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Wednesday, November 3, 2021

The Docent's Memo (Nov. 3, 2021)

 

VIDEO: "Why China Switched to the New QBZ-191 Primary Weapon"--Task & Purpose (12 min.)
Another AR clone using a short-stroke gas system.

Firearms/Shooting/Self-Defense:

  • The public comment period on the proposed ATF rules on pistol braces ended on September 8, 2021, and it has been crickets since then as far as I can find. A September 9 article from The Reload indicated that the pistol brace proposed rule received more public comments than any other proposed rule but one, and that the comments were mostly negative toward the proposed rule. If the regulation is enacted, you will have to see if your brace is still "legal" and, if not, remove the brace (or make other modifications to your set-up), or you can convert your pistol to an SBR. 80% Lower's blog talks about the process in its article, "How to Legally Convert an AR Pistol Into an SBR." I think that if the new rule is adopted, I will just remove the brace and go back to the plain pistol buffer tube.
  • "Why Sidecar Style Holsters Suck"--Primer Peak. Sidecar holsters are those pistol holsters that incorporate or are attached to a magazine holster (like a sidecar is attached to a motorcycle). The ones that are the subject of this article are those designed to be worn in the appendix inside-the-waistband (AIWB) position. The author identified four main areas where the holsters are deficient compared to other AIWB holsters: (i) concealment; (ii) durability; (iii) retention (at least as to single piece designs where retention is the same for both the pistol and the magazine); and (iv) comfort.
  • "Why You May Need a .308 AR-style Semi-Auto Rifle" by Caleb, Prepared Gun Owners. The author argues that for preppers/survivalists:
... I think an AR-15 in .223 and a mid-size CCW appropriate handgun like a Glock 19 are the perfect “first guns”, but that an AR-308 may be the perfect “next gun” if you want to do some mid-range to long-range shooting and move up to a heavier caliber for things like hunting.

The points he uses to support his position can be broken into three parts: the cartridge, why a semi-auto instead of a bolt-action, and why the AR platform over other .308 platforms. The main points he raises as to the .308 cartridge are: that it is has better terminal ballistics and barrier penetration than smaller calibers; it can be an accurate cartridge (specifically comparing it against the .30-06); it's popular (i.e., lots of .308 and 7.62 NATO); and it makes a good hunting cartridge and is legal to hunt with in all 50 states. As for having a semi-auto rifle, he contends that the bolt-action platform is obsolete for .308 "[b]ecause a semi-auto .308 is so much more versatile than a bolt-action .308 if we’re talking about self-defense or grid-down, SHTF type situations …," and, properly set-up, can be very versatile:

Even if all you had was ONE AR-308 rifle, then that one rifle could be put into use just like an AR-15 (at CQB distances, mid-range, large volume of suppressive fire, etc) and used for long-range “sniping” type roles too (a properly setup, quality AR-308 should easily produce MOA groups).  

    Finally, as to why the AR over other platforms (e.g., FN-FAL, G3/Cetme, M14/M1A, or SCAR17) he raises four points: (i) if you have an AR-15, an AR-10 allows for a common manual of arms; (ii) the AR system has superior ergonomics; (iii) with the exception of the SCAR, it is much easier to mount an optic on an AR than on the other platforms; and (iv) the popularity of the AR308 platforms is such that spare parts for it are far more easily found than for the other platforms.

    While I can pick at a couple of the points he has raised (for instance, the accuracy of the .308 over the .30-06 is based on data from the 1960's which modern tests with modern firearms have not been able to replicate; and the wounding effect of FMJ .308 is less than FMJ 5.56 at distances inside of 150 yards or so), I think he is pretty spot on. 

    Flash forward to the 21st century when virtually every police department in the country issues some sort of semi-auto pistol to their officers. The NYPD, who had allowed officers of a certain tenure to keep their .38 Specials, finally retired those officers and their guns in 2018, ending over 120 years of the .38 wheel gun on patrol in the five boroughs.

    Many law enforcement officers get their only firearms training through whichever academy is attached to their organization, and that academy only teaches new recruits how to use the firearms their department issues. This maximizes the resources that the academy has and ensures that the freshly minted rookies will be highly qualified with whichever model auto pistol, shotgun or rifle they are issued.

    The downside to this is that we now have generations of police patrolling the streets who have never held a revolver and have no idea how to operate one. They often don’t know how to open the cylinder to clear the gun if they run across one in the wild or even check to see if it’s loaded or not.

The author goes on to explain that this problem is not just limited to revolvers, but extends to single-action pistols like the 1911 or DA/SA semi-autos.  

