Music Video: "How Deep Is Your Fraud"

 A little song about our Somali immigrants.... 

 VIDEO: "How Deep Is Your Fraud? (Bee Gees Parody)"
Brian Coyne Parodies (5 min.)

VIDEO: The Caliphate--An Animated Musical

While white liberal women fantasize about being subjugated under a Christian theocracy à la The Handmaid's Tale, British women may soon live out the reality under the Muslim caliphate they are importing.  

 VIDEO: "The Caliphate - Disney Style Parody from @ThePosieParker"
Perspectives On Islam - Elaine Ellinger (5 min.)

VIDEO: Meteorite Crater Hidden Beneath Greenland's Ice Sheet

Oz Geographic has a lot of videos on large meteor impacts and their consequences. There are more common than most people think, and the primary reason that not much is known of the majority is because the impact craters are hidden in the oceans or, in this case, beneath thousands of feet of ice.

    This particular video is of the 31-kilometre wide Hiawatha impact crater found under the Hiawatha glacier in northwest Greenland. Because of the condition of the crater, scientist initially believed it was a young crater and it was even proposed to have been the crater from the Younger Dryas Impact Event. However, better dating indicates that the crater was formed about 58 million years ago. The impact was during one of the many periods when Greenland was ice-free (in fact, the current ice sheets did not appear until about 3 million years ago when we entered the current ice age--we are currently in a relatively warm inter-glacial period).  

 VIDEO: "A Meteorite Crater Hidden Beneath The Ice"
OzGeology (9 min.) 

VIDEO: "The Black Death Never Made Sense - Until Now"

This past December saw the release of research showing that a "a volcanic eruption – or cluster of eruptions – around 1345 caused annual temperatures to drop for consecutive years due to the haze from volcanic ash and gases, which in turn caused crops to fail across the Mediterranean region." This in turn caused a shift in trade with Europe turning to grain imports from the Black Sea region; and, unfortunately, paving the way for the rapid spread of bubonic plague (the "Black Plague" or "Great Dying") into Europe. 

• See also: "A Volcanic Eruption in 1345 May Have Triggered a Chain of Events That Brought the Black Death to Europe"--Smithsonian Magazine. 

The data relied upon in the research comes from tree ring records. But the video below notes that when you know what to look for, you see independent confirmation of the cooler weather and poor crops in other places. (Although I would note that scientists that study the Black Plague have been well aware that cooler weather and poor crops had preceded the plague outbreak in Europe, arguing that this made Europeans--sickened and weakened by weather and poor diet--more susceptible to the plague). 

     The more interesting issue is why there was a major plague outbreak in Central Asia on the western edge of China that spread a devastating plague across half the world to Europe.

    This was not a one-off. A large volcanic eruption in 536 AD (probably in Iceland) also resulted in a significant and disastrous decline in temperatures in Europe with resultant famines. As an article from the University of Melbourne describes it:

    This triggered the coldest decade on record going back two thousand years, causing crop failures from Ireland all the way to China.

    It also provided perfect conditions for the spread of a devastating outbreak of bubonic plague 

    Believed to have originated in China and passed through India, the so-called ‘Plague of Justinian’ arrived in Constantinople in 542 through grain ships from Egypt before engulfing the rest of the Mediterranean, Europe and the Persian Empire.

    By 549, this killer pandemic had destroyed at least a quarter of the population of the Byzantine Empire – perhaps as many as 10 million people. 

Two plagues, nearly 800 years apart, caused by sudden volcanic cooling, originating in western China, and spreading across the known world causing unprecedented numbers of death. 

VIDEO: "The Black Death Never Made Sense - Until Now"
Paul Whitewick (9 min.)

Wilder: Part II Of "How To Break A Society"

John Wilder has the next installment in his "How To Break A Society" series: "Part II - Destroy The Family." He points out:

    The most stable setup? Dad in charge, Mom raising the rugrats, everyone pulling in the same direction. Young men get wives, which calms their inner caveman urges. Kids give them purpose beyond leveling up in Call of Duty®.

