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Saturday, September 30, 2023

Prepper News

 Just some articles and reviews related to prepping that I've come across recently:

  • "Blue Collar Prepping: The Pacific Bay Portable Water Pump". A review of a small rechargeable electric pump intended for refilling a hydration bladder from a water bottle or canteen. Per the review, "[t]he hoses support standard quick-detach mounts used by Sawyer, Katadyn, etc." I assume that it could be connected to a filter to pump water through the filter, but the review does not discuss this.
  • "SABRE Pepper Spray - One Of The Best For Self Defense"--Modern Survival Blog. Some information about SABRE's products and the differences between the stream, fog/mist, and gel dispensers, effective range, number of shots, etc.
  • "Best Keychain Flashlight Ever!"--Modern Survival Blog. And that flashlight, according to the author, is the Olight i3e EOS. I have one as well and can also attest that it is a great little flashlight. It is bright for its size. It uses a single AAA battery making it small enough to comfortably carry in your pocket attached to your key ring. It is my EDC flashlight and because it is on my key ring, it truly is EDC. 
  • "Colt King Cobra Target Revolver .357 Magnum - Review"--Ammo Land. This is a target revolver in that it has a high visibility front sight and an adjustable rear site, but it only has a 4.25-inch barrel rather than the longer 6-inch you would expect with a target revolver. That brings it down into a more manageable size for carrying on the hip all day long. I know that revolvers are not considered suitable as a combat pistol (and, for that reason, no longer considered suitable for a police duty weapon) but I have long felt that the .357 Magnum brings a certain versatility to the table for the prepper/survivalist because of the wide variety of loads it can shoot: everything from light birdshot rounds suitable for killing pests, light power loads for small game or practice, and up to very capable defensive rounds or rounds capable of taking medium game. 
  • "Get the FN 5.7 Firearms You’ve Been Waiting For"--Ammo Land. If you are interested in picking up an FN Five-seveN pistol or PS90 carbine, FN is running a rebate ($125 and $175, respectively) through October 31, 2023.
  • "Foraging for Berries - Survival Food"--Alpha Survivalist. An article focusing on foraging for blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, raspberries and strawberries. 

Friday, September 29, 2023

VIDEO: Mechanized v. Light Infantry

The topic of this video is whether light infantry is obsolete. To address that question, the author of the video first explains what is light infantry (and what the U.S. military considers light infantry isn't--it is too heavily weighed down) and discuss the advantages and disadvantages to each. The conclusion is that light infantry works great versus mechanized infantry where mechanized infantry can be canalized, such as mountain passes or swampy/marshy ground but stands no chance in flat terrain--and that includes forested terrain as one of his stories illustrates. A 60-ton tank has no problem pushing over trees.

Christopher Larsen (35 min.)

The Changing Face of Crime

 Greg Ellifritz has a new Weekend Knowledge Dump up. But rather than discuss that, I want to review one of his recent articles: "The Reality of Modern Criminal Attacks." We know that crime has fundamentally changed since 2019/2020. Greg summarizes some of the changes:

  • Multiple attackers: As Greg notes, the day of the lone mugger seems to be receding in the rear view mirror. We instead see a proliferation of flash mob robberies that might involve dozens of criminals, to groups of 3 to 5 (but sometimes more) robbing stores, people on the street, breaking into vehicles, following people home and attacking them there and more. How many videos have you seen over the past year or two where someone tries to defend themselves against an attack and suddenly a bunch of the criminal's buddies show up on the scene to rescue their buddy and, frequently, administer an educational beat down. Remember my post from early August where a guy in Seattle was chasing down a crook that stole a bag and laptop from out of a car and there were multiple people that tried to intervene, conceal the thief, and finally spirited him away in a getaway car? This is actually similar to what FerFal describes happening in Argentina as the economy collapse, as he noted the increase in crimes committed by gangs. The lesson here is that your defensive plans may need to shift to be oriented around facing multiple attackers. That probably means that if you might want to consider a concealed carry weapon with more than 5, 6, or 7 rounds.
  • Declining distinction between resource and process predators: It wasn't so long ago that criminals tended to fall into two categories: the resource predator who just wanted your stuff and the process predator who enjoyed hurting his/her victim. I don't think it was because a resource predator couldn't enjoy hurting a victim but because they wanted to get away quick or didn't want to unnecessarily escalate the crime to one where the police would actively investigate it. But as Greg has noted, an increasing number of crimes seem to involve criminals that not only want to take the victim's stuff, but will take the time (or assign one of the crew) to beat or kick the victim. Greg doesn't discuss the why of this change, but I will offer up two suggestions: First, due to poor policing (especially in urban areas), the odds of the police showing up or investigating has declined and so the criminals have a free hand to indulge themselves; and, second, given the racial makeup of many of these criminals and the messaging from the elites, there is probably racial animus involved.
  • Compliance won't guarantee your safety: related to the point immediately above, Greg notes that increasingly it appears that not only won't compliance guarantee your safety, it may embolden the criminals to commit battery. 
  • Younger attackers: Greg notes that the ages of violent offenders is decreasing so that the crimes now often involve teens or even pre-teens. Two points here: First, as Greg points out, are you mentally prepared to defend yourself against a 12-year old? Second, I believe we are seeing more because the gangs that are organizing the flash mob attacks and robberies are also increasingly using kids to carry out these crimes.
  • Logical reasoning and de-escalation won't work: As Greg notes, you can't reason with attackers that want to victimize you as part of their amusement. 
  • Everything will be recorded: You need to be prepared that your encounter will be recorded, possibly from multiple angles. This isn't just because of the prevalence of surveillance and security cameras, but also because an increasing number of criminals like to video their acts of depravity. (See also Greg's article, "Should I Leave the Scene of a Defensive Shooting?" noting, among other things, the widespread use of video evidence). Greg also warns:

Many prosecutors aren’t interested in filing charges against the violent kids who attacked your or stole your stuff.  They won’t hesitate a bit to prosecute you if you make what they perceive is an unreasonable self defense decision.

Ding, Dong! The Wicked Witch Is Dead!

