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Sunday, October 11, 2020

A Quick Run Around the Web (Oct. 11, 2020)

 

VIDEO: "The speed of punching pales in comparison to the speed of problem solving"--Ramsey Dewey (9 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
  • Be sure to check out this weekend's "Weekend Knowledge Dump" from Active Response Training. A lot of good links and articles, as always, including an excellent article on why hit-men and assassins like the J-frame revolver. But I want to direct your attention to an article from someone that lived through the civil war in Sri Lanka with the title "I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There." The author begins:
    I lived through the end of a civil war — I moved back to Sri Lanka in my twenties, just as the ceasefire fell apart. Do you know what it was like for me? Quite normal. I went to work, I went out, I dated. This is what Americans don’t understand. They’re waiting to get personally punched in the face while ash falls from the sky. That’s not how it happens. 
 
    This is how it happens. Precisely what you’re feeling now. The numbing litany of bad news. The ever rising outrages. People suffering, dying, and protesting all around you, while you think about dinner. If you’re trying to carry on while people around you die, your society is not collapsing. It’s already fallen down.

Read the whole thing and check out the other articles.
    ... If [a] knife is part if [your] defensive EDC routine, it should be a fixed blade, period.

    There are ample offerings on the market that can serve this role, and in no order, knives like the Skallywag dagger, Shivworks Clinch Pick or Push Dagger, Bastinelli Picolomako, or Hard Ready HR1 all fit the bill. Many of these have “trainer” options, which is essentially the same exact knife in every way, just with a blunted, inert edge. This is a critical distinction. You practice dry fire with a pistol, why not practice safe “dry-fire” with a blade you carry every day.

Also:

Assuming you have a blade that is comfortable to use, concealable, and has strong retention, you need to have a place to carry it that you can access quickly and that doesn’t get in the way too much. Most experts and trainers suggest it should be close to the centerline (think appendix carry), but wherever you carry, it should be second nature when you need to draw it.
    We ask a lot ... of premium self-defense ammunition. When a self-defense projectile strikes a target, it is supposed to get bigger and penetrate deeply in order to cause more fight-stopping damage. Defensive ammo is expected to work every time.

    It’s also expected to hold up for years in humid (sweaty) carry environments and not corrode or malfunction when called upon. In order to meet these design requirements, companies have to upgrade every component of a self-defense cartridge[.]
  • "Is The Glaser Safety Slug Good for Self Defense?"--Shooting Illustrated. The Glaser ammo uses a copper jacket to contain lead bird shot and capped with a polymer plug to allow reliable feeding. The color of the cap indicates what size of bird-shot is used in the round. The idea was that the round would quickly dump all of its energy into the target, as well as creating a wide wound channel, but it would fragment and not penetrate against a harder target. Ostensibly, it was developed for use on aircraft, but it was also considered by some to be a good candidate for use within the home for the same reason. The problem, as a lot of people see it, is that it's penetration is so meager: 
The jacket fragments will penetrate to between 1 to 4 inches, and the No. 12 shot will push as deep as 6 inches, with the No. 6 shot going as deep as 8, depending on the cartridge. The shot also radiates outward in a cone that can be as wide as 4 to 5 inches.

A long time ago, in my early 20s, I bought some because I lived in an apartment and was worried about a bullet penetrating the walls into a neighboring apartment if I ever had to use a handgun in self-defense. My naive thinking at the time was to have the first one or two rounds in the magazine as Glazer, and the remainder as regular hollow-point, assuming that the first one or two shots were the one's I most likely to miss with (I was using a DA/SA pistol at the time). I did test a couple rounds (they were expensive!), but my only test medium were plastic milk jugs filled with water. They did explode violently, I was please to see. But as the author notes:

Another concern when using Safety Slugs centers around intermediate soft targets. Many people hold up a hand or arm defensively before getting shot. If the Glaser fragments on these intermediate targets, there is nothing left to impact vitals. Also, both bodybuilders and the morbidly obese may have more that 6 to 8 inches of soft tissue over their vitals, which could prove problematic for these projectiles.

They used to be sold in blister packs of 6 rounds each, but the author indicates that they are now sold in boxes of 20 rounds for between $20 and $40 per box depending on the caliber. They are manufactured by Cor-Bon.

    On a side note, the author makes a snide comment about the Strasbourg Tests, which used goats as test subjects to test and analyze terminal ballistics in a living, breathing creature. The author sarcastically remarks that "[u]nfortunately, humans rarely need to defend themselves from attacking goats, and how this all relates to stopping bad guys is debatable." The reason for using goats is quite simple and reasonable. Goats (and sheep) have thoracic cavities and lungs that are similar in size to humans. That's why doctors who research surgery techniques involving the lungs will use sheep or goats as test subjects. The goats were being shot through the thoracic cavity, so using goats would be a good analog to a person being shot in the same location.

