A Quick Run Around the Web (9/1/2020)

 

VIDEO: "Thoughts from the Deck - Fighting vs. Shooting"--Handgun Combatives (6 min.)

FIREARMS/SELF-DEFENSE/PREPPING

• "Some Louisiana residents won't have power for weeks, if not months, after Hurricane Laura"--CNN. "Laura destroyed parts of Louisiana's power grid after making landfall Thursday as the strongest hurricane to strike the state since 1856. The storm struck with 150-mph winds, shredded houses and contributed to at least 17 deaths in Louisiana and Texas."
• Related: "One Louisiana city refuses to take hurricane evacuees. Officials blame racial justice protesters."--Washington Post. Because of the danger of protesters and rioters coming into the parish, Lafayette is refusing to allow charities to sheltering hurricane evacuees within the parish. 
• Related: "Deaths, worries about assistance mount after Hurricane Laura"--AP. Take particular note of the latter half of this sentence: "Nineteen deaths in Texas and Louisiana have been attributed to the storm; half were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from the unsafe operation of generators." 
• If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out Active Response Training's Weekend Knowledge Dump. I must have been living right, because I received two mentions by Greg Ellifritz; so, my thanks to Mr. Ellifritz for the shout-out. Some of the topics to which Ellifritz links this weekend include some warnings about our nascent civil war and lessons learned from the rioting, shooting while wearing gas masks, how to survive a mob when in your vehicle, concealed carry on a motorcycle, ankle carry, a look at the .380 for self-defense, a look at the effectiveness of short-barreled SBRs, and a lot more. 

    One article I want to direct your attention is "Staying Alive in the Brave New World" by Michael Bane, with some various points to consider and keep in mind given the political unrest. A couple points he makes are: " If you are not armed all the time, you are a fool. The time for fond illusions of safety has passed"; and advising that we should carry less-lethal options on our person and in our car, such as pepper spray and "bear spray." Like Ellifritz, Bane recommends Saber brand. For defense in the car, he suggests using the pepper gel to avoid contaminating your car as much as is possible.

• Also, Jon Low has released another of his Defensive Pistolcraft roundups of articles and videos, with commentary thrown in, so be sure to check it out. (And thanks to Jon for the shout-out). Topics include a video on convincing your wife/girlfriend/sister to be comfortable with guns, a link to an article by Marcus Wynne on the mental training of Chuck Norris, a look at an article from Greg Ellifritz on the criminal mindset (and it has nothing to do with growing up in poverty or disadvantaged in other ways), how to reduce your exposure to lead when shooting, concealed carry tips, pre-attack indicators, dry fire practice, emergency driving skills, using distraction to hide a draw, the history of the shoot-down drill, why single-action semi-auto pistols should be carried cocked and locked, and a lot more. For those interested in carry/self-defense insurance, Low has compiled a list of carriers that offer such insurance--it's tucked away near the bottom of the post. Low includes his own commentary on various topics, which are always useful, including the following on grip strength:

    I've been to a lot of training over the decades, and in almost all of the classes that I have taken, the instructor has taught to grip the pistol as tight as you can.  Some teach to squeeze until you start trembling and then back off until you don't.  

     I don't think this is a good technique.  If you grip your pistol real tight for any extended period, your firing side hand is going to get cramps.  Then you're going to have to break your grip to stretch out your muscles.  

     Don't believe me?  Try shooting an IDPA match with your support side hand.  All you need is a new holster.  All of your other gear should still work.  The first time I did this experiment several years ago, my left hand was cramping after the second stage; to the point that I had to holster and stretch out my left hand.  

     High stress and a death grip will cause cramping in your hands.  

     Perhaps the solution is grip exercises to strengthen your hands and then using a firm grip; as you would shake a friend's hand, not as you would attempt to break an enemy's hand.  

     Any exercise regimen should strive for symmetry around all joints to avoid joint problems.  So, may I suggest immersing your hands in wet sand up to your forearms.  Expand your hands all the way.  Clench your hands into fists.  Repeat until fatigued.  Wet sand too much?  Try dry sand.  Still too much?  Try dry rice.  

Some other good advice: 

    Do not punch with your fist.  You will break your knuckles, fingers, hand, and wrist.  Use open hand techniques.  Strike with the base of your palm  to the nose.  If you have to clench your fist, hammer with the side of your fist.  Best to gouge the eyes with all fingers spread out.  If the enemy is wearing goggles, gouge up and under the eye protection.  

     Strike with elbows and knees.  Strike hard with intent to break the enemy's bones.  If you are not confident that you can break his bones when the time comes, practice.  

Regarding eye gouges, Mass Ayoob teaches that you (the defender) need to bring your hand up from a low position below the attacker's line of sight so to avoid the attacker's blink response which will serve to protect his eyes.

Anyway, read Low's whole post and check out the links.

• "The Importance of Silent Self-Defense Weapons in Secluded Places"--Organic Prepper. Greg Ellifritz included this in his post, but I want to emphasize it a bit more because the title doesn't really do justice to the subject of the article. The author is stuck in Venezuela, which means no electricity or fuel. That, in turn, means that "silence has returned. In fact, the silence is sometimes scary. A few of our neighbors use to have those old little radios with national popular music…that’s gone now, most of the time, at least." (ellipses in original). Using a firearm for hunting or self-defense, the author explains, can and will attract unwanted attention. 

    Therefore, you are well-advised to acquire silent means to defend your homestead. Establishing a plan to improve your self-defense is hard. And it can be done. Still, “they” will not come in one by one. They will come in by the numbers.  A well-positioned 15 mm diameter steel ball at middle-chest with a powerful hunting slingshot from 30 meters away will make any group think twice. (Body armor is highly recommended.)

    The more isolated and secluded you are, the more silent your choice of self-defense weapons needs to be.

The author discusses several different weapons including bows, crossbows, the atlatl (essentially a device used with a spear that effectively lengthens your "arm" and increases the force you can impart to the spear), and the hunting slingshot. I would also add the sling. The author does not include air guns, but I don't know if this is because they are not available in Venezuela, or, more likely, because most air-guns are actually fairly loud. 