  • "8-Shot Revolver Showdown With S&W, Ruger, and Taurus"--Personal Defense World. Smith & Wesson, Ruger and Taurus each offer models of 8-shot .357 Magnum revolvers. The author of this piece was able to get examples from each of the manufacturers and did a comparison. Surprisingly, he rated the Taurus revolver highly. Part of the reason for this is that the author had problems with the Ruger and S&W models because their cylinders were cut to use moon-clips: the author found it harder to load with the moonclips than a speed loader, and had multiple light primer strikes (probably the result of not using the moon clips and loading the rounds loose). 
    I've long thought that an 8-round .357 would be a good home defense revolver as its increased size and weight would not be an issue, but its increased capacity would be welcome. S&W makes their Performance Center 627 revolver in 2.6-inch, 4-inch, and 5-inch models using the N-frame. They make a 7-round version (the Performance Center Model 686 and Model 686 Plus) which uses the smaller L frame, which might be better for concealed carry.
  • "Bolt-Action Rifles: Push-Feed vs. Controlled-Round-Feed"--American Hunter. Basically, push-feed don't grab the cartridge but simply push it off the top of the magazine and forward into the chamber; while controlled feed (generally represented by Mauser style bolts and actions) involves the extractor holding the base of the cartridge while it is fed into the chamber. The advantages of the former is that it is cheaper to manufacture and, at least in my experience, somewhat smoother to cycle; the latter, however, will hold the cartridge in place even if you should stumble or fall. Thus the reason why the latter was popular with military rifles.
  • "How to Improve the Reliability of AR’s Chambered in 7.62×39"--Guns America Digest. I'll be blunt: I fall into the camp that believe that if you want 7.62x39 performance out of an AR, use .300 Blackout. But the latter option is more expensive than cheap steel cased imported ammo .... The author of this piece mostly looks at the issue as getting a .30 caliber slug out of an AR platform without the recoil and weight of a .308 AR-10 to use for hog hunting. While you can get propriety lowers that will work with standard AK mags and run reliably (e.g., CMMG's Mutant), this article is about improving reliability when using a standard AR lower. A lot of the problems with reliable feeding seem to arise from the magazine: the author recommends C-Products Duramag, writing:
The C-Products Duramag 7.62×39 magazine is uniformly considered the best magazine option for your build. They allow for easy insertion into an AR magwell while flaring out to accommodate the round’s taper and feature an improved follower to facilitate consistent feeding. I exclusively use these and have had zero FTF’s in thousands of rounds. Failures to feed represent probably 95% of the challenge in getting this build up and running and these Duramags run like a clock.  
 
Another issue has to do with light primer strikes due to the hardness of the primers used in the steel cased ammo. The author recommends buying an enhanced 7.62x39 firing pin, which he mentions has become standard with most 7.62x39 bolt carrier groups. Another concern with using steel cased ammo is increased bolt and extractor wear, which the author essentially characterizes as something you will just need to get used to--your extractor and bolt are consumables. 

    Rookie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who loaded the gun that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while being handled by Alec Baldwin, was the subject of numerous complaints on her last movie. 

    Gutierrez-Reed, 24, upset crew members and star Nicolas Cage with her 'dangerous' gun handling on the set of The Old Way, just two months before Rust.  

    Stu Brumbaugh, the key grip on The Old Way, told TheWrap that the young armorer failed to abide by basic gun safety protocols. 

    He said that after Gutierrez-Reed discharged a weapon for the second time in three days without warning, Cage yelled: 'Make an announcement, you just blew my f**king eardrums out!' before reportedly storming off set. 

    Brumbaugh said he told the assistant director on the Montana set that Gutierrez-Reed needed to be fired: 'After the second round I was pissed off. We were moving too fast. She's a rookie.'

Brumbaugh laid part of the blame at the feet of skin-flint producers unwilling to pay to hire more personnel or pay to hire a more experienced armorer. 

    Her claims [of an unsafe set] echo those of other crew members who say the production was unsafe. Most of them have blamed assistant director Dave Halls, who they said has been accused of running unsafe sets in the past. 

    Halls told sheriff's deputies after the shooting that he asked Gutierrez-Reed to show him the gun before he handed it to Baldwin last Thursday. 

    Halls said that he can remember seeing three chambers in the gun that contained dummy bullets, recognizable by a small hole in the side that sets them apart from real bullets. 

    He looked at them, declared the gun 'a cold' weapon then handed it to Baldwin. 

    It was only after the shooting that he asked Gutierrez-Reed to look again inside the chamber. That is when they saw there were five rounds, four of which were dummies and one of which contained the spent casing of a real bullet. 

    Halls admitted to the sheriff that he 'should have checked' all of the rounds but 'didn't.' 

    Others on set described Gutierrez-Reed as having a slap-dash approach to firearms training. 

    An Associated Press report from 2016 determined that from 1990 until the time of publication, at least 43 people died on sets in the U.S. and more than 150 had been left with life-altering injuries.

    Though Hutchins' death is tragic and distressing, film and television prop experts told NPR that injuries or death from prop firearms specifically are exceedingly rare.

    "It is an extremely rare circumstance that anything like this happens. Especially nowadays when there are so many different procedures and policies in place," said Kevin Williams, the prop department supervisor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "This is one of these freak accidents."

But what constitutes exceedingly rare? Given the number of firearms in the United States (estimated to be 400 million), gun deaths are exceedingly rare. A March 2021 Washington Post article claimed that there were nearly 20,000 violent gun deaths in the United States in 2020, and 24,000 suicides using firearms. If you are suicidal, your changes of being killed by a firearm are 0.011% (dividing the number of total deaths by the number of total firearms); and if you are not suicidal, it drops to 0.005%. If we use the population as the divisor, the differences aren't much different (since the population is approximately 330 million): 0.013% if you are suicidal, and 0.006% if you are not suicidal. By comparison, in 2019, 36,096 people died as a result of motor vehicle crashes. On a population basis, your odds of dying from an auto-accident was 0.011%, nearly twice that of the non-suicidal person dying from gun violence; an a per licensed driver basis, that increases to 0.016%. 

    Anyway, back to the article. It later relates:

    Hollywood adheres to Safety Bulletins, written and distributed by the Industry-Wide Labor-Management Safety Committee, for standards on weapon and prop safety, as well as other rules.