    A society of married dads with skin in the game? They build. They invest. They don’t riot over pronouns. This setup is so rock-solid it’s baked into every enduring culture from Rome to the Amish. It’s also morally encoded. It’s True, Beautiful, and Good. The Bible talks about this from the earliest through the latest books, with not a single mention of gay marriage being stunning and brave. 

    But since the late 1800s, there’s been a full-court press to dismantle the family.

    Why? Because stable families are hard to control. Families don’t need government handouts or therapy apps because they self-regulate.   

He goes on to describe the suffragettes and early family planning/birth control protagonists (i.e., eugenicists) and advocates of "free love" who were anti-Church but fascinated with the occult. You see these characters show up again and again in popular literature in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Pick up almost any Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers novel from the 1920s and '30s and you will constantly be stumbling over such women as characters.

    Oswald Spengler referred to women of this type as "Ibsen women" after the famous 19th Century playwright Henrik Ibsen. And what are these Ibsen women?

“Instead of children, she has psychic conflicts, and marriage turns into a task in which what matters most is that the partners understand each other.” Men no longer see women as the prospective mother of their children, but as business associates with whom they can resolve their spiritual quandaries. Sexual reproduction transitions from a matter of instinct to a subject of cost-benefit analysis.

Spengler also noted:

The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now [in the aging civilization] emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of “mutual understanding.” It is all the same whether the case against children is the American lady’s who would not miss a season for anything, or the Parisienne’s who fears that her lover would leave her, or an Ibsen heroine’s who “lives for herself”—they all belong to themselves and they are all unfruitful. 

 It is no surprise that these anti-female "feminist" movements arose when they did, closely following on the Romanticism movement of the late 18th Century which advocated for the importance of subjectivity, imagination, and appreciation of nature in society and culture, but instead just gave us socialism and communism and spiritual death. As Wikipedia notes:

Romanticists rejected the social conventions of the time in favour of a moral outlook known as individualism. They argued that passion and intuition were crucial to understanding the world, and that beauty is more than merely an affair of form, but rather something that evokes a strong emotional response. With this philosophical foundation, the Romanticists elevated several key themes to which they were deeply committed: a reverence for nature and the supernatural, an idealization of the past as a nobler era, a fascination with the exotic and the mysterious, and a celebration of the heroic and the sublime.  

And there you have the end of Western Civilization, when we became ruled by women and children as the prophet Isaiah would have put it. The rejection of reason for "feelings"; replacement of true art with blobs of paint and detritus; rejection of family for individualism; rejection of Christianity for paganism,  spiritualism, and environmentalism; the rejection of one's posterity and nation with a lust for the foreign and foreigners which underlays the modern invasion of the West from the third world. 

     James Blish (under the pseudonym, William Atheling, Jr.) summarized many of Spengler's ideas in his own piece "Probapossible Prelegomena to Ideareal History" including this bit:

    Spengler's view of history is organic rather than casual, and so is his imagery; as previously implied, he compares the four major periods of each culture with the four seasons. The onset of civilization is the beginning of autumn. At this point, the culture has lost is growth-drive, and its lifestyle is codified--most particularly in architecture, with the building of great cities or cosmoploi which both express the culture's highest spirit and drain it away from the countryside. Here, too, law is codified and history is written (all history is urban history); and the arts enter upon a period of attempted conformity to older, "standard" models, like the eighteenth century in Europe, when it became increasingly difficult to tell one composer or playwright from another. In the West, civilization began to set in about the time of Napoleon. 

    Civilization may last for centuries and be extremely eventful; Imperial Rome is a prime example. At first, too, great creative works remain possible; I have mentioned Vergil, and in the West we have had Milton, Goethe, Joyce, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Einstein. (Spengler would unabashedly add himself to such a list, I think justifiably.) But autumn ends, and a civilizations becomes a culture gone frozen in its brains and heart, and its finale is anything but grand. We are now far into what the Chinese called the period of contending states, and the collapse of Caesarism. 

