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Wednesday, September 8, 2021

The Docent's Memo (9/8/2021)

 

VIDEO: "Not Just for Revolvers: The Low Thumb Grip - Gun Guys Ep. 42 with Massad Ayoob and Bill Wilson" (13 min.). Ayoob discusses the retention advantages of using a low thumb grip when shooting a semi-auto single handed.

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • "Critical Space: How to Effectively Shoot at Close Range"--Blue Sheepdog. The author begins by noting that, unlike the military which seeks to increase the distance between the soldier and the enemy, the police officer and the civilian will likely need to deploy a weapon at close distances--perhaps even contact distance--to an assailant. 

    Open hand skills are necessary even if shooting is reasonable based on the circumstances at hand. At extreme close quarters, it is likely you will have to “create” the space needed to deploy the firearm. A gun will only be useful if you have the time to use it without deflection – time = distance, distance = time and time = win! The draw stroke should be the same physical action, regard- less of the distance to the threat or the position in which one might find himself (or herself). Keep in mind that a fast draw is not spastic looking muscle manipulation; it is an exercise in lack of unnecessary motion. While any number of body locations can be used to carry/conceal a handgun, strong side belt mounted carry will always be the most physiologically efficient as the gun is mounted on the same side as the shoulder, arm, elbow and hand which will draw and drive it to the threat.

    Carefully consider the physical action required to draw a handgun. The shoulder rotates, the elbow folds and the hand travels to the handgun, wrapping around it in a solid shooting grip which must not vary from the moment it is drawn until it is returned to the holster. It should also be understood that this must take no more than two seconds – regardless of what position the body is in. Also consider that the shooter might be involved in intense hand-to-hand combat as the draw occurs which makes me wonder why anyone would want to place their bullet launching lifeline anywhere other than their strong side? In close confines, reaching across the body to a shoulder or cross draw holster places the arm in a position where it can be easily fouled by an attacker. Also, the gun is pointed in a direction which is potentially more accessible to the attacker than the wearer.

The author discusses different positions on the waist to carry a pistol and some special considerations for drawing from each. He then continues:

    To draw the gun, pull it up until the arm will not fold anymore, but without bending the upper torso to the side. This elevation is easy to recreate, making it consistent regardless of whether you are standing, sitting or supine. If lying on your back or stomach, you will likely have to rotate your upper body off the ground to gain access which is a good reason to have a strong core. Let’s be honest, fight- ing is a physical activity, so try to stay in shape. Once the gun is out of the holster and drawn to a position next to the rib cage, the muzzle will need to be directed towards the target. There are two ways to do this consistently: immediately turn the muzzle towards the target or rotate the elbow down.

    While rotating the muzzle gets the gun directed straight forward quickly, it also “unlocks” the wrist for many people. I prefer to rotate the elbow down while keeping the wrist locked. This not only gets the gun into a weapon retention position, it also keeps the wrist locked while allowing the shooter to fire anywhere along the arc the muzzle travels, thus “zippering” a close attacker, if needed.

    After studying five years’ worth of data, researchers observed that force was applied on 10,718 subjects, of which 3,322 were believed to be in an emotional crisis. Of these 3,322 subjects, 197 presented enough features to conclude they were experiencing probable ExDS.

    In cases involving probable ExDS (six or more features of ExD), researchers observed that almost half of the encounters involved more than one use of force intervention.

    Even after controlling for other risk factors (i.e., perceived drug and alcohol use, violent behavior, a ground struggle, and perceived weapons), researchers reported: “the odds that more force was applied to probable cases of ExDS increased by a factor of almost four.”

    Researchers also noted a nearly 400% increase in the odds that a use of force intervention would be ineffective in cases involving probable ExDS. By comparison, subjects perceived to be under the influence of drugs increased the odds that a use of force would be ineffective by only 44%.

    When controlling for other risk factors, researchers actually observed a 28% decrease in the odds of suspect injury during encounters involving probable ExDS. However, the odds that an officer would be injured increased by 57%. It should be noted that when other risk factors (i.e., perceived drug and alcohol use, violent behavior, a ground struggle, and perceived weapons) were not controlled for, probable ExDS increased the odds of officer injury by almost two and half times.


VIDEO: "How to Cluster Model Rocket Motors with Success"--Apogee Components (18 min.)

Prepping/Survival:

    There’s no doubt that the best thing to do when you receive a spider bite is to seek professional medical attention, but there may be situations where you can’t have access to a doctor.

