version of the .44 Russian, throwing the same bullet at the same velocity. It is inherently more accurate than any other pistol cartridge that I have fired, as loaded by the ammunition factories. This trait can be improved upon by handloading. Therein lies its fascination.
                             As a defense or hunting load, the factory .44 Special is on a par with the .45 ACP and the .38 Special - both notoriously poor performers. Commercial cartridges in .45 Colt, .44-40, .38-40, and .357 Magnum far outshine the leisurely moving, roundnosed .44, which for generations has maintained its staid, 760 fps pace. But put a bullet of the right configuration over a .44 Special case, crackling with enough of the right, slow burning powder, and its superiority to any of the above-named killers is so apparent as to make comparison a waste of time.
                               The .357 Magnum, with much justification, has enjoyed a heyday since 1935. Smith & Wesson's advertising for this revolver used to proclaim, "The S & W '.357' Magnum Has Far Greater Shock Power Than Any .38, .44, or .45 Ever Tested." With factory loads, this was true. Handloaded, the .44 Special made the .357 - also handloaded to peak performance - eat dust. It was the case of a good big man beating hell out of a good little man.
                                Basic mathematics made it obvious to experimenters that if the .44 Special were loaded up to its maximum velocity - generally accepted as 1,200 fps at the muzzle with 250-grain bullets - it could skunk the 158-grain .357 slug at 1,500 fps.
                                  Topped with cast bullets in Hollow-point form, both the .357 and .44 Special handloads ran several times higher than their closest competitors on General Julian Hatcher's scale of relative stopping power. Significantly, the .44 had almost double the stopping effect of the .357 when this scale was applied, in spite of its moving at 300 less velocity.

                              * * *

                                      Solid or hollowpoint, these forty-fours are deadly, and can't be bettered as manstoppers by any cartridge other than the .44 and .41 magnums, equally properly loaded. My heavy load for police work or big game shooting is an easy one to put together. Size either the Thompson or Keith bullet to .429" for Smith & Wesson or Ruger guns, .427" for Colts. Seat this bullet over 17½ grains of Hercules 2400 powder and cap with CCI Magnum  primers. ...
                                       This is a maximum load, and it is unlikely that it will be employed exclusively by men who shoot a great deal. For an intermediate cartridge of around 1,000 fps, 8½ grains of Unique serves well, and outperforms most factory pistol cartridges of any caliber. Charges of 6½ grains of 5066 or 5 grains of Bullseye with either the Lyman 429244 or 429421 bullets will give fine, about-factory-velocity, performance.
                                          For normal to medium-heavy charges, almost any pistol, shotgun, or fast rifle powder may be used for the .44 Special. The Alcan and Red Dot Shotgun powders give singular performance, as well as such slow burners as Du Pont's IMR4227. A comprehensive list of un-tempermental .44 loads will fill books.
                                    • Related: ".44 Special and Unique"--Load Data. Loading data for a large variety of .44 Special loads using Unique powder.
                                    • Related: ".44 Special"--Ballistics By The Inch. A look at the performance from different barrel lengths. With the two loads tested, the maximum performance in terms of velocity were at 17 inches.
                                    • Related: ".44 Special"--Brass Fetcher. Ballistic gelatin results using .44 Special. 
                                    • "Editor's Notebook: Gender and Weapon Selection"--Tactical Wire. The author argues for a first time gun buyer looking for a self-defense weapon to pick one that they are confident with and like to shoot ... even if, as in this case, it is a .22 LR. He writes:
                                      If she ever needs that gun, by definition she'll need it more than she's ever needed anything in her life. It's the only thing that stands between her and death or crippling injury. I want her confidence level to be high. That only comes from (1) comfort in her ability to handle that particular gun, (2) having a gun that's reliable and (3) having a gun that she will shoot. She told me she understood she'd have to shoot the gun in practice. How much practice can she get with ammo that's $25 per fifty rounds as opposed to $25 for 500 rounds?

                                      "How Democracy Will End"--Oswald Spengler (5 min.)
                                      This was the plan.