  • In my last "Quick Run Around The Web", I had included a video from Hard2Hurt that discussed why collapsible batons are poor weapons for use by police in a less-than-lethal role. Greg Ellifritz takes up this same subject in an article with the title, "Why I Don’t Carry an Expandable Baton." Basically, he observes, the baton is generally useful only when used in ways that would be considered lethal or potentially lethal force:
    ... The targeting areas (arms, legs, torso) taught in most police/civilian impact weapons classes tend to be ineffective for all but the strongest or most highly skilled baton user.  Strikes to the head tend to be very effective, but will likely be judged as lethal force.  Shots to the knee, elbow, and wrist joints, as well as strikes to the collarbone and groin can also be effective.  Depending on your jurisdiction, those may also be considered lethal force as well.
  • "Bang: Most FBI gun checks ever — with three months to go"--Washington Examiner. The article indicates that there were 2,892,115 NICS checks last month, and that 28,826,499 NICS checks have been conducted this year through September. Interestingly, since the NICS system was established in 1998, there have been 361,830,515 checks performed by the FBI. 
  • "S&W Model 649 Bodyguard" by Rob Garrett, Guns America. The 649 is the .357 Magnum steel-framed J-frame revolver with the shrouded hammer, allowing you the ability to take single-action shots if you want to, while also being snag free allowing it to be fired from a pocket or quickly drawn from a pocket. The aluminum framed version is the 638 Airweight in .38 Special +P.  The author recommends .38 Special +P for the 649 and standard pressure .38 Special for the 638 due to recoil concerns.
  • "How To Correctly Insert Foam Earplugs"--Shooting Sports USA. The author explains: "Roll out the earplug to compress it. You wan to roll it out as long and as thin as you can. Reach over the top of your head and pull the top of your ear up when you insert the plug. This expands and 'straightens' the ear canal. Give the plug a gentle tap to seat it."
  • "Fit Versus Feel" by Massad Ayoob, Guns Magazine. An excerpt:
    Let’s define “fit.” Can we reach all the parts we need to manipulate without shifting our grasp? Can we get enough hand around the girth of the grip for a solid hold, but still have room for the support hand — without our hits or speed suffering when shooting one-hand-only? For good shooting, trigger control is the heart of the beast which makes trigger reach a key factor in fit. On the gun, it’s measured from the point at the center of the backstrap where the web of the hand rests, to the center of the face of the trigger.

    On the hand, it’s measured from the center of the web of the hand in line with the long bones of the forearm to the chosen point of contact for the finger on the trigger. Depending on the gun and the shooter, it might be the “pad” of the finger (think, “the whorl of the fingerprint”) or the distal joint on the palmar surface the old-time double action revolver shooters call “the power crease.” I have learned to live with either (and have to, on GLOCKs or the first shot from a Beretta 92), but prefer the power crease because it gives me more leverage.
  • Throughout history, men have decorated weapons. Sometimes the decorations had some spiritual significance, such as engraving a religious symbol, a totem, or other symbol that it was hoped would endow the weapon and its bearer with strength. Sometimes the decorations served a functional purpose such as to designate rank or affiliation--think of the symbols of heraldry on a knight's shield, for instance. Sometimes the decorations were designed to be psychological weapons to terrify or awe an opponent, such as the nose decorations of some WWII fighter aircraft, or a cannon that may have been cast to appear like the head or mouth of a lion. And, many times, it is to transform a weapon into art, such as we see with the carvings and etching on many historical firearms. 
    I think that this largely fell off or was greatly subdued once we got to the modern era of blued steel and polished wood. It wasn't completely absent--I remember my father checkering stocks in designs that went beyond what a customer would strictly need to get a better grip on a rifle by adding slight embellishments such as a pleasing design or pattern--but it was the firearm's own form and finish that provided the overall aesthetic. Now that era has mostly passed, and we are now into guns that are plastic and coated steel and/or aluminum and strictly utilitarian, it seems that more elaborate decorations are beginning to reappear. Some of it is simply having more color options available for firearms, or the various designs of slides and receivers milled to make them more cool looking. And, for some, it is a paint job. 

    That brings me to this post from Tin Can Bandit where he has collected photographs of some elaborately decorated firearms: everything from Mandalorian blasters and Hello Kitty pistols, to firearms decorated like WWII fighters or looking like something your favorite super-hero would carry around.

  • Obviously the .30-06 is superior: "Why Are We Still Talking About The .308 Vs .30-06?"--Gun Digest. The reality, as this article discusses, there is little difference between the two when using commercially loaded ammunition. It is with hand-loading that the differences show up. Simply put, the .30-06 has larger case capacity, so it can be loaded hotter for extra speed, or loaded up with heavier bullets, than you can get out of the .308. The .308 has long been believed to be more accurate at longer distances, but that may not actually be the case:
Modern-day match shooters have dusted off the .30-06 and come up with some different results. A competitive shooter by the name of German Salazar did a two-year analysis of .308 and .30-06 with a matched pair of Gilkes-Action rifles chambered for each cartridge. In a comparison of his competition results, he came up with interesting conclusions. At mid-range, 500 to 600 yards, the .308 had a slight advantage. At long range the .30-06 proved superior. His take on the superior performance of the “aught-six” mirrors our talk above on case capacity. More powder equals more velocity, which counts more down range.
    Overlapping layers of vulnerable targets are clustered around the torso center, to include the heart with its major arteries, the spine just behind the heart, and the liver found just at the bottom of the rib cage. Please note that the heart is not located center-chest but slightly to the subject's left side.

    A hit to the heart obviously will cause severe blood loss and lead to unconsciousness and likely death in 10 to 15 seconds. A spine hit, which isn't as certain, is a CNS shot with instant incapacitation and possible death, but it cannot be relied on to prevent the subject from firing a weapon unless it impacts higher than the shoulder blades.

    A rifle wound to the liver will induce dramatic and rapid blood loss, having an effect similar to a heart shot. Soft liver tissue is especially vulnerable to damage from temporary cavitation, meaning even a near miss can inflict serious injury.

