Exploring practical methods for preparing for the end times, including analysis of end time scripture and prophecy, current events, prepping and self-defense.
The real horror of the last days is not the locusts with their vicious scorpion tails or the horseman and their deadly mounts so vividly described in Revelation chapter 9. It is that there will be men and women who will live through the evil day and not be humbled, who will continue to cling to their gold and silver as though these lifeless and powerless things were gods....
...The Second Coming does not usher in the millennial era. The woes pronounced by the trumpets in Revelation chapter 8 and 9 do. Let us emphasize, Christ will not appear in glory as the millennial day dawns. Instead, Satan’s inferno-created sadistic hoards and their murderous horses will (v. 18).
... During these last days, the faithful of God are to watch and wait, taking the time to fully prepare for what is to come.
Spiritual preparation is the most important for only in that can we receive the seal of God and its protective power as promised in Revelation 7:3 and Doctrine and Covenants 77:9. However, temporal preparedness must not be far behind. One point the Lord himself stressed to us through the parables he told the New Testament Saints is the need to be fully and continually prepared for all eventualities. As he closed his prophecy dealing with the last days, he told them and us,
“If the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:43–44).
Notice, the man was good and that is where the pinch of the parable lies. His loss was not the result of sinfulness or even laziness, but from a lack of preparation. The ever-popular parable of the ten virgins makes the same point. Once the cry is made, “The bridegroom cometh,” there will be no time, even for the more righteous, to prepare, and the Lord will respond to them as to the wicked, “I know you not” (Matt. 25:1-12).
It is of note that the three weapons of destruction are fire, smoke, and sulfur. These, however, are not associated with Lord’s coming during when “the elements should melt with fervent heat, and the earth should be wrapt together as a scroll, and the heavens and the earth should pass away” (3 Ne. 26:3, compare Morm. 9:2). They precede it. This era has been called the period of the “the Great Over-Burn,” an apt description of the final holocaust of Revelation, and is associated with the last great war before the Second Coming—a war of a special nature. It is not described in the usual term of bloodshed and the work of the sword. It is a war of burning in which “the people shall be as the fuel of the fire” (2 Ne. 19:19).
It would take a miracle for anyone to survive such a general holocaust, but that is exactly the point. The destruction is limited. God sets the boundary of the whole thing. Further, the fire acts as his agent. Its purpose is to protect his people.
For the time soon cometh that the fulness of the wrath of God shall be poured out upon all the children of men; for he will not suffer that the wicked shall destroy the righteous. Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come, and the righteous be preserved, even unto the destruction of their enemies by fire. Wherefore, the righteous need not fear; for thus saith the prophet, they shall be saved, even if it so be as by fire. Behold, my brethren, I say unto you, that these things must shortly come; yea, even blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke must come; and it must needs be upon the face of this earth; and it cometh unto men according to the flesh if it so be that they will harden their hearts against the Holy One of Israel (1 Ne. 22:16-18).
The Lord is perfectly prepared to allow thousands to die in order to protect his people.
Some may have trouble with this idea, but the Seer has a very realistic understanding about death. From John’s perspective, all must die. The question is when and how. Ultimate destiny is not determined by the moment or manner of death; it is by the manner of life (Caird, Revelation, 113). ... Some balk at this, but, as one scholar has noted, the idea that mortality is so infallibly precious that,
the death which robs us of it must be the ultimate tragedy is precisely the idolatry that John is trying here to combat. We have already seen that John calls the enemies of the church ‘the inhabiters of earth’, because they have made themselves utterly at home in this transient world order. If all men must die, and if at the end heaven and earth must vanish, along with those whose life is irremediably bounded by worldly horizons, then it is surely in accord with the mercy of God that he should send men from time to time forceful reminders of the insecurity of their tenure. (Caird, Revelation, 113.)
Besides, as already noted, the purpose of the plagues is to open wide the doors of death into the cleansing fires of hell and from there into a kingdom of glory. It should be noted, however, that before that time comes, these wayward souls have contributed to the continual unleashing of the powers of de-creation of which the demonic cavalry (pictured in Rev. 9:7–18) are the final agents. In chapter 8, we saw the sun, moon, sea, and land all struck. In chapter 9, humankind, the last of God’s creation, come under the same force. The chapter ends leaving no hope that the trend can be reversed. Indeed, the very acts which unleashed the powers have now gotten so strong a hold on the wicked that repentance is no longer possible. De-creation has reached its nadir.
