The Realist: Atlas Industries Be Ready Bag Family Emergency Preparedness Kit

[A guest post by the Realist]

The Be Ready Bag Family Emergency Preparedness Kit.

Walmart seems to have started stocking a few items geared to emergency preparations, as opposed to camping/sporting goods items that may also be useful in an emergency. A few months ago, it was the Ultimate Survival Technologies emergency food ration bars. A few weeks ago, I saw the Atlas Industries, Inc., Be Ready Bag (BRB) Family Emergency Preparedness Kit - a turnkey 72-hour emergency kit for three people - show up on the shelves. (Others have reported seeing them as early as late 2014 in their Walmart stores.) This emergency kit is manufactured by Atlas Industries, Inc., located in Encinitas, California. I don't know why Atlas Industries decided a family was three people, but that is how they describe their kit, and there are three of many items in the kit.

There are plenty of turnkey 72-hour kits on the market, but this is the first time I'd actually seen one offered for sale in the flesh at a reasonable price - $49.97. I was curious about the kit, but substantive reviews of the kit were lacking. I only found a couple YouTube stream-of-consciousness videos that inventoried the items as they were pulled out of the backpack and ended with the reviewer whining about how difficult it was to light the matches. They didn't critically look at any items in the kit.

Given the dearth of substantive reviews of this emergency kit, I decided to spend $50 and do a detailed review of it, highlighting the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'll also discuss whether or not this kit is a good starting point for a personalized kit, and compare it to what it cost to put together a similar kit from scratch.

This kit is a generic emergency kit, and is not tailored to any specific type of emergency. If you live in an arid area, you may want to store additional water. If you live in a cold area, you may want additional clothes/blankets for warmth. Or, if you live in an earthquake or tornado prone area, you may want to add a wrench to shut off natural gas to your home.

Contents of the emergency kit.

EMERGENCY KIT COMPONENTS REVIEW

Below, I review the various components of the emergency kit, trying to order them from best to worst: Good, Fair, Poor, Bad, and Ugly. "Good" items are reasonable quality goods I might choose to include in a custom-built emergency kit. "Fair" items are acceptable, and I may or may not have included in a custom-built kit. "Poor" items I would want to enhance or replace. "Bad" and "Ugly" items need to be discarded and replaced with suitable quality items

The Good:

Food Bars. The packaging claims there are 10,800 total calories in the kit. The food consists of five vacuum packed pouches of eight food bars per pouch. Each package looks like it has four bars in it, but the 8 bars are stacked in a 4 by 2 configuration. Each bar is individually formed, and two bars are wrapped in loose paper. Each individual bar is 270 calories. There is no indication who actually manufactured them, and the three-year shelf life is somewhat short for emergency ration bars of this type, which typically have a five year life. The food bars are packed together in a cardboard box, which adequately protects the vacuum pouches from being damaged during normal handling.

The food bar is quite crumbly, reminding me of the Datrex food bars. It has a slightly sweet pastry taste, but I'm at a loss to describe it any better. The food bar is quite dry, so I'd recommend having something to drink handy when eating one of these bars.

Water Purification Tablets. The kit comes with 30 Aquatabs branded sodium dichloroisocyanurate water purification tablets. Each tablet will purify two liters of "clean water", or 750 ml of filtered/decanted dirty water. (An instruction sheet is included with the Aquatabs.) In other words, if the water comes from a potentially compromised municipal water system, the 30 tablets will purify 60 liters (15.8 gallons) of water. If the water came from a dirty source with suspected organic solids like a river or lake, the 30 tablets will purify 22.5 liters (5.9 gallons) of water. Like most other water purification tablets, the Aquatabs will kill most pathogens found in the water but do not remove chemical contamination. Worst case, the tablets will purify 2.5 liters (2.6 quarts) of water per person per day - the equivalent of 5 half-liter water bottles per person per day.

Collapsible 2 Liter Water Bottle. This water bottle actually appears to be reasonably well made from heavy plastic sheeting. There are no sharp corners to create stress points when filled, and it incorporates a handle for carrying. A collapsible water container like this is actually a good item to include in an emergency kit since it takes up very little space when stored, and is sized to be used conveniently with the supplied water purification tablets.

Dust Masks. The kit comes with three 3 NIOSH N95 dust masks. These will keep you from ingesting dust if in a dusty environment or digging through rubble. They will not protect you from airborne biological or chemical threats.

Backpack. The backpack is the size of your typical "book bag" or day pack, and seems to be reasonably well made for its intended purpose. The pack is bright red. Besides the main compartment, it has a smaller secondary zippered pocket and two mesh side pockets for water bottles. All of the supplies come packed in the main compartment.

The Fair:

Emergency Blankets. The kit comes with three aluminized mylar blankets. These are like those sold everywhere and included with every emergency kit. Because these blankets are so cheap, I'd be tempted to buy several more blankets as spares in case one tears or is otherwise damaged.

