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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

The Docent's Memo (March 17, 2021)

VIDEO: "Why the Weird Advanced Combat Rifle Failed to replace M16"--Task & Purpose (6 min.)
When the M16 was adopted, it was considered a stop-gap rifle until the Special Purpose Individual Weapon (SPIW) shooting super-high velocity flechette rounds could be developed. (The SPIW concept began to be looked at in 1951, which begs the question of why the military even bothered with the M14 if they expected it to be replaced in the early to mid-60's anyway). Of course, that didn't happen. The military has made several other attempts to replace the M16 which have generally failed because of technology issues or that a replacement offered too little advantage over the M16 for the cost. The video above describes the ACR program from the 1980s which also failed to replace the M16. 

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:

  • "Don’t Go Into the Swamp: Crocodiles and the Japanese Type 99 Rifle" by Will Dabbs, Guns America. In January 1945, British and Indian troops staged a landing on Ramree Island, a 520-square mile landmass off the coast of Rakhine State in what is today known as Myanmar, captured by the Japanese in 1942. The Japanese had adopted a defense tactic of withdrawing from the coastlines and defending from prepared defenses further inland. In this case, one of the Japanese garrisons on the island "intending to join a second, larger element on the opposite side of the island. To do so, however, these battle-weary Japanese troops had to traverse 16 kilometers’ worth of fetid mangrove swamp." Surrounded on all other sides by the British and Indian troops, the Japanese decided to retreat through the swamp rather than surrender. The article relates:

“That night [of 19 February 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M. L. [motor launch] crews ever experienced. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left….Of about one thousand Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about twenty were found alive.”

  • The Revolver Guy article I linked to last week discussing firearms in Brazil mentioned that police there, who don't have access to the high quality duty ammunition that we have in the U.S., were trending to the .40 S&W, and that made me think of the .40 vs. 9 mm debate. Thus, some articles on the subject:
    • "Is the 40 S&W Dead?"--Omaha Outdoors.  A good overview of the how and why the .40 S&W was developed and came to be a popular police cartridge in the 1990's and 2000's. But now? The author relates that "Memes about 'knockdown power' aside, there are precious few reasons to pick a 40 caliber handgun over one in 9mm, despite the maturity of the cartridge and the many platforms in which it's available. If you can shoot a 40 well, chances are you can shoot a 9mm better." But he doesn't think the cartridge is doomed to extinction, although his first reasons seems to support that: that is, his first reason the cartridge is not dead is because through two ammo runs (this article is from 2018), even when the .45 ACP and 9mm was gone, there was still .40 on the shelf. But this points to a lack of popularity. The second reason is that, if by some reason we once again are limited to 10-rounds of ammunition per magazine, people will gravitate back to the .40.
    • "Faulty, Fabulous, or Fad? An M.D. Argues the 40 S&W" by Will Dabbs, Guns America. He begins his article:
    Our patient was a heavily muscled young gladiator of the sort who frequents an urban emergency department. Stabbings and gunshot wounds are lamentable side effects of his day job. When he hobbled into the ER he had a bandana pressed against the lower right side of his abdomen yet seemed pleasant enough.

    I forget the sordid details. Turf, drugs, or women accounted for the lion’s share of the chaos, so the impetus this evening was likely some toxic combination. Once we got him into the CT scanner we could see the 9mm round flattened against the back of his pelvis. The bullet had undoubtedly played holy havoc with the intervening entrails so the surgical residents got a laparotomy out of it, but I will never forget how calm he seemed. The round could have ricocheted or passed through some intervening barrier material to bleed a little horsepower, but its terminal effectiveness in this particular instance was decidedly underwhelming.
    • "9mm vs .40 S&W: Is Bigger Always Better?"--Pew Pew Tactical. The author goes into the history of the .40 and discusses some of the pros and cons of the 9mm and .40, looks at some ballistic gel tests with quality defensive ammo, and concludes: "Overall, the truth is that the .40 S&W was a great cartridge during its time – even with the recoil. But thanks to improvements in ballistics technology, the 9mm can now perform the same way as the .40 S&W has for nearly three decades."
    • "In Praise of the .40 Smith & Wesson Cartridge" by David Tong, Chuck Hawks. Although Tong agrees that the .40 has some kick--enough that it probably is not the best choice for a small, lightweight pistol--it is worth going up to a larger alloy or steel framed pistol to enjoy the greater power offered by the round. In a subsequent 2017 article for Ammo Land, Tong writes:
    What continues to draw me to the .40 S&W is the variety of bullet weights and velocities that you can fire in it. The 135gr at 1250fps, the 155 at 1150, the 165 at 1050, and the 180 at 950. Each has its place, as the lighter bullets generally offer greater dynamic expansion and reduced penetration, while the heavier offers the opposite.