• "Decisiveness Matters in a Deadly Force Situation" by Sheriff Jim Wilson at Shooting Illustrated. He relates that there are times and situations to attempt deescalation techniques, but "[w]hen deadly violence is thrust upon you, you must act and you must act quickly." 
• "The Effects a Criminal Attack Can Have on the Heart" by Sheriff Jim Wilson at Shooting Illustrated. Wilson notes that when faced with a threat, our heart rate increases, blood pressure increases and the breath rate increases, and it may take 20 to 60 minutes for the body to return to normal status. Unfortunately, these effects on our body could lead to a heart attack or stroke. We can mitigate this by learning how to slow our breathing and calm ourselves, and also lose weight and get into better shape.
• "How to Get the Best Accuracy with Shotgun Slugs"--Shooting Illustrated. The author recommends that you experiment to find the best load for your particular shotgun, practice, and use better sights (e.g., ghost ring or red-dot). And, the author warns: "Keep in mind, however, that it is a great shooter who can hold a gun’s benchrest group average to double or less from field positions. After all, you’ll not have the luxury of a benchrest in times of emergency, so your accuracy from field positions is the metric you should count."
• "Calculating Target Movement and Leads"--Bev Fitchett's Guns. An excerpt: "The easiest way to remember .308 lead distances is to count in sevens—7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42—and you'll have the correct walking leads almost perfectly for 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and 600 yards. This technique's even closer for military iM [sic] 118 ammo."
• "British Army Makes Move To M-LOK as SA80 A3 Receives Tweaks"--The Firearm Blog. The rifles had been making use of HK's HKey system (their proprietary flavor of KeyMod). 
• "Pairing Barrel Twist Rates with Bullets for .223 and 5.56 NATO"--Guns & Ammo. A look at the common twist rates and what bullet weights do best for each. Of course, you have to keep in mind that what is actually at play is the length of the bullet; weight is just a handy shorthand because most bullets have similar construction and, for that reason, heavier bullets are equal to longer bullets. Where the weight might be thrown off is using a bullet that incorporates lighter materials (e.g., a solid copper bullet) so the length will be longer than the weight would suggest.
• Wounded animals should be approached only with extreme caution: "Bow hunter is gored to death by an enraged ELK which charged at him the morning AFTER he shot it with an arrow in Oregon"--Daily Mail. The hunter had shot the elk Saturday evening, but called off the search for the wounded animal because of the dark. He returned on Sunday morning, found the elk, and attempted to shoot the animal with his bow, but was gored in the neck and died. Frankly, under similar circumstances--and not being able to use a firearm because of it being archery season--I would probably have something like a boar spear with me.
• "Bear kills Canadian woman on a call with her dad, who heard attack unfold"--New York Post. According to the article, this was a case of predation by the black bear on the woman, rather than the bear feeling threatened.
• "Get naked, and other advice to fend off a polar bear attack"--New York Post. The author writes:

I have been to the Arctic four times — in Greenland and Canada — and each time the warning is the same: Stay away from bears. However, should you run into one, there are three things you can do to protect yourself.

• Mace. Three years ago, during a Vintage Air Rally across the Arctic, I visited the abandoned Air Force base Bluie East Two on Greenland’s rugged East Coast. While walking around, I had to carry bear spray, which is mace for bears. According to several Air Greenland pilots I talked to beforehand, the spray does work; however, when you spray you have to be close and upwind, otherwise “it doesn’t go so well.”
• Gun. Always carry a gun — or travel with someone who has a firearm. While no one wants to kill a polar bear, you might have to if you want to save your own life. Sick and desperate bears are the ones that often come close to humans. During the air rally, I spent the night in Kulusuk. The day after we left, a half-starved polar bear wandered into town and had to be shot at close range, to save several school children nearby.
• Get Naked. There is no way you can outrun a polar bear. But they are, according to word of mouth, easily distractible. “Polar bears are very curious,” Sarah Woodall, a tourism destination manager for Visit South Greenland told me during my first trip to the country in 2015. To that end, if you should come face-to-face with one, back away (slowly at first), while peeling off your clothes one item at a time. The bears are very curious so they should stop, sniff, and perhaps play with each item as they come across it, leaving you free to run somewhere across the Arctic buck naked. Until they catch up with you, of course. Or you die of exposure. Either way — what an experience!

• "I Tried Making a Vegetable Oil Lamp – Here’s What Happened"--Apartment Prepper. The lamp used was different from you generally think of with an oil lamp because, rather than a jar with free flowing oil, it instead uses a small jar or dish filled first with sand (or salt), and the oil then poured into this until it is saturated. The wick (100% cotton in this case--don't use synthetic fibers) is then pushed into the sand.
• "Prepping as a Diabetic" by Steve Hensley at Survival Sullivan. An excerpt:

    There are several obstacles that need to be overcome when it comes to prepping as a diabetic. First and foremost is going to be access to medication. Whether you are currently on medication or not, the unknown circumstances that may develop during an emergency may alter your current situation to one where medication is needed.

    It’s important to remember that even if you are a Type 2 that controls blood glucose levels with diet and exercise only, everything we do now is at the benefit of calm surroundings. It may not be so easy to maintain blood sugars during an actual emergency event. The added stress of an emergency can also wreak havoc on our bodies, and that includes instability in blood glucose.

    In fact it is well documented that the body’s stress response can lead to hyperglycemia, insulin resistance and glucose intolerance, collectively termed stress hyperglycemia.

    The second obstacle is going to be diet. Normal diabetic diets are sugar free and carb restrictive. Most food stores are sugar laden and carb heavy. This is obviously not going to work very well. We must either alter the food that we store, or learn how to somehow change the way we eat and utilize our food stores to better suit our dietary needs.

    A third is going to be exercise. Most type 2 diabetics need to exercise on a daily basis to not only assist with stabilizing blood sugars, but also to combat the numerous complications that comes along with diabetes.

    Depending on the emergency at hand, getting further than your living room may be difficult or dangerous. We have to again look to alter the way we manage our bodies, or find alternative ways to get the exercise that we need in the space that we have available.