Alternatively, you might consider buying an Adventure Medical Kits SOL emergency blanket for each member of the household. These are available for around five dollars each and are much more durable than the inexpensive aluminized mylar blanket.

Bottled Water. The kit contains three 8 ounce bottles of water. This provides some water to be consumed in the immediate aftermath of an emergency, delaying the need to find a water source. The water in my kit was bottled in Arizona. I would have preferred larger bottles of water, but this size reflects a compromise to facilitate efficient packaging of the kit.

Hand Sanitizer. The 2 ounce hand sanitizer is the typical jelled alcohol product you see on the store shelves. Alcohol-based hand sanitizer can also be used to help start fires.

Tissues. The kit contains one package of ten four-ply facial tissues. I guess this is intended to be used for both toilet paper and snotty noses.

Ponchos. The kit comes with three lightweight plastic ponchos. These are like the cheap disposable ponchos sold everywhere. They will keep you dry, but the plastic is so thin they will easily tear.

Nylon Paracord. Ten meters (32.8 feet) of a nylon sheathed rope. Inside the rope are 13 strands of some unidentifiable cordage - it doesn't melt like a synthetic fiber. The rope is thicker than standard 7-strand 550 paracord. It is adequate for its intended purpose, but has less potential utility than real 550 paracord.

Emergency 5-in-1 Survival Tool. This is the typical orange whistle, compass, mirror, matchbox, and flint gadget. These are sold everywhere, and this unit is just like the others. The compass markings are not luminous. The matchbox was empty.

If you intend to keep this gadget in the kit, fill the matchbox with some strike anywhere matches padded with some cotton so they don't rattle.

Note Pad and Pen. The note pad is a pocket sized (approximately 2.75 by 4 inches) and contains 50 unlined pages. The pen is a four inch long retractable ballpoint pen.

Playing Cards. A standard 52-card deck plus two jokers. The cards are printed on lighter than normal plastic-coated card stock. They are not casino quality cards, but are adequate for their intended purpose.

The Poor:

Light Sticks. The kit comes with three individually packaged 6-inch chemical light sticks for signaling and light. The packing does not indicate the color or operational life of the light stick. Inside the light stick package is a short nylon cord to facilitate hanging it or tying it to something. The light sticks are the common green color. Their performance is subpar, providing what I would consider useful illumination for around an hour, then a marker/indicator level of light for another 12 to 14 hours. One of the three light sticks put out very little light initially and faded quickly. In contrast, the two-for-a-dollar light sticks from Dollar Tree provide more initial light and longer duration light.

First Aid Kit. While the 30 piece first aid kit contains a triangular bandage and safety pins to immobilize an arm, it is otherwise designed to only handle minor cuts and scrapes. It also contains tweezers and scissors. It has surprisingly few (8) standard adhesive bandages.

The first aid kit pouch has enough space to add items to significantly improve it. More bandages, larger bandages, larger gauze pads, analgesic pills like aspirin or acetaminophen, triple-antibiotic ointment packets, and more advanced items could be added to significantly improve it.

Tube Tent. The tube tent package gives measurements of 8 feet long by 6 feet wide by 3 feet high. Doing the math, that is a tube with a 14.5 foot circumference. It comes with roughly 20 feet of lightweight nylon cord to support the tent. I honestly don't know what the fascination is with tube tents. The one time I saw one used, the person using it woke up the next morning soaked in the water they had perspired and exhaled during the night that had condensed on the inside of the plastic tube.

The tube tent can be adapted for use as a tarp or ground cloth. Personally, I'd dump it for a regular tarp or a real military poncho.

LED Flashlight with Batteries. The flashlight looks superficially like the old-fashioned 2 D-cell flashlight with an incandescent bulb, but has three LEDs in place of the single bulb. The kit comes with two heavy-duty carbon-zinc D-cells. The flashlight puts out more light than I remember the original incandescent bulb flashlight putting out, but less light than the typical LED flashlight.

It is definitely better than nothing, but I'd probably replace it with a good quality (and higher cost) LED flashlight that is powered by AA cells that are common with the batteries used to power the radio.

Matches. The matches are claimed to be weatherproof matches. Curiously, labeling on the match bottle says to store them in a cool dry place. These matches are of the "safety match" variety in that the match head must be struck against a red phosphorous striker surface. They really are pretty poor matches. The first match I tried failed to light, a second match did light, but did not burn very energetically. In contrast, some cheap generic Chinese weatherproof matches lit the first time, and burned more energetically. UCO brand stormproof matches lit the first time and burned very energetically. With all three different matches, it seems that the wood of the match stick is treated with a fire retardant so the match extinguishes as soon as the propellant has completed its burn.