    In such a period, politics becomes an arena of competing generals and plutocrats, under a dummy ruler chosen for low intelligence and complete moral plasticity, who amuses himself and keeps the masses distracted from their troubles with bread, circuses and brushfire-wars. (This is the time of all times when a culture should unite--and the time when such a thing has become impossible.). Technology flourishes (the late Romans were first-class engineers) but science disintegrates into a welter of competing, grandiosely trivial hypotheses which supersede each other almost weekly and veer more and more markedly toward the occult. Among the masses there arises a "second religiousness" in which nobody actually believes; an attempt is made to buttress this by syncretism, the wrenching out of context of religious forms from other cultures, such as the Indian, without the faintest hope of knowing what they mean. This process, too, leads inevitably toward a revival of the occult, and here science and religion overlap, to the benefit of neither. Economic inequity, instability and wretchedness become endemic on a hitherto unprecedented scale; the highest buildings ever erected by the Classical culture were the tenements of the Imperial Roman slums, crammed to bursting point with freed and runaway slaves, bankrupts, and deposed petty kings and other political refugees. The group name we give all this, being linearists by nature, is Progress. 

    Given all this, it is easy to deduce the state of the arts; a period of confused individual experimentation, in which traditions and even schools have ceased to exist, having been replaced by ephemeral fads. Hence the sole aim of all this experimentation is originality--a complete chimera, since the climate for the Great Idea is (in the West) fifty years dead; nor will nostalgia, simply an accompanying symptom, bring it back. This is not just winter now; it is the Fimbulwinter, the deep freeze which is the death of a culture.

My own Church leaders released a proclamation on The Family in 1995 (probably about 100 years too late) that states, in part:

    The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities. By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners. Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation. Extended families should lend support when needed.

    ... Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets. 

The opposite of the family is individualism, best summed up by Alistair Crowley as: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Which, of course, is just chaos, violence, and tyranny of the strong and powerful. 

Why The FBI Ammo Choice Matters To Civilian Defenders

Scott Witner, writing at The Truth About Guns explains "What 9mm Ammo Does the FBI Use — And Why It Matters to You." I'm not going to go back over the 1986 Miami shootout and the rest of the backstory that takes us to the present choice in 9mm by the FBI. You probably already know it and, if you don't, you can click over to Witner's article. The key points, however, are these:

•  "FBI is widely reported to be issuing Hornady Critical Duty 9mm +P 135gr (FlexLock/FTX) as its current duty load."
• The 135 grain (rather than 115 grain or 124 grain) is the important bit.

Without endorsing specific brands, the FBI’s own researcher offers practical guidance:

    Look for duty-focused projectiles in the 135–147-grain range, engineered for consistent barrier performance. Bonded or mechanically locked bullets — designed to hold together and expand reliably through intermediate barriers — are where modern defensive ammo earns its keep.

Ultra-light 115-grain loads optimized for raw velocity are, in his words, “old news” for duty criteria. Some 124-grain loads can perform well, but often depend on +P velocity to achieve consistent penetration through barriers. 

• Barriers includes not just glass or metal, but heavy clothing.  

The Current Life Cycle Stage Of Western Civilization

(Source)

And a related video:

VIDEO: "The 'SOUTH AFRICANIZATION' of the WEST is NOW"
Black Pigeon Speaks (19 min.)

Texas Mass Shooter Ticks Most Of The Leftist Boxes

 Early Sunday morning, a gunman opened fire in a crowded nightclub in Austin, Texas, killing 2 and wounding 14 others. "The suspect ... left the scene and travelled farther down Sixth Street, where he was encountered by Austin police officers who engaged the suspect and killed him less than one minute later." The shooter was an immigrant, reports the New York Post:

     Crazed Texas shooter Ndiaga Diagne, 53, of Senegal arrived in the US on March 13, 2000 on a B-2 tourist visa during the Democratic Clinton administration and became a lawful permanent resident (IR-6) when he married a US citizen in June 2006, a source familiar with his immigration history told The Post.

