A Quick Run Around the Web (7/10/2020)

"Remington R51 Gen2 - Shooting and Takedown"--PhoenixPhart (5 min.)

The first half of the video shows shooting, loading, etc., of the firearm, but the last half is actually a nice demonstration of field stripping the firearm.

• Active Response Training has a new "Weekend Knowledge Dump" up this week. Notable articles to which he links include: advice from a medical doctor on the best place to shoot someone in the head; the tale of an officer shot at with a firework's mortar and who was aided by "bystanders" to escape; and an article from Massad Ayoob on why you should be using hollow point for most defensive calibers.
• From earlier this week: a new "Humpday Reading List" from Grant Cunningham. 
• "Deaths from a single punch not that uncommon"--Washington Times. From the article:

      Dr. Karen Gunson, the state medical examiner, estimates that 80 percent of homicide victims die from gunshot wounds. That’s followed next in frequency by stabbings, then bludgeonings and strangulations.

     One-punch deaths fall even further down the list. But it happens often enough that Gunson, without pause, is able to describe precisely how a sock to the face can end a life.

     “They fall over backwards and they hit the back of their head,” Gunson said. “They often end up having a skull fracture.”

     The impact on hard ground causes the brain to ricochet into the opposite wall of the skull, somewhere around the forehead, causing hemorrhaging near the brain and death. It’s known as a contrecoup brain injury.

     Or, in cases when the victim has been drinking heavily, a punch to the face can cause an artery at the base of the brain to fatally tear as the head snaps back.

The article also has compiled real-world examples where this occurred.

• "Lessons Learned from a Home Invasion Attempt"--Active Response Training. The burglar was able to access the interior, but wasn't able to break through a window, so he resorted to kicking the door in, but apparently ran off after the alarm went off. The homeowner, meanwhile, had hidden in a bedroom upstairs. Some advice: strengthen looks and doorplates, install something like "Hurricane Film" over your windows, remove things (rocks, ladders, etc.) from around your house that can be used to facilitate breaking in; install a solid core door with good locks for whichever room inside your house that you will be using as a "safe room".
• "Proximity Negates Skill"--Beans, Bullets, Bandages & You. The author explains: "This is a security and defense concept that is intuitive for some people but needs to be explained to others. The simplest way to think about it is this — the closer an attacker is to you, the less skilled they need to be in order to hit, injure, or kill you." 
• Open season on polar bears: "Shock video: Black man bludgeons white boy, 12, dancing on sidewalk"--WND. Per the article, "[t]he assault took place Friday night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, as the suspect, whom police have identified as 27-year-old Cedric Charles Moore Jr., exited an SUV from the passenger side, sneaked up behind the child and used his fist to bludgeon the boy who never saw the punch coming."
• "RIFLES FOR TROUBLED TIMES"--Dave Anderson at Guns Magazine. The author lives in a rural setting well away from even his closest neighbors. Thus, his choice of primary firearms may not match yours. However, his three are a .22 Magnum rifle, a .308 or other big game bolt-action hunting rifle, and a shotgun. His closing comments, however, are worthwhile to keep in mind no matter where you live: "Oh, and you may have noticed I haven’t mentioned a .45 ACP pistol or .38 Spl. pocket revolver. I haven’t mentioned socks or underwear either, and for the same reason — they are just part of everyday wear."
• "The Other .38s"--Shooting Sports USA. An article on why competitive revolver shooters are increasingly turning to shooting the .38 Long Colt (LC) and the .38 Short Colt (SC) out of their .357 revolvers. Because of the stronger cylinders and frames, these old classics can have their performance boosted to nearly .38 Special or 9 mm power, but the shorter cases make it easier to punch the empty brass out of the cylinder when reloading. My personal belief is that some company should come out with a defensive revolver with a shorter cylinder (and thus smaller and lighter than conventional revolvers) using shorter cases similar to the old .38 Colt or .38 S&W cases. Just take a look at how small many of the early pocket revolvers were, even in .38 calibers, compared with revolvers today. 
• "Some Commentary on Last Weekend’s Snubnose Revolver Class"--Active Response Training. One comment: "Several guns shut down during the day (about 250 rounds) because of lack of lubrication. When the trigger pull becomes progressively more difficult and the cylinder doesn’t spin easily, a couple drops of lube where the cylinder attaches to the crane will make your life easier."
• "The Rimfire Report: What it Takes to Get Extreme Long Range out of 22LR"--The Firearm Blog. By "extreme long range" in the context of the .22 LR, the author is talking about beyond 300 yards. Although one impetus for getting into such a sport is cost, the other is land: "Most of us don’t have access to 2+ miles of range to shoot at. Meanwhile, it is not uncommon to find outdoor ranges with 600+ yard rifle bays. So where your 300 PRC would be having a snooze fest drilling quarter-sized holes at 600 yards, your 22LR will net you a bit more equitable difficulty during your range session."
• "HOW TO PICK THE BEST DEFENSIVE HANDGUN"--The Mag Life. The author discusses issues such as reliability, simplicity, and fit. I would agree that "reliability" is a key factor--you want your firearm to work when it needs to. Fortunately, most popular defensive handguns produced today can be mechanically reliable out of the box or with very little break-in. But, to me, there is more to reliability. It means actually testing your firearm to make sure it works with your particular ammunition and that there are no magazine issues. To do this, you will have to actually fire full magazines. I've seen magazines not feed correctly when fully loaded, have followers start to catch in the middle, or have too weak of springs to reliably feed at the last few rounds.

