Latest Defensive Pistolcraft

Jon Low had published a new Defensive Pistolcraft prior to my leaving on my vacation, but with trying to get things done before I left, and then catching up on some matters after getting back, I'm only just now getting to his post. Before continuing, though, I want to publicly thank him for referencing some of my posts and comments.

    Now, getting to the stories and his comments. First up, it is not infrequent to read accounts of police conducting raids at the wrong addresses. You would think that with multiple officers all being given the correct address and being able to see the incorrect address on the structure being raided that this wouldn't happen, but as I've noted before, raids and police shootings often resemble feeding frenzies. Anyway, Jon has some recommendations for such situations:

    One of those Ring door bells, https://ring.com/doorbell-cameras[,] attached to the front door or the wall next to the front door would have gone a long way to keeping the residents safe.  All of my neighbors have them installed.  You can see and talk to the guys outside without having to open your door.  Generally best to stay away from your front door, as the bad guys can and do shoot through doors.  

     Police are human. They make mistakes. No sense compounding the mistake and getting killed.  The officers might get convicted. The wife might get a big civil settlement. But, the husband is still dead. How could he have avoided getting killed?  

1.  Don't answer the door. Let the police get a warrant. They would not have been able to. Call 911 and tell the dispatcher that there are men claiming to be police at your door trying to make entry.  "Are they really police officers?"  Impersonating a police officer is a common thing.  

2.  Leave via the back door.  Leaving is always a good idea.  Go to a movie theater and see the new "John Wick Chapter 4" movie.  No, as a matter of fact, you don't have to get involved in the drama.  My father (who was a prosecutor, defense attorney, and judge) often said, "You can always walk away."  And it's true!  

3.  Answer the door from your smart phone, using your remote door bell video and audio system.  Lot's of them on the market, cheap as dirt.  

[4].  Answer the door from a side window, balcony, etc.  

And some practice tips:

     Hopefully, you have had expert training before practicing to ensure that what you are practicing is correct.  

     Practice should be planned (have a list of things to do and execute to your list), deliberate (as opposed to casual), and intentional (attitude, concentrate on what you are doing without distraction).  

     If you are practicing a new skill, practice should be slow to ensure you are doing it correctly and not engraining bad habits.  If you are practicing a skill you know well, practice should initially be slow to make sure you're doing it correctly (not unintentionally engraining bad habits).  

     You must keep a highly detailed journal.  

     Before going to practice, write down what you are going to work on at the practice session.  (What are you going to accomplish?  If you don't know, STOP!  THINK!  {Ya, I kow it's hard.  Don't hurt yourself.}  If you don't have any goals, you're wasting your time. )  

     During the practice session, execute the things on your list.  

     After the practice session, write down what you did at the practice session.  Write down what worked, and what didn't work.  Write down what you will be working on at the next session based on the results of this session.  

     Otherwise, you're wasting your time.  Wasting time can be fun, especially when doing it with someone hot.  Just don't confuse it with practice.  Only practice will improve your performance.  

     "I went to the range today with the guys and shot a thousand rounds, while drinking a cooler of beers, and grilling burgers and hot dogs.  What a great day of practice.  I'm ready for war.  NOT!"  

     If you're going to practice, you're probably going by yourself.  Or, possibly with your coach.  Team practices make sense for team sports.  Shooting is an individual sport / art /skill/ combat skill.  Going with friends is distracting.  If you want to accomplish your goals for the day, best to go by yourself.  You're not being anti-social.  You're being serious.  

I don't think that going with a friend (emphasis on the singular) is necessarily a bad idea. I learned more about shooting by going with a friend of about equal skill level and having games or contests to shoot small targets under a time limit than all the aimed target shooting I've ever done (e.g., shooting at a can or shotgun shell hull to try and bump it up a short slope to see who would be first to get it to a ledge; or setting up a line of bowling pins and drawing and, starting from each end, see who gets the most down the fastest). One of the reasons I learned to appreciate the 1911 is because it is one of the best quick draw and shoot firearms out there. 

    But that said, Jon is right in saying if your "practice" shooting is just aimless plinking, you aren't going to get much out of it beyond the mental and emotional catharsis that just comes with shooting. And you won't know if you are getting any better without using a journal of some sort to record information. And if you are wanting to shoot a longer ranges, you will need to record a lot more information in order to learn the proper dope for your rifle and the ammunition. You can get by without a journal or records early on because you are just learning the gross skills, but in order to fine tune what you are doing, you need the records so you can analyze the patterns and spot problems. It also helps to record yourself or, during dry fire practice, watch yourself in a mirror. Repeating something wrong 1000 times is useless; you want some incremental improvement as you practice.

    But back to practicing around other people. What I've found inhibits my practice is where I have to instruct or monitor other persons for the majority of a shooting session. There is some benefit because in order to teach them, I have to really think about what I do which works and explain it/demonstrate it, but mostly it is babysitting. It is one of the reasons that I stopped going shooting with my father-in-law: I discovered that I was only invited along on those occasions where he and his sons needed someone to watch their kids and/or teach their kids to shoot. The other was that after a few years of constant excuses on why he couldn't go shooting on most occasions, I realized that he would go shooting with me or my kids only if one of his sons or their children were also going. I don't know why he favored the grandkids from his sons over the grandkids from his daughters (he was the same toward the kids of his other daughters), but that was how he was. 

    Anyway, sorry about getting sidetracked there. But back to Jon Low's post: it is full of good stuff so be sure to read the whole thing.

A Couple Videos Testing Two Methods Of Purifying Water

The Realist directed my attention to these two videos. The first examines pond water under a microscope before and after boiling. As the author notes, the boiling doesn't remove debris (dirt, etc.) in the water, so you will want to filter with a cloth, but the boiling does destroy the microorganisms.

VIDEO: "Boiling Water vs Germs Under Microscope (Does boiling pond water kill bacteria?)"

CloseIntel (1-1/2 min).

In the second video, the author does a before and after examination of water after going through a Life Straw. The author describes finding some debris after pumping it through the Life Straw but did not see any evidence of microbial life.

VIDEO: "Testing The Lifestraw Under Microscope"

CloseIntel (2 min.)

Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 83 (Streamed 4/26/2023)

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 83" (51 min.)

More fun and frolics

Welcome To The Collapse

Simon Black of the Sovereign Man website believes that "We’re done with 'gradually'. We’ve now reached the 'suddenly' part." Black is paraphrasing a passage from Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, where a character describes how to go bankrupt: "'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.'"

    What Hemingway's character is discussing, as Black explains, is called logarithmic decay: a line showing a gradual downward trend that suddenly makes a sharp and very steep decline. He continues:

    In fact logarithmic decay is great way to describe social and financial decline. Even the rise and fall of superpowers are often logarithmic in scale. The Kingdom of France in the 1700s infamously fell gradually… then suddenly.

    We can see the same logarithmic decay in the West today, and specifically the United States.

    The deterioration of government finances has been gradual, then sudden. Social conflict, censorship, and the decline in basic civility has been gradual, then sudden. Even the loss of confidence in the US dollar has been gradual… and is poised to be sudden.

    Back in 2009 when I started Sovereign Man, I spoke a lot about ideas that were highly controversial at the time.

    I suggested that Social Security’s trust funds would run out of money. That the US government would eventually be buried by its gargantuan national debt. That the US dollar would eventually lose its international reserve dominance. That inflation and social conflict would rise.

    The main thesis, quite simply, was that the US was in decline. And whenever I spoke at events, I used to talk about logarithmic decay, saying:

    “As a civilization in decline, you never really know quite where you are on the curve. You could be way over here on the horizontal line, at the very beginning of the decline… or you could be standing on the precipice about to hit the vertical slide down.”

    Well, now we have a much better idea of where we are on that logarithmic decay curve. Because these ideas about the national debt, inflation, social security, social conflict, etc. are no longer theories. Nor are they even remotely controversial.

    Just last week, US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said in a speech that “America’s debt is a ticking time bomb”. Social Security’s looming insolvency is now openly discussed in Washington and regularly reported in the Wall Street Journal.