    Moving farther down the torso, we see the kidneys, probably the most susceptible organs to crippling pain from even the slightest wound, which can incapacitate the subject. Like the liver, the inelastic kidneys are readily injured by temporary cavitation.

    Major blood vessels, too, make good targets, especially the femoral artery in the groin (not illustrated) and the carotid arteries in the neck. Because the neck also contains the spine, it can prove an especially productive impact point.
  • "Make Mine A Shotgun: The Scattergun Is Still Versatile And Viable" by Denny Hansen, Guns Magazine.
  • "Gamma Seal Lids – How To Install And Use Them" by Ken Jorgustin, Modern Survival Blog. If you don't already know, Gamma Seal lids replace the standard lid on the 5-gallon plastic food storage buckets. The seal fits around the rim of the bucket, and the lid screws into the seal. It is truly a must for those buckets that you expect to be opening and closing regularly. 
  • "Boots And Socks Matter"--Men of the West. "Wool socks are expensive. Well, wool anything is expensive, really, but you get what you pay for. They are very comfortable, though. If your feet get sweaty, they wick away moisture. They don’t cause blisters like cotton socks, and they don’t hold smells. I usually wear a pair twice. I wash them in the machine, and let them air dry. Mine have lasted a very long time." The author recommends Smartwool brand of socks.
  • "Maintenance as a Way of Thinking"--Blue Collar Prepping. A paean for preventative and predictive maintenance.
  • "Best time to plant a tree? Probably now"--AP. From the article:
    Experts used to recommend planting trees in spring. But that’s changed for most species.

    With spring planting, there’s a danger that stems can start to grow before the roots are established in the ground. Fall planting helps avoid that. Stems can’t grow until they have experienced a winter’s worth of cold. Roots, on the other hand, grow whenever the soil temperature is above about 40 degrees, so they can still make use of summer’s lingering heat in the ground.
7-Eleven does not allow its clerks to be armed. They even go so far, according to a poster documented on ConcealedNation.org, as to instruct employees on how to not resist robbers, and to also rat out any co-workers who may be hiding in a back room. Should that result in injury or death, the corporation had already established the precedent that they’re not liable for what happens to franchisee clerks.

Bernstein offers an extensive review of happenings in cities ranging from Seattle to Louisville, Portland to Chicago and New York and Raleigh, and many other cities. In case after case, police were told to stand down, in order to avoid provoking violence. And in each case, the result was more violence, more property destruction, and more damage to businesses and jobs, while political leaders stood by.

Bernstein argues that courts considering Second Amendment cases should consider that political leaders have encouraged violence and slowed--or, even, prevented--police response.
    Do please note the emphasis on "Combat shooting, battlefield fitness, small team [tactics, techniques and procedures] and battle craft". These are basic elements of the soldier's craft, and they should be basic for us as well, to the extent possible to civilians. It's not going to help to train with your weapons only on the "square range", where you line up your shots slowly and carefully from a shooting bench, pull the trigger, stop to chat with your buddies for a while, then leisurely fire off another round. No, snap shooting, rapid movement, and the pressure of knowing that someone out there is trying to "do unto you" what you're trying to "do unto him", will make the real deal something you really don't want to experience! (How do I know this? Trust me. I know this.)

    That's why, to cite just one example, the Rhodesian Army spent so much time training its recruits in combat reaction shooting - seeing targets only fleetingly and at odd angles, some partly or fully behind cover or concealment, requiring extremely fast reactions, rapid sight alignment and snap-shooting accuracy. South Africa adopted similar methods (sometimes called "Jungle Walk" training). I'm here to tell you, they were very effective. For more details, see the sections "Fire and Movement" (p. 6) and "The Rhodesian Cover Shoot - 'Kill' the concealment, kill the terrorist" (p. 8) in the Adobe Acrobat document "Rhodesian Cover Shooting" at Small Wars Journal. They're very informative. The Rhodesians operated in a bush warfare environment, of course; but similar skills may (probably will) be needed (suitably adapted, of course) in cities, even if the situation doesn't degenerate into full-blown urban warfare. (Again, see Selco's book.)



VIDEO: "Ideas Have Consequences: The Philosophers Who Shaped 2020"--Bishop Robert Barron (51 min.)

The Current Unrest:

Fortitude Ranch camps in West Virginia and Colorado will open on election day to protect members, the company’s October newsletter said. Regardless of whether Republican President Donald Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden wins the election, Fortitude Ranch expects possible “looting and violence” that could devolve into long-term, widespread clashes, the newsletter said.

  • "4th Generation Warfare At Your Doorstep" by Sam Culper, American Partisan. Culper quickly explains what is 4th Generation Warfare--it being the point that the State loses its monopoly on violence, and "[w]ar is less and less being fought among conventional militaries and nation-states, and it’s increasingly fought by tribal entities, where both armed and unarmed combatants wage war against an enemy."
    Yet, as Lind describes, “All over the world, citizens of states are transferring their primary allegiance away from the state to other entities: to tribes, ethnic groups, religions, gangs, ideologies, and ’causes.'” In 4GW, fighting for one’s “nation” increasingly means fighting for your social tribe, instead of fighting for one’s country.
 