    In the first bulletin addressing firearms and the use of blank ammunition, the document notes prominently: "TREAT ALL FIREARMS AS THOUGH THEY ARE LOADED." It goes on to say live ammunition is to never be used nor brought onto a set.

    However, these are recommendations and not binding law.

    "There are a lot of working pieces when it comes to firing guns on set," said Karl Weschta, the vice president of weapons for Independent Studio Services in Los Angeles. ISS provides props and weapons for television and movie productions.

    In addition to safety lessons and practice sessions, actors are told to keep a safe distance from other crew members when handling a prop gun. Filmmakers often use movie magic so it looks as if an actor is pointing a gun directly at another character — when they're actually pointing the weapon at an angle or off-center.

    "It's really rare when a gun is actually directly pointed at someone," Weschta said.

    Those weapons also are usually empty or loaded with blank cartridges. But a blank cartridge shot at close range can still cause serious damage.


VIDEO: "Eating ACORNS 🌰: How to Forage, Store, & Cook Acorns"--Insteading (15 min.)

Prepping/Survival/Outdoors:

  • "How To Build A Disaster Survival Team" by Rich Murphy, Urban Survival Site. Murphy begins by pointing out that while it may seem romantic, trying to survive on your own is probably a recipe for failure and death. Rather, just as with self-defense, you need a team. Of course, you don't want to accept just any Tom, Dick, or Harry onto your team. The author suggests things to look for:
    • Ability to get along with others – Someone who brings strife into the team will eventually end up causing it to split. Better to have people with lesser skills, who can get along with everyone else in the team. 
    • Likeminded about survival – People who aren’t preppers or survivalists on their own aren’t going to be willing to put the effort into helping the team prepare. 
    • Committed to the team – There’s going to be work, and there are going to be joint costs in preparing. People who aren’t willing to contribute aren’t a help; they’re a hindrance. 
    • Proximity – I’ve seen too many survival teams which were scattered all across town. If the people in your team don’t live close together or have a common place they can use as a survival retreat, they aren’t going to be able to help each other out when the time comes. 
The article continues by looking at skills that members of your team will ideally have. Check it out.
  • Is it safe? "Dental Care Post-SHTF" by Tim Makay, Modern Survival Online. The author observes that "[f]ailing to keep your teeth clean and any oral maladies taken care of can eventually lead to excruciating pain and turn life threatening far more quickly than one would think." The bulk of the article deals with learning skills, treatments for a couple common tooth complaints, and supplies to have on hand.
  • More medical stuff: "The SAM Splint"--Blue Collar Prepping. The SAM splint is a moldable splint that comes in various sizes. Some are packed flat, but most are rolled up. The article has links to articles and videos on how to use them. While you can improvise a splint, these will work better. 
  • "The Self-Reliance Manifesto: More Than 350 Resources to Guide You on the Path to Radical Freedom" by Daisy Luther, Organic Prepper. This is a page that you definitely want to bookmark. Luther has put together a list of 350 links on various subjects useful for preppers. And, unlike my own resource page that just lumps everything together, she has broken these down into topics: getting started; general homesteading information; chickens; other fowl; rabbits; sheep; pigs; goats; cows; bees; gardening; composting and building your soil; etc. 
  • How to make TEOTWAWKI spicier!
  • "How To Make Charcloth: A Miracle Material For Catching Sparks And Making Fire"--Survival Common Sense. If you don't know what is charcloth, you probably need to bone up on primitive fire making skills.
  • "Deadly Deer Predators" by Dr. James C Kroll, North American Whitetail Magazine. A look at wolves, coyotes, black bears, mountain lions and bobcats. Kroll has this to say about wolves:

    The most charismatic of deer predators, wolves are the focus of recent controversies regarding elevating them to game animal status. A recent wolf season in Wisconsin even resulted in all-night candlelight vigils by anti-hunters! Yet, wolves probably have been the most significant predator of deer since the Pleistocene.

    Research has shown that wolves are tremendously efficient in killing deer, and packs can have a devastating impact on deer populations. It is my belief that wolves helped develop the tendency of deer to find “sanctuaries” in habitats to avoid detection; a preadaptation to sport hunting.

    Reliable scientific studies support that, where wolves are prevalent, deer can be found only in the interstices of wolf territory boundaries. This is because wolves respect pack boundary lines in an effort to avoid conflict.

    Recently, research in the Yellowstone Country has shown wolves to be a significant predator to mountain lions; seeking out dens and killing the lion cubs. This is an ironic twist to the predation suite discussed to this point.


VIDEO: "One Shepherd: Warrior Advanced Course (WAC)" (30 min.)
Obviously not the whole course, but it gives you a taste of what was taught and some lessons learned.

Decline of Civilization:

    Two thirds of French people think white, European, Christian populations are being 'threatened with extinction' by immigration from Muslim and African countries.

    Sixty per cent of French people said such a scenario will 'definitely' or 'probably' play out in the country when asked by pollsters, who published the results last week.

    The question was posed ahead of next year's election, where Emmanuel Macron is almost certain to face off against one of two right-wing candidates: Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour.

Also:

    The issue of migration and its impact on French identity is set to become a key theme of the upcoming election, as Zemmour - who has yet to declare his candidacy - threatens to usurp Le Pen for the chance to taken on Macron.

    Zemmour - a notorious figure in France for his anti-Islam and anti-migration views that he espouses in essays and on his TV new show - is now polling higher than Le Pen in some opinion polls ahead of voting in April next year.

