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Wednesday, March 3, 2021

The Docent's Memo

VIDEO: "Handgun Stopping Power?"--Jerry Ziegner (17 min.)

Firearms/Self-Defense/Prepping:
    The fundamental failure, I believe, and expressed consistently in the prepping literature, is that current prepping philosophy is short-sighted, too individualistic, and not assertive enough of its philosophical underpinnings.

    Basically (to oversimplify here) what I keep reading is “Prepare for a SHTF scenario by having food and water, protecting yourself and loved ones and possessions, and survive… “ What I do not read about is organizing, long range group survival, and rebuilding society.

    At the moment, the “prepping movement” seems to consist of many people in agreement that there may be a sudden catastrophic watershed situation causing the collapse of the structure and functioning of society as we currently experience it, and one should prepare for the possibility. Specifics vary .... However, the fundamental point is that one should prepare to survive.

    While this is an admirable starting point, it lacks the necessary depth in the context of this historical moment.

* * *

    ... How long can any prepping family last? How long until the food supplies are gone, how long until a powerful gang of thieves or the government (redundant?) steal what you have stored or confiscate that to distribute things equally to all?

* * * 
 
    Sorry, but a family is not a large enough unit to establish a real survival strategy.

    Prepping needs to change from focusing on individual or family survival to focusing on organizing groups, (or maybe, more precisely, “mini_societies”?) who would have a longer range view of not only surviving any national catastrophe but also of rebuilding society.

    Prepping groups need to more proselytistic and get more members who are actively taking steps not just for individual survival but for group survival. Local prepping meetings need to happen to help people understand what they must prepare for, especially so that they do not in a SHTF situation end up as a burden to others. Also standards and responsibilities need to be agreed upon, and discussions will generate ideas and activity.
    Prior to the end of the Clinton AWB, and really not until the 2006-2007 timeframe, ARs were not the real go-to gun in America. During the AWB, the popularity of ARs and the general popularity of other AWB-restricted rifles (AKs, etc.) rose. But there still wasn’t the market domination that we see today with the AR platform.

    The AR-15 was, for the most part, a relatively rare bird. It wasn’t popular for a variety of reasons. The cartridge was considered weak, the stigma from its horrible introduction in Vietnam still lingered, and the options to really modify the rifle didn’t exist yet. The carry handle was even seen as a negative because it limited the options for scopes.

    ARs were called “poodle shooters” and “jam-o-matics” that would get you killed. The reliability of the platform that we take for granted today was there. It was just unheard of due to all the gun shop gossip from the guy behind the counter who claimed to serve in Vietnam as a Green Beret when in fact he was in the Ohio National Guard and the closest he ever got to combat was handling a Remington 870 during a prison riot.

    Back then, I was on the AR-15 bandwagon and loved it like I do now. To me, the AR-15 was everything that was right. Light weight, low recoil, rugged, dependable, and easy to work on. But at the local range at the time, I was the odd duck. Nine times out of ten, no one else had an AR.
  • "My EDC: Why I Carry A Kel-Tec P3AT"--The Mag Life. The author's explanation: "The Kel Tec 380 is slim, short, and flat. As such, it disappears easily in a pocket." Can't argue with that--especially if you are in an office environment.
  • "Skill Set: Small Things" by Tiger McGee, Tactical Wire. 
The “usual” fight is well documented. Close range – bad breath, danger distances, usually low-light environments. There’s a big possibility of multiple threats; you have to prioritize the danger. The time involved in the physical part of the fight is going to be short -- likely a few seconds. When forced to fire it will probably be three to four rounds. Knowing all these conditions – documented conflicts – tells us what to practice. But there are always exceptions.
  • "The Sniper Big Four"--The Patrol Base (h/t WRSA). These basic categories of skills are: (i) target detection; (ii) range/wind estimation; (iii) stalking/blending; and (iv) marksmanship. He also discusses the three types of snipers that can be encountered on the battle-field: (a) the armed irregular; (b) the trained marksman; and (c) the well-trained sniper. Good read so check it out.
  • Lesson from police involved shooting: "Oklahoma cop is charged with first-degree manslaughter for fatally shooting a knife-wielding black man, 60, three times in the back as he fled"--Daily Mail. Sgt. Clifford Holman responded to a call about a homeless black man (Bennie Edwards) who was harassing customers at a pawn shop in north Oklahoma City. "When he arrived at the scene in the 2100 block of West Hefner Road, Holman encountered Edwards, who was holding a folding knife and refusing officers' commands to drop it," according to an arrest affidavit. Edwards lunged with the knife at one of the officer and then fled. After using a Taser and pepper spray on Edwards to little effect, Holman fired three shots at Edwards as Edwards ran away, resulting in Edwards' death. One of Edwards' family members insisted that Edwards wouldn't hurt a fly, but according to the article, "in 2014, Edwards was charged with assault and battery for allegedly stabbing a female postal worker after yelling at her to 'get off his porch.'" This appears to be a case where the fleeing felon rule was applicable and the officer lawfully shot Edwards in order to prevent him from harming another officer or a member of the public. Yet the officer is being charged in what is most likely a politically motivated prosecution because the officer is white while Edwards was black. For the citizen, the lesson to take away is that once a criminal breaks off an attack and flees, he becomes someone else's problem--so don't shoot them in the back.
  • "Here’s How Fast and Brutally Migrants and Locals Can Turn Against Each Other"--Organic Prepper. Peruvians are getting less tolerant of the Venezuelan refugees in their midst as racial tensions soar. Not really surprising--see my links below to diversity causing declining social capital and interracial crime.
  • "Tunnel Rats: The Underground Grunts of the Vietnam War" by B.C. Sanders, Skillset. An excerpt:
    When tunnels became discovered, the rats went in armed with their own preferences of weapons, including .38-caliber revolvers, .25-caliber pistols, sawed-off shotguns, folding-stock carbines, grenades, bayonets and boot knives. Some donned gas masks and used tear gas to create panic in the enemy to flush them out, while others battled the enemy blade to blade, bullet for bullet. 

