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Wednesday, March 31, 2021

The Docent's Memo (3/31/2021)

 

VIDEO: "How To Use a Walking Stick for Self-Defense"--The Modern Defender (4 min.)
A basic combination of strikes to use in self-defense.

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
    As armed citizens, we must only respond to a threat. We can’t initiate the action. We must decide what, if any, threat there is. And then we must decide how to react to it. In other words, if the crook does “X” then I will do “Y”. We call that the mental trigger.

    And that response need to not only effectively stop the situation but it must be an acceptable response under the law. If a man comes at you to beat you with his fists it might not be appropriate to shoot him.  “He scared me!" may not turn out to be a good legal defense.

    Another real-world example might be the neighborhood bully who is standing across the street, 25-30 yards away, and threatening you with a baseball bat. You honestly believe his threats are real. Should you shoot him? Should you wait to respond until he is in striking distance with the club? At what point can you lawfully respond to his attack? Knowing what your options are and knowing what is considered a lawful response helps you establish your mental trigger for dealing with the attack.

    It takes a good deal of training and a good deal of thought to establish an effective mental trigger. It is generally not a good idea to wait to establish a mental trigger in the middle of the actual chaos and stress when your judgment may not be at its best.

    In the case of the man who is advancing and won’t take his hands out of his pockets, I would be considering that I might need to rely on some less-lethal defensive tool. In the case of the man with the club, it might be a good idea to wait to deploy the defensive firearm until he has reached the point of being able to reach me with that club. And, in both cases, the defensive shooter should also have considered the use of cover or just exiting the scene. In any case, we should not hurt him because we can, but because we have to. “If he does this, then I will do that” is the mental trigger. 
  • Challenging conventional wisdom: "Don’t Just Dress Around The Gun"--Everyday Marksman. From an interview with Alex Sansone, better known as The Suited Shootist. Excerpt:
    The most important point Alex made during this episode is that the phrase “dress around the gun” is false. While wearing clothes that work well for concealed carry are important, it is too often taken to mean that we should look sloppy. 

    In the real world, looking sloppy is often an unacceptable outcome. It hurts our personal and professional opportunities, and can even draw unwanted attention from those who are trained to look for it.

    It also causes a dilemma for new gun owners. Most people getting involved in gun ownership already have 20, 30, 40, or more years of life under their belts before they made the commitment to buy the gun. That means they have decades of habits and styles that they’ve already adopted.

If we go to this group of people and tell them that they aren’t really “in it” until they change their personal style or behaviors, then we’re only working to push them away.

Concealed carry is a series of compromises, and one of the compromises may have to be the size of the firearm and/or where or how it is carried. I mentioned this a long time ago, but it bears some repeating. When I first became interested in concealed carry and started studying it, I found the majority of magazine articles on the topic to be of dubious value because those writing them typically hailed from a law enforcement background with experience in plain clothes work. They carried full-sized or compact weapons on their hips and it wasn't a big deal if they printed or someone caught a glimpse of the firearm. The best advice seemed to come from the occasional writer who worked as a bodyguard where they had to look and act discrete, or had worked undercover. 

  • While we are on the subject of concealed carry, however: "Editor’s Notebook: Access"--Tactical Wire. The author notes that "before you can deploy the firearm for defense you have to get your hands upon it." The article is not so much about how to carry your firearm, but the need to practice getting to it with minimal fuss and time. Also:
    My practice had been the smooth, swift draw ending at point or at guard. I could take the time of the nonreflective, reflexive draw to occupy my mind with assessing the situation before me on the street. That saved me from lots of potential shootings – and I imagine my clients were delighted at that too.

    Practice access - mostly - drawing without shooting.

And:

    The most time is consumed in getting the hand on the gun – moving the cover garment, defeating safety features of the holster. It’s “quick to the gun then sure to the grip.” Getting the firing grip in the holster is a deliberate move.

    Then “quick to the eyes” – bringing the gun level – and “sure to the sights/trigger” – the deliberate move.

    I recommend this system of practice as investment against the day you hope never arrives.

  • "Stand and Deliver Worked -- This Time"--Sensible Self Defense. The author begins by analyzing a gun fight from Uruguay where the officer had to draw after the armed criminals had already entered an establishment, but he had put his hand on the butt of his pistol as soon as he thought there might be trouble. Most of the time trying to outdraw an attacker with a weapon already in hand is a loosing proposition. But starting with your hand on the weapon has major speed advantages as the author explains:

    The Vickers and Lewinski research prompted me to collect data to determine how much of a time advantage you can gain through placing your hand on the pistol versus starting with your hands in some other location (e.g. hands at sides). My goal was to determine how long it took a competitor (granted, not necessarily the average private citizen licensed to carry) to draw and fire single shot from different starting positions.

    We have now timed the draws of 362 individuals over a period of several years during our local IDPA and Sensible Self Defense Short Range matches. We have measured 2458 specific instances of drawing the pistol and firing a shot from concealment, 1627 draws with the pistol not concealed, and 1349 instances when the competitor started with their hand on the holstered pistol. We only included instances where the competitor's shot stuck inside the -1 or 0 of the standard IDPA target or the Shootsteel target in the data set.