    Le Pen appears to be leaking support to Zemmour as she tries to move herself towards the centre-ground in an attempt to paint herself as a serious candidate - having lost out to Macron during the second round of voting last time

    By contrast, Zemmour sits openly on the far-right - declaring that suburbs of Paris are being 'colonised' by Muslim migrants with large families that he says will make up the majority of the population by the middle of the century. 

    A Florida school board member chaperoned a group of elementary school children on a field trip to a gay bar, according to photos of the trip she posted to social media. 

    "I was SO honored to be invited to chaperone Wilton Manors Elementary’s field trip to the incredible Rosie’s! The students and I had a fun walk over and learned a lot about our community! A huge thank you to Rosie's Bar and Grill for hosting this special field trip every year!" Broward County School Board member Sarah Leonardi posted on her official school board Facebook page Wednesday. 

In a more civilized time, the board member would have been tarred and feathered before being run out of town on a rail.

    Leonardo, in his talk, cited the book “Learning to Be White: Money, Race and God in America,” which argues that “child abuse, ethnic conflicts, class exploitation, poor self-esteem, and a general feeling of self-contempt … are the wages of whiteness,” according to its description.

    “Whites learn to be white,” Leonardo said, adding that the book’s author, Thandeka, argues “whites are not born white. They have to become white.”

    “They were born human,” he said. “Little by little, they have to be abused into becoming white humans. This abuse is sometimes physical … such as being bullied into whiteness.”

    “But also it’s psychological and cultural,” he added.

    This physical, psychological and cultural abuse can come from parents and guardians, but it also “extends to the white nationhood as a caretaker” and the “white social system,” Leonardo said during his talk.

VIDEO: "I am Torn... What Pfizer did and did not tell us..."--Dr. Hong's Pharmacy Classroom (7 min)

Covid News:

    The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically worsened a nationwide staffing shortage for emergency medical technicians and paramedics bringing longstanding issues — including low federal reimbursement rates and salary constraints — to a head in an industry already dealing with extremely high turnover.

    According to a survey conducted by the American Ambulance Association, the turnover among paramedics and EMTs ranges from 20 to 30 percent annually, resulting in an unsustainable 100 percent turnover every four years. 

    The survey of 258 EMS organizations across the country found that in 2020, nearly a third of the workforce left their ambulance company after less than a year. Eleven percent left within the first three months.

    "I have not heard of any state that feels like they're not in a bit of a crisis mode for first responders, paramedics in particular," said Shawn Baird, the association's president.  

    Baird said staffing shortages have been a "systemic" problem, but COVID-19 hit the pipeline of new recruits hard. Training programs paused or shut down entirely, and the National Registry of EMTs stopped its certification testing.

    Another issue is the pandemic has opened up opportunities for paramedics to work in other health environments, Baird said. Hospitals that were short on nursing staff have hired paramedics to do the job at much higher wages.

    Worried that President Joe Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate for private companies could cause a mass exodus of employees, business groups are pleading with the White House to delay the rule until after the holiday season.

    White House officials at the Office of Management and Budget held dozens of meetings with labor unions, industry lobbyists and private individuals last week as the administration conducts its final review of the mandate, which will require businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure they are vaccinated against Covid or tested weekly for the virus. It is estimated to cover roughly two-thirds of the private sector workforce.

    OMB officials have several meetings lined up Monday and Tuesday with groups representing dentists, trucking companies, staffing companies and realtors, among others.

    The American Trucking Associations, which will meet with the OMB on Tuesday, warned the administration last week that many drivers will likely quit rather than get vaccinated, further disrupting the national supply chain at time when the industry is already short 80,000 drivers.

    The trucking association estimates companies covered by the mandate could lose 37% of drivers through retirements, resignations and workers switching to smaller companies not covered by the requirements.

With large numbers of unemployed, they may aim to misbehave. 

A letter from Lawrence Tabak, the National Institutes of Health’s principal deputy director, to Kentucky congressman James Comer confirms that the NIH funded research at the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] during 2018–2019 that manipulated a bat coronavirus called WIV1. Researchers at the institute grafted spike proteins from other coronaviruses onto WIV1 to see if the modified virus was capable of binding in a mouse that possessed the ACE2 receptors found in humans—the same receptor to which SARS-CoV-2 binds. The modified virus reproduced more rapidly and made infected humanized mice sicker than the unmodified virus.

Also:

    ... Despite intensive efforts over the past two years, no one has found a bat-source population, SARS-CoV-2 circulating in an intermediate species that functioned as a viral conduit between bats and humans, or evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was present anywhere else before it emerged in Wuhan.

    Consider, too, the unique furin cleavage site between the S1 and S2 subunits of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Furin is an enzyme expressed by human cells that separates the spike protein subunits at the cleavage site, enabling the virus to bind more efficiently to human cells and release its genetic material into them. It is an important reason that SARS-CoV-2 is so easily transmissible.

    The furin cleavage site is found nowhere else in the entire genus of SARS-related betacoronaviruses. SARS-CoV-2 is the only one that has it. This fact alone suggests that it did not arise naturally in SARS-CoV-2. In addition, while other, more distant coronaviruses do have furin cleavage sites, the protein components (amino acids) in the SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site are coded for by a unique set of nucleotides in its RNA, not found in the other viruses, making natural recombination between the viruses unlikely.