    Finally we have refrigeration. Insulin needs to be kept chilled because it begins to breakdown at room temperature, which lowers its effectiveness at reducing glucose in the blood. Without the ability to chill the medication, we face harming the very medicine we need to live.

Read the whole thing as he discusses short term solutions to each of these obstacles,  and some longer term possibilities. 

• "The 7 Pillars of Urban Preparedness"--Organic Prepper. The 7 pillars are: (i) water; (ii) shelter; (iii) fire; (iv) food; (v) signalling/communications; (vi) medical and hygiene; and (vii) personal safety. The author, Toby Cowern, discusses each "pillar" as well as an "action point" you can take to build on that pillar. But he also warns that you need to make sure that you are working on all 7 rather than pouring all your efforts and resources into one or two and neglecting all the others. A few other points he makes is to avoid making a token effort at the "water pillar" because it so important--and a couple cases of water bottles is not going to cut it. Several of the pillars are multifaceted: for instance, "fire" includes not only being able to have fires for heating and cooking, but also fire protection and fire suppression; "personal safety" is not just self-defense, but also protection against pathogens and other environmental risks. Be sure to read the whole thing.
• "12 Advantages A Revolver Has Over A Semi-Auto That You May Not Have Thought Of"--The Truth About Guns. Some of the points is that the shape and size of the grip is not constrained by the magazine making it easier to fit a revolver to the shooter; the ability to shoot a variety of bullets and loads; it can't be pushed out of battery in a contact shot; better theoretical accuracy; etc. Although it has not been posted to the American Rifleman website, the latest edition of American Rifleman had one of those "what-if-you-could-only-have-one" articles that looked at what would make an ideal all-around handgun. The author of that piece decided on a .357 Magnum revolver (the specific model was the Ruger Security Six) with some upgrades to the grip and sights, and the addition of a lanyard loop, to make it useful for both self-defense and as a hunting/working gun. I like semi-autos, but if I were in a position where I was trying to minimize and simplify down to a single handgun, I also would probably go with either a double-action .357 Magnum or .45 Colt revolver.
• "The .44 Special: History & Performance"--American Rifleman. The author identifies what has long been a problem with this caliber, which is that it needs to be offered in a +P configuration to really shine. Otherwise, it offers performance not all that different from the .45 ACP. That is why a substantial part of the article is about handloading more powerful rounds.
• "Concealed Carry Corner: Figuring Out How To Carry a PDW"--The Firearm Blog. I think that it is measure of the difficulty of finding someway to conveniently, but discretely, carry such firearms that the author of this piece identifies some of the problems, but doesn't really offer much in the way of solutions.
• You can't stop the signal: "Underground Arms Watch – August Pt.1"--The Firearm Blog. Illegally manufactured firearms in Ukraine, Israel, Vietnam, the UK, and "somewhere in Europe." The latter was an FGC-9 making use of an "expedient barrel consisting of a steel tube and three shaft collars" with the rifling produced using ECM (Electrochemical Machining).
• "Dry Fire Discussion: More than Just Snapping In"--New Rifleman.

What gave me the motivation to write this quick article though, as I was aiming at my target while moving up and down my hallway. So I picked the doorknob going one way and a small plant going the other way. I kept my sights as steady as possible while walking. All I was doing was just leveling the carbine on target and manipulating my safety over and over because I want to work on my safety manipulation on my AR being second nature. (editor: I used to compete frequently, and each stage the safety was almost involuntary engaged and disengaged due to my familiarity with the AR. Repetition works.) Since I shoot on private property, with no one else around, my safety manipulation habits are not the best. So in this case I want to be better.

• "5 Steps to Improve Your Dry-Fire Routine"--American Rifleman. The article is primarily aimed at dry fire practice with a handgun. It is a longish read, but worth the time. 

VIDEO: "Intro to CQB- The Raid Part 1"--The Immortal (23 min.)

THE CURRENT TROUBLES:

• "Shooting in Kenosha Just the Beginning of Civil War in America, Says Prediction Expert" by Megan Fox at PJ Media. An excerpt:

    It was a short trip from the Boston Massacre, which has eerie similarities to the current climate on the street when riotous mobs antagonized British soldiers into opening fire on an unarmed crowd, to Lexington and Concord when the Revolutionary War kicked off with a bang. We are teetering on the edge and our elected officials are trying to push us over into an abyss from which there is no return other than to walk through the hell of war.

    These officials should be arrested by the county sheriffs all over the country who can and should take control and stop the violence right now. If they do not arrest these governors and mayors and police chiefs who are complicit in this lawlessness and put an end to this insurrection, the American people will have no other choice but to step in. And you do not want that to happen. Even those of you who think a new civil war is necessary or would be easy, or a good idea…you’re out of your damned minds.

    War is hell. Act now for peace. You’ve been warned.

• "Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?"--Wilder, Wealthy & Wise. Kyle Rittenhouse's actions in defending his life when outnumbered and on the run should be a reminder to us all that the Left's victory is not preordained. Also this:

    When reviewing the footage I was astonished at the discipline of Kyle Rittenhouse.  Each person he allegedly shot was clearly attacking him.  He held back the second each threat passed.  If I had been shooting, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have kept shooting at the targets commies until the magazine ran dry, especially with Grosskreutz.  It’s also astonishing how quickly it happened.  The elapsed time from when he was attacked by Huber and when he allegedly shot Grosskreutz?  Less than five seconds.

    Life comes at you very, very fast.

(Strike-through in original).

• "Antifa are hired convicts"--Vox Popoli. All three of the people shot by Kyle Rittenhouse were career criminals. Vox Day reports:

• Joseph Rosenbaum, convicted pedophile. Served 12.5 years for sexual contact with a minor.
• Gaige Grosskreutz, a convicted burglar who was illegally carrying a gun.
• Anthony Huber, convicted domestic abuser. Convicted of multiple domestic abuse counts, ADW, battery, false imprisonment, and "strangulation and suffocation".
• "CNN: Anthony Huber Had Nothing but a Skateboard"--The Truth About Guns. CNN is attempting to paint Huber as a hero while downplaying his assault with a deadly weapon.
• "In Defense of Kyle Rittenhouse" by Spencer Quinn at The Unz Review. 