    The skill level of the competitors has varied from new shooters participating in their first practical match, Novices, Marksmen, Sharpshooters, Experts, and two Masters--unfortunately we have few Master class shooters in our local matches.

    We have discovered that for all experience levels, placing your hand on a concealed or openly carried pistol early in a dangerous situation can provide a 0.75 to 1.75 second time advantage (depending on the individual skill level) if you must draw compared to starting with the hands in some other position. This is not trivial—3/4th of a second to 1-3/4 seconds faster can be a lifetime in a deadly confrontation as we saw in the video.

  • "Stopping Power Is a Myth…Mostly" by Tim Olmstead, The Truth About Guns. Basic physics teaches us that the energy a projectile carries toward the target will also be directed backward toward the shooter, so most firearms have little or no "stopping power" in the sense that the slug will physically be blowing the target off of its feet. That is where the "mostly" comes in:
    Now, some guns with what could accurately be called stopping power — meaning enough to knock you over — were devised in the 18th century, such as the two bores and four bores. They were known to be especially unforgiving. Today, “bore” is called “gauge” which should give you an idea of the projectiles being used. At the time, they were muzzleloaders but a few cartridge models have been made over the years.

    A two bore cartridge, for those curious, is 1.326 caliber. Velocity is moderate, at less than 2,000 feet per second…but with somewhere between 10,000 ft-lbs and 17,000 ft-lbs of energy. The .50 BMG comes quite close; typical muzzle energy is between 13,000 and 14,000 ft-pounds of energy…but like a 2 bore, you’re gonna want a bipod.

    As you can imagine, shooting one would be…unpleasant. Sir Samuel White Baker, a professional hunter and explorer, used a two bore rifle nicknamed “Baby” for elephant hunts in Africa and India. He always fired it from a rest, but only managed to do so about 20 times in his whole life because it was that unpleasant.

    It spun him around whenever he shot it. When he let his gun-bearers (he was definitely a Great White Hunter) have a go, it usually put the man firing and the man standing behind the shooter for support on the flat of their backs.
  • "The .45 ACP Big Bear Medicine ?"--Straight Forward In A Crooked World. I know this July 2010 article is ancient history as far as the Internet is concerned, but the information is useful. Essentially, the author had been debating with a friend the merits of using the .45 ACP for bear defense in the woods, and relates two incidents where a .45 ACP was successfully used to defend against grizzly bear attacks. Not too surprising since Dean Weingarten's research on the topic revealed "four cases where .45 caliber pistols were used to defend against [brown] bears. All were successful."
    • Related: "10mm Vs .45 ACP – Cartridge Comparison"--Sniper Country. A look at ballistics, energy, momentum, recoil, and other factors between the two cartridges. If you've a pistol that can shoot .45 +P rounds, there is little or no practical difference. Even using standard pressure .45 loads, the difference is less than you might think.
  • "Hindsight Is 30/06: A Critique Of The M1 Garand"--The Firearm Blog. Nathaniel F. tries to objectively review the best and worst features of the M1 Garand by looking at it from the perspective of what was known or capable at the time the firearm was invented. For instance, at that time, it would have been cost prohibitive to issue detachable magazines to individual soldiers, so the en bloc clip system was the next best alternative. Another item of interest (illustration omitted):

    “Anti Pre-Engagement” is not a term readers are likely to have heard, but it’s an important one for the design of repeating arms. For an autoloading weapon with a locking bolt mechanism that is actuated by the compression of the bolt and carrier (as in most designs), it is important that the locking mechanism not be able to lock too early. In many designs, this is done by simply not giving the mechanism room until it is in the right position for locking.

    For example, in an AR-15, the bolt is prevented in its rotation by the inside of the receiver, which bears against the cam pin. Once the bolt has reached the end of its travel, a special cutout in the side of the receiver, visible from the outside as a small “hump” on the side of the receiver, allows the cam pin to rotate and the bolt to engage. While this system works very well, it means that the bolt is trying to engage throughout its travel forward as the force of the ammunition and friction of the magazine tries to force it rearward. This induces friction between the moving parts and the receiver, which must be overcome for reliable functioning.

    There is a more elegant way to overcome this, which has been described as an “anti pre-engagement mechanism”. The Garand features this. Essentially, instead of the locking element trying to actuate throughout its travel in the receiver, the Garand features a shelf in the operating rod:

    [photograph] 

    Another flat surface on the bolt lug rests against this shelf during cycling, preventing the bolt from trying to make a turning move, and reducing friction during operation. Just before locking, a bump in the receiver knocks the bolt out of alignment with this shelf, allowing it to complete its rotation.

    Interestingly, while the post-war M14 rifle disposed of the anti pre-engagment mechanism in favor of a roller, the Russian Kalashnikov rifle – also derived from the Garand – has retained it through the latest AK-100 series variants. No doubt that rifle’s tremendous reputation for reliability owes something to this feature.