I am pleased to report that, per the Daily Mail, "Dianne Feinstein dead at 90: Democratic Senator who served for more than 30 years passes away after struggling with her health for months." I'm sure that Satan welcomed her with open arms. 

    Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom had previously promised that, if Feinstein kicked the bucket, he would replace her with a black woman, and now he is scrambling to find potential candidates. The problem is that Adam Schiff, who is Jewish, was running to replace Feinstein (also Jewish), and whoever replaces Feinstein will have an advantage as an incumbent in running against Schiff. Per the article:

    There are multiple black women in California politics to choose from. One of them, Rep. Barbara Lee [ed: a former Black Panther], is already running for the seat, complicating matters.

    Others include Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass [ed: this is the anti-gun Mayor that had two handguns stolen from her home], another former member of Congress. She was elected to the post only last year.

    Additional names floated as Feinstein battled health problems and missed votes include Secretary of State Shirley Weber, L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed, Politico reported in May.

    Selecting Lee might invite charges of giving her an unfair advantage in the hotly contested primary. That would give her the chance to run in 2024 as an incumbent, a substantial leg up in a heavily Democratic state.

    An L.A. Times / Berkeley IGS poll this week had California Rep. Adam Schiff leading the field with 20 per cent. Schiff, a former House impeachment manager, was followed by Rep. Katie Porter at 17 per cent and Lee at 7 per cent.

They are all solid Leftists, but Bass, when in Congress, signed a letter condemning Israel's annexation of Palestinian territory (although she supported a resolution to provide defense aid to Israel), so that may count against her.

Thursday, September 28, 2023

More of the Great Replacement: "Hollywood’s new racist discrimination employment policies which blacklist whites"

From Behind the Black:

    They’re coming for you next: According to a lawsuit filled by the non-profit legal firm First Liberty on behalf of James Harker, a white film electrician, the film industry has set up a racially segregated apprentice program that specifically excludes whites and is designed only for minorities.

    When Harker complained about the bigoted nature of this program, he was then blacklisted, and has no longer been able to get any freelance jobs, despite 27 years of experience in the industry.

    ... The program itself is called “Double the Line” (DTL). Its purpose is to force film companies to hire one minority to match every crew person it hires normally. That minority will be paid a full if not higher salary, regardless of his or her experience or training, and will later receive favored treatment in hiring, in order “to push forward a demographic shift,” as noted on the Equity and Inclusion website of the Association of Independent Producers (AICP), one of the defendents in this case.

    In other words, the program specifically favors minorities in hiring and training, and specifically excludes whites because of their race.

    The lawsuit was triggered when Harker discovered this program on a job. He had been hired by the film production company Something Ideal for a commercial being made for Meta (formerly Facebook). His position was bestboy, who works under the gaffer in the electrical department. In doing some paperwork as part of his job, he discovered the crew had two gaffers, one of whom was a minority hired under the DTL program that AICP runs with the support of Meta. She was being paid more than Harker, but had literally no experience, so little that she “was unable to even properly coil an electric extension cord, which is among the most basic skills of any motion picture electrian.”

    After Harker complained about this to the production supervisor, he found he was no longer wanted as an electrician, and has since been blacklisted by AICP, Something Ideal, and Meta.

The Great Replacement: "Just 6 Percent of New S&P Jobs Went to White Applicants in The Wake of George Floyd, Analysis Shows"

The Washington Free Beacon reports that "Only 6 percent of new S&P 100 jobs went to white applicants in the year after George Floyd’s death, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News, a testament to the pervasiveness of legally tenuous diversity programs throughout corporate America."

    The analysis, based on data reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, shows that S&P 100 companies added 323,094 new jobs between 2020 and 2021. Of that total, 302,570 of them—94 percent of the total increase—went to "people of color," defined as blacks, Asians, and Hispanics, the analysis found. Together, those groups make up just 40 percent of the U.S population.

    The disparities raise new questions about the role of race in corporate hiring, which is already under scrutiny following the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions. With many companies and law firms now facing lawsuits over their diversity programs, the numbers suggest that race-conscious decision-making has gone beyond flashy fellowships or supplier diversity initiatives; in 2020, it appears to have permeated routine employment decisions.

    "These numbers are extraordinarily stark," said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, which litigates reverse discrimination cases. "It’s very hard to imagine this could be legally defensible."

    Morenoff added that "disparate impact," or disparities in outcomes, can be a basis for liability even without proof of intentional discrimination. The Justice Department used this theory last year when it sued Meta, Facebook’s parent company, on the grounds that the platform’s algorithms affect users differently based on their race.

The George Floyd riots were our Kristallnacht. This is just the continuation. 

More Cultural Enrichment in Philadelphia

Looting in rioting for a second night in Philadelphia: "Looting rocks Philly for a SECOND night: Brazen thieves rip out safe and lottery machine of closed liquor store in latest flash mob crime to hit City of Brotherly Love"--Daily Mail. Some of the best footage of the rioting and looting came from a woman, Dayjia Blackwell, livestreaming under the apt moniker "Meatball" but she wound up being arrested: "Teary-eyed influencer ‘Meatball’ who livestreamed Philadelphia looting mayhem is charged with 6 felonies"--New York Post. Paul Joseph Watson has a nice collection of video of the looting from Tuesday night including Meatball's arrest.

"All hell broke loose."--Paul Joseph Watson (8 min.)

Karma Strikes Sweden, Again

Sweden not only supported allowing refugees come into Europe, but played an outsized role in destroying the governments in Rhodesia and South Africa. And now the chickens have come home to roost:

    Late on Wednesday, an 18-year-old rapper was shot dead at the Mälarhöjden sports ground in Fruängen in southern Stockholm in a brazen attack during a football training session.

    Within hours, one man was killed and another was wounded in a shooting in Jordbro, south of the Swedish capital. Minutes after police were called to reports of gunfire, a pickup truck crashed into a house in the area before two men ran from the vehicle.

    And early on Thursday morning, a 25-year-old woman died in an explosion that ripped through her home and four neighbouring buildings in Storvreta outside Uppsala, north of Stockholm.

    Footage of the bomb's aftermath shows the woman's building ripped apart, the smashed windows hanging haphazardly down the front of her home in a scene that witnesses have likened to a war zone. 