    We’re seeing this right now as the American identity is being redefined and the country becomes more tribal. Small groups, most often based on ideology or race, are trying to reform or replace state power, authority, and legitimacy to benefit their own self-interests. This is the battle between New America and Old America, where “American” is becoming, for many, a secondary or tertiary identity, often behind race and/or ideology.
        Also, he explains, "to win in 4GW, you don’t necessarily need to kill your opponent; you need to reshape the information environment and shift the perception of morality so that your opponent (and/or his ideology) becomes unpopular and immoral. Once unpopular and immoral by societal standards, political and social power dries up." Are you living in an area where 4G warfare may occur? Culper lists some signs to look for, including what I think to be the most important indication: "Are there community organizing efforts in your area to build competing social movements?" Read the whole thing.

            We know, of course, that there are groups attempting to instigate or already instigating 4G warfare.  Don Feder, at Frontpage Magazine, explains that "The Elements of Revolution Are All in Place." 

            What was kindled decades ago, now has burst into flames.

            The pieces are all in place: rioting without end, war on the police, government complicity with anarchy, one party firmly in the grasp of revolutionaries, ongoing efforts to erase our history, radicals with a death-grip on the culture and an election from which there could be no turning back. To view any of these elements in isolation would be a tragic mistake.

            The riots following the death of George Floyd have been anything but spontaneous. They were planned and organized by Black Lives Matter, Antifa and others. The founders of BLM describe themselves as “trained Marxists.”

            Every time there are charges of police brutality (given the sort of characters the police are forced to deal with on a daily basis, these are inevitable), the switch is thrown: first come the useful idiots with their signs and slogans, then the outside agitators (with U-Hauls disgorging riot gear), then the looting and burning, then the assaults on police, then the calls to defund the police and on and on.

            The goal is chaos, leading to uncertainty, apprehension and politicians willing to give the terrorists whatever they want to buy peace. 

        He ends: "Don’t think civil war. Think firing squads, gulags and death camps. Think the Black Lives Matter flag flying over the White House and Capitol."
        Here's my prediction:  The 2020 election is going to be a clusterf[**]k.  The Left does not intend to lose, and will do everything in its power to ensure that. ... [I]f they lose, the "peaceful protests" we've seen recently will seem like a walk in the park.  All those "defunded" demoralized police who are now terrified of doing their jobs, won't.  And the Left will discover to their horror that the police aren't there to protect the citizens from them, but to protect them from the citizens.  All those guns and all that ammunition that has been purchased since 2000?  Well, when Americans get to f[**]kery, it will be f[**]kery unlike anything seen before.  The question is, will that shock return them to sanity, or will it be all-out war?  I wouldn't bet on sanity.  I'd bet on them doubling-down.
            This summer, in the first week of June, about 6,000 law enforcement officers and National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, D.C., to keep order during protests there, and another 1,700 troops from Fort Bragg were held in waiting just outside the district. When President Trump appeared in Lafayette Park that Monday, police had to clear the square using pepper balls and smoke canisters because protesters were throwing projectiles and the president’s safety could not be assured. At several points during the week, the only thing preventing the White House from being overrun was a line of armed men from the Secret Service and the Park Police, 51 of whom were injured and 11 hospitalized by the rioters. 

            This would not necessarily have been reason for alarm—there are protests in Lafayette Park literally every day—except that it came the same week that former defense secretary Jim Mattis published a long interview in The Atlantic denouncing the president and saying, ominously, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff also made a statement that week condemning the president’s Lafayette Park appearance and expressing his support for the protesters’ goals.

            These murmurings from prominent generals raised the question: what if the president gave an order to clear Lafayette Park and military officers didn’t follow it? What if they decided the order was, as Mattis said, a threat to the Constitution? Mayor Muriel Bowser evicted some National Guard troops from D.C. hotels on June 5 because she did not approve of their mission, and there was nothing the National Guard could do except try to find another hotel. Less than a week after the Mattis interview, The Atlantic ran a piece by Franklin Foer suggesting that the color revolution model might be a good one to follow if more American officials could be persuaded to treat President Trump the way Ukrainians treated their corrupt President Yanukovych in the days before he hopped a plane to Moscow. The house magazine of the Resistance, which had done so much to drive the Russiagate soft coup, was apparently preparing the ground for something harder.

            In August, word was leaked that a group of government officials and political operatives calling itself the Transition Integrity Project had gathered a few weeks earlier to game out possible election scenarios. In one, John Podesta, playing candidate Joe Biden, refused to concede after winning the popular vote but losing narrowly in the Electoral College, citing alleged voter suppression. Congress split, blue states threatened to secede, and the hypothetical outcome was determined by the military. Evidently, serious people on the Democratic side are thinking in very broad terms about what the coming months will bring. Republicans should, too, because scenarios like the ones Podesta and Foer are imagining may be unprecedented in the United States, but they are certainly not unprecedented in modern history.
            In July of 2013, the seeds of the most powerful protest movement of the modern era were planted.

            In a restless climate of nationwide demonstrations touched off by the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, an activist named Alicia Garza uttered the phrase “Black lives matter.” A few months later, in October 2013, Garza took a job with an organization called the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and the nonprofit immediately saw a dramatic increase in its funding from organizations tied to some of the wealthiest people in the world—people with names like Buffett, Soros, and Rockefeller.

            This spring, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the movement became a global interest: Some 1.1 million individual donations worth an estimated $33 million flowed into its coffers. Large corporations, especially in Silicon Valley and retail, have been quick to follow suit, with brands like Square, Ubisoft, Google, Spanx, Tom’s Shoes, Lululemon, Nike, and Anastasia Beauty all making six- and seven-figure organizational pledges.