    Thus, the .40 Smith & Wesson remains a good choice and will be around for decades, as all American LE or military rounds do. The FBI may think it’s a great idea to return to the 9X19, but that doesn’t mean we do, especially if prices on clean used pistols and ammo for the . 40 S&W remain momentarily somewhat depressed.
    • "Keefe Report: Seriously, Is the .40 S&W Dead?"--American Rifleman. In this 2016 article, the author noted several major new pistol releases that omitted .40 S&W from the lineup. "I asked the question directly to one major manufacturer and the firm’s new duty-size pistol about when the .40 S&W was coming. He told me they had no plans to do it. Demand for .40s in that company’s other platforms was already dramatically down." He concludes:
I don't think it will ever go away; it will just lose its role over time as America's primary duty cartridge. When you read gunwriter reviews of small lightweight guns chambered in .40 S&W you will often see the word “snappy.” Just in case you're wondering, that's a gunwriter code word for “unpleasant.” Back in the day, writers often referred to the 10 mm Auto as “snappy,” too. A 0.355” bullet can expand to 0.400”, but it’s unlikely a 0.400” will contract to 0.355”. It appears to not matter.
When it's evaluated on the basis of actual field performance, the .40 out-performs its closest competitor, the 9 mm Luger, but falls short of the .45 ACP. The amazing fact to be drawn from all of this is that the least-effective cartridge has become most popular. This is a situation in need of some serious examination.

But he notes that a diverse police force has meant smaller people that don't like the kick of the .40 S&W, and improvements in 9mm bullets have removed much of the objection to the smaller caliber. All this doesn't speak well to its long term viability as a police sidearm.  But in a 2017 article, Clapp argues that smaller statured people can be taught to use the larger bore handguns, and the 9 mm represents a compromise between recoil and effectiveness.

It's been several years since these articles were written, and the law enforcement shift from .40 S&W to 9mm has continued. This has placed a lot of low priced police trade-in pistols on the market--great news if you like the .40 S&W. 

    With the exceptions of hits to the brain or upper spinal cord, the concept of reliable and reproducible immediate incapacitation of the human target by gunshot wounds to the torso is a myth. The human target is a complex and durable one. A wide variety of psychological, physical, and physiological factors exist, all of them pertinent to the probability of incapacitation. However, except for the location of the wound and the amount of tissue destroyed, none of the factors are within the control of the law enforcement officer.

    Physiologically, a determined adversary can be stopped reliably and immediately only by a shot that disrupts the brain or upper spinal cord. Failing a hit to the central nervous system, massive bleeding from holes in the heart or major blood vessels of the torso causing circulatory collapse is the only other way to force incapacitation upon an adversary, and this takes time. For example, there is sufficient oxygen within the brain to support full, voluntary action for 10-15 seconds after the heart has been destroyed.

    In fact, physiological factors may actually play a relatively minor role in achieving rapid incapacitation. Barring central nervous system hits, there is no physiological reason for an individual to be incapacitated by even a fatal wound, until blood loss is sufficient to drop blood pressure and/or the brain is deprived of oxygen. The effects of pain, which could contribute greatly to incapacitation, are commonly delayed in the aftermath of serious injury such as a gunshot wound. The body engages survival patterns, the well known "fight or flight" syndrome. Pain is irrelevant to survival and is commonly suppressed until some
time later. In order to be a factor, pain must first be perceived, and second must cause an emotional response. In many individuals, pain is ignored even when perceived, or the response is anger and increased resistance, not surrender.