    ... Rittenhouse was caught behind enemy lines and was frantically trying to make it to safety. It took all of his self-possession and firearms training to be able to survive. Panic never overcame him. According to the New York Times, Rittenhouse fired eight times from various angles and scored three hits, two of which were kill shots. That is remarkable. What’s even more remarkable was that he shot the Antifa goon who was approaching him with a pistol in the arm which held the pistol. Was it pure luck? Or did Rittenhouse wish to disarm his attacker without killing him, gunslinger style? Maybe we will know one day soon. But in the meantime, we should know that Kyle Rittenhouse demonstrated the effectiveness of responsible firearms training and the critical importance of staying cool under pressure. To everyone on the Right, the kid is nothing less than an inspiration.

• More: "In a Bizarre Turn of Events, NYT Investigation of Kenosha Shooting Makes a Strong Case for Self-Defense"--Red State.
• "Kenosha police union says Jacob Blake assaulted officers, had knife in hand during altercation"--Just The News. 
• "Man Shot and Killed in Portland After Pro-Trump Rally in City"--24 News.
• More: "'I Am 100% ANTIFA All the Way,' Portland Shooting Suspect Said, Warning of 'War' to Come"--PJ Media.

    Portland Police have not publicly named a suspect in the Saturday night deadly shooting of Trump supporter Aaron Danielson, also known as “Jay Bishop,” but sources told The Oregonian that police are investigating 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinoehl, who has identified himself as antifa, has been arrested at previous antifa riots in Portland, and matches some descriptions of the shooter. Reinoehl has also described his support for Black Lives Matter as part of a “war” that will involve “casualties.”

    “Every revolution needs people that are willing and ready to fight. There are many of us protesters that are just protesting without a clue of where that will lead. That’s just the beginning that’s where the fight starts. If that’s as far and you can take it thank you for your participation but please stand aside and support the ones that are willing to fight,” Reinoehl posted on Instagram in June.

    “I am 100% ANTIFA all the way! I am willing to fight for my brothers and sisters! Even if some of them are too ignorant to realize what antifa truly stands for,” he added. “We are currently living through a crucial point in Humanities [sic] evolution. We truly have an opportunity right now to fix everything. But it will be a fight like no other! It will be a war and like all wars there will be casualties.”

    It does seem Reinoehl approaches the antifa riots in Portland like a war.

• More: "'Rest in peace Jay': Donald Trump pays tribute to Patriot Prayer supporter who was shot dead in Portland during violent clashes between MAGA fans and BLM protesters on the 95th night of unrest"--Daily Mail.
• "Seattle cops accuse protesters of attempted murder after they tried to trap officers inside their burning precinct using quick-dry cement"--Daily Mail. This apparently pertains to an incident on August 24. "Cops released images of the door they say was covered in quick-dry cement to keep it shut and had its electronic keypad destroyed, leaving officers forced to smash their way out of the building." Rioters had piled wood at and near the door and lit fires.
• "The BLM Mob Doesn’t Just Want You To Raise Your Fist, It Wants To Rule You"--The Federalist. The author,  John Daniel Davidson, observes that:

    The video footage of bands of Black Lives Matter activists roaming through Washington D.C. on Monday evening harassing diners—surrounding them, screaming in their faces, declaring that anyone who doesn’t raise a fist in solidarity is a white supremacist—is in a way more disturbing than the riotous scenes of arson, looting, and violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in recent days following the police shooting of 29-year-old Jacob Blake.

    It’s more disturbing because it’s a glimpse of what comes after the rioting and looting are over, when the attention and ire of the social justice mob moves away from institutions and settles, as it always does, on ordinary people minding their own business.

• Paging Colin Flaherty: "College student, 21, and her stepfather, 45, are shot dead in road rage attack over fender bender while he was arriving to drop off keys to the new home she'd just bought"--Daily Mail. Per the article, "Ty Sheem Walters III, 23, opened fire after rear-ending Wall's car, cops say." If the races had been reversed, this would have been all over the major American media outlets, and they would have been blaming Trump.
• Ditto: "Black Man Charged After Yelling ‘Black Lives Matter’ Before Stabbing White Man in Chest"--24 News. The assailant in this case is Steve Sinclair.
• And in an unrelated incident: "AutoZone Stabbing Suspect: I Needed to 'Find a White Male to Kill'"--24 News. The assailant in this case is Jayvon Hatchett.
• Hmm. "Exporting Rioters"--Second City Cop. The author reports: "FYI witnesses at the scene report that at least 6 huge luxury motorcoaches arrived, a Chicago limo company. As the buses were letting people out witnesses recognized Miracle Boyd and others from the Chicago protests/riots. This was reported on social media." The owner of the limo company lied about transporting rioters, claiming, initially, he was transporting Wisconsin National Guard, and when caught in that lie, then claimed it was sailors from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. The Center denied knowing anything about the limo company.
• Related? "Joe Biden leads Donald Trump among active-duty troops, new poll shows - which showed Trump leading Hillary Clinton two to one in 2016"--Daily Mail. Almost a 6% lead.
• "Black Lives Matter pushes Japan to confront racism"--BBC News. "To many Japanese, racism towards black people has long been considered something that happens in the US or Europe, not at home," begins the article. Well, that's because they don't have black people in Japan--it is a very homogeneous culture.
• Michelle Obama complains that when she went out into public incognito, people actually treated her like anyone else, and this is racist. I don't think she understands the meaning of "incognito." 
• I guess this is why teachers are so afraid of parents viewing them while teaching: "High School Teacher Receiving Death Threats After Wearing Black Lives Matter Shirt To Class"--CBS Los Angeles. Although the shirt receives the attention, the article indicates that parents were upset that rather than teaching English, the assigned subject of the class, the teacher was teaching "social justice." 
• Related: From Instapundit: "3 Antifa members arrested last night in Portland. A preschool teacher, a Social Work Grad Student, and a Band Teacher."
• "Kamala Harris on the Second Amendment"--The Volokh Conspiracy. Short take, a 2008 friend-of-the-court brief that she filed (1) argued that a total handgun ban was constitutional, and (2) strongly suggested that the Second Amendment doesn't secure an individual right.
• More: "Biden-Harris Plan Would Ban Online Gun Sales, Force Adoption of Smart Guns"--Guns America. Not just end online sales of firearms, but online sales of ammunition and parts as well.