    He then became a naturalized US citizen on April 5, 2013 around the start of former President Barack Obama’s second term — despite his growing rap sheet spanning New York and Texas.

 So, a black immigrant--two boxes checked off.

    After the shooting, the FBI's Joint Terrorism task force quickly became involved because "[h]e was wearing a “Property of Allah” hoodie at the time of the rampage and had a Quran in his car," and "sources said he was wearing an undershirt emblazoned with the Iranian flag or other Iran-related imagery." So, Muslim and hates America. Two more boxes checked off. 

    "Law enforcement knew him as an emotionally disturbed person in both New York and Texas before Sunday’s bloody rampage, sources said."  Liberals have higher rates of mental illness than Conservatives, so another box checked off. 

Gun & Prepping News #70

 Just some gun and prepping related links that I thought interesting or useful:

• "Concealed Carry Corner: Can Carry Guns Be Outdated?"--The Firearm Blog.  An excerpt:

The hard truth about many older carry guns is the fact that they are almost all still extremely capable and good options. Of course, there will be better options that are more efficient with a higher round count and smaller overall size, but the older models can still be extremely effective. The two models that are still some of my favorites that many people have stopped carrying are the original Glock 43 and Glock 26. These two are still really useful and the overall size of the original Glock 43 is fantastic for smaller pocket carry where the slightly larger frame of the Glock 43X is better on a belt set up to me.

• "KelTec Announces the KP50 and MP50: 50 Rounds of 5.7"--The Firearm Blog. This appears to be an updated designs over the original P50 that moves the magazine to the bottom of the weapon making it easier to switch magazines, and also offering a better pistol grip. 

The original P50 was a proof of concept that happened to be commercially available. The KP50 is the finished product. Bottom-loading drop-free magazines, a proper trigger group, AR-style controls, and a real accessory mounting system. Everything that was awkward about the P50 has been addressed. 

• No. "Is the .380 Auto Obsolete?"--Firearms News.  The article isn't really about whether the round obsolete but how it can be made better. The author notes that there are three strategies: (i) use a lighter, faster bullet that will increase the odds of penetration; (ii) stick with something about the same speed and weight as Browning's original design; or (iii) use a heavier bullet with deeper penetration. Each as its own advantages and disadvantages. But here are the author's thoughts on a defensive load:

    While I am not normally one to advocate the carrying and usage of full metal jacket ammunition for personal protection, in this caliber FMJ provides peace of mind knowing you will get consistent penetration deep enough to reach vital organs. While the initial wound cavity might not be as drastic as a JHP, it has consistent performance from start to finish. The reason I choose a flat point over the more traditional round nose FMJ is due to the added and wider frontal area. This flat nose acts much like a 148-grain Mid-Range Hollow Base Wad Cutter from a .38 Special, producing a more pronounced wound cavity than that of a round nose, with penetration that leans less on the side of over penetration. Another advantage to the flat point is it is less likely to deflect off of bone or other tougher mediums, and will be less likely to push its way around vital organs (more likely with a round nose).

    While I and some others prefer to carry FMJ ammunition for the added penetration, the best performing .380 Auto JHP load is, in my opinion, hands down the Hornady XTP 90-grain JHP. This controlled expansion JHP design is the only one I have tested that will consistently provide enough penetration to meet the FBI protocol depths. Due to this it is the .380 Auto JHP load I recommend for self-defense. With an impressive advertised velocity of 1,000 feet per second, my chronograph results came in 4.9% lower through the Walther PPK/s, averaging 951 feet per second. While expansion is considered "minimal" at .40-.44 of an inch, the disruption to tissue due to this expansion places it above FMJ in terms of terminal performance. Penetration averages 13.5 to 14.5 inches which exceeds the FBI 12-inch minimum. It is also a great choice for those who may worry about over-penetration with FMJ loads.

