A Quick Run Around the Web (12/5/2019)

"Archery: Will it EVER be the same again? Wow."--JoergSprave (13 min.)

The host demonstrates his magazine fed, repeating bow.

• Jon Low at Defensive Pistolcraft has his monthly roundup of articles, tips and commentary up for this month. An excerpt:

     If the enemy is far enough away that you need to use your sights to aim your pistol, you need to extend your arms to bring your pistol up to your line of sight. (Don't bend your neck to move your eye inline with your sights.  Your head must remain erect, otherwise you will disturb your inner ear balance. Rotate your arms at your shoulders to move your pistol up to your line of sight.) 

      If the enemy is close enough to grab your pistol, you need to keep your pistol in close to your body in a compressed ready or close contact position. Both forearms should be firmly pressed against your rib cage.  Tilt the top of the pistol away from your body, so the slide doesn't get fouled on your shirt. If your breast will get in the way of slide when it reciprocates, pull your pistol further around to the side of your torso, or tilt the top of your pistol further away from your body.

     If you only have a one hand grip on your pistol, pull the firing side elbow as far back as possible, press the bottom of the grip or your hand firmly against your rib cage, and tilt the top of the pistol out away from your body to prevent the slide from getting fouled on your clothing or breast.

     When shooting with a flashlight, push the emitting end of the flashlight out in front of anything that you are using for cover.  If you have the flashlight too far back, the light will reflect off the cover and illuminate you.  Yes, this exposes your gun and hands to an enemy hiding around the corner, so be careful. If you don't push the flashlight out in front of the cover, the reflected light can blind you, or kill your night vision for several seconds. ....

     When shining a flashlight though a window, press the emitting end against the window.  Even a small gap will generate glare that will inhibit your view through the window. 

• And be sure to check out this week's Hump Day Reading List from Grant Cunningham. Links and commentary to articles on using a fire extinguisher as a weapon, good sources for self-defense information, and why weather radios are useful.
• "National Shooting Sports Foundation Releases Firearms Production Figures for 2019"--Ammo Land. A couple of key takeaways: (1) the ATF now estimates that Americans own 422.9 million firearms (with an estimated U.S. population of 329.2 million), and (2) "[d]uring the 25-year period covered in this report (1993–2017) the violent crime rate has decreased by 48.6 percent and unintentional firearm-related fatalities have declined by 68 percent."
• The color of crime in Los Angeles: "In 2018, 86% of Those Arrested for Violent Crime in Los Angeles Were Non-White (5% Were White): the City Is 28% White"--DC Clothesline. Keep in mind that in 2018, the city was 9 percent black, 49 percent Hispanic and 28 percent white. Per the LAPD, black offenders committed 43% of the violent crime, Hispanics committed 40% of the violent crime, and whites came in at just 8%. For homicides, the rates were 34%, 37% and 5%, respectively. And robberies, the rates were 52%, 35% and 5%, respectively.  
• "Free Targets and Cheap Stands: Train More Spend Less"--Guns America Digest. Some suggestions on making cheap paper targets and assembling inexpensive target stands from PVC. I also posted instructions on a homemade PVC stand back in 2016. I still use it and, so far, haven't destroyed any of the pieces.
• "AR500 Armor Introduces MILITIA Steel Ballistic Helmet"--The Firearm Blog. These are steel, weigh about 3 lbs including the interior padding, and cost $298.99 (currently on sale for $50 less). They are only rated to stop handgun bullets (not including magnum rounds), but the company is promising upgrades rated that will eventually provide protection against rifle round. As some of the comments note, the price is higher than that of surplus PASGT's or ACH's or similar foreign helmets.
• "Potentially fatal ‘superbug’ Candida auris spreading in New Jersey"--New York Post. Technically, its not a "bug" because it is fungal. Nevertheless, the state has 141 reported cases. Fatality rates are between 30 and 60%. Per the CDC, it typically infects patients with pre-existing conditions who are already in hospitals and nursing homes. 
• "Thousands Turn Out To Support The Second Amendment In Virginia"--Bearing Arms. From the article:

How fast is the Second Amendment Sanctuary movement growing in Virginia? So fast that even as I was talking with Philip Van Cleave of the Virginia Citizens Defense League for today’s show, another county in the state was adopting a resolution. More than 40 of the state’s 95 counties have adopted the resolution, with at least 20 counties signing on just this week.