    We’ve all seen with our own eyes (and even experienced) inflation, social divisions, and censorship.

    And as for the dollar, we continue to see a multitude of cracks in its dominance. Most notably, Saudi Arabia is considering a plan to sell oil not just in US dollars, but also in Chinese yuan.

    Plus the international development bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) announced earlier this month that they will start moving away from the dollar.

    Is it any surprise? The US government is weeks away from defaulting on its national debt over the latest debt ceiling debacle. And yet the guy who shakes hands with thin air refuses to negotiate a single penny in spending cuts to help reduce trillions of dollars in future deficit spending.

    The whole world is watching in utter disbelief at the astonishing level of incompetence that has infected the highest levels of America’s once hallowed institutions, including news media, big business, and the government itself.

    America– and the West by extension– really are on the precipice of that logarithmic decay curve… the part where the horizontal line becomes a vertical line down.

    It has taken years… even decades to reach this point, gradually. We’re now at the “suddenly” part.

He goes on to discuss some methods to slow or protect against the decay at both national and personal levels. And while he notes that some empires have, at least temporarily, pulled themselves out of this death spiral, it would require some sacrifices and changes that both the elites and the public would not like. 

• "Why plunging tax receipts are raising fears about the debt ceiling"--The Hill.

    The article cited above from The Hill mentions one great problem facing the country: declining tax receipts. It reports:

    The federal government is pulling in less tax revenue than expected, prompting concerns the early numbers could leave far less time for Congress to strike a deal to avoid a default on the national debt.

    Before tax figures started rolling in after last week’s filing deadline, Congress appeared to have until sometime in late July or August to pass legislation to raise or suspend the debt limit. But some experts have warned that a major shortfall in tax revenue means the U.S. government could run out of cash as early as June.

More specifically, according to the article:

    The U.S. government has collected 35 percent less in tax revenue this year than at the same time in 2022, according to a recent analysis released by Moody’s Analytics economists Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros. 

    Zandi noted in an interview that it’s “not a surprise” the receipts are coming in at lower levels than last year — when the government saw a budget surplus of more than $300 billion in April 2022, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). But he added receipts are “coming even weaker than” anticipated. 

    “They’re going to come to a point in early June when they don’t have enough cash to pay everyone on time,” Zandi said. ...

The article suggest that the primary drivers of the decline are decreased realization of taxable capital gains (i.e., weakening stock, bonds, and real estate markets), and a decline in corporate tax receipts (although corporate taxes are only a small share--10%--of tax receipts). On top of this, investors are shying away from short term Treasury Notes, so even short term debt financing is becoming more difficult. 

    Per the article, House Republicans have introduced a bill that would raise the debt ceiling in return for spending cuts, but the bill is expected to be dead on arrival to the Democrat controlled Senate.

• "An Obvious Solution"--Vox Day.

    Vox day notes a new report on New York City's efforts to curb its carbon footprint by requiring people to eat less. That news report relates:

    New York City will track the carbon footprint of residents’ food consumption as part of a sweeping initiative to decrease the city’s carbon emissions from food by a third this year, Mayor Eric Adams revealed on Monday at an event for the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. 

    About a fifth of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions come from household food consumption, Adams told reporters, blaming much of that total on meat and dairy. Household food consumption is supposedly the third largest contributor to city emissions totals, trailing only buildings and transportation. 

    The Mayor’s Office of Food Policy has ordered city agencies to reduce their food consumption by 33% by 2030, and Adams has asked private corporations to cut their own emissions by 25% by 2030, insisting New Yorkers’ wasteful eating habits cannot continue without imperiling the planet.

Vox Day reminds us that "Sooner or later, the Satanists always resort to starvation. It’s less confrontational, and therefore, less risky than war. This is why it’s important to start taking steps to secure your family’s food supply now." So, yet another reason to lay up substantial food storage and, where possible, to learn to garden.

• "Did the Neocons Save the World from the Thucydides Trap?" by Ron Unz, The Unz Review.

The Democrats and the Neocons did not save us from war with China, but they sure did their best to make sure we lost. As the two World Wars taught us, the manufacturing capabilities of the combatants is as or more important than what happens on the front line. So, this brings me to the first point: destruction of the U.S.'s ability to manufacture:

Following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago, America had emerged as the sole, unchallenged global superpower. But over the last generation, the tremendous growth rate of the Chinese economy had propelled it past America’s in real size, the first such transition since our own country had overtaken Britain near the end of the 19th century. China’s technological progress had been equally rapid, and in our modern world these constitute the raw elements of global power, while China had also begun bolstering its military, not previously a high priority.

    The second point is that the Neocons and Democrats have squandered and foiled any attempt to build an effective coalition with Russia against China. Although Unz does not delve into this, the U.S. missed an opportunity after the collapse of the Soviet Union to develop deeper ties with Russia. But things have obviously soured over the last couple of decades:

    When Mearsheimer had written his long final chapter in 2014, he had naturally envisioned Russia as a central element of the balancing coalition that America would construct against the Chinese, together with India and Japan as well as smaller powers such as South Korea and Vietnam. Any rational American geopolitical strategist seeking to contain a rising China would have taken that approach.

    But the Neocons running the foreign policy of the Obama Administration were remarkably arrogant rather than rational, and that same year they orchestrated an anti-Russian coup in Ukraine, followed by the loss of Crimea and ongoing fighting in the Donbas, all of which permanently poisoned Russian relations. Not long afterward, Mearsheimer gave his prophetic talk on the looming future risks of a NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine, a presentation that over the last year has been viewed some 29 million times on Youtube, perhaps more than any academic lecture in the history of the Internet.

    Thus, by the time Allison published his 2017 book, any possibility of an American-Russian alliance against China had evaporated and Russia scarcely featured in his discussion. These trends continued and a year ago Rudd’s book already characterized China and Russia as strategic partners, mentioning that Xi had described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “his best friend” and that the two countries regularly collaborated on a variety of different political, military, and economic issues. But Russia still remained a minor factor in Rudd’s analysis, with its role discussed in just a couple of pages together with scattered references elsewhere in his text.

    The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war completely changed everything, as did the unprecedented wave of resulting Western sanctions targeting Russia and the massive amount of financial and military aid provided to Ukraine, already totaling $120 billion, a sum far larger than the entire annual Russian defense budget. Over the last year, American-led NATO has been fighting a proxy-war against Russia on Russia’s own border, a war that many American political leaders have declared can only end with Russia’s defeat and the death or overthrow of Putin. The Hague in Europe has already issued an arrest-warrant against the Russian president for alleged war-crimes.

    Just prior to the beginning of the Ukraine war, Xi had held this 39th personal meeting with Putin, and had declared that China’s partnership with Russia “had no limits.” The subsequent all-out Western assault on Russia has inevitably produced a tight alliance between the two huge countries.

    China’s industrial strength is enormous, with its real productive economy already larger than the combined total for America, the European Union, and Japan. But add to that the enormous energy supplies and other natural resources of its remarkably complementary Russian neighbor, and the two together probably outweigh the power of America and its allies. ...

Moreover, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India and others are strengthening economic ties with this growing Sino-Russian alliance while reducing the dependence on the dollars. Other erstwhile allies, including France and Japan, are abandoning the U.S. coalition against Russia because of the harm caused by sanctions. As Unz points out, "Given our country’s horrendous budget and trade deficits, America’s continued standard of living is heavily dependent upon the international use of the dollar, especially for oil sales, so these are extremely threatening developments." The only way out of this is to get back to U.S. oil dominance as we briefly saw under the Trump Administration, but we all know the odds of that are practically nill.

• "Human tidal wave is waiting for border to open May 11 — Biden has no plan to stop it"--New York Post. 
• "Mayor Eric Adams says Biden's migrant crisis has 'destroyed' NYC"--New York Post.
• "'The Purpose of Communist Propaganda Is to Humiliate'—Why the Biden Regime Lies About the Border" by John Derbyshire, The Unz Review.