The withdrawal of $475,000 in cash by the man who killed 22 Nova Scotians in April matches the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents, sources say. Gabriel Wortman, who is responsible for the largest mass killing in Canadian history, withdrew the money from a Brink’s depot in Dartmouth, N.S., on March 30, stashing a carryall filled with hundred-dollar bills in the trunk of his car. According to a source close to the police investigation the money came from CIBC Intria, a subsidiary of the chartered bank that handles currency transactions. Sources in both banking and the RCMP say the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP funnels money to its confidential informants and agents, and is not an option available to private banking customers.
In other words, even if you had that much money to withdraw, you wouldn't be able to walk into a Brink's depot and be handed the cash in the cash. Rather, your bank would order the money from Brink's, and after receipt, would count the money in front of you before handing it over. That is, unless you worked for the government:
A second Mountie, who does not know the first one but who has also been involved in CI operations, also believes that Wortman’s ability to withdraw a large sum of money from Brink’s is an indication that Wortman had a link with the police. “That’s tradecraft,” the Mountie said, explaining that by going through CIBC Intria, the RCMP could avoid typical banking scrutiny, as there are no holds placed on the money. “That’s what we do when we need flash money for a buy. We don’t keep stashes of money around the office. When we suddenly need a large sum of money to make a buy or something, that’s the route we take. I think [with the Brink’s transaction] you’ve proved with that single fact that he had a relationship with the police. He was either a CI or an agent.”
The article also notes that "it could explain why the [RCMP] appeared not to take action on complaints about his illegal guns and his assault on his common-law wife." The article also mentions that informants are never paid any amounts over $10,000 at a time, and, therefore, this size of withdrawal would indicate someone working as an agent for the government.
More than two months later the victims' families are still seeking answers as to why Wortman carried out the attack and why it took so long for the RCMP to stop him. Over the past several weeks Nova Scotia attorney general Mark Furey has repeatedly promised that a federal-provincial inquiry is on the way - yet no official date has been set. A potential break in the case came last week when news magazine Maclean's unearthed video which allegedly showed Wortman withdrawing $475,000 from a Brink's office 19 days before the shooting. Law enforcement sources say that the massive withdrawal matched the method the RCMP uses to send money to confidential informants and agents - and would not have been possible for a regular citizen. The RCMP has repeatedly insisted that it had no 'special relationship' with Wortman and refused to answer questions about the withdrawal.
As I've written before, both my son and I are using shoulder holsters for the majority of our everyday carry needs (see, "Review of Craft Holsters' Shoulder Holster System With Mag Pouch" and "Another Shoulder Holster Review"). Although quick and easy access are important for a holster for a defensive weapon, other factors are also important for a holster used for everyday carry, including retention (speaking of simply keeping the weapon from falling out regardless of physical activity, movement, or position) and how much it restricts you in doing other activities. Well, our shoulder holsters got a workout this weekend.
First, some background detail. One of my typical shooting areas is accessed by an unimproved road off of a state highway. While I will travel quite some distance from the highway to shoot, I've noticed that there is a location just a 100 yards or so from the highway which is popular with people using passenger cars (coups, sedans).
Coming back out of the desert after doing some shooting this weekend, my son and I were flagged down by a couple as we got close to the state highway. They had pulled off in their subcompact car to do a bit of shooting with two new handguns they had purchased, but had gotten stuck when they tried to leave. Inspection showed that the car had become high-centered, and one of the front tires, being free to spin, had simply dug a deeper hole. Unfortunately, I didn't have a tow strap, but I had a jack and a folding shovel and found some debris we could slide under the front tire, and so after an hour or so we had the car freed and the people on their way.