                                      Others, like Durham [i.e., John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut conducting a separate probe into the origins of the Russia investigation], are being tested by this moment. I’ve been proud to know John for at least a decade, but I was troubled by his unusual statement disputing the inspector general’s findings. Good reputations are hard-won in the legal profession, but they are fragile; anyone in Durham’s shoes would do well to remember that, in dealing with this administration, many reputations have been irrevocably lost.
                                            The House Democrats have left all that behind.  They are post-constitutional and anti-constitutional.  They have moved beyond the United States Constitution to full Marxism-Leninism-Alinskyism.  Rejecting the "superstitions" of Judeo-Christian morality and the Ten Commandments, they have ascended to a higher plane that the deplorables are incapable of comprehending.  The left is the vanguard of the proletariat; leftists will dictate to the unenlightened masses what is good for them, no matter how strongly the proletariat disagrees.  Marxists love humanity; it's people that they hate, and particularly those who voted for our president.
                                              In our obsolete and unfashionable moral system, we know what is right and what is wrong.  The end does not justify the means; we will be judged according to our own actions.  In Marxism, however, the end does justify the means.  Leftists may commit any crime, make any false statement, do whatever is necessary to bring about worldwide "pure" socialism.  Any opposition must be ardently suppressed; to fail to do so is to betray their socialist principles, to sin against their godless religion, a religion to which they are just as dedicated as the apostles were to Christ.  They see no God who will judge them.
                                                 As evidenced by the statements of many current players behind the scenes who have been actively trying to fundamentally transform America, it would seem that in the 20th century, it was determined by those committed to this transformation that the people of the USA would never willfully throw away their own freedoms and embrace some form of Marxian socialism.  Therefore, in order to effect this change, there needed to be an internal use of the system itself to subvert it through legislation and regulations to become a de facto state of Marxian socialism without ever calling it such, nor voting for such.
                                                  Ever since, there have been bureaucrats and presidents who have worked against the will of the majority in order to "overthrow" the duly elected government and replace it with their own view of what the USA government "should" look like.  It is a war, not a coup.  They are relentless.  Indefatigable.  They will never stop.  What we are seeing with Mr. Trump is an "Antietam" or a "Gettysburg — a bloody battlefield, but just another battlefield.
                                                     It isn't a coup.  Not soft.  Not silent.  And if we don't see it as a war, we lose.  Why?  Because we then think it's about Mr. Trump or his administration.  It isn't.
                                              The ISIL claim that the emir is an Iraqi decedent of the Quraysh (through the Hashimi line instead of al-Husseini) gives us a clue to evaluate the possibility that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s chief deputy, Hajji Abdullah al-'Afri, is the new caliph Abu Ibrahim.While al-'Afri is thought to be an ethnic Turkmen like many from Tal Afar, where his nisba (al-Afri) indicates he comes from. Although his larger tribal affiliation with the al-Mawali is not Arab, and one of his kunyas (Qardash) is a Turkish word for "brother,” it is also known that al-Mawali tribe has sub-tribes with Arab origin. A bigger clue that Hajji Abdullah could be Abu Ibrahim is that one of the clans of the al-Mawali claims a descent from ‘Abbas Abdul Mutalib al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi—the Prophet’s paternal uncle. This is very similar to the case of Hajji Iman (aka Abu ‘Alaa al-‘Afri, and more famously, Abu Ali al-Anbari), the late deputy of al-Baghdadi, was also a Turkman from Tal’ Afar who also claimed to be rooted from al-Quraysh.
                                                     The most striking couple of sentences in the breathtaking report from the Washington Post about the West’s failed nation-building in Afghanistan were right in the middle. The report stated, in no uncertain terms, “Some U.S. officials wanted to use the war to turn Afghanistan into a democracy. Others wanted to transform Afghan culture and elevate women’s rights.”
                                                       Think about that for a moment. More than $1 trillion spent, more than 2,000 lives lost, more than 20,000 men and women maimed and scarred physically and psychologically for life, all to shape the semi-feudal Afghanistan into modern Switzerland. To do what the British Empire and the Soviet Empire failed before: to impose a Western idea — developed and practiced in the West, with all the cultural forces that shaped it — in a land which has historically never had a Magna Carta, a James Madison, or an October Revolution. It doesn’t even have a normative society such as erstwhile pre-colonial India, Egypt, or China, or pre-1945 Germany or Japan.
                                                         According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the new series of attacks, which have not yet been confirmed as ransomware, were affecting city services. An announcement at City Hall on Friday told workers, including those at the police department, to unplug computers, according to the report. A spokesman for the office of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell told the newspaper that the attack started after 11 a.m.