  • "The Post says: Get weapons of war off America’s streets" by the New York Post Editorial Board. The Board should fire whomever did the fact checking for them. Some of the lies/mistakes includes: "Curbing guns is what led to New York City’s three-decade reduction in murders." No, it was a higher number of stops, arrests, and incarcerations of blacks. "Polls show most Americans want this." No, the most recent polls show that the majority of Americans oppose additional gun control or think it unnecessary. "[T]he Boulder gun was an AR-15-style weapon with a pistol stock and a shorter barrel — less accurate, but easier to conceal — and nothing that any civilian needs to own." Who are you to determine what is the best weapon for a person to own? "The Supreme Court has ruled the Constitution protects guns 'in common use,' not weapons of war. Our forefathers did not want every American to be capable of mass slaughter." Our forefathers were quite aware of weapons capable of firing a large number of projectiles, explosive shells, booby trap bombs, early blackpowder repeating rifles, and various weapons capable of firing multiple barrels (e.g., organ guns) but still gave us the Second Amendment as a bulwark against an oppressive government without exceptions for particular types of weapons or quantities of explosives.
    And for the Fudd types that think they won't come after your hunting rifle, you might consider this line from the editorial (underline added): "Start by writing an assault-weapon ban that focuses on firepower — rate of fire, muzzle velocity, and so on."
  • "Worth Remembering..." by Massad Ayoob, Backwoods Home. Ayood notes that the favorite phrase of gun controllers is something along the line of "if it saves one life...." But he notes that the statistics show that firearms are used in self-defense between half a million and three million times per year citing Forbes, and the CDC.
  • "Straight Cheatin'"--Blue Collar Prepping. An explanation of a cheater bar and how it gives you greater torque. 
  • "Gear Review: NAR Tactical Operator Response Kit (TORK) First Aid Kit" by Jon Wayne Taylor, The Truth About Guns. The author explains that in addition to a nice medical pouch you get:
2 Large pairs of quality Bear Claw Nitrile Glove
1 Nasopharyngeal Airway 28F with Lubricant
2 HyFin Vent Chest Seals
1 Black C-A-T (Combat Application Tourniquet)
2  S-Rolled Gauze (4.5 in. x 4.1 yd)
1 6 in. Emergency Trauma Dressing
1 set of Trauma Shears (7.25 in.)

That’s not what came in mine. Mine didn’t have 2 packs of S-Rolled Gauze, but instead one pack and a roll of Quick Clot Combat Gauze. It also included an eye shield and a 14g needle for an emergency needle chest decompression.

For $89 dollars, that is a pretty good deal, especially if it comes with the Quick Clot.   

  • "What Books Would You Choose to Restart Civilization?"--Medium. Back in the 1980s when preppers were concerned about preparing for surviving a nuclear war, there was interest in what books and resources to set aside to educate children and have as important references. In the novel Lucifer's Hammer, one of the characters was admitted to the survival community that is the focus of the story based on his having carefully stored a library necessary to rebuild a technological civilization. In any event, the article begins:
    “What books would you want to restart civilization from scratch?”
 
    The Long Now Foundation has been involved in and inspired by projects centered on that question since launching in 01996. (See, for example, The Rosetta Project, Westinghouse Time Capsules, The Human Document Project, The Survivor Library, The Toaster Project, The Crypt of Civilization, and the Voyager Record.) For years, Long Now Executive Director Alexander Rose has been in discussions on how to create a record of humanity and technology for our descendants. In 02014, Long Now began building it.
 
    The Manual For Civilization is working toward a living, crowd-curated library of 3,500 books put forward by the Long Now community and on display at The Interval, Long Now’s cafe-bar-salon in San Francisco. To stack the shelves, we solicited book recommendations from Long Now members and supporters, special guest curators like Long Now founders Stewart Brand and Brian Eno, past Seminar speakers like Tim O’Reilly, George Dysonand Neal Stephenson, subject experts Maria Popova and Violet Blue, and volunteer curators like Alan Beatts, Michael Pujals, and Heath Rezabek.

The article goes on to discuss both other attempts to curate and collect civilizational knowledge and some of the considerations used in this attempt (which, unfortunately, is already tainted by "wokeness"). The Long Now Foundation's website explains its purpose in more detail and includes proposed lists of books and resources from some of its members/contributors. From the website: "We have named this collection the Manual for Civilization, and it will include the roughly 3500 books most essential to sustain or rebuild civilization."  

    Some of the past efforts to preserve materials concerning our civilization include The Crypt of Civilization--"an impenetrable airtight chamber, built between 1937 and 1940, at the Oglethorpe University in Brookhaven, Georgia. The 2,000-cubic-foot (57 m3) repository is meant not to be opened before 8113 A.D. and contains numerous artifacts and sound recordings that illustrate civilization and human development to the 20th century. Classic literature and religious texts were also deposited, as well as items showing the extent of scientific progress to 1939."

The Crypt of Civilization was constructed in the swimming pool in the basement of the Phoebe Hearst Hall at Oglethorpe University. The swimming pool was modified into an airtight chamber, measuring 20 ft (6.1 m) long, 10 ft (3.0 m) high and 10 ft (3.0 m) wide, which was remodeled between 1937 and 1940. It sits on a bedrock floor and has a stone roof 7 ft (2.1 m) thick. The walls are lined with plates of enamel, secured in place with pitch. The stainless steel doorway was welded permanently closed after the oxygen had been removed and replaced with inert nitrogen. Peters supervised construction and served as the Crypt's archivist who would represent the current civilization. The project was financed by industrialists and philanthropists. The crypt was deeded to the United States government, its heirs and assigns, to be held in trust for the people of the 82nd century. 