The Undiscovered Country: The Fall Of The International Order And The Future Of The West

In Hamlet, Shakespeare used the phrase "The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns," as a reference to death. In the film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the writers put a slight twist on this, using the term "undiscovered country" to more loosely refer to the future, particularly an unknown future deviating from the path of predictability. 

     Star Trek VI, although set in a fictional future, mirrored the collapse of the Soviet Union occurring about the time of its release in 1991. Around the same time, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama published his book, The End of History and the Last Man. In that book, he argued that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, humanity had reached the end of history. "That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." Samuel P. Huntington wrote a rebuttal of this--first as an article and later a book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order--arguing that the end of the Cold War only meant that the world had reverted to a normal state of affairs characterized by cultural conflict and that, in fact, future conflicts would mostly be along cultural or civilizational lines. (See this Wikipedia article for a summary of Huntington's book; I also reviewed it back in 2016, providing a lengthy summary). In effect, Fukuyama argued for a predictable future following the same course; while Huntington suggested something more chaotic. 

    We are now roughly 30 years after Fukuyama's and Huntington's works and history has shown that Huntington was correct. He predicted a clash between Orthodox and Western civilizations, accurately predicting a fault line within Ukraine--and now we have it in the war in Ukraine. (See also, "The Role of Religion in Russia’s War on Ukraine" by Aidan Houston and Peter Mandaville, Ph.D., United States Institute of Peace). Of course, the Global War on Terror (GWoT) was, itself, a clash between Western and Muslim civilizations. And I think that one can correctly view the immigration crises facing the United States as a conflict between Western and Latin American cultures. (See, "Video: Texas Troops Spring Into Action After Illegal Immigrants Plant Foreign Flag on US Soil"; "Shocking video shows migrant mom and baby crying as they cross under razor wire into El Paso just to be sent back the same way: Costa Rica declares a state of emergency amid huge influx of migrants at the US southern border."). The assistance provided by various Latin American countries in encouraging and assisting illegal aliens move north and across the southern U.S. border is really just a different type of warfare and colonization. (See, "Friday Afternoon Statistic Dump - Border Patrol Reports Over 7.5 million Illegal Aliens Released into U.S. During Biden Term, 5.18 Million are Single Adult Males" - The Last Refuge). I suppose that the same can be said about the Muslim nations along the periphery of the Mediterranean that assist Muslims and sub-Saharan Africans make their way to Europe.

    But if the post-War (i.e., post-World War II) world was divided between two ideologies--Western Liberal Democracy on the one hand and Communism on the other--and the fall of the Soviet Union spelled the end to Communism, what about the other ideology? According to many thinkers and pundits, it too appears to be collapsing. For instance, in a recent interview, Tucker Carlson said:

    I've become convinced over the past several years — particularly since the war in Ukraine began — that the world is changing much more quickly than most Americans understand. And because there's virtually no coverage of the rest of the world in American media, Americans don't have a good sense of it.

    What we, in this country, refer to as the "Post-War Order” — the institutions set up in the wake of World War II to keep the world peaceful and prosperous and the United States at the top of the pyramid, and that would include the dominance of the dollar, the SWIFT system, NATO — all of that appears to me to be crumbling. ...

    So what is the "Post-War Order"? In a 2022 article published in Foreign Affairs by Michael J. Mazarr, "How to Save the Postwar Order," Mazarr explains:

    Broadly speaking, the international order is nothing more than the prevailing pattern of interactions in world politics. The existence of an order does not presume shared, enforced rules or any degree of stability. But in certain periods, rules-based orders have emerged that benefited many nations. These systems were not grounded in altruism or the ideal of a supranational government. Rather, the most powerful actors of the era, often under the leadership of one preeminent power or a small number of them, agreed to certain explicit or implicit rules and norms to promote their own interests—typically, territorial security and economic prosperity.

    The post-1945 U.S.-led international order is by far the most institutionalized rules-based order to date. It is grounded in the UN system but incorporates regional organizations such as NATO and the European Union, as well as global economic institutions, intergovernmental processes, public-private coalitions, and nongovernmental organizations that set thousands of issue-specific rules and standards. The order embodies norms, imperfectly adhered to but widely shared and at least partly enforced, that promote the interests of participating countries, most notably their interest in territorial nonaggression and relatively open economic exchange.

* * *

    The result is a material set of influences on states. The economic alignment of powerful countries, for example, made it possible for these countries to set standards—in the rule of law, financial and monetary policy, technology interoperability, and many other areas—and then to attract new adherents eager to benefit from the resulting coordination. Countries that sought cutting-edge technology, foreign direct investment, or support from international financial organizations found themselves at least partly constrained by the order’s rules and norms. Exclusion from the economic order has proved economically fatal—ensuring that the vast majority of countries adjust their behavior, at least to a degree, in order to remain tethered to the international system.

    The postwar order is often held to be the sum of its institutional parts, but its wider gravitational effect is the real source of its power. The order’s norms and institutions derive from a more essential underlying force—the corresponding interests of a critical mass of the world community and the resulting global influence of that bloc. Dozens of leading economic and military powers have come to view the postwar order as essential to creating the conditions that produce economic and territorial security for themselves. Over time, the states enmeshed in the international order have been joined by potent nonstate actors: nongovernmental organizations, businesses, political parties, and movements now play important roles in advocating for and enforcing the order’s rules. By conditioning full participation in economic, political, and even cultural networks on those rules, the states and nonstate actors at the core of the order create a formidable echo effect on world politics.

Some scholars further seek to distinguish the current international order formed after the fall of the Soviet Union from the U.S. led international order that existed among the West and its allies during the Cold War. (See, e.g., "Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order" by John J. Mearsheimer, International Security (2019); "Collapse of the World Order?" by Alexey Arbatov, Carnegie Endowment for World Peace (2014)). Mearsheimer contends:

... the United States has led two different orders since World War II. The Cold War order, which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a “liberal international order,” was neither liberal nor international. It was a bounded order that was limited mainly to the West and was realist in all its key dimensions. It had certain features that were also consistent with a liberal order, but those attributes were based on realist logic. The U.S.-led post–Cold War order, on the other hand, is liberal and international, and thus differs in fundamental ways from the bounded order the United States dominated during the Cold War.