     I used to be fully on the simplicity wagon, but I think it has been taken too far with people eschewing most any controls on a handgun. As Marc MacYoung has pointed out, most everyone in times of stress can still safely operate a motor vehicle, which is something far more complicated than shooting a firearm. The reason is because we drive so much that it becomes second nature--we don't have to consciously think about where to shift our foot to speed up or slow down, which peddle to press, etc. A newbie to shooting very well may be better off with a revolver for simplicity sake, but once you are up to using a magazine release and perform tactical reloads, able to handily deal with double-feeds or smoke-stack stoppages, you can handle a manual safety. (And no, I'm not saying that you need to have a manual safety; just that the argument that it makes the gun too complicated is ridiculous).

      For fit, I would really like to see more specifics on the topic. For instance, a tailor takes certain measurements and then finds cloths (and makes final adjustments) to fit the person. A good gunsmith will do the same for a shotgun or a rifle. I would like to see more information on actual measurements to take into account to fit a person to a firearm.

• "Reloading 101: Beating the High Cost of Ammunition"--The Truth About Guns. A look at the economics of reloading.
• "BOOK REVIEW: FOUNDATIONS OF SNIPER MARKSMANSHIP, BY JOHN C. SIMPSON"--Art of the Rifle. An excerpt:

      The core material of this edition is largely the same as the previous edition. John has actually streamlined some information, having removed a short section on an esoteric sitting variation. This brings me to a core point about this book. Sometimes knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to include. It would be easy to fall into the temptation of putting in all the information (trust me, there have been times when I put it all in). Being able to figure out who you’re addressing, and exactly what you want to say to them is really the first step in effective communication. That is one of the main strengths of this book.

      John knows that his book is meant for aspiring police snipers. Understanding that police snipers show up to basic sniper school with little to no preparation from their departments, with only a 40-hour class to prepare them for deployment, this book is his attempt to bridge the knowledge gap necessary for a functional level of skill. John came to the world of police sniper instruction from the military, where sniper school was 4-8 weeks long, after a known curriculum in marksmanship.

      I can speak to the basic police sniper course lacking in fully preparing the police sniper to be ready for the contingencies of callouts (missions). Feeling that my basic sniper class, which was the class approved by the training commission in my state, did not fully prepare me was one of the primary reasons for me starting this blog as a means of further exploration. It seems that John’s intent with his book is to prime the candidate so that he can come to school with a basic understanding of the fundamentals, but perhaps more importantly the context of what a police sniper does.

• "This is how a mortar system works"--We Are The Mighty. As the author notes, "a well-trained mortar team often means the difference between victory and defeat for infantry troops in contact." The article is primarily a history of the development of the modern mortar. 
• "Legends of the Old Corps: Gustav Hasford and the 'Snuffies'"--by Chris Hernandez at Breach, Bang, Clear. The "snuffies" were Marine Corps war correspondents, and the ones discussed in this article were those that inspired the movie Full Metal Jacket. Interesting read for those with an interest in the Vietnam War.
• Interesting times: "Chinese health official now admits 'unknown pneumonia more deadly than coronavirus' that is 'sweeping' Kazakhstan is actually 'likely to be Covid-19'"--Daily Mail.
• "Abandoning Liberalism Will Destroy Social Peace" by Stanley Kurtz at the National Review.