    Psychological factors are probably the most important relative to achieving rapid incapacitation from a gunshot wound to the torso. Awareness of the injury (often delayed by the suppression of pain); fear of injury, death, blood, or pain; intimidation by the weapon or the act of being shot; preconceived notions of what people do when they are shot; or the simple desire to quit can all lead to rapid incapacitation even from minor wounds. However, psychological factors are also the primary cause of incapacitation failures.

    The individual may be unaware of the wound and thus has no stimuli to force a reaction. Strong will, survival instinct, or sheer emotion such as rage or hate can keep a grievously injured individual fighting, as is common on the battlefield and in the street. The effects of chemicals can be powerful stimuli preventing incapacitation. Adrenaline alone can be sufficient to keep a mortally wounded adversary functioning. Stimulants, anesthetics, pain killers, or tranquilizers can all prevent incapacitation by suppressing pain, awareness of the injury, or eliminating any concerns over the injury. Drugs such as cocaine, PCP, and heroin are disassociative in nature. One of their effects is that the individual "exists" outside of his body. He sees and experiences what happens to his body, but as an outside observer who can be unaffected by it yet continue to use the body as a tool for fighting or resisting. 
    The FBI performs six separate tests that consist of shooting into 10-percent ballistic gelatin, simulating human flesh. Each round must penetrate from 12 to 18 inches of gelatin in each of the tests. The tests measure several factors: total penetration, maximum temporary cavity and round expansion, amongst others. The tests include: (1) bare gelatin (2) heavy clothing (3) steel (4) wallboard (5) plywood and (6) automobile glass.

    The first test is self-explanatory. A cotton T-shirt, cotton shirt, a layer of fleece and a layer of denim simulate heavy clothing. The steel test utilizes two pieces of 20-gauge steel set 3 inches apart. This simulates shooting through a car door. The wallboard test requires two pieces of half-inch gypsum (aka drywall) set 3.5 inches apart. This simulates shooting through most interior walls. The plywood test uses a 0.75-inch-thick board to simulate shooting through a wooden door. Finally, the auto glass is 0.25-inch laminated safety glass set at an angle of 45 degrees to the floor and 15 degrees to the side. This simulates standing at the left-front quarter panel and shooting into a car at the driver of the vehicle.

    Bar none, it is the auto glass test that separates the men from the boys. Lots of rounds can pass tests #1 through #5, but test #6 tends to be the toughest for most ammo to overcome.
  • It depends: ".300 BLK vs. .300 HAMR: Which is the Better Cartridge?" by Richard Mann, Shooting Illustrated. Per Mann, if you want to silence your firearm, the .300 Blackout is the way to go; but if you want a hunting cartridge, the .300 HAMR is the better choice. Although he doesn't get into the numbers, he claims that the .300 HAMR actually does match the performance of the .30-30. He doesn't address respective performance from short barreled weapons. 
  • "BOOTLEG TURNS | Escaping The Kill Zone" by John Mattera, American Cop. The steps, per Mattera:
    1. Driving in a straight line, downshift or emergency brake and turn of the wheel to the inside of the turn.
    2. Rear wheels lock and the front of the vehicle enters the skid.
    3. Vehicle enters the 90-degree arc of the turn.
    4. As you pass thru the 90-degree point release the E-brake or shift up on the gears.
    5. Spin the wheel back in the direction opposite the turn.
    6. Final corrections on the steering wheel and begin to add acceleration.
    7. With direction reversed, add power and drive away from the problem.
Both articles were updated last month (February 2021).

  • "How to Stock a Survival Pantry"--The Prepper Journal. An excerpt addressing the best type of survival foods:
    • Foods that your family already eats – This is one of the prepper food storage mistakes we will talk about later in the article. One time when I first started to build my food storage out, I purchased a case of canned mushrooms because they were a good deal. Five years past the expiration date we threw them out. My wife never cooked with canned mushrooms. They sat there unused the entire time so that was a fail on my part. Part of what makes this survival pantry checklist work is that you should be rotating these foods into your normal routine so they never expire. If you don’t like a certain item, that is really difficult to do.
    • Foods that have a long shelf life – Most canned food is a great candidate for this requirement but others are shelf-stable on their own like beans and rice if kept in the right conditions.
    • Foods that are nutritionally packed – You don’t want to store a lot of “junk food” that tastes good. You will need higher-quality nutrition if your body is under stress and overworked. Comfort items are fine and recommended of course but should not be a significant portion of your survival pantry inventory.
    • Foods that do not require refrigeration – This should be obvious but you don’t want a power outage ruining all of your food.
    • Foods that are easy to prepare with primitive cooking means – Think no stove or microwave. Everything on the list below can be cooked in my Dutch oven over a fire or camping stove with usually nothing more than added water.
  • "Comprehensive: How to Build a Fire"--Swift Silent Deadly. When the author says that this is a comprehensive article on building fires, he is not joking. It may be the definitive article on making and maintaining a fire, and I would recommend that you either download it, save it as a PDF, or print it out. Just a note on that: the article is long and the author has included a lot of photographs. To make sure you get all the photographs, you will need to slowly scroll down to the end of the article and give time for the photographs to load completely before attempting to print or save it as a PDF. 