                                                            Cybercriminals have been targeting state and local governments with ransomware tools, which infect an organization’s computer networks and lock up critical files in exchange for a ransom payment. In the past year, Atlanta, Baltimore and several cities in Florida are among those that have been hit. A spate of ransomware attacks hit 23 Texas towns in a coordinated fashion in August.
                                                             About 72,000 United States-born children delivered every year to foreign tourists, foreign visa workers, and foreign students are rewarded birthright American citizenship, a new study reveals.
                                                                Research by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that every year, 39,000 anchor babies are born to foreign students and foreign visa workers, as well as 33,000 anchor babies born to foreign tourists every year.
                                                                  This indicates that about 72,000 anchor babies are born to foreigners who are legally temporarily in the U.S. These U.S.-born children — in addition to the 300,000 anchor babies born to illegal aliens every year —  are immediately rewarded American citizenship simply because their foreign parents delivered them in the parameters of the nation’s borders.
                                                              Executives at World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table — an organization with links to the Soros-funded National Immigration Forum — have been lobbying governors across the country to bring more refugees to their states. So far, six Republican governors have signed off to resettle refugees in their states, including North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
                                                              Here we show, to our knowledge for the first time, that stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be recorded remotely, both in acoustic chambers and in greenhouses. We recorded ∼65 dBSPL ultrasonic sounds 10 cm from tomato and tobacco plants, implying that these sounds could be detected by some organisms from up to several meters away. We developed machine learning models that were capable of distinguishing between plant sounds and general noises, and identifying the condition of the plants – dry, cut, or intact – based solely on the emitted sounds. Our results suggest that animals, humans, and possibly even other plants, could use sounds emitted by a plant to gain information about the plant’s condition.
                                                              • Two more major studies fail to detect dark matter: 
                                                                    Earlier this year, US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the British Geological Survey (BGS) were forced to update the World Magnetic Model a year ahead of schedule due to the speed with which the magnetic north pole is shifting out of the Canadian Arctic and toward Russia’s Siberia.
                                                                      The BGS and the US National Centers for Environmental Information has released a new update to the World Magnetic Model this week, confirming that the magnetic north pole, whose coordinates are crucial for the navigation systems used by governments, militaries and a slew of civilian applications, is continuing its push toward Siberia.
                                                                  As Suspicious Observers has noted, the north magnetic pole is rapidly moving toward the south magnetic pole.
                                                                    The sun is currently in the midst of a deep solar minimum and it is about to reach an historic milestone. So far this year the sun has been blank (i.e., no visible sunspots) for 266 days and, barring any major surprises, it’ll reach 269 days early next week which will be the quietest year in terms of sunspots since 1913 when the sun was spotless for 311 days. In fact, the current stretch of consecutive spotless days has reached 29 and for the year the sun has been blank 77% of the time. The current record-holder in the satellite era for spotless days in a given year is 2008 when the sun was blank for 268 days making the 2008-2009 solar minimum the deepest since 1913.
                                                                            I have tried to read every iota of information released about the first two launches of the Long March 5 in order to figure out what went wrong during its second launch. At no time however had I ever come across any report that described any launch problems during its first flight. The Chinese always touted that first flight as a complete success, with no problems.
                                                                              We now learn that the first stage during that first launch was under-powered, a problem that was not dealt with before the second launch, resulting in the complete failure of that second launch.
                                                                                This is the typical behavior one sees in a government-run top-down program. Rather than bluntly address problems to fix them, even if it means someone will be embarrassed, management acts to protect itself, hiding problems so as to avoid blame. The result is always more failures.
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                                                                          2 comments:

                                                                          1. John WilderDecember 16, 2019 at 8:10 PM

                                                                            I'm moving the clock up next month. Virginia.

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                                                                            1. DocentDecember 16, 2019 at 10:57 PM

                                                                              Probably accurate. I hope the resisters there will have their own media organized to film everything and release it over the internet.

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