• Related: "Maybe It Begins In Virginia"--NC Renegade. The author writes:

      There is a resistance movement taking place in Virginia. There is a deep divide between the rural red areas that held power for a long time and the urban communities that now dominate. The mountain folk have figured out that their vote is now worthless. They will never be able to out vote the big cities. They are now looking to secure the place where they live. Virginia is fracturing.

     NC, SC and GA will be the next to fall. We have been inundated with these Democrats and they have weaseled their way into our politics and have screwed us all.

• Related: "'We Need To Send a Message': Virginia Sheriffs Throw Support to Counties Becoming Second Amendment Sanctuaries"--Town Hall. 

• Gun control in action: "Homes raided as police target hand grenade gang"--Liverpool Echo. While checking out that news report, I also saw this one from the same news outlet: "Two men shot in arm and chest when masked gunmen burst into pub."
• "This Is Why There Will Be A Violent Separation In FUSA"--Western Rifle Shooters Association. A screen capture of a Facebook post from an angry Leftist calling for the public execution of gun owners that defy a gun ban.
• "THE GLARING PROBLEM WITH YOUR PLAN TO DEFEND YOUR HOME"--SOFREP. That being the assumption that you will have ready access to your weapons and will only being facing a single aggressor. The author cautions: 

You have no idea how many opponents you’ll be facing, what they’re armed with, what sort of training or equipment they may have, or where exactly they’ll be coming from (assuming your house, like most, has multiple entrances). Your home-field advantage dissipates quickly the minute you find yourself creeping through the kitchen and realize there are bad guys both in front of and behind you.

He continues:

Sometimes you’ll have no choice but to move from one room to another during a break in: You’ll need to get to your family and your firearm. Once you’ve got both, don’t bother moving through the house like Solid Snake trying to take down the bad guys one by one. Instead, put yourself in a solidly defensible position, keep your family around the corner, out of sight, and behind whatever cover you can find. Call the police and keep them on the line. Then, if need be, open fire to keep the home intruders from entering the room you’re all hiding in. The best place for you to take cover is somewhere that allows you as clear a line of sight of their approach as possible, while allowing for as little exposure to your opponents as possible. Stake out your house ahead of time and identify spots like that so you can more easily locate them when the adrenaline starts pumping.

• ".308 Versus .30-06"--Sporting Shooter. For factory loadings, there may not be a significant difference, but for the handloader there are considerable advantages to the .30-06, especially using 180 grain bullets, according to the author. For one thing, as the author notes, "Case capacity in grains of water is 56gn for the .308 against 68gn for the .30-06." He notes, for instance:

In fact, I experienced no difficulty in driving the 180gn bullet in the '06 to 2800 - 2900 fps using slow powders like RE-22 and Re-25, and pressures were mild enough to permit reusing the cases up to ten times. In general the .308 Win. shines with medium burning rate powders and its advantage is for target shooting. I'd choose the .30-06 any day over the .308 for hunting big game.

And although the author does not go into bullet weight much more, one of the primary advantages to the .30-06 for the hunter is the ability to launch heavier bullets than can be used in the .308.

• "TAKING CARE OF YOUR AIR (RIFLE)"--Guns Magazine. Tips on lubrication, safe use, and storage. One that is important:

When you finish shooting a break-barrel air rifle for the day, take care to leave it un-cocked after firing your last shot. Most manufacturers strongly recommend not storing a break-barrel, spring or piston air rifle under pressure. It takes a bit of planning to reach a safe storage condition because most manufacturers also recommend you don’t dry-fire a spring or piston-powered air rifle. They’re designed to operate with a pellet in the chamber to offer the right amount of resistance. So, take the last “real” shot and pack up your rifle immediately after so it doesn’t get cocked again.