Indeed, the general’s death “from” COVID—despite his vaccination status—indicates one thing very plainly: the vaccines don’t work. If they did, if they really prevented anyone from contracting the disease, Powell might still be alive while his doctors battled his other ailments. But they don’t, he didn’t, and it’s high time everyone admitted it.

He also answers the question of why the media and elites keep pushing the Covid narrative:

    It might be something, it might be nothing. I suspect it’s this: They like it.

    Without the phantom menace of COVID, they could never have changed election laws, mandated arbitrary and capricious punishment of their enemies, destroyed the Trump administration, wrecked the economy, harmed our national defense, crippled our police department, suborned our legal system, destroyed childhood, instilled fear and obedience, encouraged neighbors to rat each other out, scapegoated those they despise, eliminated the southern border, and moved the nation steadily away from sovereignty and toward the New World Order of the Great Reset, whose motto is: you’ll own nothing and you’ll like it.

    How do you like that? And what are you going to do about it?


VIDEO: "Sun Controls Climate | Part 1 - Upper Atmosphere"--Suspicious Observers (12 min.)

Miscellany:

    It’s a forgotten fact that universities, before the Left’s Long March into dominance of the classrooms and the academic bureaucracy, were very much the work of “Jesus Followers.” Four institutions that began in England in the 7th Century as Cathedral schools, for example, are still open today, the oldest continuously operating classrooms in the world.

    In fact, according to J. Warner Wallace in his new book, “Person of Interest,” the concept of universal education and literacy is rooted in the idea that everybody should know how to read (and thus also write and think, hopefully, logically) in order to understand God’s Word.
    On the occasion of the October 29 visit to the Vatican, the press agencies have spread the news that Joe Biden reported the content of the meeting and said that Francis called him “a good Catholic,” inviting him to “continue to receive Communion.” It is disconcerting that, to date, no clarifying comment has come from the Vatican Press Office. This leaves us to presume that Joe Biden’s words correspond to the truth and that Bergoglio actually spoke them.

    Even if what Biden said corresponds perfectly to the intemperate quips of Jorge Mario Bergoglio – who called a notorious radical abortion activist a “great Italian” – it is evident that such statements represent an unheard of scandal, since they fail to condemn the positions of a political personality who supports abortion, disavow the immutable position of the Magisterium of the Church, and resound as a blatant invitation to commit sacrilege, profaning the Most Holy Eucharist by receiving it in the state of public and manifest sin.
    On October 8, a suicide bomber struck a Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s Kunduz province. The bombing killed more than 70 people and injured over 140 worshippers belonging to the Hazara minority community. Soon after, the Islamic State terror group’s local affiliate in Afghanistan, known Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), claimed responsibility for the heinous attack via an online propaganda statement. ISK identified the bomber as “Muhammad al-Uyghuri,” saying the assault targeted both “rafidites” (a derogatory term used by jihadists to refer to Shiites) and the Taliban government for its purported willingness to deport Uyghurs from Afghanistan in response to requests from China.
 
* * *

    However, the group’s apparent attempt to justify the targeting of the Hazara minority community in Afghanistan through rhetoric about China and Uyghurs is both unusual and perplexing. An analysis of the attack indicates that ISK is potentially considering pivoting its China strategy away from what it was previously assessed to be, moving from a relatively non-provocative posture toward a more hands-on stance. Furthermore, ISK is apparently viewing the Taliban’s stated incentives to deport Uyghur militants as an opportunity to position itself as a new protector of the Uyghurs, with the aim of welcoming disgruntled Uyghur militants into its ranks.

I have a feeling that China is going to have a very bad decade. 

    The crooked Malaysian businessman known as Fat Leonard, who brought down Navy top brass in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the history of the military, has broken his silence in a stunning new podcast where he boasts about plying admirals with booze and prostitutes, and the sweet informant deal he struck with the US government.  

    Francis Glenn Leonard, 57, was arrested after the scandal erupted in 2013. 

    Famous for his towering portliness, he is known widely as Fat Leonard and the scandal - which toppled dozens of Navy officers and implicated commanders and admirals- became known by that nickname. 

    Leonard was arrested in 2013 and pleaded guilty to fraud and bribery after spending years plying the Navy with gifts, cash, trips and prostitutes' in exchange for favorable contracts and secret information. 

    He flipped after his arrest and agreed to testify against the Navy as part of a sweeping prosecution by the Department of Justice's that remains ongoing; seven Navy officers are still awaiting trial and Leonard is the star witness.  

    Despite being told by the government not to talk, Leonard - who has kidney cancer - is revealing how he infilitrated the upper echelons of the Navy in Fat Leonard, a new nine-part podcast by author and journalist Tom Wright, which DailyMail.com has previewed.

    'Everybody was in my pocket. I had them rolling around in my palm. I had the Navy by their balls. I turned my torpedo, my guns against them, because they betrayed me,' Leonard says in one episode.  

    He also revealed that the government had arranged for visas for his whole family, saying: 'Everybody came legally. Uncle Sam knows, everybody knows what I’m doing. My children are my children. 

    'My wellbeing is more important than anyone else… I am their star witness,' Leonard said.  

    Wright shared unreleased episodes with DailyMail.com where Leonard, 'entirely unrepentant', calls the mother of his children a 'prostitute' and reveals that the US government gave his kids visas in order for them to come to the country and be with him. 

    In one episode, he talks proudly about going after Michael Misiewicz, a commander who he supplied with prostitutes in Tokyo in exchange for secret shipping routes to Australia. 

    ‘Misciewicz had value, you know, he was like the number two guy in the scheduling department. 