    These units were given the autonomy to develop their own techniques to eliminate the embedded enemy. Tunnel rats employed cunning tricks, such as flashlights on sticks to draw gunfire while they triangulated on the enemy’s muzzle flashes. They would then tie ropes around the dead Vietcong and drag them back to the surface. The all-volunteer units’ esprit de corps was displayed through the creative patches they wore on their uniforms. They depicted armed rodents with phrases such as “Non gratum anus rodentum” (Latin for “Not worth a rat’s ass”)

    Often, the enemy fled the approaching tunnel rats, leaving behind troves of intelligence documents. Tunnel rats located paperwork outlining the assassination plot against Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The assassins’ cell later identified, and its members then captured and executed. 
What is the difference between tactical and survival knives? A survival knife is specially designed for tasks like chopping, battening and hammering, and they usually include built-in survival kits or survival supplies, typically hidden in the handle or sheath. Tactical knives on the other hand are typically defense or combat-oriented, usually being weighted and balanced for fighting, as well as various tactical tasks like cutting through webbing or breaking glass.

    “Commonsense” has a reassuring sound for many voters. That’s why politicians use it every time they can make it fit. All the more reason to examine the meaning obscured by the political music. The adjective assumes that the sense being sold is held in common by Americans.

    Most of us are aware that the Gun Nut and Control Nuts do not share the same “sense.” There are millions among us who like guns and don’t feel they have an obligation to explain themselves. There are millions of others who don’t own guns, don’t like guns, and don’t think other people should like guns. So the government should stop them. This is kind of a cultural clash.

    It may be that the pollsters can compile persuasive data showing that there are twice as many Control Nuts as Gun Nuts, An argument that majority rule principle decides the debate is useless since the Gun Nuts argue from principle. In this context counting votes has no more relevance than counting noses.

    A serious campaign to reduce and restrict gun ownership would require an estimate of the loss of life and liberty this would require. We know that New York and Connecticut recently demanded registration of AR-15 rifles. Those states threaten fines and imprisonment for failure to comply. Only a fraction of those rifles have been registered and the dimensions of the disobedience confronted those state governments with the need for mass arrests. So they just left the law on the books and found other ways to bungle government work.

    This point requires emphasis. If the Control Nuts aren’t willing to consider the cost of enforcement, the [sic] don’t deserve to be taken seriously.


VIDEO: "Stealth Camping In Storm Drain"--Steve Wallis (28 min.)


They really do hate you: 
    Under Armour “forced its white employees to participate in a training program that asked them to consider ways in which they might be racist.”

    The course’s moderator even reportedly asked white employees how many “virtually all-white” funerals they had attended during their lives, insisting that not going to a minority funeral may prove the employee is racist. After asking that question, the moderator quickly interrupted, saying that she didn’t want to give whites time to think of their answer. She then told white employees that the question “should be something that you are thinking about if you are white for the rest of your life.”

    In another part of the training, whites are told that saying “I was taught to treat everyone the same” is also racist.

    The program’s host went on saying, “I’m hoping that those questions for most white people surface, that there’s a little more going on than ‘we just were taught to see everybody as equal.'”
    The course description made it clear that its goal was to guide people to be “less white” , help them “understand what it means to be white” and “challenge what it means to be racist” .

    However, on social networks they released some of the slides used in the seminar and the concepts presented left many speechless.

    In one of the images you can read: “To be less white is: to be less oppressive, to be less arrogant, to be less trusting, to be less defensive, to be less ignorant, to be more humble, to listen, to believe. , break with apathy and break with white solidarity ” .

    Another says that "in the United States and other Western nations, whites are socialized to feel that they are inherently superior because they are white ." And they finish with an invitation: "Try to be less white."
    ... At Teaching Tolerance, we’ve even featured anti-racist activities built around the Dr. Seuss book The Sneetches. But when we re-evaluated, we found that the story is actually not as “anti-racist” as we once thought. And it has some pretty intricate layers you and your students might consider, too.

    The solution to the story’s conflict is that the Plain-Belly Sneetches and Star-Bellied Sneetches simply get confused as to who is oppressed. As a result, they accept one another. This message of “acceptance” does not acknowledge structural power imbalances. It doesn’t address the idea that historical narratives impact present-day power structures. And instead of encouraging young readers to recognize and take action against injustice, the story promotes a race-neutral approach.