You can get a sense of this dynamic between either good expansion or good penetration, but not both, by looking at the Lucky Gunner gel tests of the .380. The ShootingTheBull410 YouTube channel did a series of videos on trying to find a good .380 round for micro sized pistols, testing them in calibrated ballistic gel with a denim clothing barrier. His "wrap up" video setting out his conclusions can be found here. The top rounds he found were any of the loads using Hornady XTP bullets and the Federal Hydra-Shok. (As a side note, his videos can also be found on the Internet Archive and downloaded).

• "BCA Announces the .380ACP BC-102"--The Truth About Guns. It seems that .380 is regaining popularity as a defensive round. From the article-cum-press release:

    Bear Creek Arms (BCA ) just announced a new pistol, this time chambered in .380ACP.

    The BC-102 will be available as a complete handgun, or the barrel and slide will be offered separately as a conversion for existing 9mm guns. 

[snip]

    The new BC-102 is BCA’s Glock 19 Gen 3 clone, but chambered for .380ACP. The pistol features a 15 round magazine capacity and a barrel made of 416R stainless steel with a stainless steel finish.  

• "Smith & Wesson Releases Model 940-3 J-Frame Revolver"--Ammo Land. A snub-nosed revolver using 9mm. The barrel is slightly longer (2.17-inch) than a .38 snub nose (1.9-inch) and it is heavier than the aluminum frame .38 Specials (23 ounces versus 14.4. ounces)--probably reflecting the higher pressures at which 9mm functions. It also has real sights. And, of course, it uses moon-clips. When I first got serious about shooting, .38 Special ammo was just as common to find as 9mm. But, at least in my area, the gun stores generally carry very little of it or .357 anymore. 
• ".41 Magnum – The ‘Do-It-All’ Caliber"--Guns Magazine. This sort of fills the same niche as .40 S&W and 10mm fill in the semi-auto pistol market. It can be downloaded to be an effective self-defense round and loaded up to almost .44 Magnum performance (but with less recoil) for hunting or a woods gun. 
• "The .338 Winchester Magnum Is a Cartridge That No Longer Makes Sense"--Outdoor Life. This seems like sacrilege. I have a book on hunting brown bear and polar bear that is adamant that the .338 is the smallest acceptable rifle cartridge for such game. But that book is probably 3 decades old at this point and times (and bullets and cartridge offerings) have changed. The author if this piece is an Alaskan guide that had relied on the .338 when trying to track down wounded bear, but now uses a .30-06 "loaded with 175-grain Lehigh Defense Controlled Chaos bullets which are fracturing copper hollow points. I can tell you from experience, those will shoot through a moose and leave a massive wound channel when fired from a .308. If I feel the need for more, I’ll step up to the .375 Ruger." The author isn't suggesting that you ditch your .338 rifle if you are already invested in the caliber, but that if you are just starting into rifles for larger and/or more dangerous game there are other cartridges that can do just as well or better with less recoil and/or greater terminal performance.  

• "NSWC Crane’s New Drone Killer Cartridge (DKC) Technology"--The Firearm Blog.  A couple new multi-projectile rounds intended to shoot down drones. "The primary advantage of the DKC technology over shotgun ammunition is its greater range. Additionally, this ammunition is designed to be used in standard-issue firearms with no modifications, so there is no need to have a separate dedicated anti-drone weapon or attachments." 
• "Suppressors and Hearing Safety: What Decibels Actually Tell Us"--The Truth About Guns. The author notes that "140 dB is the commonly accepted threshold where unprotected ears enter real risk territory for acoustic trauma when it comes to single gunshots. To put it simply, this means that if the noise you’re hearing is at 140 dB or greater, then you are actively doing damage to your hearing." Unsuppressed guns, according to the article, routinely exceed 160 dB at the muzzle and 140 to 150 dB at the user's ears. But because "the best suppressors meant for a 5.56 AR-15 on a standard 16-inch barrel measure around 138 dB peak at the ear," you will still want to use hearing protection even when using a suppressor. 