At a bare minimum, I'd add a butane cigarette lighter and replace the matches with a higher quality product such as the UCO match kit.

AM/FM Radio with Batteries. The supplied radio is the Yima QQ-26 radio - yeah, I've never heard of Yima either. It works, but I'm underwhelmed by it. The specified tuning range is 530 to 1600 KHz, with my sample tuning 530 to 1630 KHz. The AM broadcast band in the US is 530 to 1700 KHz (expanded 1993), so it doesn't quite cover the entire AM broadcast band - not that I consider this a serious handicap. It has an undersized ferrite bar antenna (around 1.25 inches, compared to a more typical 2 to 2.5 inch length in inexpensive radios) and poor selectivity (the ability to pick out one station between two other adjacent stations). Internal construction quality is below average.

Test your radio. Maybe I got a bad unit. At a minimum, I'd replace the radio with the similar Sony ICF-S10MK2.

The Bad:

Work Gloves. These gloves are described as "heavy duty real leather gloves". They are the typical canvas glove with leather on the palm and finger areas. This style of glove typically uses split leather. I wasn't expecting a lot given my prior experience with inexpensive (two-dollars at a flea market) work gloves of this style. These gloves were worse. The leather is almost paper thin. They will provide some protection if digging through debris. They will not protect your hands from thorns or other sharp pointed hazards. Further, they won't last very long if you are trying to avoid blisters while doing something like digging with a shovel.

At a minimum, I'd replace these gloves with similar appearing work gloves sold for a few dollars a pair at Walmart or your favorite big-box home improvement store.

The Ugly:

Multitool. The multitool is described as having pliers, knife, Philips screwdriver, straight screwdriver, can opener, bottle opener, file, leather punch, and being stored in a fabric carrying case. IMMEDIATELY THROW THIS MULTITOOL AWAY! Bar none, it is the worst multitool I have ever seen. The metal pieces that are supposed to form the straight screw drivers, leather punch, and can opener have no grinding or forming to complete their transition into useful tools. For example, what I suspect should have been a small straight screwdriver was a square metal peg. The knife has a terrible edge on it - a "wire" edge. If you are counting on this multitool to save your life, you are going to die.

On the left are several individual tools from the kit's multitool. Note how they are rounded and lack sharpening or grinding to become functional tools. On the right are individual tools from other multitools to illustrate how those tools should be finished to be functional.

High quality multitools, such as the Leatherman products, can cost more than this entire emergency kit. But, there are acceptable quality multitools available for around $10 - these tend to be prominently displayed around Fathers Day and Christmas. Even the cheap $2 pocket knife sold at Walmart would be an improvement over the multitool provided with this kit.

KIT AS STARTING POINT

As I did a lot of "window shopping" trying to find sources for the emergency kit, I came to the conclusion that Atlas Industries was quite resourceful in buying and assembling the components that make up this kit. In some cases, I think they cut corners they should not have cut. In other cases, they managed to provide tremendous value that cannot be matched by a retail buyer.

Atlas Industries did a lot of their own branding of the various components, perhaps to obscure their supplier sources. In most cases, the products are sufficiently generic that supplier sources are not important to this analysis.

This emergency kit can provide a starting point for building a better emergency kit. Just four main components - food bars, backpack, collapsible water bottle, Aquatabs water purification tablets - cannot be purchased for the $50 the entire kit costs. Buying equivalents of just those four components at retail would cost in excess of $60. And, I estimate trying to assemble the entire kit from retail sources (including aggressive use of ebay and Amazon) would cost $140 to $150.

I've suggested a few improvements in the component review above. Of critical importance, I'd replace the multitool, replace/add fire starting implements, and add to the first aid kit. Further, I would be strongly tempted to replace the flashlight with a quality AA-powered LED flashlight.

I'd further make a few low-cost additions, such as a partial roll of toilet paper (put it in a zip-lock bag), a few feet of duct tape wrapped around an old credit/gift card, a small travel-size package of baby wipes, a small sharpening stone for the knife, and at least one large one-gallon size zip-lock freezer bag to hold opened food bar packages.

I would replace the cheap batteries supplied with the kit with name brand (Duracell, Energizer, Rayovac) long shelf-life alkaline or lithium batteries, and include extra batteries. Also, do not leave the batteries in the battery powered devices - store the batteries in an external container (or leave them in their original packaging).

I'd further be tempted to replace the Emergency 5-in-1 Survival Tool gadget with an inexpensive real compass and a regular whistle.

FINAL COMMENTS

Preppers have probably already put together an emergency kit tailored to their specific needs that is superior to this kit. For people who are just starting to realize they may need some emergency preparedness supplies in their home, this kit can provide a good starting point when the updates I recommend above are made.

I remain a bit perplexed by the decision to make an emergency kit that can support three people. It would certainly work well for two people, giving them a little more time and some spare items. And, it would be great for a single person (e.g. a college student - be aware of any campus rules regarding knives on campus).