       ... If you deny the fruits of liberalism to half the country, where do they go to get their say? Conservatives in general, and Trump supporters in particular, are already being squeezed out of social media. If Trump and his supporters are really so dangerous that they are no longer entitled to fundamental rights, why not hound them out of restaurants, shout down their lectures, get up in their faces at their homes and make their lives impossible? We’ve seen all that already, of course. Up to now, however, it’s been condemned, however tepidly, by at least a few “small l” liberal voices on the Democrat side. But what if half the country begins to feel — with justice — that the other half is eager to deprive them of their rights, has set them beyond the pale, wants to see them crushed? What then?

* * *

      ... The Left is playing with fire, and abolishing the police is only the half of it. They think they can replicate the college campus at the national level. But it’s easier to silence visiting speakers or hapless students than to treat half the citizens of this country as fascists unworthy of rights — especially when what’s actually bothering the Right is the Left’s abandonment of liberal principle, and its embrace of argument-by-accusation-of-bigotry instead.

      The Times can bar anyone it wants from its pages, right on up to senators and the president himself. And it can cover politics the way it likes, too. Trump supporters still have the right to speak and to publish in outlets of their own. Yet those legal rights rest on a cultural presumption in favor of free speech. Once mainstream outlets bar Republican op-eds on grounds that the party is now beyond the pale of liberal rights — and openly depict Trump supporters as fascists in news stories — that cultural presumption in favor of liberty is out the window. ... Once half the country sees itself made out to be bigots without rights — with no voices on the op-ed pages permitted to contradict this depiction — civil peace will slip away.

Read the whole thing.

"Operation Barbarossa - End of the Nazi-Soviet Alliance - WW2 - 096b - June 27 1941"--World War Two (19 min.). Germany decides to lose the war by launching the largest land invasion in history into the Soviet Union. By doing so, Hitler has also made a de facto decision to cede North Africa and the Middle East to the British.

"Wehrmacht 1/3 of Way to Moscow - WW2 - 097 - July 4 1941"--World War Two (18 min.)

Germany's successes during the first week were impressive, but now Germany begins experiencing the logistical problems that will eventually doom the invasion.

• "Constitutional Republic vs. Pure Democracy: How the U.S. Election Process Has Changed"--Ammo.com. An in-depth discussion of whether the change from a representative republic to democracy has been good for the country. As the author observes, both before and after the U.S. was formed, the voting franchise was limited in various ways, such as limiting voting to property owners or based on religion. 

      While it is easy to ascribe this to petty religious bigotry, the reason is actually somewhat more profound: The colonists and the colonial governments that they formed considered it important to only allow the franchise to people who shared their values. Thus, those with heterodox religious beliefs were not allowed to vote on the grounds that doing so would undermine both the values and the liberty of the colony.

     Similarly, property holders were meant to be the main voters for the simple reason of having skin in the game. The early colonists did not want, for example, the merchant class to have an outsized say in politics because they were not tied to the land and thus not as subject to bad decisions. A shopkeeper or importer can simply sell their stock and move on to the next colony. A freeholder, working the land with his family, has far less flexibility and, the theory goes anyway, would be making more long-term decisions about what is best for the polity.

      As the article describes, the U.S. gradually moved from a republic to a democracy, both through national and state legislation opening the franchise up to more and more people, and U.S. Supreme Court decisions that enforced a "one person, one vote" of representative voting on states that previously had state senates that mirrored the federal senate by giving a certain number of senators to each county regardless of a county population. The consequence of this was to take power from rural areas and concentrate it in cities. 

      The rest of the article discusses the corruption that has come with liberalized voting standards. It's well worth the read, so be sure to check it out.

      One point not addressed in the article is the wisdom of extending the voting franchise to women. This is not something without consequence: women are far more likely to vote for liberals and leftists, and are far more likely to support liberal causes such as the welfare state and open immigration, than men. 

• Related: "Far-Left’s ‘BREATHE Act’ Calls on States to Expand Voting to ‘Undocumented People’"--Breitbart.

• SJWs always double-down: "Michael Flynn Judge Asks Full D.C. Circuit to Rehear His Case Against Immediate Dismissal of Prosecution"--Law & Crime. 

• Related: "Justice Department unearths more notes from Peter Strzok and others in Flynn case"--Washington Examiner. 

      The Justice Department announced that it has unearthed further information related to the FBI’s investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, including more notes taken by fired special agent Peter Strzok.

     Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital, said Tuesday that the documents handed over to Flynn’s defense team included handwritten notes from Strzok taken at a meeting on Jan. 25, 2017; notes from former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tashina Gauhar at the same meeting; an internal DOJ document dated Jan. 30, 2017; and handwritten notes from then-acting Attorney General Dana Boente which were dated March 30, 2017. The notes remain sealed by the court.

• The collapse of complex societies: "New York diners are being attacked by RATS while eating on the sidewalk as restaurant owners beg the city to deal with sanitation problems"--Daily Mail. 
• "Utah governor declares state of emergency due to 'civil unrest'"--The Hill. 

     Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) late Thursday declared a state of emergency in Salt Lake City following tense demonstrations that saw protesters square off against Salt Lake City police.

     Protesters flooded the streets after the Salt Lake County district attorney announced that the May police killing of Bernardo Palacios Carbajal was justified.

• Black lives matter more than yours: "NYC Black Lives Matter marches can continue despite large-event ban, de Blasio says"--New York Post. All non-approved protests are cancelled. Per the article: "The de Blasio administration will also deny all permits for events in parks that it believes will 'unreasonably diminish public use' as well as street fairs and events stretching larger than one block or for gatherings that require a sound system." 
• White lives don't matter: "Washington State School Reopening Option Prioritizes ‘Students of Color’"--Breitbart. From the article: "The state of Washington’s school district planning guide for reopening public schools gives an example of a possible 'phased-in opening' in which 'students furthest from educational justice,' would be given priority to have face-to-face instruction, a category that includes 'students of color.'"

• Related: "City of Seattle held segregated training session for white staff aimed at 'undoing their whiteness' and told them 'not to take undeserved promotions' to be better allies for racial justice"--The Daily Mail. This should result in class-action civil rights lawsuit.

• The primary reason the elites don't care about white Americans: "US population growth is driven ONLY by minorities with the white population declining for the first time in the nation's history, according to new census data"--Daily Mail. Also this: "Estimates released by the US Census Bureau ahead of the 2020 results show that in 2019 more than 50% of those under 16 also identified as a minority." It will be interesting to see how blacks feel about being a minority under the rule of La Raza and Asians. It should be obvious that once whites become a permanent minority, it will spell the end of "systemic racism," and perks like affirmative action will largely disappear. 
• Is this a bad thing? "White woman attacks a black and indigenous protester with a HOCKEY STICK for laying in the road and blocking traffic during a demonstration in Canada"--Daily Mail. Of course, the woman was fired by her employer.
• The beginning of the end of the "world cities"? "Cities Are No Longer Escalators of Opportunity, MIT Study Finds"--Bloomberg. An excerpt:

      Cities such as New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston are still good places to work for people in high-paid professions such as banking, but they’re no longer good for people in middle-paying jobs, finds the new study, “The Faltering Escalator of Urban Opportunity” (PDF), by MIT economist David Autor. It was released on July 8 by MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future, which Autor co-chairs.

     In an interview, Autor says, “I was as surprised by my findings as anyone else.”

      The conventional wisdom in economics is that cities provide opportunities that aren’t available in suburbs or rural areas, says Autor. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser wrote in a working paper this year that “cities have been an escape route for unemployed residents of rural areas, such as the African-Americans who fled north during the Great Migration.” The policy implication: If cities are so valuable to workers, then government should focus on removing barriers, such as the high cost of housing, that make cities unaffordable.

     But Autor says the conventional wisdom is wrong. The problem with cities isn’t just that they’re unaffordable, but that they’re also not very desirable to workers in middle-paying occupations. Administrative and clerical jobs that provided a solid middle-class life in cities have been automated out of existence. And manufacturing, which once supplied a lot of decent jobs in cities, has mostly shut down or moved to less densely populated areas. The remaining jobs in cities are mostly either high-paying ones for highly skilled, specialized workers in sectors such as banking, or low-paying ones in food service, cleaning, security, and the like.

• Related: "Exhausted cities face another challenge: a surge in violence"--AP. Well, when you subsidize (i.e., encourage) something, you get more of it.

• Related: "NYC Rental Market Pushed to Breaking Point by Tenant Debts"--Bloomberg. No jobs, because of the lock downs, means no money for tenants to pay rents. Landlords can't kick out the non-paying renters due to temporary orders preventing evictions. So, with no money coming in and no recourse, landlords are unable to pay their debts and expenses. The only winners out of all of this will be the banks.