Derbyshire points out: "They lie. We know they’re lying, and they know we know. They don’t care that we know. The object is not persuasion, it’s humiliation—to break our wills and make us obedient subjects of the all-knowing, all-powerful state." As I stood in line with thousands of other passengers at the Las Vegas airport earlier this week to go past a drug sniffing dog just to reach a TSA checkpoint (where they had graciously decided to not require passengers to remove shoes and belts to make up for the delay by the dog sniffing) and thought of how useless all this was, I also thought how all of this is not intended to protect us from terrorist or win the war on drugs, but to humiliate the public.

• "US special forces evacuate nearly 100 diplomatic personnel from Sudan as African nation collapses into civil war that Biden calls 'unconscionable'"--Daily Mail. 
• "Massachusetts teacher and her toddler daughter are among thousands trapped in Sudan as conflict rages, as White House says it has NO plans to evacuate Americans"--Daily Mail.

The teacher was a teacher at the American School in Sudan--i.e., she taught the children of the diplomats that were evacuated. This is just another example that citizenship--at least U.S. citizenship--is bringing fewer and fewer benefits.

Tiger McKee Has Passed Away

I heard from Jonathan Low that Tiger McKee has passed away. McKee founded and taught at Shootrite as well as being a prolific writer for numerous publications as well as a regular contributor to the Tactical Wire blog. American Handgunner has an In Memoriam article.

VIDEO: When Societies Commit Suicide

VIDEO: "A Study of Decadence(When Societies Commit Suicide)."

Whatifalthist (30 min.)

Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 82 (Streamed 4/19/2023)

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 82" (44 min.)

Evidence of a CIA Motive to Assassinate JFK?

Even though federal law required all papers related to the JFK assassination be released in 2017, the CIA is still holding back thousands of pages of documents. (See the two videos below from Tucker Carlson--the first is his opening monologue and the second is an interview that immediately follows--which discuss why the CIA is afraid to release the documents).

VIDEO: "Tucker Carlson: We were shocked to learn this"

Fox News (7 min.)

VIDEO: "Tucker: What could the government be hiding about the JFK assassination?"

Fox News (5 min.)

    Nevertheless, what has been released has not been without useful information. Geoff Cruickshank has a post that puts some pieces together and found that the CIA's then-chief of counter-intelligence, James Angleton, was running a covert program to supply Israel with nuclear weapons behind President Kennedy's back. He writes:

    The testimony of James Jesus Angleton during the Church Committee hearings in 1975 in the recently released tranche of records also gives some insight into why the C.I.A. needed a rapid change in Administration in 1963.

    On page 6, they establish that Angleton had two separate responsibilities within his role at C.I.A.; one as Counterintelligence Chief, whilst the other role is redacted.

    Fortunately for us, on page 13, they missed a redaction when asking Angleton what his responsibilities were in the role:

He then posts a couple pages that mention another role, and then continues:

    So, Angleton was in control of the “Israeli Account”.

    We also find out in this document on page 86 that Angleton’s close friend, William Harvey, who ran the C.I.A.’s assassination program, ZR/RIFLE, also used the intelligence components of the “Israeli Account” during the Bay of Pigs invasion:

After another copy of a document:

    This revelation is interesting because journalist Tad Szulc wrote an article for Penthouse magazine in August 1975 that stated the CIA was running a program to deliver nuclear weapons to Israel, and that Angleton was in charge of the program. In his testimony to the Church Committee in 1975, Szulc describes how his source (someone in Angleton’s CI division) claimed the CIA was supplying technical knowledge AND fissile material to the Israelis, and Szulc approached Angleton to check his source's veracity. Szulc recounts Angleton’s confirmation of the main thrust of the story but denies the fissile material supply:

    https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/157-10005-10255.pdf

    It has long been suspected that the source of the fissile material was the NUMEC plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania, where noted Zionist Dr. Zalman Mordecai Shapiro was the plant manager. It was found that between 1957 – 1978, over 300 kilograms of highly enriched Uranium 235 went missing from the Apollo plant. The plant was producing HEU for the NERVA / Project Rover nuclear propulsion rocket engines, which was a joint NASA-AEC project. This provided an ideal source of fissile material to "launder" to Israel - normally, the only way to dispose of HEU is to detonate it - having a rocket engine that uses fissile HEU as a fuel source means it is easy to siphon off a portion of the supply chain and redirect. It also helped when the Director of the Atomic Energy Commission was "in" on it - between 1958 and 1961, the D-AEC was Mr. John McCone - the guy who replaced Allen Dulles as the CIA Director when President Kennedy sacked him in November 1961. The "Old Boy's Club" was alive and well back then...

    https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-11-02/numec-affair-did-highly-enriched-uranium-us-aid-israels-nuclear-weapons-program

    After investigating Shapiro and the missing fissile material, the FBI and AEC mysteriously dropped further inquiries in 1966. After Szulc’s article was published in 1975, however, the Justice Department did not concur with the FBI’s assessment and believed a U.S. Government Officer had committed a long list of crimes including espionage and felonies against the Atomic Energy Act. The last three crimes listed were accessory after the fact, misprision of a felony (concealing knowledge, usually by a government official, of a felony committed by another person), and conspiracy. When read in context, these possible crimes appear to refer to someone in the federal government. That person was most likely James Jesus Angleton, comptroller of the “Israeli Account” for the CIA.

    https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/22156-21-dr-zalman-mordecai-shapiro-atomic-energy-act page 3

    It is helpful to understand the situation that Israel faced in 1963. In his book, Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations, Ronen Bergman describes how in the 1962 - 1964 time frame Israel faced a serious security conundrum: Egypt successfully tested two new types of surface-to-surface missiles in July 1962 (the Al-Zafer and Al-Qaher models) which Egyptian President Nasser claimed could strike any point "south of Beirut"--i.e., anywhere in Israel. 

    Bergman describes the development of the missiles as having caught the Israelis completely off-guard. The Mossad launched an emergency effort to gather intelligence, including breaking into Egyptian embassies in several European countries and intercepting Egyptian intelligence mail bags being transported by EgyptAir out of Zurich. The Israelis discovered that Egypt had hired a team of German scientists and engineers that had worked on the German missile programs during World War II to develop and manufacture the missiles. Then in August 1962, Israeli intelligence learned that Egypt was planning on manufacturing 900 of the missiles and they feared that Egypt would arm the missiles with radioactive or chemical weapons.

    The Israeli response described by Bergman was similar to its response to most any other security threat: initiate a campaign of assassination and letter bombs focused on the scientists and engineers working on the missile program--specifically those working on the guidance system which development lagged behind other portions of the program. This terrorist campaign continued through 1963. But due to its lack of success (they seemed unconcerned about the innocents injured by the bombs), Israel became so desperate that in 1964 it wound up engaging the assistance of Otto Skorzeny--Hitler's special-operations commander who among other things led the mission which rescued Mussolini from his mountain-top prison--in exchange for granting him amnesty from Israeli anti-Nazi kill teams or prosecution. Long story short, Skorzeny was successful in convincing the German scientists to quit the Egyptian program and that essentially wound up Bergman's account.

    But that was not all that Israel was doing to counter real and perceived threats from its Arab neighbors. We know from many sources that Israel was deeply involved at the time in its own program to develop nuclear weapons. From what Cruickshank discovered, it appears that James Angleton had been tasked, ostensibly with the blessings of President Eisenhower, to assist Israel with its nuclear weapons program. 

    That this had the blessings of Eisenhower may or may not be true. In his book, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, Michael Collins Piper has a lot to say about Angleton, but one thing that sticks out is that Angleton had de facto control and final say over everything related to Israel at the CIA. Given that he had zero oversight in regard to Israel, Angleton could do about anything he wanted to assist Israel. And, in fact, Piper claims in his book that Angleton had set up extensive ties with the Mossad as well as Jewish-American gangster Meyer Lansky, creating a vast intelligence/organize crime network. It is no wonder that Angleton is considered a hero by the Mossad. 

    After going over more testimony concerning Angleton's role in providing technical assistance to Israel for its nuclear weapons program, Cruickshank then goes on to discuss JFK's well documented opposition to Israel's nuclear weapons program. He quotes extensively from a Wikipedia entry summarizing a 2019 Haaretz article revealing the acrimony between the Kennedy Administration and Israel over Israel's weapons program, including the U.S. demanding bi-annual inspections of Israel's Dimona reactor which could be used to produce fissile materials. This matches up with Piper's discussion of the conflict between Israel and the U.S. over Israel's nuclear weapons program. 