VIDEO: "Past Micronova, New Impact Zone, Radio Galaxy | S0 News Aug.26.2020"--Suspicious Observers (8 min). The relevant section starts at 2:33 (which is where I set it start) and discusses evidence of past micro-nova in the local stellar neighborhood, and the coming galactic wave which the author believes may trigger our own star to produce a micro-nova/super-flare.

COVID NEWS:

• The suicide of expertise: "Oops: It Looks Like the Vast Majority of Positive COVID Results Should Have Been Negative"--Town Hall.

    According to The New York Times, potentially 90 percent of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 have such insignificant amounts of the virus present in their bodies that such individuals do not need to isolate nor are they candidates for contact tracing. Leading public health experts are now concerned that overtesting is responsible for misdiagnosing a huge number of people with harmless amounts of the virus in their systems.

    "Most of these people are not likely to be contagious, and identifying them may contribute to bottlenecks that prevent those who are contagious from being found in time," warns The Times.

• "TEXAS COUNTY DROPS FROM 4600+ ACTIVE COVID CASES TO UNDER 100 AFTER AUDIT"--InfoWars. Perhaps we should rewrite Shakespeare's line about having to first kill all the lawyers to take over a country, to instead saying that a wannabe tyrant would need to first kill the accountants.
• "How the Virus Penetrated Fortress New Zealand" by Phillip W. Magness at the American Institute for Economic Research. Using Edgar Allan Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" to emphasize the absurdity of New Zealand's belief that if it sufficiently isolated itself (and destroyed its economy in the process), it would not have to worry about COVID-19. From the article:

    It was supposed to be an occasion for celebration. New Zealand passed the mark of “100 days without COVID,” we learned on August 9th. New Zealand, it appeared, had beaten back and defeated the disease. Media commentators across the globe proclaimed the strategy victorious – an “emblematic champion of proper prevention and response to the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.”

     Epidemiologists used the occasion to proclaim vindication of lockdowns, border closures, and “science-based” progressive government. “New Zealand is seen as a global exemplar,” announced the World Health Organization’s Director-General in an August 10th statement. A combination of strict lockdowns, border closures, contact tracing, and enforcement had made New Zealand “COVID-free,” and for that Ardern’s government “would make no apologies.”

     The American media, which had already been championing the New Zealand approach for months, touted the case as an example of what could have been if only the United States and other countries stuck with their lockdown strategies. 

     “In New Zealand, life is ordinary again after 100 days with no community spread,” announced a triumphalist report from NPR.

     The 100-day mark also carried high political significance for Ardern, who came to power in 2017 under a tenuous coalition arrangement between the left-wing Labour Party with a smaller nationalist-populist party best known for its hardline anti-immigration stance (Ardern reconciled her coalition at the time by adopting immigration restrictions of her own on the grounds that they would help to achieve “environmental sustainability”). 

     Under normal times the Labour-New Zealand First coalition might have expected a strong challenge from the center-right National Party, which holds a plurality of seats in the New Zealand parliament.

     But 2020 was meant to be the COVID election – a victory lap for the governing coalition after having successfully driven the disease from the island nation, as the external world still struggled to contain the virus. Ardern used the 100-day mark to kick off her reelection effort with a day full of campaign stops and politicking to get out the vote. “When people ask, is this a COVID election, my answer is yes, it is,” she explained at a campaign launch party the day before the milestone. For all intents and purposes, the media predicted an easy coast to reelection, fueled by the successful defeat of the virus.

 * * *

     It happened on the 102nd day, and it took the world by surprise. The festivities of the milestone and the associated electoral campaign had yet to dissipate, but COVID-19 was back in New Zealand. A family of four tested positive in Auckland, triggering a panicked government plan to contain its spread.

     Within 24 hours the country’s largest city was back under lockdown. Police checkpoints, internal travel restrictions, police and military in the streets, arrests for violating lockdowns, runs on supermarkets, appeals to snitch on violators – a mad rush to contain the spread by any means necessary.

     Government authorities still do not know how the virus made it through the border fortress, but it breached the walls nonetheless. Then the familiar, frantic pattern set in. The initial 3-day lockdown of Auckland became 12 days. As the expiration date approached, Ardern slapped on another emergency extension that will supposedly expire August 30. But coronavirus has a strange track record of converting previously habitable places into geographical oddities – two weeks from everywhere.

• It has everything to do with money and pride and nothing to do with public health: "Why Are Medical Authorities Playing Games With COVID Treatments?"--The Federalist. The author notes that "[w]e can no longer avoid questions about the elevation of Remdesivir and suppression of hydroxychloroquine." Public health officials have execrated hydroxychloroquine as unproven, even dangerous, despite evidence of its efficacy from both anecdotal reports and studies conducted in the field, so to speak. 

    Contrast that to the receptiveness to Remdesivir. Following the journal’s publication of preliminary findings, the experimental drug was declared a “game changer.” The trial, however, showed only modest results. When the main outcome measure, a reduction in deaths, failed to reach statistical significance, a secondary outcome, time to hospital discharge, was elevated as a measure of recovery. Hospital stays were shortened from 15 to 11 days on average.

    A companion study of patients treated with Remdesivir for either five or 10 days, however, should give pause. A four-fold higher rate of acute kidney injury occurred with the longer treatment, an outcome not readily discerned when major and minor adverse events are reported in aggregate.

    Did the journal editors or peer reviewers express any concern? One hears nothing of this finding from the medical establishment, the regulatory agencies, nor the news media. By contrast, an observational study of severely ill hospitalized patients, in which hydroxychloroquine statistically halved the death rate even after correcting for factors such as steroid use, was pronounced “flawed.”