• "How the American Worker Got Fleeced"--Bloomberg. The article can pretty well be summed up with this one graph:

Unrewarded Effort

• Since the 1970s, wages and benefits have stagnated, falling out of step with workers’ productivity.
  
  

  ◼ Recession

  Cumulative percentage change

  252.9%

  Productivity

  250%

  200

  150

  115.6%

  Hourly compensation

  100

  50

  0

  1950

  1960

  1970

  1980

  1990

  2000

  2010

  2020
  Source: Economic Policy Institute

Why the change in the early 1970s? The civil rights acts of the mid-1960's as well as changing societal norms encouraged women to enter the workforce and the immigration act opened the spigots of immigration (combined with giving Puerto Ricans citizenship) to cause the supply of labor to dramatically increase at the same time American industrial jobs began to falter and contract and automation began displacing many workers. Simple supply and demand economics. Of course, the OPEC oil embargo didn't help things, but that doesn't explain the persistence of stagnant wages. Rather, the persistence is the result of the outsourcing of jobs overseas and the top elites keeping an ever greater and greater share of the wealth for themselves. "For the love of money is the root of all evil." 1 Tim. 6:10. 

• "What's Wrong With America?--'The Despair Is Smoldering in Society'"--Der Spiegel. An interview with Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. An excerpt:

      DER SPIEGEL: You have argued that this is one reason why many workers without a bachelor's degree have left the labor market. What becomes of those people?

     Deaton: Some of them live off government benefits. Some of them take early retirement or live off friends or relatives. Some move into a cheaper place. There are lots of ways of surviving.

     DER SPIEGEL: They fall into poverty?

     Case: Not necessarily. It’s more a disintegration of a way of life. One of the consequences is that, in those areas, there is a reduction of social integration. There are fewer marriages in the white working class, fewer people going to church, fewer people with stable home lives and a lessened sense of community. That puts these people at great risk.

     DER SPIEGEL: And it contributes to those deaths of despair, as you have called them. What is behind this phenomenon?

     Case: We were puzzled by the discovery that mortality rates are no longer sinking, but accelerating in the group of middle-aged whites with low education. They are dying from drug overdoses, alcoholic liver disease and suicide - all deaths by their own hand. And they have all risen dramatically since the early 1990s.

     DER SPIEGEL: Why? What about the opioid epidemic?

     Deaton: If despair due to the hollowing out of the white working class wasn't there, the drug epidemic would be much smaller. The despair is smoldering in society, and this created an opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry, an industry that is not appropriately regulated, which made the situation with opioids much worse. At the height of it, there were enough prescriptions for every American to have a month's supply. It was essentially legalized heroin.

     DER SPIEGEL: What has caused this mass-despair in white, middle-class life?

     Deaton: Look at the labor market, at wages. Life-time jobs and the meaning that comes from a life like that is very important. Roles for men and women are defined by it, as is their place in the community. It's almost like Marx: Social conditions depend on the means of production. And these means of production are being brought down by globalization, by automation, by the incredible force of health care. And that's destroying communities.

    DER SPIEGEL: Yet where there are losers, there should be winners as well. Who is to blame for this development?

    Deaton: Many people have said that there are two ways of getting rich: One way is by making things, and the other is by taking things. And one of the ways of taking things is to make the government give you special favors. Those special favors don't create anything, but they can make you rich, at the expense of everybody else.

     Case: For instance, the pharma companies get a law passed that Medicare has to pay for drugs at whatever price the pharma companies choose. Or the doctors' lobby doesn't allow as many people to go to medical school, which helps to keep doctors salaries up. That's one of the reasons why doctors are the largest single occupation in the top 1 percent.

    DER SPIEGEL: Would you argue that those in the top 1 percent are peculiarly prone to rent seeking?

    Deaton: No, but many people are in the 1 percent because of rent seeking. This mechanism is creating a lot of very wealthy people who would not be wealthy if the government hadn't given them a license to rip off the rest. We're not among the people who think of inequality as a causal force. It’s rent-seeking opportunities that create inequality.

     DER SPIEGEL: How do the losers of this development react politically?

     Deaton: Well, many of them like Donald Trump (laughs)!