    Cruickshank continues:

    Having already supplied the technical know-how (and possible fissile material) for assembly of one or [more] nuclear weapons at the cut-out site in Germany – Angleton and the C.I.A. find themselves in May of 1963 in quite a dilemma. Having continued the Israeli nuclear weapons program, started by Allen Dulles during the Eisenhower Administration and continued behind President Kennedy’s back, Angleton believes there can only be one solution and turns to his old friend William Harvey for a ZR/RIFLE Executive Action. Harvey in turn assembles the team of E. Howard Hunt, David Morales, Frank Sturgis, Bernard “Macho” Barker, Lucien Conein (who recruits Corsican thug Lucien Sarti as backup shooter), and of course, Lee Harvey Oswald. George H.W. Bush is on the periphery too, though it is never proven he is on the C.I.A. payroll during that time.

    With President Kennedy’s assassination, Angleton’s problem is now solved.

    Cruickshank obviously believes that it was an entirely CIA operation, but that is not necessarily true. Even at the early date of 1963, Israeli intelligence had carried out more assassinations than the CIA ever would because it was one of their primary methods of dealing with foreign security threats, as documented in Bergman's book, Rise And Kill First. Thus, it would have been natural for Israeli intelligence to at least consider assassination to resolve its problems and either pursue such plan itself (with Angleton's blessings) or provide assistance to Angleton.

    Moreover, as noted above, the CIA had close ties with Lansky's mob organization. It should be no surprise that Jack Ruby, who killed Lee Harvey Oswald, was reputed to be a mobster who worked for one of Lansky's associates. 

    A final bit mentioned by Cruickshank is that JFK had stated his intent to dismantle the CIA: “I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind” JFK reportedly said. 

POTD: Camping in a Train Wreck

Sometime you may need to find shelter where you can find it. The producer of this video, who does a lot of videos on stealth camping, spends the night camping in an old box car left over from a 1950's train wreck outside of Whistler, B.C.

VIDEO: "Train Wreck Camping"

Steve Wallis (30 min.)

Article: "How the Tonga eruption rang Earth ‘like a bell’"

  The January 15, 2022, Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcanic explosion near Tonga was the largest natural explosion ever recorded (i.e., since the 1960s when scientists started deploying a network of sensors and satellites--the 1815 Tambura and 1883 Krakatoa explosions were more powerful). It was, the article states, an order of magnitude larger than the explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980. But as the Popular Science article referenced in the title explains, there was a mystery: why were there not more damage and deaths? The article noted that it devastated Tonga but it only caused four deaths in the archipelago. The island nation's disaster response played a role, as did the fact that Covid-19 lockdowns meant that there were no tourists. But the saving grace for Tonga was apparently geographic. 

    The main island located 40 miles south of the eruption is surrounded by shallow seas and coral reefs. The shallow seas meant smaller waves; and the coral reefs also seemed to shield the island. Conversely, the article explains, the isle of Tofua, about 55 miles northeast of the eruption, is a volcanic caldera and sits in deep waters with sharp, mountainous coasts that offer no protection from an incoming tsunami. As a result, it may have been struck by waves more than 100 feet tall. But as Tofua is uninhabited, there was no loss of human life.

Imminent Means Imminent

    First up, as always, I am not your attorney and this is not legal advice.

    One of the requirements for using deadly force in a self-defense situation is that you are faced with an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. But I've seen two stories in the same number of days where a homeowner did not appear to understand that very basic concept. 

    The first occurred last Thursday evening when a 16-year old black male, Ralph Paul Yarl, was shot by an elderly white homeowner after ringing the wrong doorbell, the media is reporting. According to reports, Yarl was picking up two younger brothers from a friend's home at around 10 pm when went to 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace and was shot twice after ringing the doorbell. 

    NBC News relates:

    “Whoever was inside took a little longer than he anticipated to respond, and so he just waited at the door,” Merritt, told NBC News on Monday, citing a formal statement Yarl gave to law enforcement investigators from his hospital bed Friday.

    “He heard rustling around going on in the house and then finally the door was open,” the attorney said. “And he was confronted by a man who told him, ‘Don’t come back around here,’ and then he immediately fired his weapon.” 

    The teen was shot in the head, which cracked his skull and left him with a critical, traumatic brain injury, Merritt said. While the teenager was still on the ground, the homeowner opened fire a second time, striking Yarl in the upper right arm, he added.

Supposedly Yarl ran to three different homes before being helped. Some of the reports indicated that even then he was forced to lie on the ground with his hands over his head, but the Daily Mail is reporting today that actually a good Samaritan resident of the neighborhood rushed over to Yarl and held his hand while other neighbors helped with trying to stop the bleeding. Yarl's relatives have already tried to make this into an incident all about race, which seems to be successful as they have already raised over $1 million and have had plenty of celebrities signal support. 

    NBC News also reported that "Police Chief Stacey Graves Sunday said that while shooting did not appear to be racially motivated, she did 'recognize the racial components of this case.'" But the Daily Mail article cited above stated: "Clay County prosecutor Zachary Thompson confirmed there was a racial factor in the attack - after the teenage music scholar was shot twice, in the head and arm, after ringing the wrong doorbell when he went to pick up his younger brothers." In any event, on Monday the "prosecutors filed two two felony counts against the white homeowner, Andrew Lester, 85: assault in the first degree and armed criminal action." NBC adds: "Lester faces a maximum punishment of life in prison in the assault charge and three to 15 years for the alleged gun crime, Thompson said."

    I'm sure that there is more to this story than we know. For instance, it might very well turn out that Yarl started pounding on the door or shouted or made threats if the door wasn't opened. Perhaps he made some furtive movement or did something else that made Lester fear for his life. But the fact remains that Yarl, who was unarmed, was on one side of a door (probably locked) from the homeowner prior to the homeowner opening the door and shooting him, so it will be difficult for the homeowner to convince a jury that he reasonably believed he was facing an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. 

    The second new story is even more egregious. As CNN reports, "[a] 20-year-old woman [Kaylin Gillis] was shot and killed Saturday after she and three others accidentally turned into the wrong driveway while looking for a friend’s house in rural upstate New York, authorities said."  The homeowner, 65-year-old Kevin Monahan, has been charged with second-degree murder. Quoting the local sheriff, CNN relates:

“It’s a very rural area with dirt roads. It’s easy to get lost. They drove up this driveway for a very short time, realized their mistake and were leaving, when Mr. Monahan came out and fired two shots,” Murphy said, adding that the area has poor cell phone service.

Gillis' friend drove to a nearby town and called 911 but it was too late for Gillis. The article continues:

    Police officers later responded to the home from which shots were fired and found Monahan to be uncooperative, Murphy said, adding he “refused to exit his residence to speak with police.”

    He was taken into custody hours later with help from the New York State Police Special Operations Response Team, according to a press release from the Washington County Sheriff’s office.

    No one is believed to have exited the car and there was no interaction between Monahan and anyone in the vehicle before shots were fired, Murphy said.

    “There was clearly no threat from anyone in the vehicle. There was no reason for Mr. Monahan to feel threatened,” Murphy said.

Not having the same celebrity appeal as Yarl's family, Gillis' family has only been able to raise $50,000 for funeral and other expenses. 

    In this latter case, the homeowner's actions are even less defensible: he killed someone in a car in a driveway (what actually sounds more like a short road or path) apparently in the process of turning around. There was nothing to indicate the two women in the car posed any sort of imminent harm to the homeowner. 

Tips On The Marlin 60

I saw this article, "TFB Armorer’s Bench: Commentary on The Marlin Model 60," at The Firearm Blog. The Marlin Model 60 is a semi-auto .22LR rifle that uses an under barrel tube magazine, similar to what you see on lever actions. It was introduced in 1960 and went on to become one of the most successful firearms designs in history in terms of the numbers sold. It originally featured a 17-round magazine but this was reduced in the 1980s to 15 rounds to comply with New Jersey law. The barrel length was also reduced from 22 inches to 19 inches so that the barrel would not extend past the end of the tube magazine.