    'If you look at him, he’s actually a really nice guy, very gentle personality, friendly, great dad to his kids, womanizer...' Leonard said, adding that his number two - New Yorker Edmond Aruffo - 'embedded' him.

    ‘They wanted to have the good life that they could not have. They wanted the fine dining, the fine gifts, hotel rooms, sedans, luxury cars, watches, handbags, fancy meals, alcohol, cigars,' he said.

If this two-bit Malaysian contractor could so thoroughly subvert Naval officers to his bidding, imagine what the Chinese have done. 

    Two foreign female tourists were caught in a crossfire between rival crime groups and shot to death last Thursday in the high-end resort town of Tulum, Mexico. Three other people were also wounded when the firefight broke out in the popular restaurant, La Malquerida, not far from the beach. Of the two women who were killed, one was from Germany and the other India.

    “They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got caught in an exchange of gunfire between competing drug traffickers,” said a high-ranking Mexican police commander, who agreed to speak with The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity.

    “It’s a sad mistake for the victims, but such cases are not rare or unusual anymore [in and around Tulum]. When a firefight breaks out no one is safe,” the commander said.

    A recent shootout at the largest airport in Mexico is tied to numerous layers of the country’s criminal underworld. The target of the assassination attempt, a wealthy restaurateur, has since gone missing.

    The shootout took place on October 15 at the entrance of the Mexico City International Airport when a team of gunmen on motorcycles tried to kill 54-year-old Eduardo Beaven Magaña. His bodyguards managed to fight off the attack by killing one of the gunmen, a 17-year-old known as “El Donovan,” while a second got away. However, in the days after, it was revealed that at least three automobiles and two motorcycles were used in various roles in the attack. The hitmen had been following the businessman for more than a month, authorities revealed.

    After the shooting, Beavan, who owns ritzy restaurants in Mexico City, Tulum, and Cancun, went into hiding. Prior to the attack, he was traveling to the state of Quintana Roo. One of the theories being looked at by authorities involves members of the Romanian Mafia, who have established themselves in the Cancun area.

    Since the attack, authorities in Mexico City arrested members of the Union de Tepito organization (also presumed to be involved) including a man identified as Geovany “Yanik” Martinez or “El Aleman,” a 30-year-old cell leader who collected $2 million pesos for the murder (approximately $98,000 USD). During subsequent statements, El Aleman told authorities that he was involved in kidnapping and extortion for La Union.

    Intelligence obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed that Martinez is one of the top criminal allies of Francisco Javier “El Paco Pacas” Medina, a weapons smuggler linked to La Familia Michoacana. ...

    As attention is focused on a single caravan in Mexico consisting of an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 migrants headed to the U.S. southern border, cartels separately move the equivalent into the states each day.

    The caravans capture significant media attention by design. They are politically organized and seek to use the clout to bring policy changes. The caravan in Chiapas hopes to force Mexico City to discontinue migrant containment efforts and allow unfettered travel to the United States–with the ultimate goal of softening enforcement protocols in the U.S.
    I once lived next door to a guy in Memphis who owned more than a hundred firearms, some of which were strewn around his two-bedroom house and even lying on the kitchen counter. I saw them when he asked me to come over one afternoon to help him move his 700-pound gun safe.  

    Neil, as I'll call him, also kept two large dogs, one of which was a cane corso that was so unpredictable it couldn't be allowed near his two young children. Neil was a nice guy but perpetually anxious and nervous, which in turn made me uneasy about his family's safety. I worried about a gun accident or one of the dogs getting loose and mauling a passerby.  

    The fact is, there are a lot of Neils in America — white guys in a near-constant state of fear about their personal safety. And rather than being merely pitiful, guys like Neil are actually dangerous.  

    They're the hyper-armed neighbors with itchy trigger fingers, who are convinced they'll be the victims of a home invasion; who treat any Black or brown person as an imminent threat; who see foreign terrorists behind every bush; who believe the government is trying to poison them, plant a chip inside them, or take away their hunting rifles; who think that crime is far worse than it is and on the verge of spilling into outright anarchy.  

And from there, Neil becomes his model for all white men who are obnoxious or don't like where the country is heading. If you like his writing, you can read a column he wrote for the Columbus Dispatch in which he states his belief that "Antifa" is made-up, fake news propagated by a conspiracy between Fox News and Donald Trump.
    Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said, “One of our officers who has his handgun out during this struggle has an accidental discharge of his weapon, lightly striking two of our officers.”

    One of the wounded officers was shot in the arm, the second was shot in the shoulder.

    Brown pointed out that only one round was accidentally discharged and it is believed that it went through one officer then struck the second.
    ... The WaPo article also claims that contemporary witches, mediums, and other would-be consorters with false gods and demons strongly support leftist politics. The most prominently mentioned are no surprise to anyone paying attention: child sacrifice, child mutilation, ritual self-mutilation, and sexual abuse. Or, in other words, abortion and LGBT activism. Here’s the Post:

While Bennett mostly does encouraging, how-to media posts, they [sic] also agree with some witches who feel the label obliges practitioners to be politically outspoken, including on issues regarding the environment and the rights of sexual and gender minorities.

Bennett organized a fundraiser with several other occult practitioners running this week to benefit women seeking abortions in Texas, which just passed a highly restrictive law forcing people to pursue the procedure out of state. Bennett and others will hold classes and lectures for a fee, with proceeds going to the Lilith Fund.