During the time we were digging a hole to get the jack into place, jacking up the car, digging underneath the car to remove the soil on which the car had been stuck, and finally pushing it free, my son and I had no problems with our shoulder holsters. Since we were kneeling, bending and sometimes laying on our sides in order to dig, pull out dirt, and examine our progress, pushing on the car to help get it going, and so on, we had a good physical workout in many different positions, and the holsters kept the firearms at ready, but completely out of the way, and did not impede our movements or ability to kneel or lay on our sides. Since we both had casual button-up shirts we were wearing over the holsters, the firearms were kept free of dirt and dust.
I can't imagine anything that would have given a better test of a carry system as to testing its resilience in the face of physical activities, and the shoulder holsters passed with flying colors.
In it, she discusses the fact that the BLM agenda is not about solutions, but instead manipulating and using a subset of the population to further the political aims and aspirations of others by metaphorically shaking the table of American society and government. As she states, "certain lives only matter in election years." Anyway, watch the whole thing.
I had mentioned earlier that I believe the best response we can make to BLM's and Antifa's provocations is a studied indifference. The opposite of love is not hatred, but indifference. Hatred requires an emotional investment. Leftists want people to become emotionally invested, either to join them in burning it all down or violently opposing them. My personal belief is that the social unrest we saw during the Obama Administration and are now seeing is a reaction to the fact that the country had become truly color blind--at least as far as the crime statistics would allow us--and the left would rather have us hate blacks than to cease caring if someone was black or white.
Thus, they want us to become emotionally caught up in the moment. Don't. Stop caring about them and their causes. Don't acknowledge their "victim status" or allow yourself to care about or sympathize with their faux issues.
If you get waylaid by a family member or co-worker wanting to pin you down on whether you believe "Black Lives Matter" don't attempt to argue or reason with them. “Never argue with an idiot," said Mark Twain, "They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” Rather, you will have to communicate to them that you will not engage in political dialogue with them because you don't care about them or their opinions. Thus, don't apologize or admit you've done anything wrong (you are not responsible for what someone did 100 or 200 years ago). Don't admit something that can be used against you later. Don't say "all lives matter," because that suggests that you have thought about the issue enough to care about some response. Instead show that they and their issues don't concern you. "I can't talk right now" "I'm busy, what do you want?" "Why are you bothering me?" "I don't have time to talk." "Why are you wasting my time?"
Studied indifference doesn't mean that you truly don't care, because you definitely will care if their policies are implemented, they start to loot you neighborhood, get you fired from your job, etc. You will have to harden your heart. You will have to be committed to not advancing their causes or assisting or allowing them to advance their causes. You will have to take the position--even if you don't vocalize it--that your life, the lives of your children, and your culture matter.
If you are in a position to vet new employees or make hiring decisions, don't hire leftists. (It helps if you understand that hiring a leftist is hiring a law suit.) Document the deficiencies of leftist employees and write up honest evaluations--don't sugar coat their performance problems because you feel sorry for them or like them. (You should be doing this for all employees anyway; but since leftists are inherently childish, they will always have performance problems). Don't let leftists get into positions where they can make hiring decisions because they don't care about merit and will actively work to hire like minded people to fill up positions in a company or government even if it means hiring unqualified or incompetent employees.
Don't vote Democrat. Don't vote for RHINOs during the primaries.
Vote with your pocket book. That means not donating to charities that support leftist causes and not purchasing from leftist businesses (e.g., I used to love Ben's and Jerry's ice cream, but I haven't purchased any since they first started vocalizing their opposition to the Second Amendment). It may mean moving from leftist controlled cities or states.
On Wednesday, multiple sources within the Atlanta Police Department told CNN that officers were not responding to calls in three of the department's six zones.
Though the department denied that was the case, a police union director backed CNN's sources' accounts and said that, in some instances, officers were refusing to leave their precincts unless a fellow police officer required backup.
"Here We Go: Portland Protesters Topple Statue Of George Washington"--Hot Air. This is in Portland, Oregon. According to Andy Ngo, "A century old statue of George Washington was toppled & set on fire with an American flag. 'White fragility,' 'Damn white men' & other messages are written on the moment. On the ground nearby: 'Defund white men.'"
This still an information operation, not a kinetic one.