The kit could easily be expanded to support four people. Add a 3600 calorie emergency ration package (or two 2400 calorie packages), an emergency blanket, a poncho (or a couple large garbage bags, which can be used as a poncho), some more Aquatabs, and a bottle of water. Those items would all fit in the existing backpack. For more than four people, I would just buy another kit for every two or three people and make the recommended updates.

The Atlas Industries Be Ready Bag Family Emergency Preparedness Kit provides a good value for its cost. Like most turnkey emergency kits, it reflects many compromises. This kit can be the foundation of an acceptable emergency kit with the changes discussed above.

Like any emergency/prepping item, don't simply buy it, bring it home and bury it in the back of a closet, and expect it to work as advertized when you need it. Open it up, examine it, make sure it is all there and that the non-consumable items work properly.

Remember....

The north face of Two World Trade Center (south tower) immediately after being struck by United Airlines Flight 175 (Source)

And the Muslim world's reaction:

And, no, they don't hate us because we "meddle." They hate us because they resent our relative wealth and prosperity we have obtained notwithstanding we are not Muslim. They think it is unfair and unjust, and it does not fit their narrative that they are favored by Allah.

Update: At the Daily Mail: "Carnage in Mecca: At least 107 people killed and 238 injured after Bin Laden firm crane collapses on Grand Mosque during freak lightning storm."

Source: The Daily Mail

"Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."--Romans 12:19.

How Did That Retreat Work Out?

Source: Zillow.com

FerFal's site had a link to  a news story of a home invasion that resulted in a triple-homicide. The article should be a warning to everyone:

Adam Dees, 22, admitted to killing Ted, Elaine and Tom Welp. Dees will spend the rest of his life behind bars, a judge ruled last week.

During a debriefing on Monday with the sheriff's office, Dees explained in detail how he robbed the Welps and killed the three family members.

He told detectives he used Google Maps to search remote areas around Boise and Mountain Home for high-end homes to rob. ...

... Dees said he drove along Cartwright Road on March 8 and looked around for a while, before settling on the Welps' isolated home.

He told detectives he staked out the home and came back after dark, dressed in black, to rob the family.

A door to the garage was open when he returned and Dees used a set of house keys he found in a truck to get inside the house. The home's security system was disabled at the time. The 22-year-old told detectives had it been armed, he would have left immediately.

He also said he probably would have given up on his plan if the family had a bigger dog.

Ada County prosecutors outlined Dees' movements inside the home in great detail during sentencing last week.

They told the judge Dees senselessly murdered the Welps after torturing them. All three were found badly beaten and shot in the head.

The photograph above is of the home where the murder took place (according to the address in this news story). It sits on an approximately 20 acre lot.

How to Make Rope from Grass

Ebola As An STD--New Evidence

(Source)

I have long warned that Ebola was on the path to becoming a sexually transmitted disease (STD). (See here, here, here, here and here). So it was interesting to see the following from a Reuters article on the persistence of Ebola:

Isolated flare-ups of Ebola may point to a higher risk of transmission via the semen of male survivors than previously thought, undermining hopes of ending West Africa's deadly outbreak by the end of the year.

The World Health Organization's advice is that all male survivors should be tested three months after the onset of symptoms and then monthly until they know they have no risk of passing on the virus through their semen, Bruce Aylward, head of the WHO's Ebola response, told a news conference.

But a forthcoming study in the New England Journal of Medicine, based on around 200 survivors, found that around half still had traces of the virus in their semen after six months, a clinician familiar with the study told Reuters.

"The old advice of three months is no longer good," the clinician said. "The number of people with persistent virus in their semen is much greater than expected."

The clinician, who was not authorized to speak about the study, added that the risk might not only be from sex but also from masturbation.

"It's not the sex that is dangerous, it's the semen that is dangerous," said Aylward, who mentioned the study during a news conference but did not give details. "How people actually get exposed, in soiled linens or whatever, is not clear."

A Quick Run Around the Web--Immigration Crises Addition

Yesterday, I gave my thoughts about the immigration crises, backed up with some points raised by other pundits. Today, I thought I would just hit some highlights from other authors and news sites.

• "Genocide, Islam and Weaponized Empathy"--Declination. The author warns that Islam and its apologists are using our empathy against us--"weaponized empathy"--to reduce our defenses against Islam. As a descendant of Armenians that fled Turkey prior to the Armenian genocide, he reminds us that allowing Islam into Europe or the United States is to, as I've noted, harbor the serpent in our breast. He writes:

But back to the central point, why, then, if America sheltered my family, must the West turn back the refugees of Syria, of Somalia, of Libya?