 You might also want to read Dreher's take on this. But here is a closing comment from Dreher:

In case you missed it, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the parent of Learning For Justice, recently decided as a formal matter not to care so much about black race hatred, saying it’s kind of justified. So now we have Good Race Hatred (that is, when propagated by black people) and Bad Race Hatred (when propagated by non-black people). Good to get that leared. [sic]

    Kaufmann analyzed eight surveys of graduate-level professors and doctoral students, the majority of whom said they would not oppose discriminating against their right-leaning peers in some form. Ten percent of academics support outright cancelling or firing conservative professors who express their views.

    The study adds a new dimension to recent stories of harassment and intimidation of conservative voices in academia. Conservatives have long been a minority in American universities, but only recently has so-called cancel culture led to a rise in what Kaufmann calls the "chilling" effect of self-censorship.

    "The discriminatory impact is huge," Kaufmann told the Washington Free Beacon.

    Even without "punishment mechanisms," widespread opposition to conservative views leads to "powerful conformist pressures that make people keep their mouths shut."

    Those pressures are clearly effective. Seventy percent of conservative academics reported that their department created a hostile environment for conservative ideas, according to the study. Nine in 10 Trump-supporting academics reported that they would not feel comfortable expressing their views to a colleague. And more than half of conservative academics surveyed admitted to self-censoring their research and teaching.
  • Preparing the mental battle space: "White supremacy a 'transnational threat', U.N. chief warns"--Reuters. "United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday that white supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are becoming a 'transnational threat' and have exploited the coronavirus pandemic to boost their support." "Without naming states, Guterres added: 'Today, these extremist movements represent the number one internal security threat in several countries.'" Really? More than drug cartels or Islamic terror? 
  • "Why The Capitol Riot Terrified The Elites"--Loose Rounds. Short answer: "By storming the Capitol, the rioters proved that successful resistance against the American Leviathan is indeed still possible."
  • "The Continuing Crisis: The election and its aftermath" by Michael Anton, Claremont Review of Books. An excerpt:
    A full understanding of what happened that Wednesday [the Jan. 6 protests at the Capital] would begin with the ruling class’s decades-long betrayal and despoliation of what would eventually come to be called Red or Deplorable or Flyover America. But the more proximate cause was the 2020 election—easily the highest intensity such contest of my lifetime. Each side felt that the stakes were existential. The accuracy of those feelings doesn’t matter; their existence was enough to drive events.

    As an incumbent seeking a second term, President Trump ... seemed to have a lot of things going for him.... According to Gallup, in September 2020 56% of Americans reported doing better than they had four years prior—a level that, in ordinary times, would all but guarantee an incumbent’s re-election.

    But these were not ordinary times. ... The Democrats used the pandemic as an excuse to accelerate and intensify their decades-long effort to loosen and change American election practices in ways that favor their party. In the spring, they began openly talking about staging a coup: literally using the military to yank Trump from power. It’s one thing to hold a “war game” and plot in secret about a president’s ouster, but why leak the result? Only if you want the public prepared for what otherwise would look like outrageous interference in “our democracy.” Democrats and their media allies also, and for the same reason, assiduously pushed the so-called “Red Mirage” narrative: the story that, while you are likely to see Trump way ahead on election night, he will certainly lose as all the votes are counted. This was less a prediction than preemptive explanation: what you see might look funny, but let us assure you in advance that it’s all on the up-and-up.

* * *

    Then came the election itself. Unsurprisingly, the “Red Mirage” did appear. But was it a mirage? There are reasons to doubt. (Perhaps the single-best summary of the irregularities is “Memorandum: How the 2020 Election Could Have Been Stolen,” by Claes Ryn, a professor of politics at the Catholic University of America, published online at the American Conservative.)

    Vote counting seemed to be inexplicably halted in five states (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin)—or, more precisely, in Democratic Party-controlled big cities in those states—late on election night as Trump was piling up seemingly insurmountable leads. There are numerous eyewitness reports of election officials in the affected precincts telling the Republican observers to go home, because no more counting would be done that night, only to resume counting as soon as said observers were out of sight. Then suddenly, when the count was made public again, Biden was ahead in all five states.

    Officials “found” huge tranches of ballots that overwhelmingly—and in some cases exclusively—favored Biden. Sometimes the dead “voted,” along with other ineligible people (e.g., felons and people who had moved to other states). Meanwhile, registered voters showed up to vote in person only to be told that they had already voted absentee despite having never requested an absentee ballot. There are sworn affidavits alleging the back-dating of ballots; there are mail-in and absentee ballots which appeared without creases (so how did they get into their envelopes?); as well as thousands upon thousands of Biden ballots without a single choice marked for any down-ballot candidate.

    Then there are the statistical anomalies. For instance, political scientist Patrick Basham reports in the Spectator that “[i]n Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch.” What are the chances of that? And that’s only one example.

    Beyond the statistical, there are historical anomalies. Since the 19th century, not a single incumbent president who gained votes in his second run has lost. To the contrary, winners often shed votes. Barack Obama’s total, for instance, dropped by 3.5 million. President Trump’s rose by more than 11 million. Certain states and counties have long served as “bellwethers”: win them, and you win it all. President Trump won all the bellwether states and 18 of 19 bellwether counties. Successful incumbents tend to have “coattails”: they carry down-ballot officials from their party over the finish line. The Republicans gained 11 House seats, did not lose the Senate (at least not on election day) in a year when more than two thirds of defending incumbents were Republican, and cleaned up at the state level. Finally, primary voting has long been a leading indicator of the November outcome: dominate the primaries, win the general. No incumbent who received 75% or more of the total primary vote has ever lost re-election; President Trump got 94%.