(Footnotes omitted). Another notable repository are the Westinghouse Time Capsules:  "two time capsules prepared by the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (later Westinghouse Electric Corporation). One was made in 1939 and the other in 1965. They are filled with contemporary articles used in the twentieth century way of life in the United States. The items are intended for people of the 7th millennium (~ year 6900) to receive for historical significance." "The latitude and longitude coordinates of its burying place, as determined by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey, [is] 40°44′34.09″N 73°50′43.84″W within 1 inch (2.5 cm)."

    So what does the agency do to protect its assets in the field? A lot of it, Mendez says, involves hiding a person's tell-tale features. If they have straight hair, make it curly. If they're young, give them a few streaks of gray. It also helps to change the way they walk or talk by putting a brace on their leg or an "artificial palate" in their mouth. Americans have a certain way of standing—weight on one foot or the other—and if they're trying to pass themselves off as European, it helps if they stand squarely on both feet. Good disguises, Mendez says, are almost always "additive;" you can make someone taller, heavier, or older, but "we can't go the other direction."

    The CIA can also give a person the ability to do a "quick change." If someone knows they'll be trying to shake a tail, they can change their look as they move through busy sidewalks. Add a hat, change a shirt, add sunglasses, and—if it's done right—it'll look like someone has disappeared.

    The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Capitol riots shows exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.

    Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents are compiling a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    The amount of digital information is staggering: 15,000 hours of surveillance and body-worn camera footage; 1,600 electronic devices; 270,000 digital media tips; at least 140,000 photos and videos; and about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones.

    And that’s just what we know.

    More than 300 individuals from 40 states have already been charged and another 280 arrested in connection with the events of January 6. As many as 500 others are still being hunted by government agents.

    Also included in this data roundup are individuals who may have had nothing to do with the riots but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    Forget about being innocent until proven guilty.

    In a suspect society such as ours, the burden of proof has been flipped: now, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence.

    For instance, you didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol riots to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators have reportedly been tracking—and questioning—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol. One man, who had gone out for a walk with his daughters only to end up stranded near the Capitol crowds, actually had FBI agents show up at his door days later. Using Google Maps, agents were able to pinpoint exactly where they were standing and for how long.

    All of the many creepy, calculating, invasive investigative and surveillance tools the government has acquired over the years are on full display right now in the FBI’s ongoing efforts to bring the rioters to “justice.”

    FBI agents are matching photos with drivers’ license pictures; tracking movements by way of license plate toll readers; and zooming in on physical identifying marks such as moles, scars and tattoos, as well as brands, logos and symbols on clothing and backpacks. They’re poring over hours of security and body camera footage; scouring social media posts; triangulating data from cellphone towers and WiFi signals; layering facial recognition software on top of that; and then cross-referencing footage with public social media posts.

    It’s not just the FBI on the hunt, however.

    They’ve enlisted the help of volunteer posses of private citizens, such as Deep State Dogs, to collaborate on the grunt work. As Dinah Voyles Pulver reports, once Deep State Dogs locates a person and confirms their identity, they put a package together with the person’s name, address, phone number and several images and send it to the FBI.

    According to USA Today, the FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

    This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

    The lesson to be learned: Big Brother, Big Sister and all of their friends are watching you.

    They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

    Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

VIDEO: "Geopolitics of Mexico"--Caspian Report (18 min.)

The Fall of the West

    The latest Gallup survey on church membership — a data point the polling firm first asked about in 1937 — said just 47% of Americans belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque.

    The historic decline comes as fewer and fewer Americans are attending church, and more, especially younger adults, are claiming to have no affiliation with any religion.

    Every group Gallup broke out suffered declines in church membership.

    The group with the highest church membership was Republicans, at 65%. Just 46% of Democrats are church members. The group with the lowest percentage of membership was liberals at 35%.

The Gallop poll report can be found here. The percentage of Americans that were members of a church hovered around 70 to 75% for most of the 20th Century, but then started to decline about 1998 and fallen the most sharply in the past 10 to 15 years. Interestingly, the fall off has been less among the Boomers than the generation preceding them and the generations following them. The decline is also steeper among Catholics than main-line Protestants. The LDS Church still sees good growth (above 2%) in the United States, Uruguay, Chile, Cape Verde, and throughout Oceania including an amazing 62.55% growth in Tonga.

    There is a wide spread antagonism towards nationalism in the modern Western world today. We see this especially present in the mainstream media. Often those who describe themselves as nationalists are spoken about as though they are racists or at the very least xenophobic. To be fair some who call themselves nationalists are also racists and xenophobic, but nationalism and racism are not synonyms. Even in the Church, whether Protestant or non-Protestant, nationalism is often spoken about in suspicious tones. The accepted biblical stance is that nationalistic pride is antithetical to the Christian faith, and therefore many pastors and theologians will steer their people away from thinking in nationalistic terms. But nationalism isn’t antithetical to Christian faith, and it definitely is not in opposition to Biblical teaching.