            The received wisdom, echoing the official mythology around Black Lives Matter Global Network Inc.—co-founded by Garza along with fellow activists Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors—is that BLM is a grassroots movement that rose up organically out of the widespread rage sparked by viral videos of Black American men killed by police officers. According to this account, the political priorities of activists in Brooklyn screaming at cops and calling to defund the police have been fused with those of suburban moms in Peloton T-shirts, hand-painting signs with their kids using the BLM hashtags of large multinational conglomerates—an unusual union of protesters and the corporate boardroom spurred on by nothing more than everyone’s shared outrage over racism.

            There is, however, another version of events, in which the heartfelt dedication to racial justice is only the forward-facing side of a more complicated movement. Behind the street level activism and emotional outpouring is a calculated machinery built by establishment money and power that has seized on racial politics, in which some of the biggest capitalists in the world are financially backing a group of self-described “trained Marxists”—a label that Cullors enthusiastically applies to herself and the group’s other co-founders.

            These bedfellows, whose stories and fortunes are never publicly presented as related, are in reality intertwined under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor named the International Development Exchange. A modestly endowed West Coast nonprofit with origins in the Peace Corps—which for decades supported local farmers, shepherds, and agricultural workers across the Global South—IDEX has, in the past six years, been transformed into two distinct new things: the infrastructure back end to the Black Lives Matter organization in the United States and also, at the very same time, an investment fund vehicle driven by recruited MBAs and finance experts seeking to leverage decades of on-the-ground grantee relationships for novel forms of potentially problematic lending instruments . And it did so with help from the family of one of the most famous American billionaires in history—the Oracle of Omaha himself.

        Read the whole thing, print a copy, and add the names to the lists of organizations and people that will destroy this country for the sake of additional profits. 
        • Peter Beinart, writing in an op-ed at The New York Times, argues that "America May Need International Intervention." I'm sure that all the dictators in the U.N. that hate America would welcome that type of intervention. Beinart observes that "[f]or many Americans — raised to see the United States as the natural leader of the 'free world' — it may be hard to imagine requesting foreign intervention against tyranny in our own land," but assures us it is necessary because:

        Democrats must now win the popular vote by three, four or even five percentage points to be assured of winning the Electoral College. They must achieve that margin in the face of a strenuous Republican effort to ensure that many Democratic ballots are not counted. And even if they overcome both of those obstacles, Mr. Trump may still not concede.

        Apparently it has never entered his mind that much of America considers the Leftists to be tyrants or potential tyrants. In any event, he acknowledges that appealing to international bodies would likely go nowhere:

        But that’s not the point. While appealing to international bodies may not change the election’s result, it could change the Democratic Party itself. Today, many prominent Democrats remain enthralled by the very myths about American exceptionalism that Black activists have long challenged.

        And American exceptionalism apparently is his primary concern. Not to beat a dead horse, but Beinert is someone that Vox Day would contend is not a real American because he is a second generation immigrant with no deep family ties to the United States. According to Wikipedia, "[h]is parents were Jewish immigrants from South Africa (his maternal grandfather was from Russia, and his maternal grandmother, who was Sephardic, was from Egypt)." They were also academics and intellectuals, which means that, more than likely, they were Socialist or worse.
            You may have heard the terms “Cultural Marxism,” “Critical Theory” or “Frankfurt School” bandied about. And while you might have an intuitive approximation of what these terms mean for America in the 21st century, there’s a good chance that you don’t know much about the deep theory, where the ideology comes from and what it has planned for America – and the world.

            The underlying theory here is a variant of Marxism, pioneered by early-20th-century Italian Marxist politician and linguist Antonio Gramsci. Gramscian Marxism is a radical departure from Classical Marxism. One does not need to endorse the Classical Marxism of Marx, Engels and others to appreciate the significant differences between the two. He is easily the most influential thinker that you have never heard of.

            Whereas Classical Marxism located what has been called “the revolutionary subject” (the people who will overthrow capitalism and usher in socialism) within the broad working class, primarily in what is now the First World, Gramscism takes a very different approach. This approach underpins most of the social unrest that is gripping America and the West today. In a sense, we are living through the endgame of a Gramscian revolution.

            There are two important diversions that Gramscism has from more traditional Marxist thought: First, that economics was the base of culture and politics. Second, philosophical materialism in the Marxist sense where reality is effectively formed by the means of economic production.

            For Gramsci, culture was more important than either economics or politics. This was what needed to be changed for there to be a revolution. As such, the weapon to be used for revolution was not the economic might of an organized working class, but a “long march through the institutions” (a phrase actually coined by German Marxist Rudi Dutschke), whereby every institution in the West would be subverted through penetration and infiltration.

        Also:
        The bottom line of the difference between Classical Marxism and Cultural Marxism is that the latter sees the state as effectively neutral – something that can be taken over and used for its own purposes – while the former does not. Cultural Marxism is interested not in revolution in the classical 19th-century sense of throwing up barricades, toppling the monarchy and setting up guillotines. Its interests lie in cultural transformations, after which other transformations (political and economic) can take place.

        Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. As the author points out, 

        ... There are literally multiple generations of Westerners who have been so thoroughly indoctrinated in the basics of Cultural Marxism through the education system, that they have the same relationship to this world view as a fish within water. There are no easy answers with regard to how to begin reversing the course and, thanks to the pervasive influence of Cultural Marxism in our education system, they have largely accomplished their aims of a “long march through the institutions.” Virtually every aspect of society – except for police and their unions – has become dominated by Cultural Marxists, witting or otherwise.