• "Measles outbreak spurred by anti-vaxxers shuts down Samoan government"--Ars Technica. The article reports that "[o]f the 53 dead, 48 are children aged 4 and younger."
• Back in 2014, Melody Lauer of Limaunes' Range Diary published a three-part article on the subject of using force to stop someone from snatching/kidnapping your child, "Realities and Legalities of Child Snatching" (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3). Part 1 focuses on the legal aspects of whether you are justified to use force, referring to the laws of Iowa. Part 2 examines using verbal skills and less-than-lethal options and why you might want to use them ("I, for one, would GREATLY prefer washing pepper spray out of my child's face than trying to treat him or her for a gunshot wound."). Part 3 looks at lethal force. In that article, the author suggests contact shots to minimize the risk to your child; head or neck shots might be the most effective. 
• "The Survival Mindset"--Beans, Bandages, Bullets and You. Money quote: "If you are convinced you’re going to die, odds are you will."
• "Hill People Gear Longhouse Instructional Series"--Jerking the Trigger. The author recommends the Hill People Gear videos on backcountry/off-trail hiking, explaining:

It can be extremely difficult to find backcountry travel advice that works for me. Much of the prominent outdoor gear advice outlets have been hijacked by ultralight hikers. I actually like ultralight gear and appreciate their minimalist approach. However the gear and skills necessary for ultralight through-hiking on established, well traveled trails often has little to do with backcountry travel on remote, unsupported trails or off trail completely.

The Hill Gear videos fill this gap, he writes.

"Dark Energy might not exist after all"--Sabine Hossenfelder (7 min.)

The idea of "dark matter" has pretty much been debunked: all searches for "dark matter" has failed, and the steady stream of research revealing vastly larger quantities of intersteller dust and other matter seems to have eliminated the need to make up imaginary particles. Next up is "dark energy" which is the energy driving cosmic inflation. Except, as a recent research paper shows, even the very idea of cosmic inflation may be based on false data. Basically, the researchers only used a small selection of nova in a single direction and found that they were moving away from us. But more recent data looking at nova in all directions does not show uniform movement, which suggests that there is no cosmic inflation and, hence, no need for "dark energy."

• A new Babylon? "Saudi Arabia to create £400bn 'western' sports city with relaxed laws for women and workers and where fans can drink alcohol, as they look to capitalise on hosting Joshua v Ruiz Jr II"--Daily Mail. The city will be called Neom, and located in North West Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea (conveniently located near where the Israelites likely spent their 40 years of exile after leaving Egypt). Joel Richardson believes that this will be a new literal city of Babylon which will be cast down at the time of the Second Coming.
• That's some coincidence: "Jeffrey Epstein’s Private Banker at Deutsche & Citi Found Swinging From a Rope; Executive ‘Suicide’ Before FBI Questioned Him"--True Pundit. 

      Jeffrey Epstein’s private wealth banker, who brokered and signed off on untold multiple millions of dollars in controversial Deutsche Bank and Citibank loans spanning two decades for the convicted pedophile, has died from a reported suicide.

      The news of yet another mysterious Epstein-linked death comes shortly after the FBI was seeking to interview the bank executive about loans he approved for Epstein and the indicted child trafficker’s labyrinth of US-based and offshore companies.

     The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner confirmed Thomas Bowers died by an apparent suicide by hanging at his home before Thanksgiving.

     Epstein likewise died from a reported suicide by hanging, according to the New York City Medical Examiner.

     Bowers headed the private wealth banking division for Deutsche Bank and signed off on millions in loans to Epstein. Bowers, prior to taking over the private banking arm at Deutsche Bank, served in the same top position at Citibank, as the head of the bank’s private wealth arm. Citigroup also made massive loans to Epstein, according to records and banking sources who spoke to True Pundit.