 Others maintain that it is the same order, only lacking the bi-polarity of the Cold War. (See, "The Myth of Post-Cold War Chaos" by G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs (1996)).

    In any event, it appears that the liberal world order is, indeed, weakening if not collapsing. Mearsheimer argued in his article that the liberal world order was doomed to collapse because it was fundamentally flawed:

Spreading liberal democracy around the globe, which is of paramount importance for building such an order, not only is extremely difficult, but often poisons relations with other countries and sometimes leads to disastrous wars. Nationalism within the target state is the main obstacle to the promotion of democracy, but balance of power politics also function as an important blocking force.

He also noted that it was poisonous within its own core nations:

Furthermore, the liberal order's tendency to privilege international institutions over domestic considerations, as well as its deep commitment to porous, if not open borders, has had toxic political effects inside the leading liberal states themselves, including the U.S. unipole. Those policies clash with nationalism over key issues such as sovereignty and national identity. Because nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet, it invariably trumps liberalism whenever the two clash, thus undermining the order at its core.

And then there is globalization:

    In addition, hyperglobalization, which sought to minimize barriers to global trade and investment, resulted in lost jobs, declining wages, and rising income inequality throughout the liberal world. It also made the international financial system less stable, leading to recurring financial crises. Those troubles then morphed into political problems, further eroding support for the liberal order.

    A hyperglobalized economy undermines the order in yet another way: it helps countries other than the unipole grow more powerful, which can undermine unipolarity and bring the liberal order to an end. This is what is happening with the rise of China, which, along with the revival of Russian power, has brought the unipolar era to a close. ...

    Mazaar points out two other problems. First, as he points out, is the excessive ambition of our elites: that is, "the architects of the postwar system risk pushing their objectives too far and generating a violent backlash." 

This is arguably what happened with NATO in Europe. Under the United States’ watch, the alliance metastasized from a measured and carefully calibrated program to fortify European security into a limitless, duty-bound imperative. Without endorsing the legitimacy of Russia’s claim to dominate the countries of its near abroad, it is possible to acknowledge that Moscow was always bound to object to NATO’s expansion into areas it perceives as core security concerns.

He also notes that this excessive ambition (or perhaps hubris) has produced an excessive and uncompromising attitude among elites for enforcing their rules. The result has been unnecessary military interventions and abandoning imperfect treaties and agreements. 

    The second threat to the international order are those countries he terms the “hedging middle”: "countries that prefer to avoid taking sides in the U.S.-Chinese and U.S.-Russian rivalries and therefore hesitate to enforce the norms of the order." 

These countries—including Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey—participate in and support many elements of the international system. They broadly support the order’s norms and typically respect them. Some of these countries are set to become major economic and military players. Yet if more of them come to see a Chinese-Russian axis as a useful counterweight to U.S. and Western dominance and therefore defect from U.S.-led institutions, the postwar order will be in deep trouble.

You will recognize some of these countries as belonging to the group termed the "BRICS" (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) or willing to work with the BRICS in establishing alternative international banking systems and/or reserve currencies. These are also the countries that have been resistant to imposing sanctions on Russia and question the Western position in regard to Ukraine. 

    That is the international situation. But what about internally? If Huntington is correct about future clashes occurring between civilizations (or, more correctly, peoples) what about when the border between those civilizations/cultures have moved to within a country? That is what worries me. 

    In my review of Huntington's book in 2016, I related that , like many others, Huntington sees immigration as a possible strength; but only if (1) the immigrants bring skills and education with them and (2) if they can be assimilated. Absent these factors, Huntington maintained, a nation risks becoming a "cleft society". At the time Huntington wrote his book, he described Ukraine as a cleft society (cleft, that is, between a Russian Orthodox east and a Western Christian west). And we know what happened there. 

    Today it is safe to say that the "border" between Western civilization and Latin American civilization is not at the United States borders, but within it. Some want to embrace what it is to be an American, but too many bring few skills and have little or no interest in assimilating--I regularly encounter illegal aliens that have lived here for decades and are incapable of communicating in English (or so they claim). It is probably too late to reverse course. At some point, the illegals will be sent to overwhelm the lower population Red States. (See, "The inevitable consequences of the alien invasion"--Bayou Renaissance Man). The Left is making it impossible for traditional Americans to have a refuge or "safe space". (See, "Canadian police launch probe into adverts for 'whites only moms and tots' sessions for parents who want to 'escape forced diversity and join other proud parents of European children'"; "Until Lambs Become Lions"--American Greatness; "Bloomberg to Biden: Kill American 'Xenophobia' by Importing Migrants"--Breitbart). 

    In fact, the Left is hellbent on making the U.S. into a cleft society. As I noted in my 2016 review, Huntington sees Cultural Marxists and multiculturalists as the gravest threat to America:

     A more immediate and dangerous challenge exists in the United States. Historically American national identity has been defined culturally by the heritage of Western civilization and politically by the principles of the American Creed on which Americans overwhelmingly agree: liberty, democracy, individualism, equality before the law, constitutionalism, private property. In the late twentieth century both components of American identity have come under concentrated and sustained onslaught from a small but influential number of intellectuals and publicists. In the name of multiculturalism they have attacked the identification of the United States with Western civilization, denied the existence of a common American culture, and promoted racial, ethnic, and other subnational cultural identities and groupings. They have denounced, in the words of one of their reports, the “systematic bias toward European culture and its derivatives” in education and “the dominance of the European-American monocultural perspective.” The multiculturalists are, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., said, “very often ethnocentric separatists who see little in the Western heritage other than Western crimes.” Their “mood is one of divesting Americans of the sinful European inheritance and seeking redemptive infusions from non-Western cultures.” 

     The multicultural trend was also manifested in a variety of legislation that followed the civil rights acts of the 1960s, and in the 1990s the Clinton administration made the encouragement of diversity one of its major goals. The contrast with the past is striking. The Founding Fathers saw diversity as a reality and as a problem: hence the national motto, e pluribus unum, chosen by a committee of the Continental Congress consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Later political leaders who also were fearful of the dangers of racial, sectional, ethnic, economic, and cultural diversity (which, indeed, produced the largest war of the century between 1815 and 1914), responded to the call of “bring us together,” and made the promotion of national unity their central responsibility. “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all,” warned Theodore Roosevelt, “would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.” In the 1990s, however, the leaders of the United States have not only permitted that but assiduously promoted the diversity rather than the unity of the people they govern. 