        Even our churches--or, at least, a significant number of leaders and members--have unconsciously absorbed the message of Cultural Marxism concerning victim classes and racial-political guilt for "the sins of the father." As we have been warned, even the very elect shall be deceived. (Matthew 24:24). 

        One of the things that I've been trying to understand is how the Left was able to achieve a total dominance in Western Civilisation over the space of the last 100 years. Taking a big picture view, the stand out fact of 20th century has been the de-Christianisation of the European peoples replaced by a materialistic conception of themselves. The bloody struggles that have marked this period can best be considered a consequence of the struggle between Left and Right versions of materialism.  The curious factor of this state of events--unlike in previous ages-- has been the lack of participation of the Christian factor in this fight. Whereas in previous European ages, men to fought to assert or defend their their religious views  what's been interesting is Christianity's passivity during the materialistic ascendancy.
        However, as numerous Republicans in key positions also tested positive, the nature of the speculation began to change.  The issue shifted from whether or not the president wore a mask to why so many important Republicans simultaneously got the virus.  Among those testing positive were Trump's campaign manager, the chair of the Republican National Committee, the president's senior counselor, and two senators on the Judiciary Committee who will vote on the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett.
            Lockdowns are typically portrayed as prudent precautions against Covid-19, but they are surely the most risky experiment ever conducted on the public. From the start, researchers have warned that lockdowns could prove far deadlier than the coronavirus. People who lose their jobs or businesses are more prone to fatal drug overdoses and suicide, and evidence already exists that many more will die from cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, and tuberculosis and other diseases because the lockdown prevented their ailments from being diagnosed early and treated properly.

            Yet politicians and public-health officials conducting this unprecedented experiment have paid little attention to these risks. In their initial rush to lock down society, they insisted that there was no time for such analysis—and besides, these were just temporary measures to “flatten the curve” so as not to overwhelm hospitals. But since that danger passed, the lockdown enforcers have found one reason after another to persevere with closures, bans, quarantines, curfews, and other mandates. Anthony Fauci, the White House advisor, recently said that even if a vaccine arrives soon, he does not expect a return to normality before late next year.

            He and politicians like New York governor Andrew Cuomo and British prime minister Boris Johnson profess to be following “the science,” but no ethical scientist would conduct such a risky experiment without carefully considering the dangers and monitoring the results. After doing so, a group of leading researchers this week called for an end to the experiment. In a joint statement, the Great Barrington Declaration, they predicted that continued lockdowns will lead to “excess mortality in years to come” and warned of “irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed.”

            While the economic and social costs have been enormous, it’s not clear that the lockdowns have brought significant health benefits beyond what was achieved by people’s voluntary social distancing and other actions. Some researchers have credited lockdowns with slowing the pandemic, but they’ve relied on mathematical models with assumptions about people’s behavior and the virus’s tendency to spread—the kinds of models and assumptions that previously produced wild overestimates of how many people would die during the pandemic. Other researchers have sought more direct evidence, looking at mortality patterns. They have detected little impact.
            Idaho deputy state epidemiologist Dr. Kathryn Turner explains the difference in calculations.

            "Johns Hopkins uses data that's available publicly because that's the data they have," Turner said. "They take the total number of cases we have and that's their numerator, and they take the total amount of lab tests that have been done and that's their denominator and it's a pretty straight-forward calculation."

            But according to Turner, the state’s calculation is simply more precise.

            "We actually go through and really clean the data," she said. "We only include lab reports from laboratories that send us both positive results and negative results - so that the numerator and the denominator are pulling from the same basket. 

            "So if we were to include positive results from labs that don't send us all of their negative tests, it would inflate the numerator, and then of course our percent positivity would be higher," Turner added.
        These stories are ignoring the big red elephant in the room. As Stephen Green points out, the areas being targeted for strict lock downs are the areas dominated by Republican voters (including the Orthodox Jews):

        Areas of NYC that voted Republican


        Areas subject to new lockdown


        VIDEO: "Tucker Carlson - UFO Update - 10/9/20"--Fox News (5 min.)
        Interesting because they have some metal samples that they claim would be beyond our ability to manufacture. However, the question I have is: Why now? After all the years of denial, why is this suddenly coming out?

         Miscellany:

            What is the Third World? What are its features? It is not just grinding poverty. Some of the richest people in the world and their opulent palaces can be found in the Third World. But even as the Third World has gotten comparatively wealthier, it retains many features that make it unpleasant, particularly for the common man. This is why millions of people from that part of the world risk life and limb to come to the United States and Europe.

            One feature is a lack of public spiritedness. The public space and the commons are literally trashed. In the Third World, political office is a means to enrich oneself and one’s family. This is as true for presidents as it is for mayors and lower-level officials. The endemic corruption of the Third World both reflects and reinforces an extreme tribalism, which elevates the extended family above the public as a whole.

            Elections and parties reflect these ethnic divisions, and a winner-take-all spirit prevails. This is as true in India as Iran, in Mexico as in Mauritania. In parts of the United States heavily populated with immigrant groups from the Third World, the local politics reflects the same values. Old habits die hard.

            To the extent there is a private sector in the Third World, it is intertwined with and dependent on the political one. Bribes are a necessary cost of doing business. But the real money is in public corruption, whether in the form of official or unofficial monopoly, government contracts, or the like. This is increasingly true at home, where whole sectors of the economy—health care, green jobs, aerospace, and e-commerce—are dependent on a combination of regulatory assistance, government contracts, or outright subsidies.