It’s not quite the same for rimfire guns with suppressors. Silencer Shop’s quietest suppressor guide shows .22 LR cans regularly hitting 110 to 125 dB at the ear with the right host and subsonic ammo. That’s well under the impulse threshold, but in reality is still pretty loud: in the realm of a jackhammer or passing ambulance than a gunshot. No surprise there: .22 LR starts from a lower pressure baseline, and suppressors can capture nearly every bit of muzzle blast. Those numbers make extended plinking sessions genuinely pleasant without uncomfortable muffs or plugs. 

• "The Ideal Buffer Setup for a 10.5″ Unsuppressed AR Pistol"--The Truth About Guns.  I know that I had linked to this article in a post this last week, but I thought these comments from the author to be apropos to the subject of silencers:

 The industry today is flooded with suppressors, and it’s becoming increasingly rare to see an unsuppressed AR out on the range.

There are, however, those of us who choose to remain unsuppressed; whether it’s the NFA red tape, the cost of a can, or simply the fact that a suppressed AR-15 still isn’t hearing safe. You’re still going to reach for your ear pro regardless, so why bother?

• "Preppers: Choose Your Weapons"--Shooters Log. Some thoughts on weapons for a battery of survival/prepping firearms and why we need them. As to what, the author writes:

We need a rifle, shotgun, .22 rifle, a scoped rifle, and big and small handguns. The rifle is likely going to be the AR-15. I think some compromise may be in order and a versatile scoped rifle such as the M1A may take the place of the AR and the scoped rifle—unless you live out west and need to hunt the mountains. The .22 small game rifle must be chosen. 

The rifle he recommends is the AR15, although he notes that an M1A with a scope could pull double duty as the defensive rifle and scoped rifle.  As to the why:

    Not long ago in my home county, a man and woman, both about 60, were murdered in their own home in a vicious, edged weapon attack. A young man they had befriended was killed as well. The monsters responsible traveled three states to the south and murdered again before being caught.

    The neighborhood was good and a place many of us would like to live, nestled in the mountains. The POS involved was staying at his mother’s house across the way and chose a likely victim. Many such convicts are filled with hate and intense self-loathing. They will kill at some point; it depends on the trigger.

    The worst possible combination in a human being is being mean and stupid, and we see no end to these traits among criminals. In my own neighborhood, I enjoy a good relationship with my neighbors to the north, south, and east. I have a buffer to one side that is a lot at present.

    We had a doper in a rental house—that didn’t last long. We had a drunken no good—who a pastor befriended—take his car and crash it. A pastor that lives beside him gave a fellow a ride to what was supposed to be his mom’s house and it turned out to be a drug den.

• And from a slightly different perspective: "Three Weapons Every Prepper Needs"--Prepping to Survive. The author explains:

    The new post-TEOTWAWKI world will find many people looking for food through the traditional techniques of hunting and gathering. Hunting is far easier if you have the right weapon and ammunition for the game you’re attempting to capture.

    At a minimum, there are three key weapons that every prepper should own. These weapons are not the extent of the prepper’s arsenal, just the bare minimum required to allow the widest variety of hunting options.

The weapons he recommends are: a .22 LR rifle, 12 gauge shotgun, and a .30-30 rifle.