     Case: The election in 2016 was unique: Many people felt their voices weren't being heard either by the Republicans or the Democrats. They tended to move either toward Bernie Sanders on the left or to Donald Trump on the right. They wanted to signal that things were not well with them, that they did not see the country moving in the right direction. People did not feel like the parties in the middle were adequately serving their needs, especially the working-class people.

     DER SPIEGEL: It’s a phenomenon seen throughout the West – that center-left parties are no longer champions of the working class and that their leaders are mostly intellectuals.

     Deaton: In the United States, the Democratic Party gave up representing the unions and switched to being a coalition of well-educated elite on the one hand and minorities on the other. And the white working-class in the middle was just left unrepresented. In this respect, Hillary Clinton was the worst candidate you could possibly imagine. She's such a representative of that educated elite that appears to have no understanding of, nor sympathy with, ordinary working-class people.

• "Scamocracy in America" by Angelo Codevilla at The American Mind. He begins:

       Over the past fifty years the rules of public and even of private life in America have well-nigh reversed, along with the meaning of common words, e.g. marriage, merit, and equality. Social inequality, even more than economic, has increased as personal safety and freedom have plummeted. People are subject to arbitrary power as never before. No one voted for these changes. Often, as with the negation of the Defense of Marriage Act and of the referendum-approved California constitutional provision to the same effect, these reversals expressly negated law. Just as often, as in the case of our mounting restrictions on freedom of speech, they have happened quite outside any law. Altogether, they have transformed a constitutional republic into an oligarchy at war with itself as well as with the rest of society. The U.S. Constitution and the way of life lived under it are historical relics.

      Our ruling class transformed America’s regime by instituting a succession of scams, each of which transferred power and wealth to themselves. These scams’ blending into one another compel us to recognize them, individually and jointly, as the kind of governance that Augustine called “magnum latrocinium,” thievery writ large. Thievery of power even more than of money—colloquially, scamocracy.

      Neither Aristotle nor anybody else ever counted scamocracy in their category of regimes because rule by fraud exists naturally only as regimes reach the terminal stages of their corruption.

• Eat, pray, love: "Australian surfer Carmen Greentree abducted and raped for 2 months in a houseboat in Kashmir in 2004, pressurised [sic] to convert to Islam"--OP India. She's now written a book describing her ordeal. 
• A view from the Left: "When the U.S Dollar Collapses, the Elites Will Try to Steal Your Money"--Medium. This is another author recommending that you invest in precious metals (particularly gold), but also explaining that simply having gold is not enough:

       Throughout the ages in times of crisis, out-of-control governments, states, and empires have seized from their citizens what they perceived to be real money.

      In recent history, gold has allowed citizens to protect their purchasing power from fiat currency depreciation and escape state-imposed financial repression. Though, it has been the prime asset that authorities confiscate when monetary systems fail.

      In 1933, former U.S President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, enacted Executive Order 6102 banning American citizens from hoarding large amounts of gold. In 1959, the Australian Government signed the Banking Act into law allowing Aussie authorities to seize citizen’s precious metals. And in 1966, the British government blocked gold imports and banned Brits from owning more than four precious metal coins. ...

      Unfortunately, protecting your purchasing power from a fiat currency system isn’t as straightforward as buying gold, silver, and Bitcoin, and storing it down at your local JPMorgan branch. When it matters, the state will seize your property and will remove your rights to restore — what they believe to be — monetary order, whether that’s via a government-created cryptocurrency backed by gold or a new fiat currency backed by IMF (International Monetary Fund) SDRs (Special Drawing Rights): “the international reserve currency”.

     For the elites to create a new monetary paradigm, they will use any excuse to try to steal your hard-earned wealth when things go wrong. Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, encouraged citizens to hand over their gold in exchange for steel wristbands bearing the inscription “Gold for the Fatherland”, the Soviet Union banned large private ownership of gold altogether, and Saddam Hussein, the deceased Iraqi dictator, cleaned out citizen’s gold, jewelry, and other valuables while holding them at gunpoint — they traded their assets for their lives.

      Despite past events, elites will tell you gold is nothing more than a barbarous relic, a useless lump of shiny rock with no purpose in modern-day society while continuing to amass vast quantities of gold bullion. Since 2000, Russia has increased its reserves by 680%, China has increased its reserves by 393%, and U.S reserves remain equal despite a 100% debt-backed currency. When the time comes they will show their true feelings towards gold and will come for yours — if required.

      Though, there are ways to get around a government that imposes tyrannical policies in desperate times. But you’ll have to game the system, discard patriotism, and think outside the box.