    The Model 60 was upstaged by Marlin's own Model 70 (which used a detachable box magazine) and the Ruger 10/22, but it is my understanding that it remained popular overseas. Production ceased in 2020 when Ruger acquired Marlin.

    Because the Armorer's Bench column focuses on gun maintenance and repair, the article primarily focuses on common issues with the rifle. Unsurprisingly to me, many of the issues identified by the author have to do with the older style feed throat (the piece that guides the cartridge from the magazine and into the chamber). The older feed throats were of a cast metal, and included as part of the casting the extractor. It was also cast in to halves which were roughly riveted together. The author notes that in most of the older models he's inspected, the ejector had broken off. Also, he notes, the two-pieces of the old style feed throat can separate over time and cause feeding issues.

    These issues are probably why one of my most popular posts is "Replacing the Feed Throat on a Marlin 'Glenfield' Model 60" where I describe replacing a feed throat in an early Model 60 with a modern part. The modern feed throat is a one piece design, and the cast ejector has been replaced looping one tail of the lifter spring around to the top of the feed throat to also serve as the ejector.

    Another issue he describes is the buffer (which is just a plastic piece) cracking or disintegrating with age. I haven't had any issues with mine (cross my fingers). And there are few others.

    Anyway, if you own a Model 60, this is a useful article.

VIDEO: "5 Signs A Civilization Is About To Fail"

The five signs, per the video, are: (1) climate change, (2) environmental degradation, (3) inequality and oligarchy, (4) complexity, and (5) external shocks of some sort. 

    While the video describes the climate change as "global" it doesn't have to be global. For instance, the Chaco Canyon culture collapsed because of drought but there is no evidence that it was global in nature.

    Environmental degradation includes things such as loss or decline in soil quality due to farming and/or irrigation, pollution, loss of vegetation, and so on. A good example of this is Mayan civilization that had cut down so much forest land that they were having difficulty getting the wood for the fires needed to make the plaster with which they coated their stone structures. Their collapse is also believed to be related to a loss of nutrients in the soil due to over farming. 

    Inequality and oligarchy essentially results in an impoverished citizenry with little investment in the continuation of the nation. In fact, the need for cheap labor generally leads to a nation being replaced by a country with a polyglot of peoples.  In the Roman Empire, this shows up with the many small farmers throughout Italy being replaced with large plantations owned by the extremely wealthy and worked by slaves. The result was the creation of a welfare state and moral decadence. 

    Complexity refers to how that term is used by Joseph Tainter. As the complexity increases (i.e., cost or energy input goes up) the state will eventually reach a point where it encounters negative returns (i.e., the cost or energy input is greater than the benefit derived from a particular law or bureaucracy or military) and this makes the system unstable and prone to collapse. Which leads to the final point.

    An external shock to push everything over the edge. Frankly, the external shock could be climate change or environmental degradation. But climate change or environmental degradation also leads to the negative returns on complexity. Sort of an egg and the chicken argument. But external shocks could also be war or disease or economic collapse.

VIDEO: "5 Signs a Civilization is about to Fail"

The Pixel (6 min.)

This Is Why We Carry ...

The article is "Police Search for Suspects After Brazen Assault in Rocky Hill Driveway" and is from Rocky Hill, Connecticut, a suburb of Hartford. The video at the link shows your typical street thug breaking into someone's car when the vehicle owner suddenly comes out of his home and gets into a physical altercation. The thug breaks loose, but instead of running, immediately attacks the homeowner. Two of his thug buddies then run up and they start stomping and kicking the homeowner. 

New Weekend Knowledge Dump ...

 ... from Active Response Training. I always try and highlight a few of the links, so here goes:

• A Michael Bane podcast. I haven't had time yet to listen to the podcast (it's 52 minutes long), but Greg comments:

Michael Bane discusses how the “doctrine of the reasonable person” may no longer be the legal standard we have to overcome before exercising our rights to self defense in today’s increasingly tribalized world.  This is important information to consider.

•  An article analyzing whether .22 LR, .22 Magnum, .25 ACP, and 5.7x28mm are good defensive rounds. I have a couple disagreements with the article and/or conclusions. First, the article starts off talking about "mouse guns" and "micro pistols," but then includes the 5.7x28mm. All of the 5.7 pistols of which I'm aware are full size (i.e., duty sized) handguns. And, as becomes apparent from his discussion of the Fort Hood shooting, the 5.7 is in a completely different class from the other calibers discussed in the article.

    Second, the author states:

I will just pass right over the .25 ACP. Despite the compactness of some of the pistols that use it, it offers nothing the .22LR doesn’t, ballistically, and does so at greater cost, less availability and fewer options for pistol choices.

Well, the .25 ACP may not offer better ballistics but it does offer something potentially much more important: because of the cartridge design and the fact that it is centerfire, it offers more reliable ignition and operation.

• If you have a revolver for self-defense, Greg has linked to a truly excellent article from Firearm News entitled "Self-Defense with a Revolver: Fundamentals and Tips." I've printed it so I can keep it as a reference. 
• An article I found interesting was one from the Tactical Professor that tested whether a handgun with a longer barrel was more accurate at self-defense distances and easier to recover from shot-to-shot. The test was performed using revolvers of different frame sizes and barrel lengths, but of the same caliber. One of the short barreled revolvers did the best.
• An article from Massad Ayoob on the importance of being able to use your support hand to shoot and manipulate your handgun. Besides the fact that you might injure your hand (unrelated to a self-defense shooting) and have your hand/fingers in a splint, cast, or sling at the critical time, Ayood also points out:

Let’s say you want to take care of yourself and your loved ones in life-threatening emergencies. Any smart carrier is going to work on “weak-hand only” shooting (and reloading and malfunction clearing) due to the high percentage of wounded good guys in gunfights taking the hit in their dominant hand or arm.

Besides which, you might have someone grab your dominant arm in a fight. 

• Finally, check out the video from Active Self Protection, "Switched-On Concealed Carrier Wins Insane Gun Fight Against Moto Robber." Some good lessons. 

The Pelvic Shot

Dave Spaulding has published an article at Guns & Ammo titled "Pelvic Shots: Fight Stoppers or Self-Defense Fiction?" This appears to be an expanded version of an article he had published on his now-defunct Handgun Combatives blog, and which I mentioned back in 2017. I've come across numerous articles that have discussed this topic (in more or less detail) over the years, some of which I list below:

• "The truth about 'stopping power' – Anatomy First" by Aaron Cowan, Breach Bang Clear.
• "Pelvic Shooting, the Best Worst Option" by Aaron Cowan, Monderno.
• "Winning Deadly Force Encounters"--Blue Sheep Dog.
• "Self Defense Training....Pelvic shots are catching on! What are the implications?"--SNAFU.
• "Vital Points: Shot Placement, Incapacitation And Conventional Wisdom" by Massad Ayoob, Guns Magazine.

    The theory of the pelvic shot is similar to shooting dangerous game (e.g., a charging bear) in the shoulder, which is to break the bones of the joint or leg in order to anchor the game in place--safely away from the hunter--and allow the hunter to then follow up with a second and more accurate killing shot. Of course, you can probably already see where the theory breaks down when applied to a human attacker, which is that it works against dangerous game because that type of animal is trying to get to the hunter with its teeth and claw--i.e., contact weapons--not a firearm or other ranged weapon.

    Spaulding illustrates this point by relating the story of a murder attempt on the famous gun slinger, Bat Masterson, where Masterson was shot in the pelvis. Spaulding relates (bold added):

    The most "famous" pelvic shot/wound ever recorded historically, probably belongs to western lawman, buffalo hunter, gunfighter and legend Bat Masterson. In 1875 in Sweetwater, Texas, Masterson was involved in a shootout with Corporal Melvin King (U.S. Army) involving either hard feelings over a card game or the affections of a woman, historians go both ways on the issue. I know, I know, the shooting involved liquor, gambling and a woman, hard to believe those three would result in a fight, right?