    I'm not the world's best lighter of fires, but I have done it a few hundred times so I have some experience. You should know the mantra that to make a fire you need fuel, oxygen, and heat. Unfortunately, too many people sort of stop there and don't think about how you are going to meet those requirements. The biggest problem I've seen with others--including from Eagle Scouts that should know better--is that you need enough heat to bring your fuel to combustion. This means that if you have a small source of heat (e.g., a match or lighter), you are only going to bring a small amount of fuel to combustion temperatures. I see too many people that think that their match or lighter should be able to light a log on fire. You have to start small. 

    It works the same on building up the fire larger, which means that you need to protect the small flame so that the heat can build up to provide enough heat to bring larger pieces of fuel to ignition temperature. This means that you can't just drop a lit bunch of burning tinder or fire starting material on top of a pile of sticks or a log and expect the whole mass to catch on fire--the heat is rising up and away from the small fire and does little to raise the temperature of the underlying fuel. Instead, you want to build a small firebox with the larger fuel sources and put the burning starter underneath smaller pieces of fuel inside that firebox and feed it incrementally larger pieces of fuel until it is hot enough that it will ignite the large pieces of wood making up the walls and roof of your firebox. 

    Wet wood is problematic because until the water is driven out of the wood by vaporizing it, the wood will remain at a lower temperature--at the boiling point of water except for surface scorching. And it takes a significant amount of energy to change liquid water to steam. So use the driest wood you can find for starting the fire--otherwise you will simply be wasting the heat and energy to boil the water out of wood before it can reach combustion. Conversely, water works for putting out fires mostly because it robs the fuel source of heat, reducing the temperature.

    Another problem I frequently see is people thinking that if a small amount of fuel is good, then more must be better. This can result in smothering the fire because so much fuel is piled on it that it (a) cuts of oxygen flow and/or (b) lowers the temperature. And, contrary to popular belief, newsprint is one of the worst fuels for fire because the sheets tend to hold together even after being burned and will more effectively smother a fire than most anything else.

 

VIDEO: "Is the US Breaking Apart? | Why Some Conservatives Want to Form New States"--America Uncovered (15 min.). You'll note that much of this is a result of the Supreme Court ruling that representation in state legislatures had to solely be based on population, essentially doing away with states having an upper house where representation was by county.

The Coming Civil War:

  • I've seen memes recently essentially stating that if the government wants to take away your guns, it's because they are planning on doing something for which you would shoot them. There is probably more truth to that than we can imagine. But, to ferret out that truth, it is important to keep up with the Leftist code phrases to understand what they are talking about. Case in point: "College defends its ‘White Citizenship as Terrorism’ event"--The College Fix.

        Berea College in Kentucky released a statement Friday defending an upcoming event it’s hosting titled “White Citizenship as Terrorism: Make America Great Again, Again.”

        The event is scheduled for March 17 and organized by the Women’s and Gender Non-Conforming Center at the private liberal arts college.

        The college tweeted out its defense after news reports about the event prompted some backlash. It was first reported by Young America’s Foundation and followed up on by Fox News.

        The event is set to feature a zoom presentation from Amy Brandzel, author of “Against Citizenship: The Violence of the Normative.”

        “Against Citizenship provocatively shows that there is nothing redeemable about citizenship, nothing worth salvaging or sustaining in the name of ‘community,’ practice, or belonging,” according to the book’s online description.