Because they bring the source of infection with them. Armenians had managed, through some strength I sometimes find difficult to fully grasp, to hang on to their European culture and Christian religion through millenia of conflict with Islam. They had stubbornly resisted assimilation into Islam and its ideals. These refugees, for all that my heart yearns to give them sanctuary and a place to escape to, nonetheless carry Islam with them.

There are good Muslims in the world, and I want to make this clear. My own family lived only because an Ottoman official warned my great-grandfather that genocide was coming. This man, whose name I cannot remember — something that genuinely pains me, for my grandfather died when I was young and his stories are almost dream-like to me, now — paid for the ticket to America for my family, for English language lessons, and everything else needed to escape before it was too late.

I hope that I will meet this good and righteous man in the life to come. I hope God saw fit to accept him into His kingdom.

But Islam nonetheless is a contagion, even if some maintain a stubborn moral immunity to the infection. Where Islam goes, this violence will follow. You will never save all the little boys, you will never stop the slaughter. All you will do is bring it to your own shores.

And if there is something I know for certain, it is that my ancestors did not escape Islam only to see their descendants fight it again, once more in their own homes.

• One of the main tools of this "weaponized empathy" is the poignant picture of a Syrian boy that died in the attempt to reach safety in Europe--or at least, that is what the MSM would like us to believe. However, he didn't die as his family fled to safety. His family had been living safely in Turkey for 3 years. Instead, he died because his father was trying to sneak into Europe for dental work.

1. "Story Begins To Unravel About Drowned Syrian Boy"--The Daily Caller.
2. "The 5 Awkward Questions They Won't Answer About The Drowned Boy, Syria, And Our 'Moral Duty'"--Breitbart. 

• "'They’re not refugees. This is an invasion,' said Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, whose dominion stretches across the southern reaches of this predominantly Catholic nation. 'They come here with cries of "Allahu Akbar." They want to take over.'”--from The Washington Post.
• "Syrian refugees have turned Lesbos into a war zone, residents claim, as migrants chant 'f*** you' at Hungarian police amid fears ISIS is using the crisis to enter Europe"--Daily Mail.
• "We'll see who cracks first, the guests or the hosts, but sooner or later, somebody's getting loaded into cattlecars, because that's how things go in Europe," from View From The Porch.

Update (9/13/2015): We has since learned that the father of the drowned Syrian boy wasn't even trying to get to Europe, but was the pilot of the boat that sank, and part of a human smuggling ring:

• "Aylan Kurdi's father is a people smuggler, woman claims"--The Sidney Morning Herald.
• "Migrant crisis: father of dead toddler a ‘people smuggler’"--The Australian.
• "Alan Kurdi’s father worked with human smuggler and captained boat that capsized, survivor says"--The National Post.

Also, apparently things were not so bad for him in Syria: The Guardian reports that "Abdullah Kurdi says he no longer wants to continue on to Europe and will take the bodies of his two sons and wife to be buried in home town of Kobani."

Europe's Refugee Crises

The other day, someone commented to me what a horrible situation was the refugee crises in Europe, and asked me what I thought. I initially told them that, not to be cynical, but the refugees were not simply seeking safe-haven, but instead were crossing numerous safe-haven countries to reach two in particular--Britain and Germany--because those countries had the best welfare benefits. I also pointed out that the Sunnis and Shiites had been killing each other for at least a thousand years, so not only is this something we cannot change, but we have no duty to intervene. I conceded that we (the U.S.) should be willing to accept Christians and Yazidi since, obviously, they will not be terrorists and will more easily acclimate to American culture. But other than that, I saw little reason for our involvement.

There are many pundits that suggest that we (speaking of the West generally, or Europe or the United States more particularly) "own" the Syrian crises and, for that reason, should do more to alleviate the crises. Piers Morgan, whose shamelessly seeks to use dead children to further his pet views, claims that the Syrian crises is because of "the appalling, shockingly misguided decision by the United States and its chief ally Britain to invade Iraq in 2003 – the war that started the region’s slide into barbarity." He claims that "we have a moral, ethical and legal duty to help them."

Both of his points are incorrect: we didn't cause the war, and we certainly don't have a moral, ethical or legal duty to do anything. The Syrian civil war is the result of the so-called "Arab Spring," with Syrians protesting and then fighting against the Assad regime, which quickly morphed into a sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, funded by other Muslim states. We don't know how much the Western powers have been involved in the war, but the most recent complaints are that Obama stood by and did nothing--i.e., we did not meddle or interfere. Moreover, Morgan does not consider the moral and legal duties to citizens of Europe and the United States; he does not concern himself with the lives of the soldiers that he would so cavalierly throw into the meat grinder, the fiscal cost of further meddling in the Middle-East or accepting millions of refugees, or the cost to Europeans or Americans by accepting the serpent into our bosom from welcoming large numbers of refugees.