They want to convince us we are powerless, that everyone else supports their commie agenda, that we cannot win. Their tactics are designed to create that impression and crush our morale. These include the 24/7 media hype, the outright media lies, the movie stars with their dumb PSAs, the staged statue attacks, the corporate solidarity proclamations, the social media cancellations, and the craven kneeling by people who are supposed to stand up for us. But another tactic, familiar to any student of insurgencies, is to provoke an overreaction by those in power in order to undermine its moral authority. They want is to make us (including the president) think this is a kinetic operation, and get our side to make fundamental strategic errors by failing to recognize the true nature of the threat. They hope that such a mismatch between perception and reality will then lead to gravely damaging blunders. One of those would be Trump succumbing to his legit frustration and sending in a bunch of federal troops to crack skulls in Seattle.
Defining this insurgency as a kinetic operation supports the leftists’ information operation goal of making Americans perceive the situation as out of control, of there being chaos, and of making the election of Grandpa Badfinger being the only thing that will resolve the situation. But there is no kinetic situation to resolve – at least none that is strategically significant in a kinetic sense. Despite the hype, the protests may have involved a peak of 2 million people across the country – out of 330 million. That’s nothing kinetically; it’s significant informationally because it is pushed by so many cultural influencers. The scurvy scumbags of Antifa hold essentially no ground except the turf they are physically standing on at the moment, and that is minuscule. Even the hilarious Road Warrior Republic of Seattle is not even a rounding error of a rounding error in terms of US territory. It’s significant only in the context of an information operation.
If you’re against police corruption and militarization? You’re not alone.
If you’re against excessive use of force by police? You’re not alone.
If you’re against rioting and mob violence? You’re not alone.
If you mock companies that virtue signal popular causes while avoiding tough issues like the near slave labor they use to produce goods that they offshored from American production? You’re not alone.
If you’re against globalism and collectivism? You’re not alone.
I’m not saying that the position of the Right is always the right position. There are times the Right has been wrong. But the positions of the Right aren’t based in hate – they’re based in a love of freedom, or family, or tradition, or nation, or a healthy desire to be religious.
If those things are important to you?
You’re not alone.
Wilder's comments are extremely important. Although our military has forgotten it, the way to win a war is to destroy your enemy's will to fight. Our domestic enemies want to do this by making us believe that we are isolated and alone. Don't let them.
"As America Fights ‘2nd French Revolution,’ Trump Needs to Seize the Moment"--Michael Walsh at the Epoch Times. He warns that "[t]he coming months until the election are going to be among the most perilous in American history," and goes on to describe the demographic changes, loss of religiosity and WuFlu panic that has produced this current moment in history. Walsh thinks that Trump needs to crush this nascent insurrection right now, but I am hesitant because I believe that is exactly what America's enemies want: a video or photograph of troops attacking "protesters." This is 4th Generation warfare, and it would be a mistake to give the enemy want they want: a violent response to the protests. Let the Democrat strongholds stew in their own stink for awhile, say I. If they try to move beyond the Democrat strongholds, we can then reevaluate a response.
“That [conservative] revolution would not last long,” he added. “Say what you will about Barack Obama, and we do, but he never doubted he had the constitutional authority to act, and he did act. Obama knew a threat when he saw one. Our Republican leaders don’t believe they have the authority. They don’t believe they’re legitimate. They don’t see the threat. They don’t want to see the threat because they know they can’t face the mob. They know they’re too weak, and so they offer trinkets and hope the mob will go away. But it won’t, mobs can’t be sated. We thought Republicans understood that, and that’s why we supported them, but the crisis has revealed the truth. Now we know who they are. It could not be clearer, and now it’s time to find new leaders.”
The situation is multifaceted and cannot be characterized as simple as black versus white, or left versus right. There is a revolution going on, but it is at heart a revolution amongst the liberals as to who will have control of the political levers of power--similar to the rioting of 1968 at the Democratic National Convention really being about the issue of who would lead the Democratic party. I'm not denying that the revolutionaries are also targeting conservative culture or wanting to take down Trump--and they would love to have Trump intervene in a bloody way that would doom any chance of his reelection--but this is really a fight over who is in power, the radicals from the 1960s and 70s, or a new generation of radicals.
"Who gave Floyd the Fentynal?"--Vox Popoli. Vox Day cites a good run-down on the evidence indicating that George Floyd died of a fentynal overdose, but then poses the question of when and how Floyd ingested the fentynal.