• Snowflakes: "Westchester school cancels ‘Tarzan’ play after parents’ racism complaints"--New York Post. The play was based on the sanitized Disney cartoon version of the story. The play was cancelled "after two parents complained that the beloved tale is laced with implicit racism and imperialism." According to the article, the "parents were especially worried that the roles of apes in the production might be cast with students of color."
• They really do hate you: "Students protest suspension of ‘Don’t bring too many white students around’ employee"--College Fix. Chuefeng Yang, who works for the Multicultural Learning Center at Witte Residence Hall at the University of Wisconsin Madison had been suspended after he had told residents not to bring “too many white students around.” Students were protesting his suspension because, I guess, they don't too many white students.
• Good help is hard to find: "Dramatic video shows four 'extremely dangerous' teenagers escaping from a juvenile detention center before two - including a 16-year-old charged with killing Nashville musician Kyle Yorlets - are captured days later in Tennessee"--Daily Mail. According to the article, the four black youths were able to escape when a supervisor asked them to do some cleaning and then left them "unsupervised and out of their cells while they were responding to another incident. The four teenagers were then able to get into an elevator to the basement with access to the front door before escaping."
• "Drug Cartels Muscle Into Mexican Town Packed With Americans"--Bloomberg. The town is San Miguel de Allende. Amusingly, the author of the article was apparently ignorant of the term "protection racket" instead terming the cartel's activities as imposing a property tax.
• Common Core at work: "Achievement Test Shows No Progress for American Kids in Reading and Math Over Last Decade"--PJ Media.
• Only police can be trusted with guns: "Indian Border Patrol Officer Kills Five Co-Workers In Mass Shooting"--Bearing Arms. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police officer injured two other workers before turning the gun on himself.
• "Barr Says Law Enforcement Deserves More Respect and Support From Americans"--Epoch Times. But do they? "Los Angeles officer appears to fondle dead woman's breast in body-cam, police say"--NBC News.
• War is Peace, Weakness is Strength, etc.: "Chancellor Angela Merkel Says We Must Take Away Free Speech or We Can’t Be Free"--The Lid.

• Related: Speaking of censors: "The Boogaloo: Extremists’ New Slang Term for A Coming Civil War"--Anti-Defamation League. Apparently use of the term is code for threatening violence.

• I second the motion: "Abolish the National Security Council"--Daniel Greenfield. His argument:

      The NSC was meant to be a forum in which the heads of existing agencies would coordinate foreign policy and national security options. Instead, the NSC’s staff tends to set the foreign policy. What was once a support structure turned into a think tank and a policy shop. And then its very own deep state.

     The very worst example of this was Ben Rhodes, an aspiring novelist who evolved from a speechwriter to deputy national security adviser for communications, and, in that capacity ran our foreign policy. War and diplomacy weren’t run by the cabinet members accountable to Congress, but by political operatives.

    The NSC had become a state within a state, a rogue organization reporting directly to Barack Obama.

     This wasn’t Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex or the deep state, it was something worse. It allowed a gaggle of political operatives to take control of national defense and intelligence, and retool them to spy on political opponents, to manufacture cases against them, and then to act as moles within future administrations with the aim of subverting them and perpetuating their old political agendas.

    The NSC violates constitutional checks and balances. It undermines the rule of law. Its current function is an absurd perversion of the simple and straightforward purposes that it was meant to serve.

• "What’s the real story behind Right Wing and Left Wing in America?"--Bookworm Room. The author explains:

The reality is that, even though the media loves to talk about “right wingers” (although never left wingers), there is no “left wing” versus “right wing” in America, at least as those terms are understood in the rest of the world. Instead, we only have liberty versus tyranny, along with the supporters of both those ideologies.

He goes on:

      On the left ... is absolutist, totalitarian government, something with which we are all familiar. It exists under many names – monarchy, socialism, communism, democratic socialism, fascism, theocracy, etc. – but it always plays out the same: maximum government control; minimum individual liberty.

      Meanwhile, on the right side of the continuum..., is the political system that has limited government and maximum individual liberty. At its extreme, it’s anarchy. Otherwise, it’s . . . well, it’s really only the American experiment. Everywhere else in the world, government control is the standard.

In addition, I would add, the Right/Left continuum is only applicable to the general population: the elites have their own goals and agendas.

     If you want a good comparison between Left and Right, though, the following two articles are illustrative: 

• "Rolling Stone: Men Who Abstain From Porn Are Dangerous Alt-Righters"--The American Conservative. 

• "Watching porn rewires the brain to a more juvenile state, neuroscientist warns"--Daily Mail.

• This is a good example of why Rod Deher's Benedict Option is essentially unworkable: "New York Law Forces Abortion Orthodoxy on Pro-Life Employers, Even Churches"--PJ Media. From the article:

Early this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) signed SB 660, the so-called "Boss Bill," which prohibits New York employers from firing, demoting, or taking other action against employees based on "reproductive health decision making." The law also bans any "waiver" or code of conduct preventing an employee from making "reproductive health care decisions" — code for getting an abortion. Finally, the bill requires employers to cite this law in any employee handbook and allows employees to sue if this "right" is infringed.