    Biblically, nationalism is something that God gave the world as a gift to protect it from globalism, which is really just imperialism dressed up in modern clothing. Those who know their Bible well will know I am referring to the Tower of Babel. In this biblical account God is concerned about the evil that humanity can fulfil while they are unified as one people. “And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have one language, and this is on the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them. Come let us go down and confuse their language, so that they might not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). In his mercy God dispersed the people into nations, different groups of people, to limit their ability to commit evil.

    “American Jewry has one major problem: they consider themselves more American than they do Jews,” Pollard told the Israel Hayom daily.

    Asked how he felt about being accused by US Jews of having dual loyalties, Pollard did not take issue with the title. “If you don’t like the accusation of double loyalty, then go the F*** home,” he said bluntly.

    “It’s as simple as that. If you live in a country where you are constantly under that charge, then you don’t belong there. You go home. You come home. If you[‘re] outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable. The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty,” he added.

    An he suggested that if asked for advice, he would counsel a young US Jew working in the American security apparatus to spy for Israel.

    “I’d tell him, not doing anything is unacceptable. So simply going home [to Israel] is not acceptable. Making aliyah is not acceptable,” Pollard said. “You have to make a decision whether your concern for Israel and loyalty to Israel and loyalty to your fellow Jews is more important than your life.

    “If you do nothing, and you turn your back, or simply make aliyah, and go on with your life, you’ll be no better than those Jews who before and after the destruction of the Temple said, ‘It’s not my responsibility.'”

Christ taught that we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and render unto God what is God's. Here, we see a Jewish hero preaching that we must not render to Caesar what is Caesar's--in this case loyalty and national fealty--but to put the tribe above all.

    The new California ethnic studies program that is expected to be imposed on all the state’s classrooms is in fact based entirely on critical race theory (CRT) that makes whites the devil and all other minorities its victims, except Jews, who are targeted for special condemnation using language reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

    Because of outrage over the bigoted nature of the earlier versions, two revisions have been offered, both of which really changed nothing of substance. The last version however added the following:

    Two lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma, teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

    The Jewish Journal points out that Jews are the only group in the curriculum for whom the term “privilege” is used. And this privilege is not earned by way of talent, or educational and professional attainment, but rather trickery. The ESMC, echoing Nazi propaganda about Jews as impostors and appropriators hiding in plain sight, points out that American Jews often change their names (“this practice of name-changing continues to the present day”) to change their rank in the social hierarchy.

    The historical reality of repeated genocidal attacks on Jews because of their perceived or imagined privilege is not offered as counterpoint, because ethnic studies teachers assume the Holocaust is taught in world history class. But next year in San Mateo County, world history will be replaced by ethnic studies.[emphasis in original]

There is a lot more in the article at the link. Overall it outlines the racist, white- and Jew-hating nature of critical race theory, about to be imposed on all students in California’s public school system, even as that system removes any teaching about world history and the Nazi genocide of millions of Jews.

I guess I should embrace the word "and". Why do I think this way? Because critical race theory (CRT) was derived from the Frankfort School, a group of Jewish-Marxist scholars that fled to the United States to escape Nazi Germany only to turn around and traitorously devise a method of advancing Marxism through the West by the long march through the institutions while advocating critical theory--their new theory of Marxism. As I've written before, I'm reading the book Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, and what is clear from the book is that the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)--a Marxist student group--and its offspring, the Weather Underground, were formed around cores of radical Jewish students, mostly from wealthy families. In other words, CRT and the radical left (including BLM and Antifa) are the brainchildren of Jewish intellectuals and elite. As we are constantly reminded, the Left eventually eats its own, and that appears to be the case here.

But to my original point, make no mistake: This is not a new trend. It’s a continuation of yet another long leftist march through institutions, the institution, in this case, being the nuclear family with its subset of stable sexual mores. And the push for homosexuality is done in service to allying young people with leftism. Now that Milo has gone back to heterosexuality, he is, therefore, more dangerous than he ever was before.

    • Related: "Why don't we oppose perversion anymore?" by Don Surber. Surber begins by observing that "The arrest of Brett Blomme, a Democrat Milwaukee County children’s court judge, on child pornography charges has the people who put on the Drag Queen Story Hour program in Milwaukee scrambling to distance themselves from him." He then quickly moves into why Blomme posed a danger:
    None dare declare perversion to be perversion anymore. We have feminists castrating their sons in the name of transgendering. Apparently you can be born homosexuals but you are not born male or female anymore. The latter is a choice. DNA and biology be damned.

    Blomme's election put children at risk.

    A reader wrote, "I’m friends with Paul Dedinsky, the Scott Walker appointed judge that lost to Brett Bloome; the disgraced liberal who recently has been arrested by police for child pornography.

    "Learning that someone was actively uploading images of children who have been sexually abused and compromised on a computer owned by the people of this state... hard to come up with words to describe it, especially for a place where little children must come and provide testimony to describe the myriad ways by which they were sexually assaulted and harmed.