• "Lifeboat Supplies"--Blue Collar Prepping. A list of items required to be carried on a lifeboat. But even if you don't need all the items for bugging out (or bugging in), it is yet another list to check to see if you have your bases covered. 
• "Understanding the Difference: Prepping Vs Hoarding"--SHTF School. Brief synopsis from the article:

... Prepping involves proactive preparation for potential disasters or emergencies, focusing on being self-sufficient and prepared to take care of oneself and others. Hoarding, on the other hand, is a reactionary response to perceived shortages, prioritizing self-interest and often causing harm to others. Preppers emphasize community and working together, while hoarders only care about themselves. Organization and practicality are important for preppers, who prioritize essential items with a specific purpose in mind. Hoarders, on the other hand, tend to accumulate valuable items without a specific purpose or usefulness. Preppers keep their stockpiles organized and out of sight, only checking on them periodically, whereas hoarders are constantly surrounded by their items and do not prioritize organization. Prepper stockpiles are not valuable or rare items, and preppers are not attached to their stockpiles but rather to the practical use they provide. In contrast, hoarders are emotionally attached to their hoards. Overall, prepping and hoarding are two distinct practices with differing intents and outcomes.

• "Best Jumper Cable Gauge (Size Chart) – What Gauge Do You Need?"--Modern Survival Blog. Not just the gauge, but also discusses how long a cable. Be careful of the ones that come in the cheap car emergency kits because they are often the smaller gauge cables only appropriate for small engines.
• "Is Manganese Steel Good for Swords?"--ZGT Steel.  The basic answer is "no". I've seen some ads for swords and knives for preppers made of manganese steel. This type of steel is very tough--it can withstand a lot of pounding for instance--but it is too soft to hold an edge, making it more suitable as a decorative item (a "wall hanger") than a real sword or knife. 
• "Thoughts on Traveling to Mexico"--Active Response Training. Greg Ellifritz writes:

    The cartels are responsible for bringing over 90% of the heroin and fentanyl smuggled into the USA.  They also bring in significant quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine, and marijuana.  In Mexico, the cartels often work extortion and kidnapping schemes against both Mexicans and foreigners alike.  Many cartels are also engaged in protection rackets extorting money from local businesses. 

    Most of the locals don’t like the cartels, but tolerate their operations because the cartels provide lots of jobs and occasionally fund infrastructure projects (building hospitals, schools, and roads) in the place of an impoverished government. 

    Since we are mentioning the government, we also need to note that the cartels have completely infiltrated all levels of the Mexican government including the politicians, judiciary, law enforcement, and the military.

The last paragraph is important. The massive corruption that we have seen in Minnesota and is being revealed in other states should tell us that the U.S. is in a similar position--criminal organizations have completely infiltrated all levels of our government, including the politicians, judiciary, and so on. That is why in the aftermath of the 2020 election various investigative agencies and courts not only ignored allegations and reports of voting malfeasance, but worked to shut down anyone attempting to investigate the matter; and it is only now that we are starting to see the reveals of fake ballots, miscounting, voting machines being hacked from foreign countries, etc. It was all to protect this criminal enterprise. 

• Related: "Model City: Portland’s Journey From Symbol of Chic to Shabby"--Real Clear Politics. An excerpt (bold added):

    Early last year, for example, Eager reported on his Substack, Oregon Roundup, about a man named Kevin Daniel Sanabria-Ojeda, whom authorities say is a member of the violent Venezuelan Tren de Agua criminal syndicate and who was arrested for attempted murder. According to Eager, Sanabria-Ojeda, along with an accomplice who remains at large, “kidnapped Maria Guadalupe Hernandez Velasquez outside her Seattle home, drilled into her hands with a power drill to force her to provide them her PIN for her debit card, robbed her of gold and cash, shot and wounded her and left her for dead in rural Washington.”

    Somehow Velasquez survived the ordeal and police traced the two criminals to a house in a Portland suburb that police reports describe as a drug den, with “residents possibly using drugs in the back yard, large numbers of people coming and going at night, possibly entire vans full of people, and people being dazed or drugged… and on a few occasions groups of young women or girls being present at the address.” 