     The leaders of other countries have, as we have seen, at times attempted to disavow their cultural heritage and shift the identity of their country from one civilization to another. In no case to date have they succeeded and they have instead created schizophrenic torn countries. The American multiculturalists similarly reject their country’s cultural heritage. Instead of attempting to identify the United States with another civilization, however, they wish to create a country of many civilizations, which is to say a country not belonging to any civilization and lacking a cultural core. History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society. A multicivilizational United States will not be the United States; it will be the United Nations.

He goes on:

     Rejection of the Creed and of Western civilization means the end of the United States of America as we have known it. It also means effectively the end of Western civilization. If the United States is de-Westernized, the West is reduced to Europe and a few lightly populated overseas European settler countries. Without the United States the West becomes a minuscule and declining part of the world’s population on a small and inconsequential peninsula at the extremity of the Eurasian land mass. 

     The clash between the multiculturalists and the defenders of Western civilization and the American Creed is, in James Kurth’s phrase, “the real clash” within the American segment of Western civilization. Americans cannot avoid the issue: Are we a Western people or are we something else? The futures of the United States and of the West depend upon Americans reaffirming their commitment to Western civilization. Domestically this means rejecting the divisive siren calls of multiculturalism. Internationally it means rejecting the elusive and illusory calls to identify the United States with Asia. Whatever economic connections may exist between them, the fundamental cultural gap between Asian and American societies precludes their joining together in a common home. Americans are culturally part of the Western family; multiculturalists may damage and even destroy that relationship but they cannot replace it. When Americans look for their cultural roots, they find them in Europe.

 * * *

     If North America and Europe renew their moral life, build on their cultural commonality, and develop close forms of economic and political integration to supplement their security collaboration in NATO, they could generate a third Euroamerican phase of Western economic affluence and political influence. 

    We are now well within the 21st Century and multiculturalism and cultural Marxism has upended our politics and society, even our science. (See "‘We’ll Get You Through Your Children!’ The Night in 1958 That Launched the Culture War"--The Stream; "Anthropological Societies Ban Discussion of Biological Sex"--Breitbart). The United States has failed to spread a universal culture and now not only is the international order that the United States created falling apart, but Western civilization is beginning to collapse in upon itself. And there is no sign that the Devos crowd comprehend what is happening or, if they do, have any desire to stop it. (See, "The illegal alien invasion is destroying our country - deliberately"--Bayou Renaissance Man; "Axios Admits Mass Immigration 'Makes U.S. Housing Crisis Worse'"--Breitbart). They seem to prefer, it seems, to strip the United States of its assets rather than create anything new, much like private equity firms do with companies. The United States--and the West more generally--seem to be moving into an "undiscovered country" and only time will tell if it is the type of country expressed by Shakespeare or Star Trek VI.

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

News of the World

Some articles that caught my attention:

    The city's contract with the more than 100 hotels-turned-shelters, which was supposed to end this year, will now end in August 2026 and cost a total $1.365 billion - almost five times the original price tag of $237 million.

    The new cost does not include other facilities turned into shelters such as the tent shelters set up in the McCarren Recreation Center in Queens or the Island Shores Assisted Living in Staten Island. 

The city departments and agencies, including essential services, will be cut by a total of 15% by next April to help defray the costs. As usual, the public is getting the short end of the stick on this while large corporations and NGOs will profit.

    Thousands of stores across the US have been forced to lock up basic products like toothpaste and deodorant following a spike in shoplifting.

    As of April 2023, stores had lost an estimated $86.6 billion to retail theft in 2022 - with projections indicating that by 2025, retail theft may cost stores over $115 billion, according to CapitalOne Research.

    The suspect in the killing of a Chicago family-of-four and their three dogs has been pictured after he was shot dead alongside a female passenger after a police chase.

    Nathaniel Huey Jr, 32, and his partner Ermalinda Palomo, 50, were tracked down by cops in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday - more than 650 miles from the brutal slaughter at the family home in Romeoville, Illinois, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

    Huey Jr. sped away from police down the I-44 but smashed into another car and plowed into barriers near the Hard Rock Casino. The car burst into flames - police said nobody got out of the car - and then officers heard two gunshots.

He owned a private security firm, Black Bear Security, which may be significant because one of the photos on his Facebook page shows him holding what appears to be an SBR with a sound suppressor, and none of the neighbors heard any shots as he executed the family and their pets. Per the article:

The police search for Huey came to a deadly and fiery end in Oklahoma after cops were tipped off by a digital license plate reader which identified his car, prompting authorities to initiate a traffic stop. 

    The number of missing and runaway children in Ohio for 2023 is nearly double that of states with similar populations, sparking panic among parents and police who in some towns can't keep up with the number of teenagers running away. 

    In this month alone, 45 children have been reported missing in the Cleveland area. 

    They join the total number of 1,072 who have been reported missing since the start of the year. 

    The Republican Party of Texas unanimously passed a resolution calling on Governor Greg Abbott to convene a special legislative session to address Colony Ridge, the massive housing development north of Houston that’s become a hub for illegal immigrants.

    The resolution, which passed by a vote of 61-0, says a special legislative session must be convened in order to “prevent further settlement of illegal aliens in Colony Ridge and any other areas of Texas.” The power to call a special legislative session is with Abbott, who has already been urged by the state’s Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick to do the same.

    The party’s resolution honed in on a number of specific concerns highlighted in The Daily Wire’s investigation of the development, noting that “the developer allows for illegal aliens to obtain loans to purchase land using Individual Tax ID Numbers (ITINs) instead of Social Security Numbers” and that Colony Ridge “has grown to an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 inhabitants and spans over 60 square miles.”

    Titled “Resolution Calling for Action in Colony Ridge,” it also calls for Attorney General Ken Paxton to “initiate a full investigation into the development activities of Colony Ridge Land, LLC, and its possible connections to elected officials in the region.”