        “According to Brandzel, citizenship is a violent dehumanizing mechanism that makes the comparative devaluing of human lives seem commonsensical, logical, and even necessary,” it states.

    In other words, "domestic terrorism" has been defined down to mean being white. Keep that in mind and a lot more news stories make sense. For instance, House and Senate Democrats are in a race of one-upmanship to see who can pass the most onerous gun-control legislation. Dianne Feinstein has introduced a bill that would ban 205 different "assault weapons" and detachable magazines over 10-rounds, says Breitbart. You can read a copy of the bill here (PDF). Whether to avoid having to spend money to purchase existing weapons and magazines or to put off a revolt, grandfathered weapons and magazines appear to be exempt. But Feinstein's explanations for the bill are interesting. 

    First, the Breitbart article reports, she is claiming that the bill will reduce the number of "massacres" stating: "When it was in place from 1994-2004, gun massacres declined by 37 percent compared with the decade before. After the ban expired, the number of massacres rose by 183 percent." But Breitbart points out that "[i]n contrast, the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) issued a report indicating the 1994 'assault weapons' ban did not reduce crime."    Of course, Feinstein doesn't want us to know that mass shootings are primarily blacks shooting other blacks such as this shooting in Chicago this past weekend at an illegal bar where 15 people were shot, including two that died of their wounds.

    Second, as reported by the New York Post, Feinstein has also said that the bill is needed to reduce the number of scary firearms in the hands of domestic terrorists, quoting Feinstein: “We’re now seeing a rise in domestic terrorism, and military-style assault weapons are increasingly becoming the guns of choice for these dangerous groups.” As the Post blandly points out, "Democrats frequently use the term 'domestic terrorism' to refer to the actions of groups associated with a mob of President Donald Trump supporters who fought police to break into the Capitol and disrupt certification of President Biden’s election victory."

    The idea of Trump supporters being domestic terrorists is the fevered dreams (or projection) of the Left. Rather, a poll apparently taken just before the 2020 election shows that white liberals embrace using violence to pursue political goals more than conservatives. The poll was conducted by the American National Elections Studies, which was established by the National Science Foundation in 1977. 

    The survey found that 95.8% of "very conservative" white respondents said violence should never be used to pursue a political ambition, which was up from 93.3% in 2016. "Conservative" respondents were nearly identical, with 95% disavowing political violence in 2020 and 93.3% in 2016.

    However, on the other end of the political spectrum, leftists are more likely to embrace political violence as a means to an end. According to the poll, only 66.5% of "very liberal" white respondents said it was wrong to use violence to attain their political goals. That means that over a third of "very liberal" Americans would justify using some or a "great deal" of violence to pursue their political goals. In the 2016 survey, the percent of "very liberal" respondents willing to endorse political violence was much higher at 86.9%.

    There were 82.8% that identified as "liberals" who were against political violence, down from 88.1% in 2016.

    George Floyd Square is the name given to approximately four square blocks of barricaded area in Minneapolis, from 37th to 39th Streets South and Columbus and Elliott Avenues East, that was established shortly after the death of George Floyd.

    According to the Washington Examiner, it was Black Lives Matter activists who organized the site.

    KIMT3 News reports that traffic in the zone was originally blocked with refrigerators, trash cans, and pallets, and later the city provided concrete barriers.

The City might want to reconsider its largesse since its largest employer, Target, has decided to move out of downtown Minneapolis--but not because of the riots, you understand.

    ... Apparently, 2-4 million Venezuelans have swarmed into Colombia. Nobody know the real numbers.

    Other neighborhood countries such as Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, are experiencing similar from Venezuela. And now with Biden policy, they’ll be marching north, joined by migrations from around Asia, Africa, Middle East, Cuba, other Caribbean countries such as Haiti, and also from other South American countries.

    As they march north, they will be joined by some Panamanians, and large numbers or Nicaraguans, Salvadorians, Hondurans, and finally Mexicans. And you shall see the flood. It’s coming. It’s building. Our border, relatively open, while American fuel and food prices rocket. At this rate we soon will adopt millions — most speak no lick of English — even while homeless camps swell around America.
    Demonstrations to commemorate the first anniversary of Breonna Taylor's death have turned violent as protesters clashed with cops and members of the public at marches across the country.  