    In a pinch, you can do some initial things to manage pain and swelling and slow the spread of poison before it causes too much damage.

  1. Locate the wound and clean it well with antiseptic solution. You want to kill any bacteria in the bite that could cause an infection.
  2. Use rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide, and flush the wound.
  3. Apply a topical antibiotic ointment and wound dressing if needed.
  4. If you’re experiencing swelling and pain take Ibuprofen or Tylenol for relief, but make sure you let your doctor know.
  5. Benzocaine or lidocaine spray can help temporarily numb the area and relieve pain if it’s too intense.
  6. Apply a cool compress to reduce swelling, but keep the wound sterile.
  7. If the bite is on a limb, elevate the extremity to control blood pressure.

And some things to avoid or not do:

  1. High Activity. As you work up a sweat, your heart pumps faster, elevating your blood pressure and circulating poison through your body. Sit tight and let someone else take care of you.
  2. Avoid tourniquets. Many people think they should apply one in the hopes of helping to isolate the poison. Don’t do this as it can make things worse by limiting blood flow, causing weakness, and increasing pressure.
  3. Removing the poison. Attempting to remove the poison with suction devices, or even by cutting out the affected tissue, can not only cause further damage and infection but can even spread the poison to the person trying to help.
  4. Steroid creams. While antibiotic creams can definitely help treat a spider bite, make sure that you’re not using any steroid creams, facilitating a faster spread of infection.
  5. Heat. This will only create more swelling, increase blood pressure, and facilitate the spread of poison.

  • "How to Get Started with Prepping"--Apartment Prepper. The article has a short self-assessment to see where you are; how to involve your partner; a link to another article on storage tips; a short discussion on finances and putting away extra cash; and some tips on water and food, hygiene supplies and first aid kits, and supplies to help you through a power outage.
  • "3 Methods to Remove Heavy Metals From Water" by Tom Marlowe, The Survivalist Blog. This is going to be a bigger issue than most people think. The most obvious place heavy metals will show up is water in and around old time mines, especially if river or lake beds get disturbed and allow the metals to churn up. An example of this is Lake Coeur d'Alene in Northern Idaho, an area popular with preppers and survivalists. With over a century of mining upstream in the Silver Valley, there are prodigious amounts of heavy metals (particularly cyanide) in the lake bed. Nothing to worry about unless the bed is stirred up such as could happen after an earthquake. Similarly, it is not unknown for pristine mountain streams to run through mineral deposits resulting in dangerous levels of heavy metals, even if there has been no human development. What? You thought only humans caused pollution? 

    Cities--particularly old cities--can also present dangers for heavy metals due to extensive use in the past of leaded gasoline, lead paint, lead pipes, commercial and industrial pollution, and so on. Something to think about if the grid goes down and you are scavenging for water. 

    In any event, this article discusses in some detail the health impacts of ingesting heavy metals, the different ways water can become contaminated with heavy metals, and three methods for removing heavy metals: Cilantro (yes, you read that right), reverse osmosis filters, and distillation. The article relates that "cilantro contains a chelating agent that can bind and remove heavy metal particles. In the body, this allows them to be passed out with other wastes. In water the heavy metal will bind to the cilantro to be carried away."


VIDEO: "The FINAL TABOO of WORLD WAR II : The RAPE OF BERLIN"--Black Pigeon Speaks (15 min.)
The War Against US:
A year and a half after the arrival of Virus, some may have started wondering why the usually unscrupulous ruling elites decided to freeze the global profit-making machine in the face of a pathogen that targets almost exclusively the unproductive (over 80s). Why all the humanitarian zeal? Cui bono? Only those who are unfamiliar with the wondrous adventures of GloboCap can delude themselves into thinking that the system chose to shut down out of compassion. Let us be clear from the start: the big predators of oil, arms, and vaccines could not care less about humanity.

The author goes on to note that "[i]n pre-Covid times, the world economy was on the verge of another colossal meltdown." And he provides evidence to back up his claim. Vighi continues:

Joining the dots is a simple enough exercise. If we do so, we might see a well-defined narrative outline emerge, whose succinct summary reads as follows: lockdowns and the global suspension of economic transactions were intended to 1) Allow the Fed to flood the ailing financial markets with freshly printed money while deferring hyperinflation; and 2) Introduce mass vaccination programmes and health passports as pillars of a neo-feudal regime of capitalist accumulation. As we shall see, the two aims merge into one.