    "We all know the world is behind because of the pandemic, but I don't understand why they're not stressing to you how bad it is," Quis began in his video. He explained that as a seventh-grade teacher, he's noticed that most of the children in his class are performing at a fourth-grade level.

    He continued, saying that almost no one, the other public school administrators or even the parents of these kids are not speaking about it or doing anything to help. Instead, these students are still being passed on to the next grade despite severely underperforming.
  • "Why Gentrification May Be a Trigger for Gun Violence"--U.S. News. The article relates that "[a]n analysis published this week in JAMA Surgery found the incidence rate for firearm injuries in gentrifying neighborhoods was 62% higher between 2014 and 2019 than in nongentrifying neighborhoods with similar socioeconomic characteristics." 
    Gentrification has been a controversial issue in many U.S. cities for decades. While it can have a positive impact when examining issues like poverty rate, home values and crime rates, the new study says it “may result in social disruption and alterations of social norms that can destabilize the previous social structure as prior residents experience rising costs, increasingly limited housing, and the stress associated with possible displacement into new communities.”

    In other words, residents who have long called a community home – and are often people of color – can effectively be forced to move once rents and property values rise.

    Previous research has found an uptick in firearm violence in neighborhoods that surrounded gentrified communities. The new study also notes another prior analysis that found shootings in a 12-year period moved from gentrified areas to nongentrified ones.

    “Together, these studies paint a nuanced picture of gentrification’s association with firearm injuries, with an initial increase as prior residents are displaced and eventual stabilization and decrease in firearm injury incidence when higher-income residents predominate and firearm injuries are displaced into surrounding (low-income nongentrifying) communities,” the new study says.

The authors of the study suggest that "policies that focus on increasing affordable housing and reducing the impact of resident displacement – as well as interventions that seek to rebuild cohesion within communities that have been disrupted through gentrification – could help mitigate the risk of increased gun violence." It hasn't worked before, but why not try again and expect a different result. 

    As best as I can tell from the article, the researchers have established a correlation but not the cause(s). Is it a simple matter of mixed communities presenting a target rich environment, so to speak, for the criminal elements? Is it a case, as Robert Putnam's research showed, that ethnic diversity leads to a loss of social capital and trust--i.e., a more divisive community? Is it anger over housing becoming unaffordable for one group? A greater criminal propensity among one group? A mixture of these or other factors? 

    The next major pandemic is coming. It’s already on the horizon, and could be far worse — killing millions more people — than the last one.

    We don’t yet know for certain what form it will take — just that its arrival, according to global health experts, is not just a possibility but a probability.

    That’s horrific enough. Even more terrifying is the fact that Britain and the rest of the world have so far done very little to prepare for it.

    To combat Disease X — as the World Health Organisation ominously calls it — we will once again need vaccines to be engineered and delivered in record time. But, as things stand, there is absolutely no guarantee that will happen.

    According to De Telegraph, an autopsy found that Wattiez died of asphyxiation and not the euthanasia drugs.

    An investigation found that the doctor and nurses took turns using a pillow to suffocate Wattiez until she was dead.

    Chinese police descended upon the financial services arm of doomed property giant Evergrande on Saturday night, arresting numerous employees at the company’s Shenzhen offices, possibly including General Manager Du Liang.

    The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the arrests followed Friday’s takeover of the Evergrande life insurance company by a state-owned firm and Saturday’s announcement that a case had been filed against the Evergrande Financial Wealth Management Company over violations of disclosure regulations.

It isn't just Evergrande in trouble. The article also relates that China's largest real estate investment company, Country Garden, was teetering on the edge of defaulting. 

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Samples From Bennu Asteroid Delivered To Earth

I had missed this earlier, but on Sunday, samples recovered from the asteroid Bennu were dropped in a small capsule onto the Utah desert and recovered by NASA

    The samples were gathered from the surface of a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu. The space rock, which is roughly as tall as the Empire State Building, is located more than 200 million miles away from Earth but orbits in such a way that it occasionally swings within 4.6 million miles of the planet.

    Bennu’s main draw owes to its age. The asteroid is estimated to have formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s existence, making it a pristine remnant from a chaotic time more than 4.5 billion years ago. As such, studying an asteroid’s chemical and physical properties is thought to be one of the best ways to understand the earliest days of the solar system.

    “They’re pretty well untouched from right around 4.5 billion years ago,” Betts said. “To get insights into these rocks gives real power to not just the science of asteroids but to everything in our solar system.”

    Researchers are keen to understand what role — if any — asteroids played in the emergence of life on Earth. There are theories, for instance, that asteroids and comets may have delivered water and other building blocks of life to the planet.

The samples were collected by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft which launched in 2016, arrived at Bennu in 2018, touched down on Bennu's surface in 2020, and left to return to Earth in 2021. The samples were taken to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas on Monday.

Prepping Your Vehicle For Winter

 Blue Collar Prepping recently ran an article entitled "Vehicle Check: Winter Is Coming," that has some good points on preparing for winter:

  • Check your tires for wear and for pressure (including your spare tire);
  • Change your wiper blades;
  • Check your washer fluid (the author lives in a warm area so he doesn't use any with anti-freeze properties--those of you in cold areas should make sure that you are using the proper washer fluid);
  • Check your brakes;
  • Check your coolant (anti-freeze) levels. 
    Basically, you want to give your car a thorough looking over to spot potential issues that might lead to a breakdown such as belts, hoses, spark plugs, wires and cables, and make sure that your battery still has enough cold cranking amps (CCA) to handle the cold weather. 

    Although not mentioned by the author, you can pick up winter wiper blades that are supposed to resist the build-up of ice better than regular wiper blades. The downside is that they tend to streak more than regular blades. But I've heard (although I haven't tried them yet) that the beam style wiper blades work better in both summer and winter than either the regular or winter blades, respectively.