    Hundreds of activists took to the streets in Los Angeles for a march on Saturday night, where two demonstrators were seen smashing a squad car. 

    Video shared on social media shows the men beating the hood of the LAPD vehicle as it stopped on a road in Hollywood with its siren blaring. 

    The cop car then slowly started to move with the men still smashing the hood, before it abruptly accelerated throwing the men onto the road. 

    'LAPD just ran over two protesters at the Hollywood Breonna Taylor march,' one activist stated beneath a video of the incident. 

    Other footage shared to social media showed police clad in riot gear as they stood off against protesters. Several businesses in the Hollywood area were also reportedly vandalized.

    Meanwhile, in Louisville, Kentucky - the city where Taylor was shot dead during a botched police raid on her home on March 13, 2020 -  armed demonstrators blocked roads prompting police to declare an unlawful assembly.  

    'Arrests will be made to those that refuse to disperse,' the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department wrote on Twitter at 9.30pm local time.

    It is currently unclear whether anyone has been taken into custody 

    Several blocks away from where the protests were being held, firefighters responded to a blaze at a vacant church that is being investigated as a suspected case of arson.

    Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are assisting the investigation into the two-alarm fire at the church, which was most recently used by the Greater New Hope Community Church. 

    The large building at West Broadway and South 5th Street had been up for auction for the past month, and it was not immediately clear whether the fire was connected to the protests. 

    In Seattle, police were seen blocking roads as other cops on bikes were pictured pushing a crowd forward into the downtown area. 
    Police have clashed with Antifa protesters during a second consecutive night of unrest in Portland. 

    The ugly scenes occurred Friday after a group of activists assembled to march against the Department of Homeland Security. 

    One local journalist claimed that between 100 and 150 protesters started making their way through the city's Pearl District before they began 'breaking the windows of businesses' and 'attacking' anyone who was filming them. 

 

VIDEO: "WHY #SuperStraight​ MEME CRASHED TWITTER (& the INTERNET)"--Felix Rex (12 min.)

Miscellany:

#1 Literally one day after Biden was inaugurated, a massive U.S. military convoy rolled into Syria…

#2 Just a few weeks later, Joe Biden conducted his first airstrike against Iranian-backed forces inside Syria…

#3 ... Iranian-backed forces ... retaliated by launching rockets at a military base in Iraq where U.S. forces are stationed.  ...

#4 More U.S. airstrikes may come sooner rather than later.  In fact, it is being reported that the U.S. has just sent six B-52 bombers to Diego Garcia…

#5 The Biden administration is also sending approximately 10,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East…

#7 ... Israel continues to hit strategically important targets inside Syria on a regular basis.  ...

#8 ... Israel is ready to attack Iran without any U.S. help [to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons]…

#9 During a phone call last Thursday between Kamala Harris and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister made it exceedingly clear that his nation is ready to do whatever it takes to prevent the Iranians from developing their own nukes… 

    The fundamental dilemma of domestic vs. foreign policy facing the Biden Administration is that they want to geld the US military at home with intersectionality so it can’t get uppity … but they also want to use Special Forces trigger-pullers overseas a lot.

    The problem is that the pointy end of the spear (e.g., the Navy SEALs) looks like this:

 


    The video that triggered Saturday’s protest and sparked accusations of racism against the Liege police, shows officers pinning a woman of Congolese descent to the ground. The woman claimed that an officer beat her with a baton and almost choked her after she refused to get to the ground and set out to leave following an ID check. The woman, identified by local media as Tania, said that she approached the officers herself after she saw them surrounding a woman, who apparently felt unwell. Being a caregiver, she said she wanted to help the woman until the ambulance arrived. However, her interaction with the police quickly took a turn for the worse.

    Police defended the officers’ conduct, claiming that the woman, who is now being accused of “rebellion,” went berserk and bit one of the officers, which led to the incident. Police spokesperson Jadranka Lozina described the use of force as “a clean, justified intervention,” insisting that “police have nothing to be ashamed of.”