    Thus Remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug repurposed for COVID-19, is declared the standard of care by a National Institutes of Health (NIH) panel, the members of which have financial ties to the manufacturer, Gilead Sciences. The same panel duly notes the hydroxychloroquine study results yet “recommends against” using the drug except in clinical trials.

    Sadly, this phenomenon is not new. Fifteen years ago, a survey of 200 expert panels that issued practice guidelines found that a third of the members had a financial interest in the drug under consideration.

She also notes that "[t]he National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a branch of the NIH led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, sponsored the multicenter trial of Remdesivir."

• Related: "FDA expands emergency use authorization for remdesivir"--UPI. "Clinic results on the antiviral have been mixed, with one study last week showing the drug doesn't improve outcomes in people hospitalized with moderate pneumonia caused by COVID-19." 
• Related: "COVID19 breaking news, August 28, 2020: New Belgian large-cohort study shows hydroxychloroquine significantly reduces mortality"--Spin Strangeness & Charm (h/t Instapundit).
• Related: "Dr. Fauci’s Hydroxychloroquine Denial"--Real Clear Politics. 

    Distinguished Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch has written extensively on the meticulous research demonstrating the efficacy of the early administration of HCQ in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin and zinc. Conclusions from this research are based on criteria developed by British epidemiologist Sir Bradford Hill and Sir Richard Doll, two of the first scientists to discover the causal link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer, criteria that laid the foundations of modern epidemiology and that are used to this day to determine whether an observed association can be ascribed to causation. 

    Far from exploring this potential breakthrough in the treatment of COVID-19, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were both dismissive, condemning early outpatient treatment with the HCQ triple therapy as ineffective and dangerous. Instead, these agencies state that the only permissible way to determine its efficacy and safety is with randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Virologist Steven Hatfill has described a circle of self-reinforcing media commentary based on flawed, fraudulent, and withdrawn studies and the FDA’s mistaken decision to withdraw its HCQ Emergency Use Authorization, costing thousands of American lives.

• Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics: "SHOCK REPORT: This Week CDC Quietly Updated COVID-19 Numbers – Only 9,210 Americans Died From COVID-19 Alone – Rest Had Different Other Serious Illnesses"--Gateway Pundit.
• No word from BLM about this: "Inside Saudi Arabia's detention centres where hundreds of migrants and held in a bid to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and lie emaciated in sweltering cells alongside corpses"--Daily Mail.

    Saudi Arabia is locking up African migrants in hellish detention centres to stop them spreading the coronavirus, it has emerged.  

    Images leaked to the Sunday Telegraph show emaciated migrants packed into cramped cells in the searing Middle East heat. 

    Prisoners say they are 'treated like animals' by Saudi guards who beat them with whips and electric cords and toss away the bodies of migrants who died of heatstroke or suicide. 

VIDEO: "Cosmic Rays, Ice Age, Extinction Coming | S0 News Aug.27.2020"--Suspicious Observers (8 min.). The relevant section begins at about 2:25, which is where I've set the video to start. The discussion is about how the weakening magnetic field is letting in particles, warming the area and leading to fresh water melt that could lead to another ice age (by shutting down the warm currents that currently bring warm air to the North Atlantic and Europe). He also notes research showing that the global warming over the last century is puny compared to the global temperature change at the last ice age. 

MISCELLANY: 

• Suspicious Observers fans may find this interesting: "Declining resilience of North America's plant biomes may be a sign of a mass extinction last seen nearly 13,000 years ago, experts warn"--Daily Mail. 

    A mass extinction not seen in 13,000 years may be on the horizon due to human activity and climate change, cautions a new study.

    The warning comes as the resilience of North American's plant biomes is declining, suggesting present-day landscapes are 'primed to herald a major extinction event.'

    Scientists analyzed over 14,000 fossil pollen samples from 358 sites across the continent in order to reconstruct the landscape resilience, which is a habitat's ability to persist or rebound after being disturbed.

    The results show that it can take up to three centuries for landscapes to recover, but only 64 percent of biomes are restored to their original state.

    The team found that landscapes today are experiencing resilience lower than what occurred at the end of the Pleistocene megafauna and animal extinctions some 12,700 years ago.

• I had recently posted about what I considered to be some of the basic traits that define a conservative, based on Anonymous Conservative's evolutionary psychology study of conservatives and liberals. AC had assigned an r reproductive strategy to liberals:

The five psychological traits inherent to the r-strategy are docility/conflict-avoidance, promiscuity/non-monogamy, single-mom'ing, early sexualization of young, and no loyalty to a competitive in-group. All help this glut-exploiting psychology to out-reproduce everyone else by avoiding danger, mating widely starting young, booting offspring early to mate again, and never risking for others.

With that in mind, it is no surprise to see the following articles and posts:

• "New York Times Sympathizes With Adults Who Pursue Sex With 13-Year-Old Girls"--The Federalist.
• "Planned Parenthood Staff Admit To Performing Illegal Partial-Birth Abortions For Better Tissue Harvesting"--The Federalist.
• "A Short Post About Evil"--PA. 
• "San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener Introduces Bill to Decriminalize Men Having Sex With Boys"--Information Liberation. In an added twist, according to the article, "he and his allies in the media are smearing all opposition as 'homophobic' and 'anti-Semitic.'" So, does this mean that Weiner is taking the position that sex with minors is intrinsic to homosexuality and Judiasm?
• The Democrats' election strategy: "Democratic data firm predicts 'chaos' on election night with Donald Trump set for landslide victory which will take days to be revealed as victory for Joe Biden thanks to postal votes"--Daily Mail. According to the article:
• The CEO of a Democratic political data agency (Michael Bloomberg's political data and tech agency, Hawkfish) predicted 'chaos' on Election Day.
• Josh Mendelsohn told Axios on HBO in an interview that will air Sunday evening that the firm Hawkfish has a theory of a 'red mirage' in November.
• 'We believe that on election night we are going to see Donald Trump in a stronger position than the reality actually is,' Mendelsohn said.
• He suggested that after mail-in ballots are accounted for, Democratic candidate Joe Biden will be revealed as the actual winner days after the election is held.
• Ditto: "Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots"--New York Post. From the article:

    A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades.