The consequence?

      "The Boss Bill tells employers they have to be willing to employ people whose beliefs and behavior as to 'reproductive-health decisions' run counter to their own," she wrote. "That’s bad enough if you run a family-owned restaurant. It is intolerable if you run a church, a Catholic school or a pregnancy care center — and now are required by your own state government to hire people who have no ­respect for your faith and who ­oppose your pro-life convictions."

     It would be bad enough if the government were merely requiring pro-life employers to hire women who had abortions or support abortion. Yet since the bill does not bother to define "reproductive health decision making," Harle argued that it may restrict employers' ability to set rules on a whole host of complex moral and sexual issues, such as "sexual conduct, procreation, pregnancy, contraception, surrogacy, in-vitro fertilization or sexually transmitted disease."

     "Under SB 660, an employer can’t even require workers to sign a code of moral conduct. Adding insult to injury, employers are forced to ­include these reproductive-health rights in their employee handbooks — effectively compelling them to communicate the government’s ideological message," she lamented.

This is also an example of Gleichschaltung--a term used by the Germans, prior to WWII, to describe the close cooperation between segments of the economy (represented by large cartels and business and labor organizations) and government bureaucracies, but also the control exerted over those business and labor interests by the bureaucracies. In other words, the erosion of the separation between the private and the public, and the coercion of businesses to advance government policies. Since government policy in New York is to encourage abortions, private entities will be forced to support this policy.

• Related: "Abortion: the modern death cult that rejects Nature"--Bookworm Room. An excerpt:

       For religious people, when science and Nature crash into each other, or crash into religion, it’s religion which, even if it’s not a practical guide, offers moral guidance. For Leftists, though, who operate without that moral religious foundation,* when science and Nature clash, they look not to God, but to politics — and, more specifically, to identity politics as their guide.

      It’s this abandonment of an overarching morality that leads to the self-styled party of science and Nature taking ridiculous stands, such as saying that a person’s sex exists on a continuum largely affected by external factors, never mind that genetically there are only two sexes. Likewise, politics also assures Leftists that the fetus is totally unrelated to a baby. Neither science nor Nature dictate either of those stances. Only politics does.

• For those of you that remember the movie Cannonball Run, or the superior Gumball Rally, Road & Track reports that a new Cannonball record has been set: "These Guys Just Drove an E63 AMG Across America in a Record 27 Hours 25 Minutes." Average speed was 103 mph. The car was equipped with brake light and taillight kill switches, and a vinyl covering was used to cover the fancy trim and change the shape of the brake lights. As the article describes, the drivers of this vehicle had an impressive array of electronic warfare devices to spot speed traps: radar detectors, laser radar detectors, radio scanners to listen for traffic, gyroscopic stabilized binoculars, thermal imagers, even an aircraft collision avoidance system to detect aircraft. But the drivers credit their success to boots on the ground:

       What really made the difference between previous record runs and theirs, though, was the human component. The team had a lot of help from their extensive network of car nerd friends and business associates. Toman is the co-founder AMS Performance, and although he no longer works there, he still knows a lot of performance car enthusiasts and Gumball 3000 devotees. Tabbutt, founder and owner of Switchcars, sells used performance and exotic cars for a living and knows all sorts of people who would much rather be driving fast than doing anything else, if not supporting other people who are driving fast.

      "There were a lot of phone calls where I'd say, 'Hey how's that car I sold you three years ago? By the way, what are the cops like where you are?'" Tabbutt said. "There's no replacement for boots on the ground and we had lots of information from people everywhere—stuff you can't get from the Internet."

      In all, they managed to rustle up 18 lookouts along the run. These were people who drove hundreds of miles in many cases just to scout the road ahead of the fast-moving AMG for a stretch and let the team know of any police activity or other hazards ahead. Carl Reese, a one-time holder of the coast-to-coast motorcycle speed record who also set an autonomous-car record with Roy, guided them through part of California on his BMW motorcycle.

     "Having that many spotters is something we all would have dreamt of," Bolian said. "Their greatest success was in inspiring that many people to go out in the middle of the night, drive into the middle of nowhere, and help them beat something everyone said was impossible."

A lesson for those interested in the subject of 4th generation warfare.