    Near midnight, Masterson left the Lady Gay Saloon accompanied by Mollie Brennan and walked to a nearby dance hall. Masterson and Brennan sat down near the front door and began talking. Corporal King, intoxicated and angry over the night’s events (either losing at cards or Brennan's attention to Masterson), saw the two go into the dance hall and watched them through the window before he approached the locked door. King knocked and Masterson got up to answer it. As he did, King burst into the room with a drawn revolver and a string of profanity.

    While stories as to exactly what happened vary, somehow Brennan found herself between the two men when King fired (whether she was trying to protect Masterson or simply trying to get out of the way is unknown). The first shot narrowly missed her and struck Masterson in the pelvis taking him down. King’s second shot hit Brennan in the chest and she crumpled to the floor.

    At this point, Masterson raised himself up and fired the shot that killed King. Some say Bat Masterson walked with a cane the remainder of his life due to the severity of the pelvic wound while others say he merely used it as an excuse to keep an impact weapon with him at all times — a weapon he was known to use with great effectiveness. What can be said is that Masterson was seen throughout his later life without the cane.

Now, it is arguable that if Brennan's second shot had struck Masterson rather than Ms. Brennan, it would have been Masterson that died. But it does illustrate that even a successful shot to the pelvis cannot be counted on to take someone out of the fight. Moreover, based on his recovery, it also illustrates that such a shot is not necessarily crippling, particularly when using a handgun.

    On the latter issue, Spaulding quotes the following from Dr. Martin Fackler's comments on the pelvic shot:

Other than soft tissue structures not essential to continuing the gunfight (loops of bowel, bladder) the most likely thing to be struck by shots to the pelvis would be bone. The ilium is a large flat bone that forms most of the back wall of the pelvis. The problem is that handgun bullets that hit it would not break the bone but only make a small hole in passing through it: this would do nothing to destroy bony support of the pelvic girdle. The pelvic girdle is essentially a circle: to disrupt its structure significantly would require breaking it in two places. Only a shot that disrupted the neck or upper portion of the shaft of the femur would be likely to disrupt bony support enough to cause the person hit to fall. This is a small and highly unlikely target: the aim point to hit it would be a mystery to those without medical training — and to most of those with medical training.

    Both of the articles from Aaron Cowen also discuss why, anatomically, a pelvis shot is not ideal. From his excellent Breach Bang Clear article, Cowen explains (bold added):

    The last ideal area of the body to target is the lateral pelvis. Also called the pelvic girdle, this area is comprised of very dense bones designed to support weight, resist omnidirectional forces and assist in the generation of movement.

    The number of vital organs located in this area is zero, as in none. The pelvic girdle has seen a resurgence in popularity as a place to intentionally target. Some even saying they would shoot here before trying for the chest (which makes zero sense). The pelvic area does contain arteries. Unfortunately those are small targets and very, very few people can even point to their general location, let alone target one.

    The aorta enters the pelvic region, branches out into the iliac arteries which move through the pelvic girdle to become the femoral arteries, essentially an inverted “y.” While it’s very true that ballistic trauma to this area can cause immobilization via the breaking and shattering of bones, it is highly unlikely to cause incapacitation in a reasonable amount of time. One of the most recent studies into pelvic gunshot trauma found that out of over 2,800 gunshot wound related patients, 42 had suffered trauma to the pelvic region, only 18 of those resulted in fractures to the Ilium and only 7 of those actually required surgery. 

    That is not exactly reassuring.

    This is not to say that you should completely discount the pelvis shot, as Spaulding goes on to explain, but that it should not be at the top of your places to shoot someone. Obviously, we try to shoot the center of mass of a target. Thus, if all we can see of a target is a foot, we would shoot the center of the foot. Likewise, if the center of mass that is visible to us is the pelvis or pelvic girdle, we probably should take that shot. But as Cowen remarks:

The pelvis is a viable target barring a better one to shoot at, but it’s not the magical incapacitation button some people sell it as. My feeling is that the popularity of pelvic shooting is because on the vast majority of ranges across the US, the pelvis is the point of aim when practicing hip shooting because the range will not allow higher angle shots. It certainly isn’t because there is a wealth of examples of pelvic incapacitations, because those examples are very rare. I don’t discount the pelvis as a place to shoot, though I would only choose it if other areas of the body were not available to me( or if it was the first stop on my way up the body). Any other methodology is snake oil. Dirty, nasty snake oil.

    Of course, that doesn't mean that a pelvis shot is completely useless, either. In his article, Massad Ayoob writes:

    Jim Cirillo was a good friend of mine from the early 1970’s until his death, and I learned a great deal from him, his partner Bill Allard, and other members of the legendary NYPD Stakeout Squad. In Jim’s Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights (Paladin Press) he said, “We found that whenever we shot gunmen in the pelvis or butt, they were knocked off their feet. They could still be dangerous, but at least their aim would be disturbed.”

    Obviously, an offender wielding a knife or club would be out of action at that point since—without mobility—they could no longer approach to stab or strike. And even a downed gunman would now be stabilized and much easier to hit with a (hopefully) fight-stopping brain shot if he tried to shoot from the ground. More recently, a retired SEAL with extensive combat experience told me pelvic shots worked dynamically for him and his colleagues.

    Can the pelvic hit fail? Of course. A mere hairline fracture of the pelvic girdle—or just a neat, round hole drilled through it—can’t be expected to have much immediate effect. A bullet that merely chips the top off the ileac crest is about like shooting the tail fin off a 1959 Cadillac, it simply won’t break down the whole machine. But put a powerful handgun bullet close to where the pelvis joins the femur, and instant collapse is highly likely. Ditto a bullet that smashes the sacrum. Pelvic shots may not guarantee “1-shot stops,” but neither do head or center chest shots. ...

    All this brings me back to the Bat Masterson example. The shot to the pelvis certainly put him on the floor and "disturbed" his aim. It seems to have given the shooter the chance to get off a second shot (which, unfortunately for him, was squandered by his striking a bystander); and if Masterson had been armed with a knife, may have been enough to keep him from reaching the shooter. But it didn't stop Masterson from using his own firearm to kill his attacker. Thus, like Spaulding and Cohen conclude, the pelvic girdle is a third rate target behind the thoracic cavity or head, and probably should be limited to those occasions when it is the only shot available to you because it is what is visible, or you can't bring the firearm to bear on the chest or head (e.g., being forced to fire from the hip). Some have also suggested the pelvis as a good target where the chest and/or head is protected by body armor and ballistic helmet. 

Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 81 (Streamed 4/12/2022)

VIDEO: "Bombs and Bants Live! Ep 81" (52 min.)

Despite John's best efforts, the Mrs. was able to explain the Great Vowel Shift, plus a lot more frolics and fun.

When Civilization Contracts

    I came across a couple articles the other day that, I believe, reflect a new reality: that civilization is contracting. The articles are:

• "Whole Foods Closes San Francisco Flagship Store Over Employee Safety Concerns"
• "Walmart shuts four stores in Chicago - halving its footprint in Illinois city"

    The first article relates that Whole Foods is closing its store on Market Street at 8th in San Francisco because of employee safety concerns. The piece also mentions that, according to a city supervisor, the closure will be temporary. I wouldn't count on that. Although no specifics are given, "the company cited deteriorating street conditions ... drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for its closure." In other words, a collapse of infrastructure as well as law and order was forcing the company to abandon that location.

    More generally, the article continues,

    Since the start of the pandemic, Downtown has suffered a massive loss in foot traffic due to remote work. Many small businesses have shuttered, while examples of extreme poverty and mental illness on the street have become more apparent.

    Fears of a “doom loop” in which a cascade of negative financial impacts compound have spread across the city, and City Hall officials currently expect a nearly $800 million deficit in San Francisco’s budget.

    The second article reports that "Walmart is shuttering half of its stores in Chicago, mostly located on the crime-ridden city's south and west sides," ostensibly because they have not been profitable for many years despite efforts to turn the situation around. According to Walmart, the stores have never been profitable, but that the losses have nearly doubled in the past 5 years; i.e., since 2017 or 2018. 