    No precedent lasts forever, and perhaps one or more of these really were broken in 2020. But all of them?

* * *

    ... [The allegations of vote fraud have] barely been investigated, whether at the federal or state level, in the courts, or by the media. For it’s quite clear that most of the people who really run America don’t want to know what really happened. More to the point, they don’t want you to know. ... And so for all their bleating about “our democracy,” these dedicated ideologues have come to believe the incorrect outcome is ipso facto “anti-democratic.”

* * *

    The most striking and least surprising thing about the whole episode is the way it is being treated by official Washington and the larger ruling class. The very same pundits, politicians, professors, and CEOs who, all through spring and summer 2020 had denied, excused, and extolled the mass sacking of some 200 American cities, which cost some $2 billion in damage and three dozen lives, leapt to condemn all the MAGA marchers—the “mostly peaceful” majority as vociferously as the rioting few. Solons who could muster no outrage, or even concern, about the summer’s destruction—Kamala Harris even had lauded the riots and said they should continue—thundered from on high about the “Stop the Steal” march. The new president himself said that the response would have been much harsher had the Capitol been stormed by BLM—apparently forgetting last spring’s numerous scenes of cops literally kneeling before mobs, and authorities’ literal abandonment of police precincts and even whole neighborhoods.

* * *

    So ... what do [Trump supporters] see? Double standards and hypocrisy everywhere. Mike Flynn’s life ruined over a non-crime while the man who ruined it, James Comey, laughs about his handiwork on an Upper East Side stage. Four years of constant lies about Russian collusion and no reckoning, either for those who broke the law to get it going, or those who used their megaphone to keep it going. Changes to the voting system designed to help one party and marginalize theirs. A country flooded with immigration for more than half a century, padding the votes of the other party, driving down wages, and enriching oligarchs. A trade regime seemingly designed to ship their jobs overseas, close their factories, and empty out their towns. A media and intellectual class that no longer makes any pretense of fairness or objectivity but openly operates as the propaganda arm of the regime—to the extent it is not itself the regime. And now, an increasing tendency to demonize all dissent as terrorism and lock out of the political system—permanently—at least 47% of the population.

    What we now have, more and more, is a one-party oligarchy. This was the nemesis of the Trump presidency. Like all oligarchies, ours rules by coercion, not consent. It exerts its power primarily by constraining allowable, expressible opinion: it knows that the thing which cannot be said eventually becomes that which cannot be thought. And the chief thoughts it wishes to suppress are objections to its own misrule. When and where it cannot “persuade”—that is, propagandize—it punishes, with the defiant fired from their jobs, made unemployable, cut off from the financial system, even, in some cases, shunned by friends and family. This is not “death,” exactly. But how much less cruel is it, really, to cut people off from human contact and the means of making a living? And how much real misery—and desperation—does it produce?

  • Wokeness is the Marxist struggle, except replacing "class" with race, sexual orientation and gender, and sex, in that order: "Why Is Wokeness Winning?" by Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan begins by noting that "[c]ritical theory was once an esoteric academic pursuit. Now it has become the core, underlying philosophy of the majority of American cultural institutions, universities, media, corporations, liberal churches, NGOs, philanthropies, and, of course, mainstream journalism." 

This summer felt like a psychic break from old-school liberalism, a moment when a big part of the American elite just decided to junk the principles that have long defined American democratic life, and embrace what Bari Weiss calls “a mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality.”

And he asks (and answers) how did this happen? My pithy answer is that America accepted into its bosom the Frankfort School--Jewish-communist intellectuals fleeing the Nazis--who because of their ethnicity and Marxist outlooks doubly hated the Christian West. Sullivan's answer is perhaps more politic: 

    The first, it seems to me, is emotional. The reason so many people marched this summer was because of a righteous revulsion at the visceral image of a black man being murdered slowly on the street by a bad, white cop. ...

* * *

    And the CRT [critical race theory] advocates have brilliantly managed to construct a crude moral binary to pressure liberals into submission. Where liberalism allows neutrality or doubt or indifference, CRT demands an absolute and immediate choice between racism and anti-racism (defined by CRT) — and no one wants to be a racist, do they? Legitimate anguish about racial inequality and the sheer terror of being publicly labeled a bigot have led liberals to surrender their core values to the far left. 

    The second reason for CRT’s triumph is that it’s super-easy. Social inequalities are extremely complicated things. A huge variety of factors may be in play: class, family structure, education, neighborhood, sex, biology, genetics and culture are some of them. Untangling this empirically in order to figure out what might actually work to improve things is hard work. But when you can simply dismiss all of these factors and cite “structural racism” as the only reason for any racial inequality, and also cover yourself in moral righteousness, you’re home-free. Those who raise objections or complications or cite nuances can be dismissed by the same easy method.

    Then there’s the deep relationship between CRT and one of the most powerful human drives: tribalism. What antiracism brilliantly does is adopt all the instincts of racism and sexism — seeing someone and instantly judging them by the color of their skin, or sex — and drape them with a veil of virtue. You don’t have to correct yourself when your tribal psyche makes you more cognizant of someone’s visible racial differences, and pre-judges them. You don’t have to resist this any more. You can give in to your core nature, and feel pride, rather than shame. You get to have all the feels of judging people entirely by their involuntary characteristics, while actually dismantling racism and sexism! What’s not to like?