Other, less histrionic, commentators have suggested that we could have avoided this crises by intervening in Syria. (See Ron Radosh's piece at PJ Media, Fred Hiatt's editorial at the Washington Post and Michael Gearson's column at the Washington Post). Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, doesn't go so far as to suggest that we can make room for these "refugees" because there are too many ("Millions, perhaps tens of millions,..."), but suggests that the crises is the result of appeasement. Perhaps so, but this is merely crying over spilt milk. The issue is what do we do now, if anything?

Some, such as Richard Fernandez, argue for armed intervention, to reshape the "human  environment" causing the Syrians to flee to Europe. There are several questions that would need to be answered before beginning such an undertaking. First, are these "refugees" truly seeking safety, or are they simply a horde of welfare warriors? The answer is critical, because the answer will tell you which "human environment" must be adjusted: the one in Syria, or the one at the welfare offices in Germany and other EU countries.

In answering this question, Peter Grant notes:

The problem with refugees in Europe is, fundamentally, the same problem that we have with illegal aliens in the USA. The "refugees" have already escaped the horrors of war in Syria, or Iraq, or Eritrea, or wherever. They've gotten out of the combat zone. What they're now doing is traveling through many other countries in search, not of safety, but of economic improvement. They aren't so much refugees from crisis as they are economic migrants looking for a better way of life.

They see the 'entitlement society' of Europe or the USA, with its no-strings-attached benefits, as an economic Nirvana. They can arrive in a strange country and be given housing at public expense, an allowance on which to live that in many cases exceeds the wages or salaries they were able to earn in their home countries, free education for their children, publicly-funded health care . . . the list goes on and on. That's why these "refugees" aren't stopping in the first safe country they come to. They want more than safety. They want money.

Pamela Geller likewise notes that the majority of the so-called refugees are young, fit, males. Elsewhere she notes; "These are not necessarily 'refugees'; indeed, most are not refugees at all – they are opportunists from various regions, mostly North Africa, using the chaos in Libya/Syria to gain entry into Europe."

Daniel Greenfield writes:

The Syrian refugee crisis that the media bleats about is not a crisis. And the Syrian refugees it champions are often neither Syrians nor refugees. Fake Syrian passports are cheaper than an EU politician’s virtue and easier to come by. Just about anyone who speaks enough Arabic to pass the scrutiny of a European bureaucrat can come with his two wives in tow and take a turn on the carousel of their welfare state.

Or on our welfare state which pays Christian and Jewish groups to bring the Muslim terrorists of tomorrow to our towns and cities. And their gratitude will be as short-lived as our budgets.

The head of a UNHCR camp called Syrian refugees "The most difficult refugees I've ever seen. In Bulgaria, they complained that there were no jobs. In Sweden, they took off their clothes to protest that it was too cold.

In Italy, Muslim African “refugees” rejected pasta and demanded food from their own countries. But the cruel Europeans who “mistreat” migrants set up a kitchen in Calais with imported spices cooked by a Michelin chef determined to give them the stir-fried rabbit and lamb meatballs they’re used to. There are also mobile phone charging stations so the destitute refugees can check on their Facebook accounts.

It had to be done because the refugees in Italy were throwing rocks at police while demanding free wifi.

This is the tawdry sense of entitlement of the Syrian Muslim refugee that the media champions.

The second question is: can we affect any change on the ground in Syria, or whatever other flash spots will arise? Although David P. Goldman supports some form of military intervention, he also notes that "Syria’s civil war was not an isolated occurrence: it was one of many fissures in an Islamic civilization which has ceased to function from the Indus River to the Mediterranean." Greenfield writes:

What is happening in Syria is a religious civil war fought over the same ideologies as the ones practiced by the vast majority of the refugees. This is an Islamic war fought to determine which branch of Islam will be supreme. It is not a war that started last week or last year, but 1,400 years ago.

We can’t make it go away by overthrowing Assad or supporting him, by giving out candy or taking in refugees. This conflict is in the cultural DNA of Islam. It is not going anywhere.

This war is not our fault. It is their fault.

There are Christian and non-Muslim minorities who are genuine refugees, but the two Muslim sects whose militias are murdering each other are not victims, they are perpetrators. Just because Sunnis are running from a Shiite militia or Shiites from a Sunni militia right now doesn’t make them victims.

The moment that their side’s militia wins and begins slaughtering the other side, the oppressed will become the oppressors. Such shifts have already taken place countless times in this conflict.

This is not simply a matter of overthrowing Assad (or, conversely, defeating those that seek to overthrow Assad). A meaningful intervention would require fundamental changes to not only the economies and governments of the Middle-East, but their cultures.

The third question is: do we have the will to pursue an effective intervention? Again, turning to Goldman, he observes "that would mean containing Iran’s ambitions and crushing the Sunni jihadists at the same time. Blood would spill, and not all of it local."