    While Walmart in their statement did not specify the exact causes for the continued losses over the years in the Chicago stores, some on social media immediately pointed to crime rates in the area. 

    To date in 2023 over 2022, thefts are up by 25 percent according to the Chicago Police Department while robberies are up 11 percent.  

    In 2022, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon had warned that theft in stores around the country could impact stores and cause additional closings. 

Walmart also indicated that its remaining four stores were suffering similar "business difficulties" but the closure of the four stores would better help them keep the remaining four open.

    Now it is possible that the Walmart closures are unrelated to crime: unlike the Whole Foods company, the Walmart statement did not directly mention crime. And it is also true that Walmart is closing other stores across the nation and laying off warehouse workers, in part because it is integrating portions of its retail and online operations to better compete against Amazon. 

    But on the other hand there have been numerous reports and articles indicating that organized retail crime, whether outright robbery or organized groups of shoplifters, has increased dramatically. Mostly this is due to various soft-on-crime approaches adopted by certain state or local governments and, dare I say, a growing sense of entitlement among certain demographics that "the world owes them a livin'." And it is well known among the law enforcement community that Walmarts are crime magnets. And a 2022 article about shoplifting in a Galveston Walmart noted that "Nationally, shoplifted merchandise costs Walmart about $3 billion a year, about 1 percent of its U.S. revenues, according to a 2016 Reuters report, although some estimates are far more." It's only gotten worse, according to all accounts. In fact, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in December of last year that an uptick in theft is becoming such an issue at locations across the U.S. that it could lead to store closures and price hikes. And, in the video from Paul Joseph Watson below, he shows footage from one of these Chicago stores and a substantial amount of its products are locked up.  So, it is not unreasonable to assume that the Chicago closures are the result of crime.

VIDEO: "It's out of control."

Paul Joseph Watson (8 min.)

     Obviously businesses contract and close down (or close down certain locations) all of the time, and many people viewing those stories will just lump the accounts in with more general incidents of business contraction. "Those were just bad locations," they will think, "and it doesn't portend anything worse."   

     But these are not your normal business contraction. These closures represent civilization pulling back in the face of advancing barbarism. And while these particular businesses are high profile because of the size of the companies they represent, they are not isolated. News stories indicate that many businesses have closed or had to adapt to the higher crime in some urban centers. 

    The California Globe, for instance, reports that "[t]he Monday closure of San Francisco’s flagship Whole Foods supermarket is just the latest in a long string of both chain and small businesses in the city. Crime, drug use, and economic factors unique to San Francisco, have led many business owners to worry about their future in the city and where they could possibly relocate to." But while that is a recent article, a similar story played out last December:

    Outdoor clothing company Cotopaxi announced  on Tuesday that it would be closing its San Francisco store due to multiple break-ins and a rise in crime in the area, becoming the latest store to leave San Francisco due to crime.

    Since the beginning of the decade, San Francisco has lost dozens of different stores due to high crime, ranging from high-end stores to local grocery stores and drug stores. Walgreen’s alone has closed around a dozen stores in the city in only a few years, with many other drastically reducing night hours to avoid robberies.

    Clothing stores have been particularly hard hit by crime due to the ease in which merchandise can be taken and how stores are laid out. Even with many stores hiring private security guards or installing more security features, many clothing stores have left in the last few years, including the Gap, which closed their flagship store in the city in 2020, and other sportswear and outdoor brands such as Decathlon leaving. This has led to some famed shopping areas such as Market Street to have more and more empty store fronts.

    Joining them on Tuesday was Cotopaxi, with founder and CEO Davis Smith saying that rampant crime and fear for the safety of workers led to the company deciding to remove their store in the city.

    In a post on LinkedIn, Smith said “It’s sad, but San Francisco appears to have descended into a city of chaos. Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction. One of the most beautiful and amazing cities in the world is now a place where many no longer feel safe visiting or living.

Leaving San Francisco

    “We opened a retail store a year ago on Hayes Street, the charming shopping district just blocks away from the famous Full House home. Our first week there, our windows were smashed and thousands of dollars of product was stolen. We replaced the window, and it immediately happened again (four times). We replaced with window with plywood as we waited for a month+ to get a metal security gate installed (demand for those gates is creating huge delays). As of today, we are closing the store due to rampant organized theft and lack of safety for our team. Our store is hit by organized theft rings several times per week. They brazenly enter the store and grab thousands of dollars of product and walk out. We started keeping the door locked and opening it only for customers, but even then, they’ll have a woman go to the door, and then hiding individuals rush into the store as soon as the door opens.

    “Our team is terrified. They feel unsafe. Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them. It’s impossible for a retail store to operate in these circumstances, especially when cities refuse to take any action (despite us paying taxes well above any other state we operate in). The city recently announced a reduction of police presence in this neighborhood, despite mass-scale crime.

    “It makes me sad that I’m now avoiding San Francisco, a city I used to love. Last time my wife and I went in 2020, a drugged up person ran up to my wife’s face and started screaming some of the most obscene things I’ve ever heard. She was terrified. During a previous trip, my rental car was broken into and everything was stolen out of our trunk. When calling the police to report the theft, they let us know this happens hundreds of times per day in the city and said it was our own fault for parking in the street. I grew up in Latin America and spent much of my adult life there, and I never felt this unsafe there. Something has to change in San Francisco.”

It's only gotten worse. 

    It's true that there are other factors at work. Prior to Covid, for instance, The Guardian reported on how high rents and business costs were driving businesses from San Francisco. Other businesses shut down in the face of the lock downs. Then, after the Covid lockdowns taught many tech workers they didn't need to work from an office, more affluent workers fled downtown San Francisco putting even more pressure on the businesses that survived the shutdowns (see also here). But then the drug use, homelessness, and crime exploded, driving away what remained of the customer base for many businesses. 

    We've seen this play out before. New York, for instance, had become, in many ways, a run-down hell hole in the 1970s, but was able to rebound in the 1980s and push back the darkness (although it, too, is floundering again). Other cities, such as Detroit and Baltimore, have never rebounded. Baltimore, for instance, has seen seven decades of population decline. In 1950, Baltimore had a population of 949,708.  In 2020, the Census pegged the population at 585,708. And, as befits a city falling into barbarism, it has a high crime rate:

    The crime rates in Baltimore are significantly higher compared to the national average. It is ranked as the 23rd most dangerous city in the world. Baltimore has a rate of 51 homicides per 100,000 population.

    In 2015, the city recorded the highest crime rate in its history, as the rates were 52.5 per 100,000. This translated to three hundred and forty-four homicides. 93.3% of the victims were African-American. In 2021, the city recorded a violent crime rate of 1,859 per 100,000 residents.

Civilization is always a battle against barbarism, but right now, in San Francisco, it appears that barbarism is winning.

The Glock 28 Is Here: Is It Too Little Too Late?

 If you have been following firearms news, you may have heard that Glock is finally releasing the .380 ACP Glock 28 in the United States. (See, e.g., this article from Gun Digest or this video from TFB TV). For those that don't know, the Glock 28 is basically the Glock 26 but in .380 ACP rather than 9x19mm, and was apparently designed to be marketed and sold in those countries where civilians were not allowed to use military pistol cartridges. 

    For some reason, it was not sold in the United States prior to this release. The articles and videos discussing the weapon have all asserted that it was because the weapon did not pass the "sporting purposes" test used to keep certain military and "Saturday Night Special" types of weapons out of the country. That doesn't really make sense to me since G28 is the same size, weight (I think it is 1 oz. less) and configuration as the Glock 26, including finger grooves and a thumb rest to make it more sporty. But maybe the caliber played a role of which I'm not aware or that 1 oz. made all the difference. I suspect that Glock simply made a decision not to import it to the United States for some reason, and that was that.

    In any event, it is now being manufactured in the United States in limited numbers, so that whole issue of the "sporting purposes" test is moot. But I nevertheless find it interesting that the G28 is being sold is a third generation weapon, rather than being updated to the newer 4th and 5th generation designs, and apparently lacks any provision for mounting an optic. Maybe this is for the California market, but I don't know. 