    By all accounts, the Taliban is less corrupt than those the U.S. is defending. How could this be the case? The Afghan war has cost the U.S. over $2 trillion, which includes military spending on fighting the Taliban, aid to the Kabul government, and reconstruction projects. What is the Taliban spending on this war? There are no official numbers, but according to one report, they brought in $1.6 billion in the fiscal year that ended in March 2020. The Taliban can gain and hold territory in the face of overwhelming odds because they have better morale and more effective organization.

    This has been admitted by officials of the Afghan government. According to Tooryalai Wesa, the former governor of Kandahar province, citizens told him that under Taliban rule “the money changers used to cover their money just under a sheet” as they went to pray because “people knew that law will be enforced.” Moreover, “when Taliban ordered to stop poppy cultivation, Mullah Omar could enforce it with his blind eye.” Under the U.S. occupation, drug production has been out of control, sometimes implicating Afghans at the top levels of government.

Short version: the U.S. has still not learned the lesson of Vietnam that supporting a corrupt and unpopular government is a sure way to lose an insurgency. 

    Social media giant Twitter is facing a lawsuit from a victim of teenage sex trafficking who says that, even after being alerted, the platform refused to take down widely shared pornographic images of him.

    According to a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the now 17-year-old boy was just 13 when he became the target of sex traffickers who tricked him into believing they were his 16-year-old female classmate.

    The traffickers utilized the Snapchat app to lure the boy into sending nude photos. Once in their possession, the criminals used the pictures to blackmail him into performing perverse sex acts and sending other explicit material. He was threatened that if he did not comply, his naked photos would be sent to his "parents, coach, pastor," and classmates. The boy subsequently sent other material, even involving another minor in some videos he sent.

    Sometime during 2019 those videos surfaced on Twitter, coming from two accounts notorious for sharing child pornography. Twitter was notified three times within a month about the offensive content, but did nothing, according to lawsuit filed against the tech company.

But if you say that the election was stolen, they'll shut you down in a New York minute. 

    The election of 2020, which included more than 155 million votes, was decided by approximately 300,000 votes in six states, or 0.2 percent of the electorate, all of which came by an unnatural flip of results late on election night. Despite judges’ repeated hand-wringing that any court action would disenfranchise millions of voters, the reality is that millions of others may have been disenfranchised, and they [the voters] instinctively suspect so.
  • "The Ghost Of Empires Past" by William S. Lind, American Conservative. Comparing America's current predicament with that of Spain in the first half of the 17 Century when it went from being the world's first hyper-power to a declining, inept state. An excerpt:
“Like Spain, America is overextended, committed to goals it lacks the power and money to achieve. We set up a Baltic fleet while the Dutch controlled the Straits of Gibraltar; you attempt to bring peace and order to Afghanistan when you cannot provide it in your own cities. We could not pull back because the reputación of the monarchy was at stake; your term is ‘credibility.’ What do you think Cervantes was talking about when he wrote of tilting at windmills? But at court, now in Washington as then in Madrid, anyone who mentioned the unfortunate contradictions was banished. In my Spain, even the simplest activities required so many people, so much ceremony, that eventually nothing moved. As you might put it, vast inputs brought only tiny outputs. It reached the point where the king’s entourage was so vast he could no longer leave Madrid.”

Compare that with Joseph Tainter's thesis in The Collapse of Complex Societies.  I did a lengthy review of Tainter's work, written concurrently with my reading of the book, if you are interested: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

    There were once more than 100 native language newspapers in circulation in Hawaii that chronicled daily life on the islands. As early as 1834, the newspapers supplied native Hawaiians with news, current affairs, opinion, and, importantly, information about extreme weather events.
 
    In 1871, an intense hurricane struck the islands of Hawaii and Maui, causing catastrophic damage. The newspapers reported on the destruction, traced the likely path of the storm, and documented the impact on Hawaiians.
 
    “The streaming of the wind was similar to 5,000 steam whistles set off at one time,” reported the paper Ke Au Okoa. “The rain continued from morning til night. At 11 o’clock, the waters rushed swiftly and the lowlands were flooded, sweeping everything that was in their paths. The damages were great concerning the koa trees and the grapevines.”

 * * *

    More than 1 million pages of transcript text — the equivalent of 1 million A4 pages — are scattered across museums and libraries across Hawaii. Less than 2% of them have been translated. Nogelmeier, who landed in Hawaii by way of Minnesota in 1972, began translating all of it 25 years ago in an effort to preserve and cultivate the traditional language. Named Marvin at birth, he was gifted the name Puakea by a former hula teacher who shared the name.