    If you live in a cold area of the country to get out and inspect your snow tires and/or chains to spot any issues before hand. It's still too early to mount snow tires (at least in Idaho) but better to spot an issue now than after the snow has started falling. I saw this at Bridgestone's website explaining why winter tires are better than standard all-season tires when temperatures stay at or below freezing for long periods of time:

If you live in a place that experiences extremely cold winter temperatures, it is recommended that you install winter tires when winterizing your car. When the temperature consistently hovers around or below freezing, the rubber compounds in non-winter tires harden, decreasing the tire’s ability to grip the road. Winter tires use special compounds engineered to resist hardening in cold temperatures, providing better traction in ice, snow, slush, and even dry pavement.


    While I always keep a pair or two of work gloves in my car, I also like to keep a pair of winter gloves in the car during colder months. I keep an extra pair of warm socks in the car in case my feet or if a break down requires me to resort to walking, and a couple blankets in case I'm stuck in the car. If you are the type that wears a lighter coat because you are just running between a warm car and warm building, you probably will want to throw some extra winter clothing (including boots) into your car in case you become stranded or have to walk. 

    Check to make sure that you have ice scrapers in your car and that they aren't broken or too dulled. You might want to add a small shovel or spade and some sand or something else gritty that can add traction to help you become unstuck. 

    Since winter months mean long nights, it is probably a good idea to make sure that the flashlight that you keep in the car still has working batteries. 

    For a more comprehensive list of things to check, lube, or otherwise prepare for winter on your car, see "27 Things You Must Do To Prepare Your Car For Winter" at Family Handyman

Monday, September 25, 2023

Nice: Cop Has Ex-Girlfriend Involuntarily Committed To Mental Hospital After They Broke Up

From the Daily Mail: "Married Pennsylvania cop Ronald Davis is charged after being filmed forcibly arresting mistress then having her committed after telling he'd 'make her look crazy' when they broke up.

    A married Pennsylvania cop is facing felony strangulation charges after being filmed forcibly arresting his mistress while trying to force her out of his trailer. 

    Ronald Keith Davis, 37, was arrested on September 21. 

    He is accused of abusing his authority to forcibly arrest girlfriend Michelle Perfanov in August after a lovers' tiff, and have her committed to a mental hospital in Williamstown, Pennsylvania. 

    Perfanov was living in his camper van at the time after a four-month romance, but the pair's relationship had disintegrated. Rather than simply break up, Davis obtained a petition to have her involuntarily committed to a mental institution. 

    On August 21, he was filmed by a colleague arresting her after chasing her down. He sat on her, lay on her and grabbed her by the legs throughout. 

The article relates that she was held at the hospital for 5 days. The officer is now facing criminal charges, but how did he get the involuntary commitment so easily? And if it is so easy to obtain an involuntary commitment order, imagine how much easier it is to get a red-flag order.

Strengthening The West Through Immigration

First up, in France:
  • Some cultural enrichment: "France: Foreigners commit 69% of robberies, violent crimes, and sexual assaults on public transport"--ReMix. But it isn't all foreigners: "Africans are responsible for 52 percent of crimes on public transport while making up just 3.2 percent of the population." And moving out beyond crimes committed on public transportation, "Even for all of France, the data clearly shows that African nationals account for 42 percent of the above-mentioned types of crimes, way above their statistical weight within the French population." Similarly, "Overall in France, these crimes [violent crimes and sexual assaults] are also mostly (55 percent) committed by foreign nationals, the data indicated."

In a breakdown of the statistics from the city of Paris, 38 percent of violent robberies and other violent crimes were perpetrated by foreign nationals from the Maghreb region, which constitutes North African countries such as Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, followed by Africans from countries outside the Maghreb region. In total, foreigners committed approximately 70 percent of all violent robberies in Paris.

Diversity is a strength in the sense of "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger." 

Turning to Germany:

    Germany’s president, who was once cheered by the mainstream media for criticizing President Donald Trump for securing the U.S. border by building a wall, has admitted that his country has reached the “limit of its capacity” and can’t take any more illegal immigrants.

    German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a Social-Democrat who served as foreign minister in Angela Merkel’s government (2013-2017), is now telling other European countries to exercise “stronger controls and surveillance at our external borders.”

    In 2016, Steinmeier told Americans that “building walls” to secure national borders was “a very bad idea.”

    “The worst thing [we] could do is seal ourselves off,” Steinmeier warned. “So if you ask me, building walls is a very bad idea — no matter who pays for them.” He also called Trump a ‘hate preacher’ for taking a stand against mass migration.

    As Germany now faces perhaps the worst migrant wave since 2015, Steinmeier has changed his tune. He and the rest of the German political establishment are terrified as support for the right-wing opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) reaches new heights in opinion polls.

    Knife violence and brawls among Germany’s growing migrant population have become commonplace in many German cities; however, police, at least in one city, are now threatening to pursue anyone who publishes a video of one such scene in the city center of Lübeck.

    When the brawl first occurred in broad daylight, the Schleswig-Holstein police did not make any announcement about it or release a police report; however, when footage of the incident began to spread on social media, the police began to take notice and are now seeking to ban its distribution on social networks.

    The video shows men kicking a young person’s head, while another migrant tosses a metal trash can at an elderly German pedestrian. The senior citizen, uninvolved with the brawl, tumbles to the ground next to him.

    Police showed up on the scene with 10 police vehicles to try to control the violence.

    Despite the huge police mobilization during the brawl, there was no newspaper or police report about the incident. The only evidence that it even happened in the public domain was a video uploaded to Facebook by someone who filmed it on their phone.

    Only then did one authority, which works under the Schleswig-Holstein Interior Minister Sabine Sütterlin-Waack (CDU), even address the incident, stating: “The police warn against the further distribution of this video and ask that you immediately delete the video from your own devices and under no circumstances spread or share it further. This could result in criminal offenses.”

When they elites say it is "our Democracy" they mean that it is theirs, not yours. 

    Organized gangs, many of them made up of foreigners, have targeted children in Halle’s schools for years, with the police recording hundreds of such cases. However, there is now a citizens’ initiative in the German city that has begun patrolling the area, and students are arming themselves for self-defense purposes as they lose faith in the police to protect the young victims.

    The city, located in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, has seen highly troubling statistics emerge regarding the robbery of students, with Die Welt reporting that in just a matter of two years, there have been 203 such robbery offenses with 274 suspects.