    Social aspiration also plays a part. The etiquette of wokery is increasingly indispensable for high society. They mark you as someone high up in the American social hierarchy. ... Rob Henderson argues that this aspiration to be in the upper classes helps explain why Asian-Americans, who are targeted for direct race discrimination under CRT, nonetheless often support it: “While money and education are tickets to the middle class, prizing diversity is a requirement to join the upper class. It’s part of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu referred to as cultural capital — tastes, vocabulary, awareness and mannerisms which give social advantages to those higher in the social hierarchy.” ...

    There’s little doubt, either, it seems to me that there is a religious component to wokeness. A generation of nones can feel bereft of transcendence and meaning, and “becoming woke”, like being “born again,” fills that spiritual hole. In an atomized and lonely age, feeling as if you are on “the right side of history”, banishing doubt, joining with countless of your fellow converts in marches and seminars, can abate the isolation and emptiness of it all. Many moderns want the experience of religion without God. With CRT, as in the past with communism, they can have it.

    But what also make CRT so successful is ruthlessness. Those who hold a view of the world in which only power, and the struggle for power, matters, have few qualms in exercising it. After all, under CRT, power is always on the side of the white cis-heteropatriarchy, so payback is always fair play. Discriminating against the unwoke or whites or males or the cis-gendered or Asian-American, is not just fair, but vital. Shutting down speech protects the oppressed; bullying on social media and in the workplace becomes a form of virtue; mercy and forgiveness are mere buttresses for white supremacy; HR departments diligently identify dissidents, and discipline them. Once you set up this system of censorship and fear, persecute a few prominent sinners pour décourager les autres, and encourage snitches, dissidents will increasingly self-censor, and dissent peter out, until the new orthodoxy is the only one.  

    In the past, a new set of ideas could be engaged in a clash of argument and debate. But you’ll notice that the advocates of what Wes Yang has called “the successor ideology” never debate any serious opponents of their position. This is because debate in a liberal society implies equal standing for both sides, and uses reason to determine who’s right or wrong. But there can be no “both sides” within CRT, no equation of “racists” and “antiracists”, and debates are inherently oppressive. Logic, evidence, and reason are, in this worldview, mere products of white supremacy, forms of violence against the oppressed. In CRT, remember, there is no truth or objectivity; there are merely narratives. So, yes, 2 + 2 = 5, and math is inherently a function of whiteness. And what racist is going to deny this?

  • You need to read between the lines: "The Last Stop Before Thermopylae" by Max Morton, American Greatness (h/t Vox Popoli). Morton warns that we live in what has essentially become a police state, and that "We have a choice: submit or fight." He advises that we fight back by creating a movement with three main arms: (i) a political arm that "delivers the message, including the movement’s narrative, demands, and political action decisions," and has overall control and direction; (ii) an action arm that organizes marches and protests; and (iii) and a support arm that "recruits members, conducts intelligence, and counterintelligence operations (opposition research, protecting informants and provocateurs), provides logistical support to operations (secure transportation, lodging, supply chains, etc.), and runs legal defense...." Vox Day is critical of the article because he sees it as describing a political movement that only seeks votes. Day is wrong. What Morton is outlining is the basic structure of an insurgency movement much as described in F.O. Miksche's book, Secret Forces: The Technique of Underground Movements. My fear is that Morton's suggestion will not garner much interest among conservatives because underground movements run counter to their general "live and let live" attitude and natural inclination to be open and honest; and because there may not be enough time. The Frankfort School came to the United States in the 1930s, but their ideological CRT descendants seem to have only cemented their control during the past couple of decades. That is approximately 80 years.
  • "The Great Purge Ahead"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. After discussing Stalin's Great Purge starting 1936, John continues:
    Of course, there haven’t been executions in the United States.  However, Obama purged 197 high-level officers in the first five years of his administration.  That’s quite close to the Stalin numbers, and perhaps even greater when you consider that the military in 2000s America is far smaller than in late 1930s Russia.

    The purge has lately increased.  The current SecDef has made it clear:  “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

    Just let that sink in.  The current Secretary of Defense has stated that he thinks that the biggest enemies of the United States are in the military, right now.  Today.  The leadership of the military has already been purged.  Now?  The rank and file is in the process of being purged.  Anyone not actively supporting the Leftist agenda will be drummed out.

* * *

    The idea is to scare Americans about the Purge, to scare them about their place in society.  If the State and the Media can scare Americans like that, they can achieve their ultimate goal:  to make them be quiet.

VIDEO: "Long Range Shooting: How to "Ambush" Moving Targets with Scott Satterlee"--Tactical Hyve (4 min.)

Miscellany: 

  • "The Post-Truth Era*" by Marcus Wynne. Discussing the impact of "deep fake" videos and recordings. An excerpt:
    Essentially now and going forward, the average person ... will be UNABLE to determine whether an image, a video, a sound track is genuine (that is a recording of an event that actually took place) or a highly sophisticated fake generated on a laptop.