• "It’s A Big World – Big Enough For Success"--Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise. "Rich guys have figured out a secret – helping other people to be successful doesn’t make a rich person poorer."
• A couple interesting articles on electronic warfare. First up is "IDF Confuses Syrian Missile System and Returns the Missiles to Sender" from The Jewish Press. From the article:

     In a video released by IntelliTimes, which is reportedly of the Syrian missile system launching rockets at the Israeli Air Force last night, one clearly sees Syrian missile after missile become “confused”, turn around, and return to the ground and explode…

     The blog estimates that this may indicate a loss of radar lock after the launch, or another proactive action that prevented the missiles from starting their course toward the target.

     Security sites reported in the past that Israel wanted to install radar blocks on its F-35 aircraft which would enable the aircraft to bypass enemy radar systems. Similar reports have suggested that the IAF F-35 planes are equipped with a system that prevents its detection by enemy radar.

The other article is from MIT Technology Review and is interesting because it involves criminal organizations. The article is "Ghost ships, crop circles, and soft gold: A GPS mystery in Shanghai." The article is about the pervasive spoofing of automatic identification system (AIS) transponders on ships and boats in Shanghai's busy harbor and river estuary, and which ship captains use to track the location of other vessels. Location data about ships is being changed to show ships in different locations. The mystery is not only how this is being done, but who is doing it.

      One possibility is that the crop circles are an escalation in a simmering electronic war in Shanghai that has put thousands of sailors, passengers, and even the river itself at risk. For years, the MSA has been tracking and seizing ships that, while not jamming or spoofing GPS signals, have been hacking the AIS transponders that help keep Shanghai’s rivers and ports safe. These ships have been cloning the AIS identities of other ships in order to slip in and out of the harbor unmolested by authorities.

      The reason they’re doing this has to do with the cargo the New Glory was carrying when it ran aground: plain, everyday sand.

     Chinese builders call it “soft gold.” Sand dredged from Yangtze River, which has the ideal consistency and composition for cement, helped fuel Shanghai’s construction boom in the 1980s and 1990s. By the turn of the millennium, reckless sand extraction had undermined bridges, trashed ecosystems, and caused long stretches of the riverbank to collapse. In 2000, Chinese authorities banned sand mining on the Yangtze completely.

     The trade continued illicitly, however, expanding to include the illegal dredging of sand and gravel from the Yangtze estuary and the open seas near Shanghai. By day, such ships look innocuous. By night, they lower pipes to the riverbed to suck up thousands of tons of sand in a single session. A full hold can be worth over $85,000. So far in 2019, police along the Yangtze River have seized 305 sand-mining vessels and over 100 million cubic feet of sand—enough to fill over a thousand Olympic swimming pools.

    The Shanghai MSA says illegal sand and gravel ships caused 23 wrecks along the Yangtze river in 2018, accounting for over half of all major accidents and killing 53 people.

• "The Sinister Scientist Behind the CIA’s Mind-Control Mayhem"--Daily Beast.  From the article:

      For much of his 22-year CIA career, Gottlieb ran mind-control projects designed to help America defeat Communism. In the ’50s and ’60s, Kinzer writes, Gottlieb “directed the application of unknowable quantities and varieties of drugs into” countless people, searching for the narcotic recipe that might allow him to mold his human test subjects’ thoughts and actions.

     Gottlieb and a network of medical professionals gave LSD and other drugs to prisoners, hospital patients, government employees, and others—many of whom had no idea they were being dosed. A CIA staffer died in highly suspicious fashion after Gottlieb had his drink spiked with LSD. Meanwhile, when his bosses considered killing a foreign leader, Gottlieb developed custom-made poisons. Numerous people were harmed by Gottlieb’s work, but because he destroyed his files on the eve of his 1973 retirement, it’s hard to quantify the carnage he wrought.

• Related: "How CIA scientist Sidney Gottlieb - the 'most prolific torturer of his generation’ - used potent drugs, extreme temperatures, food and sleep deprivation and electroshock for his mind control experiments on human 'expendables’"--Daily Mail.

Anonymous Conservative observes: "Also note how there were assets all throughout the medical community, even entire hospitals, doing things to their patients at the behest of a secret conspiracy. Do you think that has changed? If so, when do you think it changed, and why?"