    The police noted that 40 percent of suspects have a migration background, and the proportion of those robberies committed by intensive offenders features a “significantly higher” share of foreigners, according to police, although no exact figures were given.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.:
    The United States government is deeply involved in child trafficking. The United States government does not hide what it is doing, actually putting children in a former Walmart Supercenter in Brownsville, Texas, among many others, flying these children out by commercial flights and charter flights all over the country. Putting these children into homes which have not been vetted, sometimes with people that are very suspicious.

(4:26)

    Tens of thousands of children, at a minimum, are disappearing, nobody knows what happens to them, and the government just hides everything — every attempt you make to look into this the government threatens and hides … But while they’re — interesting! — while they’re threatening and hiding, they’re also doing it in plain sight. It’s kind of a weird world where they’re actually doing it in front of you. For instance this morning, I had two sources that were in the McAllen airport in Texas, literally videotaping children that are being trafficked today — right in front of God and everybody — and being put on flights. And so, you know, it’s happening in plain view.

(5:12)

    But at the same time, when my sources were asking questions, someone called the police on them. And the police actually responded and started hassling them — to a small extent, not to a large extent — and the police right on video … from Anthony Rubin, Muckracker. The police are actually on the video, knowing they are being videotaped.

    Children are being transported through McAllen airport, every day, in small numbers and large. Infants to teenagers. This is, again, it’s a simultaneous process of doing this right in the open, right in everybody’s faces. 

(6:01)

    For instance, that one facility, the former Walmart Supercenter, which is right downtown there in … Brownsville, it’s not hidden. And then flying kids out of Arlington Airport in Texas, and McAllen Airport in Texas, flying them to places like Orlando Airport, Jacksonville, Tampa, New York City, all over the place. Right in front of everybody. 

Also:

    ... But right now we are in a state of war. And now, you need to know what’s going on, or you’re going to die. And I mean really die. I don’t mean you’re just going to lose your job, I mean you're going to be dead, in a hole, or in an incinerator.

(30:50)

    That’s clearly what’s coming. It’s coming. For a lot of people, from a lot of different cultures. As you know, many of the Chinese that are in the United States will also be targeted by the Chinese Communist Party. And it’s not just the Chinese Communist Party, it’s also Hezbollah, and all these other people that are coming in from different ecosystems. For instance, many Hezbollah … grew up in places like Venezuela, they speak Spanish, completely fluently, natively, they speak Spanish natively and their body language is native, they grew up in Venezuela. And they’re Hezbollah, and they’re going to be hunting down Jews in the United States.

 (31:25)

    These things are coming. They are here. So you’ve got all these different ecosystems of people that are coming in, unvetted, many are never detected at all. Some are coming up on Florida beaches or they’re coming through the northern routes through Canada. They’re going into Alaska, they’re going into Hawaii. They’re going all over the place…. 

(31:48) 

    I spend a lot of time in Europe, the same is happening in Europe. The same is happening in Armenia, in Georgia, in many other places that are even further outside of the eggshell. 

    Big days are coming ahead, including massive food shortages…. 

    A migrant carries a tiny baby around a razor wire fence and up a steep Texas riverbank where he precariously hands the child to another man atop a shipping container.

    Within minutes, a uniformed federal officer arrives to help.

    He hoists up the others in the 30-person group as they leisurely scale the fortifications and illegally enter the country.

    A visibly pregnant woman is next. She's guided to river on the Mexican side by a smuggler.

    Nearby, Texas state border guards simply look on.

    They know all too well that Mexican cartels and human traffickers take advantage of these desperate people and use their children like pawns – even posing as their parents to curry favor with U.S. immigration officials, who appear sympathetic.

    Not that a harder line would achieve much - they're overwhelmed.

    So nearly everyone is simply ushered through. Few tough questions are asked. Only a small percentage are expelled.

    Once safely across, the U.S. government transports the undocumented to charities that spend tens of millions of donated dollars to put them on buses and planes to shuttle them off to the destinations of their choosing.

    Shockingly, along a stretch of the Rio Grande River outside of Eagle Pass, where corrugated metal boxes serve as futile barriers between the U.S. and Mexico, this is what passes for border security in Joe Biden's America.

    Many of the thousands of migrants will make their way to cities across America, where the vast influx is suddenly causing deep concern even among Liberals, who once fought so passionately for their rights to asylum.

    And all the while, the White House brazenly insist that the President has 'done more than anybody else' to secure the border.

    The damning reality has been documented by DailyMail.com on a nearly week-long trip to Texas' 1,300-mile international boundary with Mexico.

    It proves America's border is open wide - and that The White House's claims are laughable nonsense.

Read the whole thing.

    Illegal aliens who have been working for cash for years in New York are losing their jobs as newly arrived illegals undercut them and will take day jobs for far less money.

    Illegals who wait on corners or in big box store parking lots for contractors to drive up and hire them to sling concrete, hang sheetrock, paint, or do other less skilled construction jobs are being run out of the work they have been doing for years after more than 116,000 illegals flooded New York City, the New York Post reported.

  • "Is America about to send special forces into Mexico? Growing calls for US military to tackle migrant crisis and cartels amid chaos at border"--Daily Mail. This is sort of weird article because the only person actually cited as willing to send the military into Mexico is "[f]ormer UN ambassador Nikki Haley has also endorsed the use of military force in Mexico, but has said this is in relation to tackling drug cartels. Haley has also spoke in favor of the use of targeted drone and missile strikes." There is no "also". Although the article refers to Trump and DeSantis, it also indicates that they have only suggested sending the military to the border, not across the border. This instead appears to be a shock story to motivate the illegals and faux Americans already here:
    Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, for his part, has repeatedly made clear that Mexico would not tolerate U.S. military action within its borders and has derided the calls as 'irresponsible' and 'pure publicity.'

    He has urged Mexican-Americans in the U.S. to vote against Republicans pushing such ideas and said that Mexico would react to any incursion, without giving details. Mostly he has dismissed the threats as electioneering.

    'As we are in election season, they talk about intervening in Mexican affairs, about not respecting our sovereignty; They insult us, but one shouldn't take them too seriously,' he said last month in one of his regular press conferences.