    So what might happen if a YouTube video appeared and was linked to Twitter, and it showed a major political leader expressing racist or politically incorrect views? What if that happened right before that politician’s election? What if it was even more hard core? Sexual abuse, domestic violence? What if a video of police officers expressing racist views appeared right before a controversial trial, with the officers clearly identified? Or if a public announcement came over the Emergency Management Channels that a nuclear attack was underway, along with accompanying footage?

    It’s a new generation of enabler in narrative warfare, disinformation and influence operations.
  • And something more to think about: "More Super-Soldiers…" by Marcus Wynne. The Nazis, North Koreans, and others have looked at breading super-soldiers: a multi-generational project at best. Genetic engineering, gene therapy, and nanotechnology opens the possibility of doing this in one generation ... or less. Wynne explores some of the ethical and practical implications of this, as well as the fact that some nations (China) aren't bothering to ask these questions. Although "retirement" of such super-soldiers in those countries may be quite lethal. Or maybe such super soldiers won't be able to be controlled and we wind up with someone like Khan Noonien Singh.
    "U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted human testing on members of the People's Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities," wrote then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a December 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "China Is National Security Threat No. 1."

    It is not clear how far Chinese military researchers have gone. They are, however, advocating use of the CRISPR gene-editing tool to enhance human capabilities, and the Communist Party's Central Military Commission is "supporting research in human performance enhancement and 'new concept' biotechnology."

    The People's Liberation Army has gone all-in on gene editing of humans. As leading analysts Elsa Kania and Wilson VornDick report, there are "striking parallels in themes repeated by a number of PLA scholars and scientists from influential institutions."

    All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain "biological dominance." "There are," as Ratcliffe noted, "no ethical boundaries to Beijing's pursuit of power."

The article also notes that the Chinese have been experimenting with ways to make apes more intelligent, and create chimeras.  

  • In a similar vein: "How Google's hot air balloon surprised its creators"--BBC. Essentially Google researchers for Google's now-defunct Project Loon venture, which aimed to bring internet access to remote areas via the balloons, were puzzled by an algorithm designed to steer an unmanned hot air balloon all the way from Puerto Rico to Peru. When testing the algorithm, rather than following the most direct path, the AI would steer the balloon off course slightly, requiring frequent manual course corrections. Analyzing the data later, the researchers realized that the AI had independently discovered the principle of tacking against the wind: "steering a vessel into the wind and then angling outward again so that progress in a zig-zag, roughly in the desired direction, can still be made."
  • How the government lies about inflation: "What You Can Learn About Economics From The Big Mac"--Wilder Wealthy & Wise. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a "basket" of goods which price is tracked by the government and used as a measure of inflation, but its meaningfulness has been questions. John Wilder notes that the price of a Big Mac has been used a measure of recording inflation and purchasing power because the ingredients, labor and equipment to produce them is fairly uniform the world over, and has been for a significant period of time. He notes that if a Big Mac was priced per the CPI it would have cost just $2 in 2016. It instead cost $5.06. 
  • This seemed pretty straightforward until I came across a strange bit of information in a second article: "Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee says Saudi crown prince 'should be punished without delay' after US intelligence report accused MBS of ordering the killing"--Daily Mail. If you don't remember the details, Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, is alleged to have had Kashoggi--a Washington Post reporter and general manager and editor-in-chief of Al-Arab News Channel --supposedly killed for pieces he had written that were critical of MBS and war in Yemen.
    [Khashoggi's fiancee Hatice] Cengiz, a Turkish citizen, was waiting for Khashoggi outside when he made his fateful trip to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. 

    He had gone to the consulate to pick up paperwork relating to their planned marriage, but once inside he was confronted and killed by Saudi operatives. 

    Khashoggi had once been close to the Saudi royal family but before his death had written critical pieces in the Washington Post about MBS and his policies.  

    The crown prince came under worldwide suspicion over Khashoggi's death and a UN investigator's report in 2019 said there was credible evidence of his involvement. 

    Now, the US has released its four-page report saying: 'We assess that [MBS] approved an operation... to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi'.  
 
The article adds:

    The report adds that the suspected 15-man hit squad included seven members of MBS's personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force. 

    These bodyguards had previously taken part in 'dissident suppression operations' both inside and outside Saudi Arabia, Washington claims. 

    'The crown prince viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him,' the report says.  

What we are to take away from this is that MBS was simply another corrupt tyrant taking out a particularly shrill critic of his rule. But is that all? I don't know, but I came across an interesting comment in an article at Reason, "The All-American Arms Dealer", about former CIA officer Samuel Cummings who made billions as an arms dealer, with his center of operations conveniently located in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, right across from Washington, D.C. Deep in the article was this interesting paragraph:

By the 1980s, the intrigue surrounding the Cold War's many proxy conflicts had made arms dealers figures of notable interest even in popular culture: The 1983 Chevy Chase comedy Deal of the Century was a satirical take on the arms trade, and the band Queen even wrote a song, "Khashoggi's Ship," about partying on the yacht of notorious Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. (Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, notoriously dismembered in a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018, was Adnan's nephew.)