    Mail-in ballots have become the latest flashpoint in the 2020 elections. While President Trump and the GOP warn of widespread manipulation of the absentee vote that will swell with COVID polling restrictions, many Democrats and their media allies have dismissed such concerns as unfounded.

    But the political insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears prosecution, said fraud is more the rule than the exception. His dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State. Some of the biggest names and highest office holders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.

    “An election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a difference,” the tipster said. “It could be enough to flip states.”

• Diversity is a strength: "Sweden: Middle Eastern Men Arrested in Rape, Torture of Boys in Cemetery"--InfoWars Europe. Although not mentioned in this account, other news stories indicated that the attackers had attempted to bury the boys alive.
• Of course: "Convicted Rapist, Torturer and Killer Who Squeezed Her Victim’s Testicles with Pliers Speaks at DNC as 'Impactful Community Leader'"--Gateway Pundit. The person in question is a black woman, Donna Hylton. She was convicted for the kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of a 62-year-old Long Island real estate broker in 1986. According to Wikipedia:

On March 20, 1985, Donna Hylton and three female accomplices drugged and kidnapped 62-year-old Long Island real estate broker Thomas Vigliarolo at the behest of Louis Miranda, who thought Vigliarolo had cheated him out of $139,000 on a mutual con in which the two allegedly sold shares in New York City condos and pocketed the money. The kidnappers held Vigliarolo prisoner for 15–20 days. During that time, three men and four women, including Hylton, starved, burned, beat, sexually assaulted/raped, and tortured him. On April 5, 1985, with Hylton asleep in the next room, Vigliarolo died of asphyxiation.

• I'm not sure that the author is drawing the right conclusion: "What to Do About Trump? The Same Thing My Grandfather Did in 1930s Vienna" by Liel Leibovitz at Tablet Magazine. He's not saying that Trump is like Hitler, but, as the article makes clear, Trump is like Hitler (in his mind). The author mentions how his father fled Vienna in time to avoid Germany's taking control of Austria, despite other relatives insistence that everything was fine. Leibovitz draws from his grandfather's experience three lessons: (i) Treat every poisoned word as a promise; (ii) You should treat people like adults, which means respecting them enough to demand that they understand the consequences of their actions; and (iii) Refuse to accept what’s going on as the new normal. On the latter point, Leibovitz adds:

This isn’t about policy or appointments or even about outcomes. This isn’t a political contest—it’s a moral crisis. When an inexperienced, thin-skinned demagogue rides into office by explaining away immensely complex problems while arguing that our national glory demands we strip millions of their dignity or their rights, our only duty is to resist by whatever means permitted us by law.  

But perhaps there is a different lesson to be learned. Liebovitz praises Vienna and its cosmopolitan atmosphere, writing:

Vienna in the first decades of the 20th century was a city inflamed with a desire to better understand the motives, hidden or otherwise, that move people to action. Freud and Kafka, Elias Canetti and Karl Kraus, Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfel—these were the eminences who crowded the same cafés Siegfried [Liebovitz's grandfather] and his musician friends most likely frequented. 

But Vienna was also the city that nurtured Hitler, prior to World War I. It was there that he fell under the sway of the politics of the worker's party, the Social Democrats, and partook of antisemitism. Perhaps, as Spengler suggests, the cosmopolitan nature of the international cities is the seed of their destruction. In any event, Liebovitz's grandfather did not stay to fight the antisemitism rising in Austria, but fled to Palestine to help create a Jewish state. 

• The fruits of gun control: "NYPD arrests man for attempted daytime rape on NYC subway platform"--New York Post. The video of the incident has the victim blurred out, so not sure if this was a black-on-white crime or not, but the man attacked the woman and attempted to rape her in front of by-standers. Told to knock it off, he got up and left. He was identified through an NYPD facial recognition system and arrested.
• More: "Tactical Training Scenario- Daytime Rape at a NYC Subway Station"--Active Response Training. Although Greg Ellifritz generally recommends against white knighting, he believes that this incident would fall into an exception because it was so obvious that it was not anything other than an attempted rape. 
• That must have been quite the correction: "After Correction, Study That Claimed Mutilating Trans People Helps Them Now Finds The Opposite"--The Federalist. The article notes that a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, and trumpeted by the world media, found that surgery (but not hormone therapy) had a strong positive impact on mental health. Except the researchers had misinterpreted the data:

On Aug. 1, however, the journal printed a correction saying this was wrong. After multiple letters to the editor from medical and research professionals critical of the authors’ conclusion on the efficacy of surgery based on the data presented, the journal conducted an independent analysis. The correction, agreed upon by the authors, stated, “[T]he results demonstrated no advantage for surgery in relation to” alleviating the mental struggles of trans patients.

  * * *

How did the press treat the news of the correction? Based on some internet searching two weeks after the journal posted its correction, the number of mainstream U.S. news sources that corrected their own stories was precisely zero.

• Those cavemen and their irresponsible use of fossil fuels: "Sahara turned from lush green grassland to a barren wasteland just 4,000 years ago and triggered a megadrought that crippled Southeast Asia for 1,000 years"--Daily Mail. 

    A megadrought that crippled Southeast Asia for 1,000 years was triggered by the Sahara going from lush grassland to a barren desert 4,000 years ago, a study found.

    The end of the 'Green Sahara' — also known as the 'African humid period' — was brought about as changing world weather patterns caused the region to dry up.

    The emergence of the desert we are familiar with today has long been studied by archaeologists for its impact on human civilisations of the time.

    For example, it led to the end of Mesopotamia's Akkadian Empire, the de-urbanisation of the Indus Civilisation and the emergence of pastoralism by the Nile.

    However, experts from the US found evidence in caves in Laos that it was also behind the 'missing millennia' in inner Southeast Asia's archaeological record.

    The megadrought it caused would have led to mass population movements and the adoption of new, more resilient subsistence strategies.