So:

    In financial markets powered by cheap loans, any increase in interest rates is potentially cataclysmic for banks, hedge funds, pension funds and the entire government bond market, because the cost of borrowing increases and liquidity dries up. This is what happened with the ‘repocalypse’ of September 2019: interest rates spiked to 10.5% in a matter of hours, panic broke out affecting futures, options, currencies, and other markets where traders bet by borrowing from repos. The only way to defuse the contagion was by throwing as much liquidity as necessary into the system – like helicopters dropping thousands of gallons of water on a wildfire. Between September 2019 and March 2020, the Fed injected more than $9 trillion into the banking system, equivalent to more than 40% of US GDP.

    The mainstream narrative should therefore be reversed: the stock market did not collapse (in March 2020) because lockdowns had to be imposed; rather, lockdowns had to be imposed because financial markets were collapsing. With lockdowns came the suspension of business transactions, which drained the demand for credit and stopped the contagion. In other words, restructuring the financial architecture through extraordinary monetary policy was contingent on the economy’s engine being turned off. Had the enormous mass of liquidity pumped into the financial sector reached transactions on the ground, a monetary tsunami with catastrophic consequences would have been unleashed.

He continues:

     If we ‘follow the money’, we will see that the economic blockade deviously attributed to Virus has achieved far from negligible results, not only in terms of social engineering, but also of financial predation. I will quickly highlight four of them.

    1) As anticipated, it has allowed the Fed to reorganise the financial sector by printing a continuous stream of billions of dollars out of thin air; 2) It has accelerated the extinction of small and medium-sized companies, allowing major groups to monopolise trade flows; 3) It has further depressed labour wages and facilitated significant capital savings through ‘smart working’ (which is particularly smart for those who implement it); 4) It has enabled the growth of e-commerce, the explosion of Big Tech, and the proliferation of the pharma-dollar – which also includes the much disparaged plastic industry, now producing millions of new facemasks and gloves every week, many of which end up in the oceans (to the delight of the ‘green new dealers’). In 2020 alone, the wealth of the planet’s 2,200 or so billionaires grew by $1.9 trillion, an increase without historical precedent. All this thanks to a pathogen so lethal that, according to official data, only 99.8% of the infected survive (see here and here), most of them without experiencing any symptoms.

A lot is this article, so give the whole thing a careful read. 

    Many years ago, our writers here did something that public conservatives of the time thought was too extreme: we treated all Leftists, a spectrum from moderate Democrats through Anarchists and Communists, as the same thing.

    When all people in a varied group share a symbolic belief system, or ideology, it makes sense to see them as degrees of the same thing and not different things. All Leftists are egalitarians, or those who believe in equality.

    Belief of this nature consists of several suppositions:
  1. Once, humans were equal in power, wealth, and social status.
  2. Some dark and evil force intervened, and now we are not equal.
  3. Thus, making us more equal is the only meaningful activity.
  4. When we achieve equality, a new Utopian age of peace will descend.
The basic idea behind equality is pacifism: instead of having children fight over toys, you force them to share, and then everyone has enough and there is no conflict, so Teacher can go back to reading Cosmopolitan.

    It behaves, like most pathologies, like an addiction. That is, it makes people feel good for awhile, but then more is needed. This sets up a destructive cycle which we might call The Equality Cycle:
  1. We swear allegiance to the symbol = and reject the ≠ symbol.
  2. We see equality as a middle point between the weakest and strongest. Since those who are less-than-equal right now cannot raise themselves up, we must take from the more-than-equal (strong) to give to the less-than-equal (weak).
  3. This did not work; we now must either:
    1. Accept that equality is not real, or
    2. Find something to blame for the failure of equality. Therefore, we double down and apply more equality.
  4. Repeat until the group (friends, organization, committee, society) collapses.
    Like an infection, Leftism never gives ground; it only expands, until it covers everything.

    If one starts out as the most moderate libertarian Democrat possible, the trap has already closed, sending that person down the path toward Full Communism. Once you agree that equality is the goal, you only differ in terms of method.

    When the moderate methods fail, out come the more serious ones, starting with market socialism, where you tax the wealthy half to provide for the rest. Then after that, socialism. When that fails, full-blown Communism.

Read the whole thing.

VIDEO: "The 'Great' Police Raid: Government unleashes terror campaign targeting journalists in Australia"--Aussie Cossack (34 min.). This guy's apartment gets raided by police ostensibly to look for firearms or ammunition, but, the author claims, is part of a practice to intimidate bloggers and journalists.