    "Pray for the two children this man adopted from the child welfare system."

    That last point is a reminder that we were told that gay adoption was perfectly safe. Yes, he has a husband. It is the 21st century.


VIDEO: "Personal Care In Ancient Rome (Hair Styles, Removal, Toilet Routine, Make-up, Face Mask, Teeth Care)"--SandRhoman History (8 min.). It is interesting that attitudes toward makeup and removing body hair is so similar to today. I have a hard time believing that Roman women would have employed both "waxing" and plucking, however, but not considered or used shaving.

Miscellany:

    So now it turns out that the FBI knew all about the accused Boulder shooter, but paid no attention to the obvious warning signs until police say the rabidly anti-American immigrant from Syria murdered 10 U.S. citizens in the supermarket.

    “The suspect’s identity,” the New York Times reported, “was known to the FBI because he was linked to another individual under investigation by the bureau, according to law enforcement officials.”

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

    The Famous But Incompetent FBI likewise knew all about accused shooter Ahmad al-Aliwi Alissa’s fellow Muslim immigrants who committed mass murder, like the Tsarnaev brothers — but did nothing until those welfare-collecting “asylees” blew up the Boston Marathon.

    The FBI also had early warnings about the Muslim terrorists who shot up the gay nightclub in Orlando, the Christmas party in San Bernardino, Fort Hood, the cartoon-drawing contest in Texas … and yet the G-men sat on their soft hands until scores of Americans were murdered in cold blood.

    But it’s not only foreign Muslim terrorists the FBI can’t be bothered lugging. It’s domestic killers as well.

    For instance, in 2018 the FBI’s national tip line got a 13-minute-long earful from the aunt of the Parkland High shooter Nikolas Cruz — but did nothing until 17 people were gunned down.

    Remember serial killer Gary Sampson? Before he murdered three innocent men in 2001, he called the FBI office in Boston from a pay phone in Abington and offered to turn himself in on some unsolved bank robberies.

    But it was a Friday afternoon, so the FBI “disconnected” his call and didn’t bother to pick him up. The next day, Sampson started his two-state carjacking murder spree.

He continues:

    But there have been some cases that the FBI has been on top of:

    Lady Gaga’s stolen French bulldogs.

    Tom Brady’s purloined football jerseys.

    The “noose” on NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace’s garage, which turned out to be a door pull rope. (Fifteen agents were assigned to that “hate crime.”)

    Taking a knee en masse for George Floyd.

    Using bogus Hillary Clinton-paid-for documents to create what top FBI agents described as “an insurance policy” to frame the Republican president of the United States for crimes he did not commit.

    Leaking fake news to the media in an attempt to frame Atlanta security guard Richard Jewell for a crime he did not commit.

    Railroading four Boston men onto Death Row for a 1965 murder they did not commit, allowing them to rot in prison for 35 years while corrupt FBI agents protected the real murderers from justice.

And: 

    This same never-mind phenomenon is now going on with the Jan. 6 “insurrectionists.” The feds — the Department of Justice and the banana-republic FBI — are quietly dropping many of the most outrageous (that is, false) charges.

    One of the Proud Boys was described in a March 1 court filing as leading the rioters “through the use of encrypted communications” – text messages, apparently.

    A day or two later the feds admitted the guy’s cell phone battery had died before the riot even began, meaning there was, as the judge put it, “a dearth of evidence” against him.

    Another perp was described as a “leader” of the Oath Keepers.

    In court a federal prosecutor read a message allegedly from the guy’s minions saying that members of Congress were in tunnels and that the Oath Keepers should “turn on the gas.”

    In other words, kill them.

    Turns out, the guy and his friends were nowhere near the Capitol that day. They aren’t even members of the Oath Keepers. And the guy who’s been charged as a terrorist never even responded to the ridiculous messages.

    Then there was that crazy “QAnon shaman” wearing the horns on TV. The feds made a huge media splash claiming they had “strong evidence” from his “words and actions” that the crowd was planning to “assassinate elected officials.”

    The next day the feds were forced to admit no such evidence existed.

    So these are the hobgoblins the FBI has been chasing while this latest alleged Muslim terrorist was planning what police say was his massacre of Americans.

    But like their Democrat masters, the G-men care less about Al Qaeda than they do about QAnon.

    This is not an anomaly in the FBI’s history. It in fact appears to be a pattern of negligence. During the Barack Obama presidency, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., grilled FBI Director James Comey about the “known wolf” problem — of 14 Islamist attacks in the U.S. during Obama’s tenure, the FBI had been aware of at least 12 before the violence erupted, and did nothing.

    For example, the 2009 Fort Hood shooter, who killed 13; the Boston Marathon bombers of 2013 who killed three and injured 264; and the Pulse nightclub shooter who killed 49 people and wounded 53 more. All were known to the FBI and several had been interviewed by the FBI before they went on killing sprees.

    The FBI had also been warned numerous times about the Parkland, Florida school shooter, before he killed 17 and injured 17 more in 2018. It also knew beforehand about the 2018 Nashville, Tennessee Waffle House shooter, who killed four and injured two more, and the 2020 Nashville RV bomber.