            As the Hunter Biden episode reminds us—along with the dozens of other well-paid relatives of politicians—self-enrichment among the political class is becoming an unremarkable feature of American life. One cannot imagine today a president ending up, like Harry Truman, near-broke at the end of a presidency.

            A related feature of the Third World is failing infrastructure. While gleaming homes, sports cars, and private affluence are well-known, public investments are often shoddy, decrepit, and obsolete. You can’t drink the water. There is little incentive to fix these things, as politics chiefly consists of individually rewarding one’s close associates, rather than benefiting the public as a whole. Complex problems remain unsolved and persistent.

            Along these lines, here at home, we see increasing evidence of both organizational and technological decline. A nation that once built skyscrapers, world-class universities, beautiful highways, and railroads from coast to coast, now finds much of it is in disrepair, with repair projects often exceeding the cost of the original construction.

            This does not mean money is not spent. In 2009, Obama enacted a $1 trillion stimulus. In response to COVID-19, President Trump authorized $2 trillion in spending. But what do we have to show for either? Where is the Golden Gate Bridge or Hoover Dam? For that matter, where’s our wall?

            Yet another notable feature of the Third World is poverty, lawlessness, and disorder. The most jarring symbol of third world inequality and chaos are the shantytowns that surround their urban centers.

            Here at home, we now find armies of homeless and tent dwellers in our most prosperous cities. San Francisco and New York now have to deal with a public defecation crisis. There is little serious discussion of these problems. No one in power has the will to end them. At the same time, private security and gated communities are becoming the symbols of the age.

            A final feature of the Third World, now familiar at home, is high stakes politics. While democracy exists in some measure in many third world nations, it is what Fareed Zakaria has called “illiberal democracy.” Everything is on the table. Political opponents are often targeted for punishment if they lose power. Thus, every election becomes a referendum on the freedom and safety of large sectors of the populace, and thus they are often marred by fraud and violence.

            America’s traditions of a peaceful transfer of power and political decorum are disappearing. Open talk of “burning it down” and changing the rules to guarantee victories are now becoming common. There is no restraint, because the stakes are higher and the visions of America’s future come from entirely different traditions. The Left’s view is a foreign import with totalitarian implications; it is alien to the principles of due process and restraint embedded in America’s constitutional order.
            The second incident reportedly occurred on October 2, where human smugglers recorded themselves heavily armed and operating more than 80 miles into the U.S. near Hebbronville, Texas. The incident likely originated in Roma, Texas, due to the vicinity and level of human smuggling activity occurring in the area.

            Law enforcement are attributing this tactical shift to the change in cartel turf leadership immediately south of the border.

            Miguel Aleman, for decades, sat under the control of the Gulf Cartel (CDG). Smugglers on both sides of the Rio Grande maintained affiliations with the CDG. The emerging heavy-handed tactics are a clear sign to CBP officials that the Zetas are changing the rules. Federal officials also believe that the greater the weaponry correlates with the value the cartel places on the person being moved. It is not out of the question that the customer could have been a family member or high-ranking associate of a Zetas leader.
            Recent events in Free State Province show that South Africa is more racially divided than ever. The torture/murder of 21-year old Brendin Horner by two blacks — he apparently caught them stealing cattle — sparked a wave of white protest and indignation not seen in years.

            Whites may tweet their anger or post on Facebook but they don’t often demonstrate; they see it as a “black thing.” However, on October 6th, about 3,000 whites, mostly rural Afrikaners, gathered at the town of Senekal where the two suspects, Sekwetje Esaiah Mahlamba and Sekola Piet Matlaletsa were due to appear in court.
            My great-uncle was a true believer in the new rainbow nation. He was a member of the African National Congress (ANC), Nelson Mandela’s political party, and openly supported black economic empowerment. One night, he took my father to an ANC party rally to show him how wonderful these young black leaders were and try to make him into a liberal, assuring my father that many ANC figureheads had been to England for university and training. He was adamant that these new leaders were going to lead us into the bright new future of our country. My father humored him and went with him. The event was a disorganized mess. The head speaker was so intoxicated that he had to crawl on his hands and knees to get to the podium he was supposed to deliver his speech at. My father walked out laughing, my great-uncle trailing him, silent in shame.

            A few years later this same liberal great-uncle was at his small cottage alone when he heard knocking at the door. He opened up and was met by three young black males. They forced their way in and stabbed him in the process. As he lay bleeding out on the floor of his kitchen, the robbers ransacked his cottage and took his wallet and cellphone. He managed to call for an ambulance via landline, but not soon enough: he died of his wounds later in the hospital. It didn’t matter how many ANC party meetings he had been to, or how much he truly believed in the egalitarian spirit of this new South Africa. He was an outsider — a hated outsider, and treated as such.
        One more thought about this lengthy interview on Saudi state television — who’s the audience? It’s not the Israelis, and it’s not even really the Palestinians. The royal family is informing the Saudi populace about the long history of Palestinian deception and betrayals to prepare their subjects for something. Will the Saudis normalize relations with Israel in the next couple of weeks? If I were in Palestinian leadership, I’d be afraid … very afraid at what’s coming next.

            The Turkish government’s new ideology of conquest is now on full display. 

            Their Ministry of Communication’s latest government music video, focusing on the Turkish military, presents Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as heir to the Ottoman and Seljuk dynasties and portrays Turkish conquerors praying in the Church of Hagia Sophia, the former Byzantine basilica that recently was converted into a mosque.
            There were mass cremations of bodies; entire families died and the inhabitants of the city, afraid to pull their bodies out, simply collapsed their homes on top of them to bury them on the spot.