    According to Wikipedia, Lilith is “a demonic figure in Judaic mythology, supposedly the primordial she-demon. … Commentators and interpreters often envision the figure of Lilith as a dangerous demon of the night, who is sexually wanton, and who steals babies in the darkness.” The Lilith Fund is a Texas-based organization that pays for abortions. “Through organizing and movement-building, we foster a positive culture around abortion,” the outfit says on its website.

Lilith is translated as "night owl" in the King James Version. 

  • "Letter #100, 2021, Tuesday, August 31: Viganò"--Inside The Vatican. Cardinal Vigano begins by critiquing the response to Covid as the formation of a new religion with its priests (and wizards), believers, and heretics. But then he goes into what is behind all of this:
    As I said earlier, we are faced with a colossal deception, based on lies and fraud.

    This deception starts from the premise that the justifications put forward by the authorities in support of their actions are sincere.

    More simply, the mistake consists in believing that the rulers are honest and in assuming that they do not lie to us.

    So we persist in finding more or less plausible justifications, with the sole purpose of not recognizing that we are the object of a conspiracy planned to the smallest detail.

    And while we try to rationally explain irrational behavior, while we attribute logic to the illogical actions of those who govern us, cognitive dissonance leads us to close our eyes to reality and to believe the most shameless lies.

    We should have understood — I wrote it some time ago — that the Great Reset plan was not the result of the ravings of some “conspiracy theorist” but the crude evidence of a criminal plan, conceived for decades and aimed at establishing a universal dictatorship in which a minority of immeasurably rich and powerful people intends to enslave and subjugate the whole of humanity to the globalist ideology.

    The accusation of “conspiracy theory” could perhaps have made sense when the conspiracy was not yet evident, but today denying what the elite has planned since the 1950s is unjustifiable.

    What Kalergi, the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, Klaus Schwab, Jacques Attali and Bill Gates have been saying since World War II has been published in books and newspapers, commented on and taken up by international bodies and foundations, made up precisely by parties and government majorities.

    The United States of Europe, uncontrolled immigration, the reduction of wages, the cancellation of trade union guarantees, the renunciation of national sovereignty, the single currency, the control of citizens under the pretext of a pandemic, and the reduction of the population through the use of vaccines with new technologies are not recent inventions, but the result of a planned, organized and coordinated action — an action that clearly shows itself perfectly adhering to a single script under a single direction.

    The criminal mens [“mind,” in Latin]

    Once it is understood that the present events have been intended in order to obtain certain results — and consequently to pursue certain interests on behalf of a minority part of humanity, with incalculable harm for the majority — we must also have the honesty to recognize the criminal mens [mind] of the authors of this plan.

    This criminal design also makes us understand the fraud perpetrated by civil authority in presenting certain measures as an unavoidable response to unpredictable events, when the events have been artfully created and magnified with the sole purpose of legitimizing a revolution — which Schwab identifies as the fourth industrial revolution — intended by the elite to the detriment of all humanity.

    The enslavement of authority is on the other hand the result of a process that began even earlier, with the French Revolution, and which made the political class the servant not of God (whose Lordship it disdainfully disregards) nor of the sovereign people (which it despises and uses only to legitimize itself), but of the economic and financial potentates, of the international oligarchy of bankers and usurers, of multinationals and pharmaceutical companies.

    In reality, on closer inspection, all these subjects belong to a small number of well-known very rich families.

    Equal enslavement is also evident in the media: journalists have accepted — without any scruple of conscience — prostituting themselves to the powerful, going so far as to censor the truth and spread shameless lies without even trying to give them the appearance of credibility.

    Up until last year journalists counted the numbers of the “victims” of Covid by presenting anyone who tested positive as terminally ill; today those who die after being vaccinated are always and only taken by a vague “illness,” and even before the post mortem examinations they officially decide that there is no correlation between a person’s death and the administration of the gene serum.

    They twist the truth with impunity when it does not confirm their narrative, bending it to fit their purposes.

    What has been happening for a year and a half had been widely announced, down to the smallest detail, by the creators of the Great Reset themselves; just as we were told the measures that would be adopted.

    On February 17, 1950, testifying before the United States Senate, the well-known banker James Warburg said, “We will have a world government, whether you like it or not. The only question that arises is whether this world government will be established by consensus or by force.”

    Four years later, the Bilderberg Group was born, which has counted among its members characters such as [Italian businessman Gianni] Agnelli, Henry Kissinger, Mario Monti, and the current Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

    In 1991, David Rockefeller wrote: “The world is ready for a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is certainly preferable to the national self-determination practiced in past centuries.” And he added: “We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the ‘right’ global crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order.”

    Today we can affirm that this “right crisis” coincides with the pandemic emergency and with the “lockstep” outlined since 2010 by the Rockefeller Foundation document “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” in which the events we are now witnessing are all anticipated (here).

    In short, they have created a false problem in order to be able to impose population control measures as an apparent solution, cancel small and medium-sized businesses with lockdowns and the green pass to the benefit of a few international groups, demolish education by imposing distance learning, lower the cost of manpower and employees with “smart working,” privatize public health for the benefit of BigPharma, and allow governments to use the state of emergency to legislate in derogation of the law and impose so-called vaccines on the entire population, making citizens traceable in all their movements and either chronically ill or sterile.

    Everything the elite wanted to do, they have done. And what is incomprehensible is that in the face of the evidence of the premeditation of this terrible crime against humanity, which sees the leaders of almost the whole world as accomplices and traitors, there is not a single magistrate who opens a file against them to ascertain the truth and condemn the guilty and complicit.