    While the FBI has been failing to stop terrorist attacks by known threats like these, it has conducted numerous political operations on behalf of Democrats. The ones we know about include Crossfire Hurricane‘s use of federal spy power to affect election outcomes and prevent effective governance by elected Republicans. That operation included spying on Fox News.

She goes on to describe some of the more farcical investigations that the FBI has involved itself over the past few years, including the current nation-wide manhunt to track down anyone that was near the Capital on January 6. Her recommendation is to shut down the FBI and start over from scratch.

    So what difference does it make at this point? Because it’s about the unethical dynamics of a leak-happy FBI choosing to spill information not in the public interest (I’m all for genuine whistleblowers) but instead leaking in the interest of their own political agenda. I’m not particularly offended by reporters “cozying up” to sources: it’s what they do. Where it goes wrong is when those reporters help propel a narrative based on false statements provided by the self-interested leakers.

    So at this point it matters because the word “disinformation” is a tool used to suppress civil liberties. IMHO, they violated Carter Page‘s rights, and probably Roger Stone’s and others as well. Even the far-left Brennan Center for Justice has issued papers about how problematic the use (or abuse) of the FISA Court can be. The result?

“Under today’s foreign intelligence surveillance system, the government’s ability to collect information about ordinary Americans’ lives has increased exponentially while judicial oversight has been reduced to near-nothingness. Nothing less than a fundamental overhaul of the type proposed here is needed to restore the system to its constitutional moorings.”

    So, at this point, what difference does it make? The difference is you’re next.
  • Other things the FBI was more concerned about: "Emails: FBI was looking for gold at Pennsylvania dig site"--Associated Press. Sounds like the FBI made off with 6 to 7 tons of gold that belonged to the Defense Department and/or Treasury, less finders fees for the people that originally found it. Of course, the FBI says that it found nothing notwithstanding both metal detectors and gravimeter indications that a large deposit of metal was there.
    FBI agents were looking for an extremely valuable cache of fabled Civil War-era gold — possibly tons of it — when they excavated a remote woodland site in Pennsylvania three years ago this month, according to government emails and other recently released documents in the case.

    On March 13, 2018, treasure hunters led the FBI to Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend has it an 1863 shipment of Union gold was either lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

    The FBI has long refused to confirm why exactly it went digging, saying only in written statements over the years that agents were there for a court-authorized excavation of “what evidence suggested may have been a cultural heritage site.”

    In any event, the FBI says, the dig came up empty.

    But the father-son duo who brought a small army of federal agents to the site remain convinced the FBI uncovered something there — and their lawyer, Bill Cluck, is still pressing the case, successfully suing for access to government emails about the dig.

    Those documents, which Cluck provided to The Associated Press, show that federal law enforcement was indeed after buried treasure.

    “We believe the cache itself is in the neighborhood of 3x5x8 (feet) to 5x5x8,” wrote K.T. Newton, an assistant U.S attorney in Philadelphia, in a 2018 email marked “Confidential.”
    • Related: "Mohammed Anwar’s Mystery Murderers"--The American Conservative. If you don't already know, Anwar was a Pakistani immigrant and Uber Eats driver who was killed a Washington D.C. carjacking by two girls aged 13 and 15 years. They tased him, then drove off in the car with him hanging to the outside before scraping him off against some traffic barriers. They flipped the car on its side about a block away. As they were helped from the car by bystanders, one of the girls started crying because her cell phone was still in the car. A real humanitarian there. Although media has ignored the race of the suspects, the videos from the scene show that both are black. The author writes: "Black teenagers allegedly kill South Asian man in carjacking. It would seem that if we were concerned about crimes against Asians, this would be a story. But as of this writing, there is nothing about it in The New York Times." Or any other major news outlet.
  • "Are tattoos linked with individuals' health and risky behaviors?"--Eureka Alert. This 2019 article reports that "[i]n a survey-based study published in the International Journal of Dermatology, having tattoos was not significantly related to overall health status, but individuals with tattoos were more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health issue and to report sleep problems" as well as being "more likely to be smokers, to have spent time in jail, and to have a higher number of sex partners in the past year." This was apparently for adults. A 2002 article in the journal Pediatrics, "Tattooing and high-risk behavior in adolescents", which found that "[t]attooing was significantly associated with older age, living in a single-parent household, and lower socioeconomic status but was not significantly associated with gender, ethnicity, or neighborhood type. Tattooing was strongly associated with peer substance use. Adjusting for sociodemographic factors and peer substance use, tattooing in adolescents was independently and significantly associated with reported sexual intercourse, substance use, violent behaviors, and school problems."
  • They really do hate you: "Oral Roberts University isn't the feel good March Madness story we need" by Hemal Jhaveri, USA Today. Ms. Jhaveri is upset about Oral Roberts University's LGBTQ+ policy, particularly the fact that "[t]wice in their student handbook, Oral Roberts specifically prohibits homosexuality." These prohibitions are part of a code of conduct that prohibits theft, lying, gossip, sexual immorality, use of profanity, being vulgar, drunkenness, etc. According to Ms. Jhaveri, these "standards are wildly out of line with modern society and the basic values of human decency." She continues:
That Oral Roberts wants to keep its students tied to toxic notions of fundamentalism that fetishize chastity, abstinence and absurd hemlines is a larger cultural issue that can be debated. What is not up for debate however is their anti-LGBTQ+ stance, which is nothing short of discriminatory and should expressly be condemned by the NCAA.