COVID-19 News:

    Researchers from Germany have conducted the world’s first-ever postmortem study on a corpse that prior to death had been “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19). They found that every single organ of the now-deceased person’s body had become infested with spike proteins due to the jab.

    About one month prior to his death, the 86-year-old man had received his first dose of a Fauci Flu shot. He later became infected with Chinese Germs and had to be rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

    It was already too late, though. The man’s body was overtaken by Trump Vaccine spike proteins that ate up his vital organs and left him for dead. According to reports, the man had received a “lipid nanoparticle-formulated, nucleoside-modified RNA vaccine BNT162b2 in a 30 ?g dose.”

    “On that day and in the following 2 weeks, he presented with no clinical symptoms,” reads a paper about the case that was published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

    “On day 18, he was admitted to hospital for worsening diarrhea. Since he did not present with any clinical signs of COVID-19, isolation in a specific setting did not occur. Laboratory testing revealed hypochromic anemia and increased creatinine serum levels. Antigen test and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for SARS-CoV-2 were negative.”

    It took all the way until day 25 for the man to finally test “positive” for the Fauci Flu. Just one day later, he died in the hospital of kidney and respiratory failure caused by the vaccine.

    Researchers later found that the patient’s entire body had become overrun with high viral RNA loads, also known as vaccine-induced spike proteins. The man was clearly killed by the jab.

    A new study of a series of cases in the Journal of Neurology examines possible links between Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and acute Central Nervous System (CNS) demyelination, including Multiple Sclerosis (MS).

    Demyelinating diseases damage the protective covering surrounding nerve fibers in the brain, optic nerves and spinal cord, causing neurological problems.

    In the study, four patients had the Pfizer vaccine and three had the Moderna vaccine. Within 21 days of the first or second dose, the patients developed active CNS demyelination of the optic nerve, brain, and/or spinal cord leading to "visual loss, dysmetria, gait instability, paresthesias, sphincter disturbance, and limb weakness."

You can read the research paper here. 

VIDEO: "The Battle of Cannae"--The History Guy (11 min.)

Miscellany:
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.

Also, "Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming." If that was the case, then what was the point of doing anything?

    Inflation in the US is turning into stagflation.

    US nonfarm payroll growth of 235,000 in August, the lowest in seven months, was constrained by rising wage costs.

    Average hourly earnings rose by 0.6%, or 7.5% annualized. The most labor-intensive sectors turned in the worst monthly performance.

    Retail employment dropped by 29,000 and leisure and hospitality employment was unchanged for the month.

    Leisure and hospitality jobs had risen by more than 800,000 during the preceding two months.

    The chart of the day shows a clear inverse relationship between the rate of employment growth and the rate of change of average hourly earnings.

    As labor becomes scarcer and more expensive, employers stop hiring, either because they can’t find workers or because they can’t afford them. This is a classic symptom of an inflationary cycle.
    So where does thievery come in? It is in the desire under communism to deny any private ownership of property. Thus there can be no theft of private property and there should be no punishment for something that not only is lawful (in Progressive’s eyes) but is useful in breaking down a system based on private ownership. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn addressed this in his Gulag Archipelago:

    In Old Russia there was just one single formula to be applied to the criminal recidivists: “Make them bow their heads beneath the iron yoke of the law!” And so it was that up to 1914 the thieves did not play the boss either in Russia as a whole or in Russian prisons.

    But the shackles fell and freedom dawned. In the desertion of millions in 1917, and then in the Civil War, all human passions were largely unleashed, and those of the thieves most of all, and they no longer wished to bow their heads beneath the yoke; moreover, they were informed that they didn’t have to. It was found both useful and amusing that they were enemies of private property and therefore a revolutionary force which had to be guided into the mainstream of the proletariat, yes, and this would constitute no special difficulty.

***
    Here is what our laws were like for thirty years—to 1947: For robbery of the state, embezzlement of state funds, a packing case from a warehouse, for three potatoes from a collective farm—ten years! (After 1947 it was as much as twenty!) But robbery of a free person? Suppose they cleaned out an apartment, carting off on a truck everything the family had acquired in a lifetime. If it was not accompanied by murder, then the sentence was up to one year, sometimes six months. The thieves flourished because they were encouraged.

    Through its laws the Stalinist power said to the thieves clearly: Do not steal from me! Steal from private persons! You see, private property is a belch from the past. (But “personally assigned” VIP property is the hope of the future. . . .)