    “‘How did all of that disappear from consciousness?’ That’s what we wanted to answer,” he says. “It’s not about language, it’s about knowledge.”

    By 2010, Nogelmeier was several years into his translation project and had noticed the wealth of weather data it had brought to light. He asked University of Hawai‘i meteorologist Steven Businger, PhD, to investigate whether the newspapers could be used to expand history records of geoscience events, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

    “I remember he invited me to have lunch with him,” Businger recalls, “and I would be fascinated by all these things he was telling me about the Hawaiian language. And it felt natural to then work together.”

    Nogelmeier’s team collected more than 4,000 articles documenting extreme weather events, both geological and meteorological. He then uploaded them to a digital database run by the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, an oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical research institute based in Hawaii.

    “We were able to work [on] translations and the scientists could work out, ‘Well if this tree had blown over, that meant that the wind must have been this strong,’” Nogelmeier recalls. “It was really remarkable.”

    The newspapers reported events like droughts, floods, high surf, and landslides. Taken together, the reporting showed evidence of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the climate phenomenon now known to occur in the tropical Pacific. “What surprised me the most,” Businger says, “is how many newspapers the Hawaiians had, how prolific they were in writing things down, and in detail, that we could actually work out the track of the hurricane and the intensity of it, based solely on those articles. I couldn’t believe there was so much information.”

    In 2018, the pair co-authored a paper on their findings titled “Hurricane with a History: Hawaiian Newspapers Illuminate an 1871 Storm.”

    'The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator's plan,' the Vatican's ruling said.

    God 'does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognise that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,' it said.  
On Monday, CNN host Don Lemon lectured the Roman Catholic Church and all other Christian denominations on The View, declaring — as if he had been given direct inspiration from God — that the traditional definition of marriage is “not what God is about.” He suggested that racial segregation and other forms of segregation are ultimately responsible for Christians’ supposedly backward definition of marriage.
  • Those who love the world more than the truth: "The Miseducation of America’s Elites" by Bari Weiss, City Journal. The article is ostensibly about how a group of wealthy parents are having to meet in secret to avoid having their children expelled from Harvard-Westlake, the most prestigious private school in Los Angeles, even as they worry about the Marxist ideology that has taken over the school. But this is the part that caught my attention:

    The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. “I’ve talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don’t want the controversy right now,” related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told—but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.

    “The school can ask you to leave for any reason,” said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. “Then you’ll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you’ll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer.”

    One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: “I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels.” Another joked: “We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated.” A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: “To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk.”

    Parents who have spoken out against this ideology, even in private ways, say it hasn’t gone over well. “I had a conversation with a friend, and I asked him: ‘Is there anything about this movement we should question?’” said a father with children in two prep schools in Manhattan. “And he said: ‘Dude, that’s dangerous ground you’re on in our friendship.’ I’ve had enough of those conversations to know what happens.”

    That fear is shared, deeply, by the children. For them, it’s not just the fear of getting a bad grade or getting turned down for a college recommendation, though that fear is potent. It’s the fear of social shaming. “If you publish my name, it would ruin my life. People would attack me for even questioning this ideology. I don’t even want people knowing I’m a capitalist,” a student at the Fieldston School in New York City told me, in a comment echoed by other students I spoke with. (Fieldston declined to comment for this article.) “The kids are scared of other kids,” says one Harvard-Westlake mother.

Let me say right now that if you have not already been faced with the choice, you will soon be given the choice of either drinking the Marxist cool-aid or face ostracization and, perhaps, loss of jobs or businesses, perhaps many times. The Marxists are already coming for people that dare criticize their ideology or voice support for those that criticize their ideology, but soon they will be coming for those that simply don't embrace their ideology; e.g., it's not enough to not be racist, but you have to be anti-racist. For Christians, you may well be faced with the choice of your faith or making a livelihood. It is not going to be possible to stick to a middle ground. Better make your choice now and prepare. Just be cognizant of the consequences for those that choose the mark of the Beast over the mark of the Lord because He is not going to be very understanding.

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