            The scene, beyond even the current coronavirus pandemic, was a scourge brought 500 years ago by Spanish conquistadores and their servants that exploded in Mexico City in September 1520.

            Smallpox and other newly introduced diseases went on to kill tens of millions of Indigenous people in the Americas who had no resistance to the European illnesses. The viruses later spread to South America, and helped lead to the downfall and overthrow of empires like the Aztecs and Incas. ...
            THE IDEA OF POISONING — radioactive or otherwise — is not new to Russian intelligence. According to former Russian intelligence officer Boris Volodarsky, now a historian and one-time associate of Litvinenko, the Russians have a history of substance assassination going back nearly a century. It was Lenin who ordered the establishment of their first laboratory, known simply as the ‘Special Room’, for developing new lethal toxins.

            “There is also a long succession of poisonings by Russian intelligence services in different countries, starting in the early 1920s,” he says.

            At its height, says Volodarsky, the Soviet Union had the largest biological warfare program in the world. Sources have claimed there were 40,000 individuals, including 9,000 scientists, working at 47 different facilities. More than 1,000 of these experts specialized in the development and application of deadly compounds. They used lethal gasses, skin contact poisons that were smeared on door handles and nerve toxins said to be untraceable. The idea, at all times, was to make death seem natural — or, at the very least, to confuse doctors and investigators. “It’s never designed to demonstrate anything, only to kill the victim, quietly and unobtrusively,” Volodarsky writes in The KGB’s Poison Factory. “This was an unbreakable principle.”

            Murderous poisons come in three varieties: chemical, biological, and radiological. It’s believed that the first Soviet attempt at a radiological assassination took place in 1957. The target was Nikolai Khokhlov, a defector who had left for the United States a few years earlier. He became drastically ill after drinking coffee at an anti-communist conference he was speaking at in West Germany. After his collapse, he was successfully treated at a US army hospital in Frankfurt for what was believed to be poisoning by radioactive thallium.

            In the years before Litvinenko’s murder, a series of other killings bore similar hallmarks. In 2004, Roman Tsepov, a prominent and controversial political operative from St Petersburg, died after being poisoned with an unidentified radioactive substance on a visit to Moscow. The year before, Yuri Shchekochikhin had died in similarly mysterious circumstances. An investigative journalist and member of parliament, he had exposed a series of scandals, including an FSB racket that laundered money through the Bank of New York. His death came after a brief, undiagnosed illness with familiar symptoms: hair loss, vomiting, red blotches, fatigue. He was due to fly to the United States to meet FBI agents just days later.

            The Russians may not be the only ones to have used nuclear technology for targeted execution, however. East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, are alleged to have used radioactive poisons and even deployed modified x-ray machines to irradiate and injure political prisoners. They also used radiation as a tool, surreptitiously tagging dissidents with chemicals so they could trace and track them with Geiger counters.

            And in November 2013, scientists in Switzerland announced that they had found heightened levels of polonium in the remains of the former Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Investigations began two years previously, when researchers discovered the strange news that some of the personal items that Arafat had been wearing shortly before his death appeared to be contaminated with high levels of polonium-210 and were emitting alpha radiation. It was a finding that raised difficult questions for those who may have wanted to get rid of him.

            But still, Russia’s ability to source and use radioactive poisons seems to be pre-eminent. Only about 100 grams of polonium are manufactured each year, and just three countries are known to produce it reliably: Israel, the United States, and Russia. And 97 percent of that supply is manufactured in one place — a converted nuclear weapons facility that operates under high security, on the banks of the Volga, 450 miles south east of the Kremlin.
            We stand at the crossroads.

            Over the next several years, the noble sentiments and ideas that gave birth to the United States will either be repudiated or reaffirmed. The fateful choice before us will result either in the death of a grand hope or a recommitment to an extraordinary political experiment whose full flowering we have yet to realize. The choice will involve either contempt and despair or gratitude and the self-respect worthy of a free people who know long labors lie before them and who proceed with hope toward a dignified future.

            In the name of justice and equality, those animated by contempt and despair seek to destroy longstanding but fragile American institutions through which justice and equality can be secured. Destruction of these imperfect but necessary institutions will not hasten the advent of justice and equality but rather accelerate our collapse into barbarism and degradation.

            Groups of Americans who today advocate endless racial contempt, who systematically distort our history for political gain, who scapegoat and silence whole groups of citizens, who brazenly justify and advocate violence and the destruction of property invite us not to justice and equality but to an ugly future whose only certainty is fear.

        Read the whole thing.

        Black Africans, too, were enslaved by Muslims by the untold millions; I first saw this quote at The Greatest Murder Machine in History; (link to the book added, italics in the original, bolding added):

        ... a minumum (sic) of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East.  Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions.  When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. -- John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

        at

        4 comments:

        1. John WilderOctober 11, 2020 at 10:06 PM

          As usual, amazing rundown.

          Gramsci was awful.

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          Replies
          1. DocentOctober 12, 2020 at 9:37 AM

            Thank you. And I agree--accepting Gramsci and his colleagues was holding the serpent to the breast.

            Delete
        2. KA9OFFOctober 13, 2020 at 6:51 PM

          Regarding the tree planting article...orchards in our area try to plant trees in the months with an "r" in the name

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          Replies
          1. DocentOctober 14, 2020 at 9:48 AM

            That's a good way to remember the best times to plant trees. Thanks!

            Delete