If nothing is done in the Middle-East, the battleground will be Europe. Letting the "refugees" in will be taking a serpent into the bosom of Europe. Says Goldman:

At this point the floodgates of European sympathy opened, and Germany declared that it would accept 800,000 fugitives, including many from the world’s most brutal war zones. From a security standpoint it is foolhardy in the extreme: 250,000 people have died in Syria’s civil war since 2011 because other people killed them, mostly with small arms or improvised explosives (such as the government’s notorious “barrel bombs”). Such killing is a labor-intensive affair, and requires the participation of many thousands of killers. It is isn’t only that ISIS (and other jihadists) are able to smuggle to Europe as many of their operatives as they care to, as ISIS itself purportedly boasts. The refugee population itself is flush with killers from both sides fleeing the war. The presence of small children does not obviate this; killers have families, too.

The Arab Gulf States accept very few Syrian refugees out of security concerns which are entirely legitimate. Thousands of Syrian migrants fought either with the Assad regime (allied to Iran, the nemesis of the Sunni Gulf States) or ISIS and al-Qaeda (which want to overthrow the Saudi monarchy).

The social pathologies that this brutal and brutalized population bring Europe will change Germany in a predictably nasty way. Even worse, the open door policy will attract an order of magnitude more such refugees, as the Interior Minister of the State of Bavaria, Joachim Herrmann, warned yesterday.

Greenfield similarly observes:

The refugees aren’t fleeing a dictator. They’re fleeing each other while carrying the hateful ideologies that caused this bloodshed with them.

We aren’t taking in people fleeing the civil war. We’re taking in their civil war and giving it a good home.

Goldman suggests that Europe will have to make itself into a fortress to stop the immigration:

Europe will have scenes of horror on its border: barbed wire, tear gas, rubber bullets, malnutrition and epidemic disease in tent camps swollen by millions of desperate people. It will also have acts of terrorism by refugees already inside its borders protesting Europe’s future refusal to accept more.

 Greenfield suggests that the necessary response can be much more mild:

The Syrian refugee crisis is a voluntary crisis. It would go away in a snap with secure borders and rapid deportations. The fake Syrians would stay home if they knew that their fake passport wouldn’t earn them a train ride to Germany’s Hartz welfare state, but a memorable trip to the Syrian Civil War.

Even announcing such a policy would lead to a rapid wave of self-deportations by finicky refugees for whom Bulgarian jobs, Italian food and Swedish weather aren’t good enough.

Plenty of Syrian refugees returned on their own from the Zaatari camp in Jordan when they saw that there weren’t enough treats for them. They went back to Syria from Turkey and even Europe when they didn’t find life to their liking. If they were really facing death back home, they would have stayed. There were no Jews going back to Germany during the Holocaust because they couldn’t find jobs in New York. Nobody goes home to a genocide. They go home because they were economic migrants, not refugees.

The crisis here is caused by the magnet of Western welfare states. Get rid of the magnet and you get rid of the crisis. Stop letting migrants who show up stay and there will be no more photogenic rafts filled with “starving” and “desperate” people who pay thousands of dollars to get to Europe and then complain about the food and the weather. Put up border fences and the “hikers” will go back home.

Keeping the doors open intensifies the crisis. It’s the sympathy of the bleeding hearts that leads to dead children whose parents are willing to risk their lives for their own economic goals. The left creates the crisis and then indicts everyone else for refusing to accept its solution that would make it even worse.

The “humanitarian catastrophe” in which the migrants use their children as photogenic human shields would go away if the doors were closed to everyone except real refugees who were not part of this war. The only thing that taking in fake refugees does is attract more of them and that empowers the left which uses dead children for its power and profit at more places than just Planned Parenthood.

Slovakia has announced that it will only take in Christian refugees and that’s the right thing to do. Christians are the real victims of this Muslim conflict. The vast majority of the refugees, many of whom aren’t even Syrians, aren’t. The rest of Europe should use Slovakia’s refugee policy as a model.

I don't believe that Western intervention will produce any positive results unless we are willing to accept that we will have to kill a lot of people, and occupy--truly occupy and enforce our own laws and customs--territory for an extended period of time. Since the West is incapable of doing so, armed intervention will be largely useless, except to separate one group from another (e.g., protecting the Kurds from ISIS). And nothing being done in Syria will stop future migrations from Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or Africa. Similarly, except for limited groups that will more easily be assimilated or absorbed, it will be suicide for the West to accept large numbers of refugees.

Issues with Gender Ratios

And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

--Isaiah 4:1

The implication behind this verse is that the gender ratios will be skewed, probably because of the number of men that will die in the wars preceding the Second Coming. And what happens when gender ratios are skewed so the number of women outnumber men?

From the Daily Mail:

A Chinese city has recently come under fire for its culture of polyamorous relationships and kept men.