    It may even have led to the inception of Neolithic farming in mainland Southeast Asia, the researchers have concluded. 

• Fortunately, we have /pol/ to identify the Antifa miscreants: "Facial recognition designed to detect around face masks is failing, study finds"--C-NET. From the article:

    In July, NIST released a report noting that face masks were thwarting regular facial recognition algorithms, with error rates ranging from 5% to 50%. NIST is widely considered the leading authority on facial recognition accuracy testing, and expected algorithms to improve on identifying people in face masks.

 

    That day has yet to come, as every algorithm experienced marginal increases in error rates once masks came into the picture. While some algorithms still had accuracy overall, like Chinese facial recognition company Dahua's algorithm error rate going from 0.3% without masks to 6% with masks, others had error rates increasing up to 99%. 

• "Bread prices to rise after extreme weather causes UK's worst wheat harvest in 40 years"--The Watchers. According to the article, due to heavy rains last fall, only 40% of the normal wheat crop was planted last October, and weather this summer has further reduced crop yields. Because of Brexit, the article says, there may be a significant tariff on imported wheat from the EU. The article is little confusing because the reporters don't seem to understand that there are two crops involved: those from the fall planting and those from the spring planting. They seem to conflate the two. But it appears from the story that overall production is down 33%.
• "Sailor eyed in possible arson on Navy ship that burned for days"--NBC News. "Investigators believe a massive fire that erupted on the Navy ship the USS Bonhomme Richard may have been intentionally set, and a sailor has been identified as a possible suspect, two defense officials confirmed Wednesday."
• Not sure how this made it past the censors: "Fossil leaves prove elevated CO2 triggered greening 23M years ago"--UPI. Also, according to the article, although the CO2 levels are supposed to have been about the same 23 million years ago, the global temperatures were 3 to 5 degrees Celsius higher.
• "New Nitrogen-Assembly Carbon catalyst has potential to transform chemical manufacturing"--Phys.org. Since it was a press release, I'm copying the whole thing:

    Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered a metal-free carbon-based catalyst that has the potential to be much less expensive and more efficient for many industrial concerns, including manufacturing of bio- and fossil fuels, electrocatalysis, and fuel cells.

    At their most fundamental, these industry processes involve splitting strong chemical bonds, like hydrogen-hydrogen, carbon-oxygen, and carbon-hydrogen bonds. Traditionally this has been accomplished with catalysts that use transition or precious metals, many of them expensive and low in natural abundance—like platinum and palladium.

    The scientists performed experiments with a type of heterogeneous catalyst, Nitrogen-Assembly Carbons (NACs), in which the design and placement of nitrogen on the carbon surface greatly influenced the catalytic activity of the material. These N atoms on carbon surfaces were previously believed to be distant from one another, as the close placement of N atoms is thermodynamically unstable.

    The team in Ames Lab correlated the N precursors and pyrolysis temperature for the NACs synthesis with the N distribution and discovered that meta-stable N assemblies can be made by design and deliver unexpected catalytic reactions. Such reactions include hydrogenolysis of aryl ethers, dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene and tetrahydroquinoline, and hydrogenation of common unsaturated functionalities (such as ketone, alkene, alkyne, and nitro groups). Moreover, the NACs catalysts are robust with consistent selectivity and activity for both liquid and gas phase reactions under high temperature and/or pressure.

    "We discovered that how the nitrogen was distributed on the surface of these NACs really mattered, and in the process realized that this was an entirely new kind of chemical activity," said Ames Laboratory Associate Scientist Long Qi.

    "The discovery should enable scientists to design nitrogen assemblies that are able to accomplish more sophisticated and challenging chemical transformations without the need for transition metals" said Ames Laboratory scientist Wenyu Huang. "It broadly applies to many different types of chemical conversions and industries."

• "Compound may magnetically outperform neodymium magnets"--Phys.org. "NIMS [National Institute for Materials Science] and Tohoku Gakuin University have developed a boron-doped anisotropic Sm(Fe0.8Co0.2)12 thin film containing only small amount of rare earth elements. The compound exhibited 1.2 tesla coercivity, sufficient for use in automotive electric motors." 
• Amazing if true: "Interview: The NDB team on its revolutionary nano-diamond batteries"--New Atlas. A company called NDB (nano-diamond batteries) claims to have created a "battery" that uses the radioactive decay of carbon-14 to produce electricity. They estimate 90 years of life from an automotive battery, and 9 years from a small battery for consumer electronics. They also claim manufacturing costs would be comparable to similarly sized lithium batteries. 
• A reminder that we live in the 21st Century: "Drug Cartel Now Assassinates Its Enemies With Bomb-Toting Drones"--The Drive.

A civilian self-defense militia in the city of Tepalcatepec, in Mexico's southwestern Michoacan state, reportedly recovered two dozen explosive-laden quadcopters from a car that a team of sicarios – cartel hitmen – had apparently abandoned, possibly after a failed or aborted hit, on July 25, 2020. The bombs attached to the drones consisted of Tupperware-like containers filled with C4 charges and ball bearings to act as shrapnel.

The drones are believed to have been used by the  Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), or Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Also:

    "I argue all the time with my Air Force friends that the future of flight is vertical and it's unmanned," U.S. Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said at a public event in June. "I'm not talking about large unmanned platforms, which are the size of a conventional fighter jet that we can see and deal with, as we would any other platform. I'm talking about the one you can go out and buy at Costco right now in the United States for a thousand dollars, four quad, rotorcraft, or something like that that can be launched and flown," he added. "And with very simple modifications, it can make made into something that can drop a weapon like a hand grenade or something else."

    CJNG's recent activities only underscore that there is a serious need for countermeasures off the battlefield to safeguard VIPs, critical infrastructure, and more from spying and potentially dangerous harassment, as well as deliberate lethal attacks. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security identified the need for some kind of mobile counter-drone capability as an "emerging requirement" just this week.

    If this cartel successfully adds small armed drones to its already significant arsenal, and shows that they can be useful on a more regular basis, it could easily lead to an explosion of other criminal groups in the country, and elsewhere, adopting this tactic, as well.