       Removing all your assets from entities connected to the banking system is the first step. With “bail-in” legislation passed and enacted in several countries — the G20 bank bail-in solution was signed into supranational law in late 2014 — if you store your gold within your bank and your bank goes bust, they have the power to use your gold — and even your savings — to bail out their mistakes.

       You might think to store gold in your home safe, but like anything in investing, diversification is key. Storing gold in a private vault is important, but so is the location: You must store it offshore, outside your government’s jurisdiction, otherwise they will hunt down your stash, like in 1907, 1959, and 1966. Though you don’t need a high net worth to store your assets in other countries. Companies like Goldmoney allow their clients with small account balances to buy and store gold in various countries from Singapore to Switzerland — countries with governments that have never seized precious metals.

       Though, if you’re desperate to keep some gold at home, stick to jewelry. You don’t need to hide your gold bracelets, earrings, and other wearables because the U.S government doesn’t recognize them as financial assets. As precious metals analyst, Jeff Clark, says, “History has shown, in the developed world, gold confiscations have targeted monetary metals, like coins and bars. Jewelry was spared. Only in oppressive nations, ruled by dictators, was it a target. In other words, residents of developed nations that own gold jewelry have an asset that remains [less] appealing … to grab.”

• Reminder that Boeing had outsourced their software to Indian-run companies: "NASA adds software experts to work toward new Boeing capsule flight"--UPI. The article reports:

      NASA added software experts to work with Boeing and SpaceX on their space capsule programs following the failure of Boeing's Starliner test flight in December, the agency announced via a teleconference from Florida on Wednesday.

     The software oversight changes were outlined in NASA's release of its final review of the Starliner failure.

But Boeing is leading the industry in diversity and inclusion. And why is NASA stepping in to save Boeing's bacon? Because they don't want SpaceX to become the sole provider. 

• "Earth's magnetic field can shift 10 times faster than scientists thought"--UPI. 

      In the study, published Monday in the journal Nature Communications, researchers supplied magnetic field generation models with a record of time variations in Earth's shifting magnetic field over the last 100,000 years.

     Previously, scientists estimated the planet's magnetic field shifted one degree per year at its fastest, but the latest analysis suggest the magnetic field can change up to 10 times more quickly.

     The models showed such rapid changes are usually associated with pole reversals or geomagnetic excursions, when Earth's magnetic poles stray especially far from the planet's geographic poles.

Like what's happening right now? Anyway, the article continues:

      Some 39,000 years ago, in Central America, the magnetic field altered direction at a rate of 2.5 degrees per year. Earth's magnetic field also featured fast rates of change when it experienced a brief reversal some 41,000 years ago.

     The new analysis suggests faster, more dramatic changes in Earth's magnetic field are associated with reversed flux patches found on the surface of the planet's liquid core. Because the patches are more common at lower latitudes, local magnetic fields along the equator might experience more rapid periods of magnetic field changes.

• "The Hidden Link between Earth's Magnetic Field and Climate"--Science Direct. "The book reviews the most current research on both current and paleo data to introduce a causal chain of interactions between the geomagnetic field, energetic particles which bombard the Earth’s atmosphere, ozone and humidity near the tropopause, and surface temperature."
• "Underwater cave on the Yucatan Peninsula reveals evidence of 13,000 year-old Mayan mines that scientists believe were the first of their kind in North America"--Daily Mail. It wasn't all that long ago when the "settled science" was that humans didn't start to cross from Asia into North America until 13,000 years ago.
• Kon-Tiki: "Ancient voyage carried Native Americans’ DNA to remote Pacific islands"--Nature.
• "Google parent company Alphabet just launched balloons that beam high-speed internet in Kenya"--NBC News. Yet companies have trouble bringing the internet to rural America.
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "NASA Teases ‘Psyche,’ A Robot To Explore An Asteroid Worth More Than Our Global Economy"--Forbes. 

      Located in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, metal-rich 16 Psyche is thought to be the exposed metallic iron, nickel and gold core of a protoplanet. Most asteroids are rocky or icy.

     The Psyche mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program of low-cost robotic space missions.

     16 Psyche’s core is tantalisingly similar to Earth’s, which means that it could be the heart of a dead planet that lost its rocky outer layers or suffered from violent collisions.  

      The metals that make-up this one-of-a-kind asteroid could, according to some, be worth $10,000 quadrillion.