Interestingly, Jamal fled Saudi Arabia for the United States only a couple months after his uncle died. He also had at one time worked for Saudi intelligence. Strangely, his supposedly critical articles of MBS were articles calling for greater rights for women in Saudi society and for the government to crack down on Wahhabi extremists--something that MBS had been doing. Thus, it seems unlikely that MBS would have had killed someone for urging the same types of reforms that MBS was trying to implement. It is worth considering whether Jamal was involved with his Uncle's international machinations and was killed because he was involved in some deeper political or terrorist plot that made him a clear and present danger to Saudi Arabia. Did Jamal inherit some of his father's Iranian contacts (or make his own) and/or try to help Yemen rebels obtain weapons?

  • I've posted links to articles and research showing that greater diversity leads to lesser social capital, mostly because lower societal trust. (See, e.g., "Bowling With Our Own" at City Journal, discussing research by Robert Putnam). In "Crime In The Hood" at La Griffe du Lion, the author uses mathematical models to predict the role of greater diversity on crime. The author observes the following about comparative criminality:
   The data reveal two causes of white victimization by blacks. First, a black is 3 times more likely than a white to commit violent crime. However, as a neighborhood turns black, this factor could increase black-on-white violence at most by a factor of 3, and then only when a neighborhood is virtually all black. The observed level of white victimization is much too high to blame on general tendencies of blacks to be violent. A more important reason is simply that blacks prefer white victims.  

   The best and most complete evidence comes from the Justice Department. Its annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) canvasses a representative sample of about 80,000 Americans, from roughly 43,000 households. From this survey, a picture of crime is painted by its victims. The last full report of the NCVS was issued in 1994. From it we learn that blacks committed 1,600,951 violent crimes against whites. In the same year, whites committed 165,345 such offenses against blacks. Despite being only 13 percent of the population, blacks committed more than 90 percent of the violent interracial crime. Less than 15 percent of these had robbery as a motive. The rest were assaults and rapes.  

   The asymmetry of interracial crime goes still deeper. More than half the violence committed by blacks is directed against whites, 57 percent in 1994. Less than 3 percent of the violence committed by whites is directed against blacks. Population and NCVS statistics reveal that in 1994 a black was 64 times more likely to attack a white than vice versa. In the city, the races live mostly apart from one another, so that the most convenient victims of thugs are others of the same race. Only a hunter's mentality could account for the data. Given a choice, a black thug will select a white victim. Ironically, so will a white thug.  

The author runs through the model, and you can see the math and graphs for yourself if you with. But this is the conclusion:

   We have modeled violent victimization of whites in a racially mixed neighborhood. Our model is based on data collected by the Justice Department and reported in the NCVS. It paints a bleak picture for whites. As a neighborhood turns black, violent victimization of its white residents begins immediately. At first the risk is small, not much different from its previous all-white level. However, by the time the neighborhood reaches the half-black point, every white family of four has better than a one in three chance of being victimized within a year. Two factors account for black-on-white violence. 1) Blacks are 3 times more likely to commit violent crime than whites, and 2) black thugs prefer white victims, selecting them 64 times more than white thugs choose black victims. Most of the risk faced by whites, results from the predilection of black thugs to prey upon whites. As a neighborhood becomes overwhelmingly black, the risk curve for whites rises to ominous heights. In the last stages of transformation, the likelihood of a white being victimized within a year becomes a virtual certainty.

The Z-Man looked at the foregoing conclusions and data generated from the modeling, and had this say about white-flight:

    What the numbers reveal is that as the percentage of black residents in a city increases, the white victimization rates begin to climb. At about 20% black population, the white victimization rate climbs rapidly. Blacks commit crimes against whites in this analysis at 64 times the rate of whites committing crimes against blacks. Other studies have found different rates, but it is axiomatic that black crime is vastly higher than white crime and it is axiomatic that blacks prefer white victims more than whites prefer blacks.

    Now, it is not somewhat axiomatic, but a universal truth that when Progressives talk about diversity, they mean blacks. Therefore, we can now put the upper bound on diversity as 20% of the population being black. Any more than that and white crime victimization begins to soar and awareness of it begins to soar. This sets off a chain reaction known as white flight. Baltimore is a great example. Once its black population crossed the 25% level, it began a rapid decline into chaos.

    Smoked monkeys, turtle heads, whole bats — at the bushmeat market in Mbandaka in the north of the Democratic Republic of Congo, you can find quite a few exotic types of meat. Bushmeat is one of the most important sources of protein for many Congolese. But it has a dangerous aftertaste.

    Whether bird flu, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, or COVID-19,  many diseases are zoonotic, meaning they can be transmitted from animals to humans. 

    Zoonotic diseases account for about 75% of emerging diseases currently affecting humans. They also include yellow fever, various forms of influenza, rabies, and Lyme disease. Many of these diseases can be traced back to the consumption of bushmeat.

In fact, per the article, "[a]ccording to the Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network (GIDEON), there were nearly 1,000 exceptionally severe outbreaks of zoonotic diseases between 1980 and 1985. In the period 2005 to 2010, there were almost three times as many." Ironically, the risk is increasing partly from increasing affluence. That is, the popularity of bushmeat is increasing because of a desire of Africans to eat more like their ancestors, or the belief that bushmeat is healthier. 