    And the thieves . . . understood. In their intrepid stories and songs, did they go to steal where it was difficult, dangerous, where they could lose their heads? No. Greedy cowards, they pushed their way in where they were encouraged to push their way in—they stripped the clothes from solitary passers-by and stole from unguarded apartments.

    How many citizens who were robbed knew that the police didn’t even bother to look for the criminals, didn’t even set a case in motion, so as not to spoil their record of completed cases—why should they sweat to catch a thief if he would be given only six months, and then be given three months off for good behavior? And anyway, it wasn’t certain that the bandits would even be tried when caught.

    Finally, sentences were bound to be reduced, and of course for habitual criminals especially. Watch out there now, witness in the courtroom! They will all be back soon, and it’ll be a knife in the back of anyone who gave testimony!

    Therefore, if you see someone crawling through a window, or slitting a pocket, or your neighbor’s suitcase being ripped open—shut your eyes! Walk by! You didn’t see anything! That’s how the thieves have trained us—the thieves and our laws!

* * *

    And there is always that sanctifying lofty theory for everything. It was by no means the least significant of our literary figures who determined that the thieves were our allies in the building of Communism. This was set forth in textbooks on Soviet corrective-labor policy (there were such textbooks, they were published!), in dissertations and scientific essays on camp management, and in the most practical way of all—in the regulations on which the high-ranking camp officials were trained. All this flowed from the One-and-Only True Teaching, which explained all the iridescent life of humanity . . . in terms of the class struggle and it alone.

    And here is how it was worked out. Professional criminals can in no sense be equated with capitalist elements (i.e., engineers, students, agronomists, and “nuns”), for the latter are steadfastly hostile to the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the former are only (!) politically unstable! (A professional murderer is only politically unstable!) The lumpenproletarian is not a property owner, and therefore cannot ally himself with the hostile-class elements, but will much more willingly ally himself with the proletariat (you just wait!). That is why in the official terminology of Gulag they are called socially friendly elements. (Tell me who your friends are . . .) That is why the regulations repeated over and over again: Trust the recidivist criminals! That is why through the Cultural and Educational Section a consistent effort was supposed to be made to explain to the thieves the unity of their class interests with those of all the workers, to indoctrinate them in a “suspicious and hostile attitude toward the ‘kulaks’ and counterrevolutionaries,” and the authorities were to “place their hopes in these attitudes”!

***

Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I., Chapter 16, “The Socially Friendly”, The Gulag Archipelago (p. 330-335). Harper Perennial. Kindle Edition.
Democrats oppose restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration, in part because they presume that immigrants and refugees are likely to become future Democratic voters. Amnesty, with inevitable family reunion provisions, will add millions of new voters to the Democratic rolls. The main reason Republicans want increased immigration—particularly illegal immigration—is that it provides cheap and exploitable labor. Democrats have long-term political goals; Republicans seek short-term profits.

And this:

    The Washington political establishment opposes the American public on immigration, and politicians have been notorious for failing to keep their promises on restricting immigration. Donald Trump listened to the people—and the ruling elites rebelled against him for doing so.

    This raises a simple but profound question: Who is sovereign in America? The Washington establishment that has isolated itself from the vox populi, or the American people? America’s Founders created a nation-state based on the consent of the governed. This meant, above all, that the people are sovereign and that the ultimate expression of the people’s sovereignty is, according to the Declaration, the right of revolution. Elections are designed to replace revolution in the ordinary course of politics. But when elections are consistently ignored—or disrupted—the people have the ultimate right “to provide new Guards for their future security.” Surely it cannot come to that.
    We have seen a major sea change since our December 2017 New York Times story that included two Navy videos. The government has acknowledged the reality of UFOs and the fact that they impact national security, and that alone is a major shift. We have more Navy videos of unexplained objects, an official UAP Task Force, and most recently a government report on UAP which was requested by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

    The report stated there is no evidence that UAP are ours, Russian or Chinese. It forced many stove-piped agencies to pool information for the first time and gained further attention for UAP from policymakers, with some calling for open congressional hearings. Even before the June 2021 UAP report, high level officials have made statements as to the need for further investigation of these unexplained objects exhibiting technology beyond what we possess. The taboo against taking the subject seriously is diminishing, and scientists have come out of the woodwork advocating for studies on UAP in Scientific American. These events are unprecedented. And the media can't get enough of UFOs. Recently, for the first time, UFOs were covered by both The New Yorker and the CBS show, "60 Minutes."
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