    Those who disagree are not only censored but pointed out as public enemies, as infectors, as non-persons for whom no rights are recognized.

There is a lot more so be sure to read the whole thing.


VIDEO: "Bohemian Catsody - A Rhapsody Parody Song for Every Cat Queen and King!"(6 min.)

Bright Spots And Things Of Interest:

    The seven-year-old male leopard had fallen into an open well in Beslar village, Maharashtra, Western India.

    A local farmer spotted the big cat paddling frantically to stay afloat and stop itself from drowning.

    He immediately alerted the Forest Department India, and Wildlife SOS - a non-profit charity rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife in distress across India, was also called in. 

    Footage shows the leopard clinging to a pole first before a cage is lowered. The moment the cage is opened the exhausted big cat quickly jumps onto it.

    The leopard was taken to the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre for medical attention after the rescue last week.

    Nikhil Bangar, wildlife veterinary officer from Wildlife SOS, said: 'The animal was exhausted from the ordeal, and will be kept under observation till he is deemed fit for release.'

And it definitely was exhausted. The video shows the cat make a super-human super-feline effort to drag itself into the cage where it just lay obviously too tired to do anything else. These types of stories of humans helping animals are not too infrequent, and it gives me a good feeling to see them. God appointed us stewards over his creation, and so it is nice to see positive interactions between man and beast.

    US wildlife researchers have discovered that two California condors, a critically endangered bird, gave birth without any male genetic DNA.

    The discovery that condors are capable of virgin births - formally called parthenogenesis or asexual reproduction - surprised scientists.

    Virgin births have been recorded in other bird species, as well as lizards, snakes, sharks, rays and other fish.

    Only about 500 California condors remain in the US south-west and Mexico.

    In the 1980s, fewer than two dozen birds remained in the wild, but conservation efforts have boosted their numbers in recent years.

    The peer-reviewed findings from San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance were published this week in the American Genetic Association's Journal of Heredity.
    British and American archaeologists uncovered the prints in soft mud adjoining Alkali Flat, a dry lakebed at White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico.

    Using radiocarbon dating of seed layers above and below the tracks, experts from the U.S. Geological Survey dated the footprints as having been made over a period of at least 2,000 years, according to research published today in the journal Science. 

    The oldest tracks date from around 23,000 years ago, a period that corresponds to the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheets covered much of North America and sea levels were about 400 feet lower than today. 

    For decades it's been generally held that homo sapiens first entered North America between 13,000 and 16,000 years ago — after the melting of the North American ice sheets opened up migration routes and much later than study co-author Sally Reynolds and her colleagues suggest.

    Few archaeologists have claimed reliable evidence for human habitation older than about 16,000 years.

    Additional radiocarbon dates from samples of sediments, animal bones, and charcoal start even earlier — approximately 33,000 years ago — but some critics questioned whether the stone samples were actually made by humans.

    The fossil footprints around an ancient lake in White Sands have been known for some time, but now we have what look to be perfectly respectable C-14 dates. They’re about 22 thousand years old, close to the Last Glacial maximum (LGM) and, as such clearly predate all existing evidence of human settlement of the New World (south of the glaciers, anyhow).

    There were already hints: Amerindian populations in South America, mainly in Amazonia, carry a trace of a different genetic heritage. The existing population closest to that trace are the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, between India and Burma. Other populations such as Australian Aborigines and the inhabitants of New Guinea are also close. There is reason to believe that, until a few thousand years ago, all of Southeast Asia (including the islands) was occupied by related populations, known as Australo-Melanesians.

    Here’s the key insight: the fact that the Andaman-like genetic trace is found in Amazonian Amerindians, but not in North America, suggests that it was picked up from a pre-existing population as the Amerindians expanded into South America. There are other possible scenarios, but it is hard to fit them with certain known facts. For example, we have ancient DNA from a Clovis kid, which is genetically close to modern Amerindians in South America, but does not contain this Andamanese-like trace. Hard to make this scenario work.

    This implies that there was an earlier, less-successful colonization of the New World, one that preceded the Amerindians. One could have predicted this, and I did.

The author goes on to discuss why it would have been difficult for anyone to have migrated from Asia to North America during the LGM, suggesting that the population had crossed even earlier. He notes that, unlike the subsequent Clovis culture, this earlier population did not have weapons capable of killing the large herd animals or their predators; and he suggests methods for obtaining genetic information concerning the population even in the absence of skeletons. 

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2 comments:

  1. John WilderNovember 4, 2021 at 9:37 PM

    If your aircraft carrier is buying supplies from someone named "Fat Leonard" . . . you might be doing things wrong.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DocentNovember 6, 2021 at 3:59 PM

      Wrong from a national security point of view; but if you are looking to spend quality time with hookers that name would seem to denote the right person to seek out. It is probably more common than we would like. When I was serving as a missionary in Japan, my companion and I happened one day to bump into an American who worked for Ford Aerospace that was there to hep the Japanese with a satellite that hadn't reached its right orbit. I don't know what he was thinking, but as he related how intent India was on stealing American space technology, he mentioned that the Japanese were trying to tempt him with women and he was considering it. He immediately backpedaled when he saw our expressions, but I always wondered if he went through with it.

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Bombs & Bants Episode 126

 An irreverent discussion of top news stories including more cash for Ukraine, spoiled brats at Columbia, who is the bigger jackass--Biden o...