In Dongguan, southern China, a man with several girlfriends who pay to 'keep' him is now the norm, reported People's Daily Online.

Most of the young women involved are low-paid factory workers who are hoping to get married to the men in the near future.

Chinese media recently published a set of pictures showing many men in Dongguan are holding, kissing or lying in bed with more than one woman.

* * *

The culture of polyamorous relationships has given rise to another phenomenon - that of kept men.

This problem is so widespread that it has even given rise to a local saying: 'It's not easy for a male factory worker to find a job but a female worker cannot go without a boyfriend.'

Women who share a boyfriend are said to lavish attention and money on the men in order to become the favourite.

* * *

For the boyfriend, there was no need to ask for money - his girlfriends are more than happy to give it to him to win favours.

Dongguan's problem stems from the huge gap between its male and female population.

While the rest of China has more men than women, Dongguan has just 89 men for every 100 women.

This is because female factory workers are preferred, which in turn encourages more female migrant workers to move to the region for work.

A similar effect has also been reported in other cities with a similar skew.

Coupled with societal pressures for women to marry by 27, the problem of boyfriend sharing and kept men has intensified.

 Update (9/9/2015): "Why College-Educated Women Can't Find Love" at the Daily Beast. "The current college class breakdown of women to men is 57:43, which means that there will be about one-third more women than men with college degrees when graduation arrives." Because of hypergamy, women refuse to "marry down," and so are stuck competing for an ever smaller pool of acceptable men.

Vickers Tactical: "Inside the AK 74"

Here's an interesting video that a friend recommended to me by Vickers Tactical. It includes slo-mo shots of an AK 74 firing full auto, with and without its top cover and gas tube. It is especially interesting because, although there is a small flexion of the barrel when the gun fires, it is significantly less than seen with the older AKM rifles. Also, the compensator on the rifle used in the video seems to work quite well in dampening muzzle climb.

Who Do Police Protect?

(Source)

Glenn Reynolds posted the cartoon pictured above today, with the comment that the cartoon gets it backwards: "Police don’t actually protect law-abiding citizens from criminals so much as they protect criminals from the much-rougher justice they’d get in the absence of a legal system." Robert Farago at The Truth About Guns thinks Reynolds is wrong, claiming that police are hardly the bad guy's champion.

I don't think Reynolds intended to suggest that police are the champions of criminals, but that an active police force protects criminals from a system of mob justice/vendetta by subjecting them to an impartial justice system that uses a system of laws and rules to evaluate evidence and met out punishment largely without input from crime victims. It is the neutral position of the state--acting as the Leviathan--that acts as one of the greatest mitigators of violence according to Steven Pinker, exactly because it short circuits the cycle of revenge killings.

Reynolds is correct that police do not protect law-abiding citizens from crime in the direct sense suggested by the political cartoon. As knows anyone that has been a victim of a crime, police intervention is after-the-fact. Moreover, it is well-established law that police have no duty to protect any one person. Their duty runs to the public generally (i.e., to the body politic) and not to any particular individual. See, e.g. Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App. 1981). And Reynolds seems particularly vindicated when you read headlines like these: "Businessman tackles two thieves after catching them red-handed on his property . . . now HE'S one on trial for assault," or "Life for farmer who shot burglar," both stories from the UK; or "Man faces jail after protecting home from masked attackers" in Canada. In the latter case, the masked men had just fire-bombed the man's house when he confronted them with a gun.

Farago claims that police protect the public through deterrence of crime. And it appears to be true that people are deterred from committing crimes when the odds of being apprehended are high. (Although I would question how effective this is outside the realm of the enforcement of traffic laws). But, again, Reynold's point wasn't that policy don't deter crime, but that they also keep law breakers safe from retribution or vendetta. Certainly, with insufficient law enforcement, people will eventually resort to self-help not only in apprehending criminals, but in punishing them. This leads to incidents such as this report from Venezuela:

When a man they believed to be a thief sneaked into their parking lot in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, angry residents caught him, stripped him and beat him with fists, sticks and stones.

They tied him up and doused him in gasoline, according to witnesses, in one of what rights groups and media reports say are an increasing number of mob beatings and lynchings in a country ravaged by crime.

Or this incident from China:

Video of a pregnant woman being tied up and brutally beaten has recently emerged on Chinese social media.

A woman was seen with her hands bound behind her back to a telephone pole as a man kicked her, reported People's Daily Online.

The incident took place on August 29 in a village near Taizhou city, eastern China.

Reports suggest the woman, who is only identified as Ms Lu, was brutally assaulted because the residents of Hengshan village believed she was a regular thief in their community.

She had been caught stealing from the village in the past. When residents saw her appearing again last week, they thought she has returned to steal again and decided to punish her.

So, yes, our system of law enforcement does protect criminals from street justice.