    In any event, because it is an older generation of Glock it seems somewhat obsolete compared to Sig's P365-380 or, even, Beretta's new 80X Cheetah. This, combined with the fact that it is only being distributed through TALO Distributers makes me believe that it is intended for the collector market--those people wanting copies of each model of Glock ever produced--rather than the defensive shooter.

    But it highlights something that I've seen with Glock being behind the curve on innovation. Glock was slow to come out with a single stack 9mm when those were popular (and when it did come out with a single stack, it did so in .380). In the military pistol trials, it played it so safe that it didn't even deliver features specifically requested by the military. And now that there is growing interest in higher capacity .380s, Glock's response was to throw an old design onto the market and see how it does rather than developing a new design or updating an old design.

    Finally, while most people seem to have liked it during testing, Mrgunsngear had significant enough issues with extraction that he was sending it back to Glock for repairs:

VIDEO: "New Glock 28 380ACP Review"

Mrgunsngear Channel (21 min.)

The Myth of High Jewish Intelligence

 It is widely reported that Ashkenazi Jews have, as a group, extraordinarily high intelligence. The Ashkenazi are one of two major groups of Jewish people; their ancestors lived in France and Central and Eastern Europe, including Germany, Poland, and Russia. (The other group, the Sephardic Jews, are from ancestral groups that  lived in Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and the Middle East). Almost of the Jews living in the United States are of Ashkenazi descent.

    While the average intelligence for descendants of Western Europeans is 104, the average intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews are said to be 107 to 115, with most people citing the high end of the range. But is that true? I occasionally have come across statements that the study from which this figure was derived was flawed. The video below delves into not only the main studies used to support a high IQ for Ashkenazi Jews to explain why the studies are flawed, but also uses other IQ studies to show that Ashkenazi Jews have an IQ basically the same as the Western European average: just a fraction of a decimal point below 104. In other words--surprise, surprise--their IQs are bascially the same as the group to which they are most closely genetically tied.

    Although the video raises the question of why, if the IQ is the same, Jews are overrepresented in the Ivy Leagues, government, and certain professions, but doesn't attempt to answer the question. There are probably several reasons, but one that is often cited is tribal loyalty resulting in a form of tribal nepotism when it comes to helping other Jews in admissions and hiring.  

    On the other hand, there appears to have been a suppression of white students getting into those universities that feed into the high level government and finance jobs. I recently came across a reference to the U.S. having programs in place in the 1950's and '60s across the United States where teachers would identify promising students and get them into a pipeline to top schools, but that this program completely broke down in the 1970s. In fact, I've read several news pieces over the years which makes it clear that the Ivy League discriminates against rural white Americans by, for instance, making sure applications that emphasize 4-H experience or background go into the round file. 

VIDEO: "High Jewish IQ Debunked - Joe Rogan Followup"

Leather Apron Club (34 min.)

The McDonald's Diet

    This morning I came across this headline at the Daily Mail: "I'm eating nothing but McDonald's to lose weight... with VERY surprising results." The gist of the article is that in February, Kevin Maginnis, from Tennessee, started on a challenge to eat nothing but McDonald's food for 100 days. At the time he started, he weighed 238 pounds. 44 days in, he has lost 34 pounds and lowered his cholesterol. It isn't a hog fest:

Per the rules he set for himself, he is only allowed to eat half of what he orders, but he has free reign to get whatever he wants, including dessert. He also adheres to eating just three meals a day without snacks and drinking water instead of soda. 

He adds:

'I'm never depriving myself. I’m eating McFlurries, I’m eating cinnamon rolls, I’m hitting Big Macs, I’m eating French fries,' he told Today. 'I’m just delaying myself because I’m going eat the whole thing. I’m just not going to eat it all in one sitting.'

His results were not really all that surprising to me, though. 

    In 2004, documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock released his film, Supersize Me. The film supposedly documented his going on a fast-food diet for 30-days where he ate and drank nothing but for what he bought from McDonald's. Equally important to where he ate was how he ate: supposedly, anytime he was asked if he wanted to "supersize" his order (i.e., an extra large servings portion no longer available) he would agree. He also claimed that the McDonald's food was addictive. He went on to gain 24 ½ pounds and reported other health problems. Unfortunately for Spurlock, no one has been able to replicate his experience. In fact, based on what he has said about his diet, it appears that it would have been impossible for him to have actually had a caloric intake as high as he claims (5,000 calories/day). But while he made general claims, he refuses to release his actual data on what he ate. 

    Spurlock's experiment is questionable and his conclusions appear to have been debunked, but the Supersize Me film had such broad support amongst the media and popular culture at the time (it was widely shown in schools, for instance) that people still believe Spurlock and his conclusions. 

     One of the best sources for refuting Spurlock was the 2009 documentary Fat Head from comedian Tom Naughton. (See the video below). Naughton followed Spurlock's diet as set out in Supersize Me--against his doctor's advice, by the way--and his results were quite different (and even shocked his doctor): he lost 12 pounds and his total cholesterol went down (although his HDL remained the same). He then conducted a different experiment, which Wikipedia summarizes:

At the end of his experiment, Naughton details an additional experiment inspired by his research into the lipid hypothesis. In this second experiment, he cuts out most sugars and starches from his diet for a month, eating foods such as cheeseburgers without buns, eggs and bacon fried in butter, steaks, Polish sausage, fruit in heavy cream, and green vegetables in butter. He uses coconut oil to fry onions for his cheeseburgers and eats fried shredded cheese as a snack. As a result, Naughton says that his energy level and mood have suffered no deleterious effects, despite him often working until 2 AM on a large programming project with a tight deadline. At the end of the month, his overall cholesterol has dropped from 222 to 209, with his LDL having dropped from 156 to 130 and his HDL having increased from 49 to 64.

Unlike Spurlock, Naughton was not addicted to McDonald's food--in fact, he was quite turned off by the stuff by the end of his experiment. 

VIDEO: "Fathead (1080p) FULL MOVIE - Documentary"

Gravitas HEALTH | Free Movies (1 hr 46 min.)

    Others have tried McDonald's diets as well with similar results:

• "Woman says 'McDonald's diet' took off weight"--NBC News (2005). It reports: "Inspired by the documentary “Super Size Me,” Merab Morgan decided to give a fast-food-only diet a try. The construction worker and mother of two ate only at McDonald’s for 90 days — and dropped 37 pounds in the process." She restricted herself to a 2,000/day diet.
• "Man Who Lost 60 Pounds from Eating McDonald's Every Day for Six Months Debuts Documentary"--Delish (2018). This involved one John Cisna, a science instructor at Colo Nesco High School. He did his experiment in 2014, but released a documentary in 2018.

He ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 180 straight days—all at McDonald's. But Cisna carefully chose his meals, counting calories (limiting his daily intake to 2,000 calories) and incorporating moderate exercise four to five days each week.

• "Man claims he lost weight eating nothing but McDonald’s for 30 days"--Metro (2018). Ryan Williams limited himself to a 2,500 calories/day for the first week and 2,300 after that, plus a 1-hour workout each morning. He lost 16 pounds.
• "This University Professor Ate at McDonald's for an Entire Month and She Didn't End Up Supersized"--INC. (2018). Drexel University professor Nyree Dardarian "set a target of 1,400 calories worth of McDonald's food each day, with 200 non-McDonald's calories each day that she could use however she liked. She also kept a daily log of her food and activity for the month of June 2018." Her non-McDonald's intake was reserved for wine or beer. 

At the end of her 30-day McDonald's diet, Dardarian's results were completely different than those experienced by Morgan Spurlock. She gained just one pound, her blood chemistry remained within normal values, and she didn't experience the mood swings and other mental and physical problems Spurlock did. She did experience some intense cravings for regular, non-McDonald's food choices, however.

The takeaway is that Supersize Me seems to have fallen victim to the reproducibility crises, not helped by his refusal to release his diary of what he ate and how much. The other main takeaway is that its not the fast food as much as it is caloric intake. Those that kept calories to 2,000 or so combined with moderate exercise experienced health benefits.