  • "The coming crash as men and women go their own way" by Larry Kummer, Fabius Maximus. This article covers the general information of woman wanting it all, including pushing marriage off later and later so they (the women) can party, sleep around, and otherwise avoid responsibility, but still expecting men to want to marry them with all is said and done. Kummer explains, however, that the time has come where men need women like a fish needs a bicycle:

    Cheap booze. Cheap drugs (prices will fall with legalization). Sports. Video games. Masturbation, hook-ups, and eventually — sexbots. They add up to men learning to lead easy lives without marriage. The next decade might see a collapse in the number of marriages if more men see it as unnecessary or even a bad deal for them.

    So the push-back begins. Women  going their own way is progress. Men going their own way are “peter pans”, refusing to “grow up”, living in “perpetual adolescence.” The Wise and Good advise them to join the rat race. As in this video, one of the dumbest I have ever seen.

    This instructional video gives two reasons for men to get married. First, to get respect. [But] The roles of husband and father have not been held in widespread respect in America for generations. TV shows, films, and commercials portray them as buffoons and butt-monkeys, instructed in knowledge and morality by their wives and children.

    Second, for all the benefits. But all the benefits are to women, children and society. The logic is the same as that of converting wild mustangs into gelded plow horses. Their productivity skyrockets, but is the horse better off?

    This will not convince men to marry, risking divorce and a decade or two of child support.

He foresees a social disaster, including pure destabilizing social change, the full results which are as yet unknowable. I'm not so sure it is unknowable. If you want to see a matriarchy in action, you need only look to the inner city. 

    Europe’s leaders did not realize that opening the gates brought not just guest workers, but also their culture. Sometimes — often — the cultures of newcomers contained misogynistic norms incompatible with the modern notions of women’s rights that had made rapid progress in Europe from the 1960s on. Suddenly, Europeans were confronted with the unfamiliar: traditional practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and honor violence. 

* * *

    Multiculturalism was sacrosanct. The consensus among the leadership of both the center-left and the center-right was that drawing attention to the mistreatment of women and girls in immigrant communities would only stigmatize immigrants, which in turn would impede their integration. If many women in these immigrant communities became collateral damage, it was lamentable but unavoidable. There were other, bigger issues and events demanding the political class’s urgent attention: economic downturns, the European integration process and so on.

* * *

    Many migrants, especially those from Muslim-majority countries, brought with them a different relationship between men and women. Women unaccompanied by a male guardian could be seen as prey: if a girl is left unaccompanied or unveiled, it means no one cares to protect her.

    Europeans were at first ignorant of all this and later in denial about it. Almost no one considered the possibility that imported misogyny would one day come for European women too.

    My new book, Prey, documents the wave of sexual harassment, assault and rape that followed the surge in immigration that occurred in the wake of the Arab revolutions and reached a peak in 2015 and 2016. Politicians and the mainstream media have done their best to downplay this post-2015 wave of harassment or assault, leaving populists and far-right-wing groups to exploit it (and to exaggerate it) for electoral advantage.

    There is also a class dimension to the lack of open discussion. Much of the sexual harassment and many of the assaults that I examine didn’t happen to women who were part of the #MeToo movement or had a prominent cultural voice, but to those who were stuck in the working-class neighborhoods where almost all immigrants settle.

Ali is an immigrant and, so, even recognizing the problems of non-homogenous societies, does not want immigration to end. Her solution is to double down on stupid efforts to assimilate immigrants. 

    The Scandinavian nation has stripped 94 Syrian refugees of their residency permits after it determined Damascus and the surrounding area as being safe.

    Migrants will be sent to deportation camps, but will not be forced to leave. But rights groups say the government is trying to give migrants no other option than to return to Syria on their own accord.

The article adds: "Denmark's ruling centre-Left Social Democratic Party has taken a fierce anti-immigration stance in an effort to fend off challenges from parties on the Right." 
    Pope Francis has warned that mankind is facing a second great flood caused by climate change unless leaders act to fix corruption and injustice.

    The 84-year-old said that, in the story of the great flood in the Bible, God used his wrath to punish injustice and 'clean up' the world.

    He then added that humanity is facing another 'great deluge, perhaps due to a rise in temperature and the melting of glaciers.

That isn't how it works. If the ice caps continue to melt, the release of fresh water into the oceans (particularly from the Beaufort Gyre into the Atlantic) it will disrupt ocean currents leading to the shut down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) resulting in colder temperatures and possibly a new period of glaciation. The Great Flood of Noah required something like a global crustal slip which is not something that would arise from global warming. 

Amazon is headquartered in Seattle, and so there is little question that the Seattle law applies to it with full force. In the words of the attorney retained by Mind Matters News, “under the ordinance… any individual or business entity who is allegedly harmed by an unfair contracting practice by Amazon most likely would have a cause of action in a court of law against Amazon.” 

    New UC Riverside research shows soybean oil not only leads to obesity and diabetes, but could also affect neurological conditions like autism, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety, and depression. 
 
    Used for fast food frying, added to packaged foods, and fed to livestock, soybean oil is by far the most widely produced and consumed edible oil in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In all likelihood, it is not healthy for humans.

      at

      2 comments:

      1. John WilderMarch 4, 2021 at 9:05 PM

        "Dr. Seuss" was a hard Leftist. Eventually they'll erase all of their own.

        ReplyDelete
        Replies
        1. DocentMarch 5, 2021 at 9:55 AM

          Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka, Dr. Seuss) was of Jewish descent, so it is just another example of the anti-Semitism inherent in the Left.

          Delete