    That house was also listed as the address of Uplifting Journey LLC, an addiction recovery provider that received $2.3 million in state Medicaid funds between April of 2024 and March of 2025. Eager has further documented that owners of Uplifting Journey, Julius Maximo and Espoir Ntezeyombi, have multiple ties to three men indicted in Arizona for setting up a $60 million Medicare fraud ring that was laundering money by sending it to Rwanda. One of the leaders of the Arizona fraud even co-signed the lease on another dubious residence owned by Uplifting Journey in the Portland suburb of Gresham. 

We're Going To Need More Iranian Leaders, I Guess

 

The New York Post reports: "Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is dead after US-Israeli attack on Iran — along with 40 top leaders." The article relates:

     Iran’s tyrannical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed Saturday in an unprecedented,  joint military attack by the US and Israel called Operation Epic Fury  —  which President Trump said would give Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back the country.”

    “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump declared on his Truth Social about 15 hours after the start of the onslaught. “This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS.”

    Israeli officials told Fox News that more than 40 top Iranian security and regime figures were eliminated in the opening strikes this morning, and as many as 10 high-ranking leaders were killed in the initial strike on Khamenei’s fortified compound.

     The body of the 86-year-old Khamenei was reportedly recovered in the rubble and a photograph of his corpse was shown to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a senior Israeli official told Reuters.

His death has been confirmed by Iranian state media. But back to the NY Post article:

    Multiple Islamic Revolution Guard Corps commanders were killed in the strikes — including IRGC Commander Gen. Mohammad Pakpour and Iranian defense minister Amir Nasirzadeh, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

    Pakpour was named head of the IRGC after Israel’s June attacks on Iran killed his predecessor, Hossein Salami, and oversaw the deaths of thousands of protestors during weeks-long unrest in December.

    Nasirzadeh was the point man for Iran’s production of long-range surface-to-surface missiles and weapons transferred to Iranian proxies. He also served as commander of the Iranian Air Force.

    Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, was also killed, according to the IDF.

    As were Saleh Asadi, a top Iranian intelligence official, and Hossein Jabal Amelian, the chairman of the SPND Organization, a group that advanced Iranian projects related to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

The Iranian mullahs took power 47 years ago due to stupidity of the Democrat president Jimmy Carter who let Muslim zealots take over the U.S. embassy and kill and hold hostage Americans without any significant repercussions and made the U.S. appear fools on the world stage. It took the election of a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, to scare the Iranians enough to release the hostages. 

    Of course, the Muslim traitors in our midst were upset about the strikes, with "NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Squad Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar led a laundry list of far-left pols condemning President Trump for launching airstrikes with Israel against Iran." And, as usual, "Democrats decried that Trump had taken action without congressional authorization" even though they have cheered such behavior when their own politicians attack other nations (cough, Libya, cough). Moreover, "White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the administration had briefed several Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress in advance."

    The Iranian leadership--or at least what remains--has struck back. Missiles and drones reportedly hit targets in Sunni nations, including the airport in Dubai. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has also sought to close the Straight of Hormuz. I hope you have gassed up your car, because we will probably see a spike in oil and gas prices. Too bad we can't offset it with oil seized from Venezuela. In any event, "[t]he FBI has issued a chilling warning to Americans as fears grow Iran will strike the US through its terrorist proxies." I would not be surprised if these terrorist proxies were to receive assistance from various Leftist groups and drug cartels. 

More:

• "Trump was once wary of ordering regime change in Iran. Here’s what made him change his mind"--AP.
• "Iranian Crown Prince Calls on Military, Police, Security Services to Abandon ‘Crumbling’ Islamist Regime"--Breitbart. 
• "China Denounces U.S. as ‘War Addict’ for Strikes on Iran"--Breitbart. They're just upset because the strikes will likely further restrict China's ability to project power abroad. 
• "Lawmakers push for war powers vote after US-Israel strikes on Iran"--News Nation. And by "lawmakers" the article means Democrats.