And, she contends, "whatever the Oral Roberts men’s basketball team manages to do on the court can’t obscure the dangerous and hateful ideology of its core institution." People like Ms. Jhaveri are why, IMHO, civil war is inevitable. Ironically, Ms. Jhaveri was fired from her "race and inclusion" editor and columnist position with USA Today because, in response to the news of the shooting in Boulder, CO, she stated that mass shooters are always angry white men. But, without any sign that she recognized the irony, "Jhaveri accused USA Today of 'trumpeting its commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion' but then contradicting its commitment with its actions." 

    In this vein, it is fascinating that the sacrifices outlined in the Torah portion of this week, Vayikra, range from Shelamim (“Peace Offerings” like from the word Shalom) to Olah (those offerings that are “raised up” and are wholly consumed by fire). In other words, when people reach out to us in friendship and brotherhood, we are ever-ready to develop a far-reaching relationship in full alliance, brotherhood, and peace (Shelamim) between us. However, when the opposite is true, and nations or terrorists seek to destroy us, then our response must be to rise up (Olah) and destroy them first like a fire consumes the sacrifice.

    He concludes:

    Sacrifices teach us that while peace is always the desired state and fiery war a last resort in our self-defense and preservation, we know that after thousands of years of anti-Semitism, persecution, and Holocaust, we are no longer the sacrificial lamb on anyone’s Temple altar. In so far as Jewish lives now-a-days are intertwined and dependent on the State of Israel, and they are providing not only a homeland for the Jewish people, but also a refuge for them, an attack on the one is an attack on the other. We will not be the sacrifice again; we are done.

  • "Vampires, ghosts and demons: the nightmare of sleep paralysis"--The Guardian. From the article:
    It’s known as “Ghost Depression” in China, “Kanashibari” in Japan, meaning to be bound or fastened by metal strips, and “Karabasan” or ‘The Dark Presser’ in Turkey. The latter sounds oddly like a 1980s metal band, but these three terms all refer to the same thing – the often terrifying and little understood ordeal of sleep paralysis, which is believed to have left various imprints on our culture throughout the millennia, from tales of ghosts in the night to visits from aliens.

    Over the past few months, sleep paralysis has made its way to the big screen for the first time in the shape of new docu-drama The Nightmare. With the help of a variety of special effects, director Rodney Ascher brings to life the often terrifying bedtime experiences suffered by individuals around the world. And they’re more common than you might think. Studies suggest that around 8% of the general population, 28% of students and 32% of psychiatric patients have experienced sleep paralysis at least once.

    “It’s happened to me quite a few times,” says Santi, a 25-year-old civil engineer. “It feels like you’re awake but at the same time you know you’re asleep. Some things seem a bit weird and you can’t move. Some people say that it feels like somebody’s pinning you down. I had one experience when I could see the landing of the stairs from my bed and I had this feeling there was a big, black dog there. And because you’re paralysed you often feel quite paranoid. Another time, I remember feeling convinced that someone was coming to get me and I needed to wake up as soon as possible. But I couldn’t.”

    “I had one patient who was lying in bed and woke up to see a little vampire girl with blood coming out of her mouth,” says Brian Sharpless, a clinical psychologist at Washington State University and author of the book, Sleep Paralysis: Historical, Psychological, and Medical Perspectives. “This is an example of a really vivid, multi-sensory hallucination. She could feel this vampire figure grabbing onto her arms, pulling her, and saying she was going to drag her to hell and do all these terrible things to her.”

The article goes on to explain what is probably happening and why some people suffer from these events. I've experienced sleep paralysis and it is not pleasant. 

    For the study, researchers analyzed gene expression using fresh brain tissue collected during routine surgery and found that, in some cells, gene expression increased after death.

    The investigators observed that inflammatory glial cells grew and sprouted long arm-like appendages for many hours after death.

    "Most studies assume that everything in the brain stops when the heart stops beating, but this is not so," said corresponding author Dr. Jeffrey Loeb. He is head of neurology and rehabilitation at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine.

    Gene expression is the process by which the instructions in DNA are converted into instructions for making proteins or other molecules, according to Yourgenome.org.

    "That glial cells enlarge after death isn't too surprising given that they are inflammatory and their job is to clean things up after brain injuries like oxygen deprivation or stroke," Loeb said in a university news release.

    The implications are significant, he added.

    Most research that uses human brain tissues after death to find treatments and potential cures for disorders -- such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease -- do not account for continued gene expression or cell activity.

    "Our findings will be needed to interpret research on human brain tissues," Loeb said. "We just haven't quantified these changes until now."

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Weekend Reading

 First up, although I'm several days late on this, Jon Low posted a new Defensive Pistolcraft newsletter on 12/15/2024 . He includes thi...