"Persecution is now cool!"--Behind the Black. The author writes: "We are in a time of oppression. Make no mistake. If you publicly express an opinion that the left does not like, it is now considered perfectly reasonable among our smart set to destroy your business, dox your family, threaten your children, and have your very existence cancelled."
My initial assessment is that this actually is a revolution, in the sense of the Maidan or Tahrir Square, where organizers attempt to foment a popular uprising against the government.
Maidan, of course, was Ukraine’s 2014 revolution. Tahrir Square, Egypt’s during the 2011 Arab Spring. In both cases, mass protests and violence eventually succeeded in forcing the resignation of the countries’ leaders. There were other cases, too: Puerto Rico, South Korea, Spain, Iceland, and Finland each had their own bouts of widespread protests that led to political change.
All the way back in 2017, which now seems like 20 years ago, a U.S.-based militant socialist web magazine began promoting the idea of mass protests and small scale direct action as a means to bait President Trump into cracking down on Leftists nationwide.
The anticipated iron fist reaction would rally support for the Leftist cause, the authors explained, and expand the class conflict against capitalism and the state.
Since then, the idea of mass mobilization has become regular fare for both liberal and leftist think-pieces.
Our best weapon is a studied indifference--not hatred and not obedience: "I Am Not Your Slave"--Ricochet. The author writes:
The constant attacks on American citizens who are white are absurd and insulting. The commentary insisting that all whites must be racist is bizarre and on a closer look, based on no facts at all. I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of these intended insults. (I can only be insulted if I accept the observations.) I’m pushing back. I realize that some black Americans and people on the Left would be outraged at my ideas, and if they had the opportunity would vehemently chastise me.
I don’t care.
I only care about living a life of integrity, about being a good person to my fellow man (no matter what the person’s color is), and to make good choices. No person has the right to force me to think or behave in a particular way—a person can certainly try, but I will ignore their intimidation tactics and efforts to humiliate me.
Also:
You say that if I don’t speak out or act to support your claims about racism, I am complicit. If your claims are not legitimate, what am I complicit in? Who are you to decide how I should live my life? Who are you to demand that I act for a cause that I don’t think is legitimate? Even if there are racists in this country (and I’m sure there are), why do I have to take action against them? What makes your cause stand out against all the rest of the needs of society?
... Slave trading is not a uniquely black experience. Take a peek through history and you will find slaves all over the world throughout the centuries. Here in jolly old England many of our fellow Brits were rounded up and sold into slavery. The success of St Augustine’s mission to implant Christianity into England was preceded by Pope Gregory witnessing white, blue eyed English boys being sold in a Rome slave market and declaring “They are not Angles, but Angels.”Our ancient feudal system had aspects of abuse and slavery running all the way through it. British history is full of it! Which raises an awkward question.
Who, may I ask, is the authority figure to determine which slaves are more deserving than another. What is the magic date by which we determine which statue, street name, building name stays and which is rudely discarded.Who determines which cause deserves to be championed. If slavery suddenly trumps history then should we not give equal air time to every other cause under heaven. Where do you stop?
I feel like the author was trying to not make the armor fail: other than the .45-70, all shots were at 100 yards, and the author mostly used uncommon calibers instead of more popular ones like the .270 or .243. I would have really liked to have seen what the .243 would have done, even at 100 yards.
At this point, there are plenty of reasons for gun owners to be concerned, not the least being Donald Trump’s unique ability to alienate the core constituency that got him elected (and a new report of a potential ATF reversal on arm braces isn’t helping). What we know for certain is that if Joe Biden and the Democrats win “bigly,” the means of peaceful redress supposedly guaranteed by the First Amendment will be as closed off to us as “Second Amendment protections.”
None of us has a crystal ball to know what is coming next, but it does look like November could be our “last best hope” for such redress using the remarkable system bequeathed us by our Founders. After that, who knows what terrible choices each of us will be confronted with, and when?
The one thing we will come to know to our credit or our shame is how serious we each are when we declare “WE WILL NOT DISARM” and the only choices left by those who would claim our rights as theirs are surrender or resist.
As poor countries around the world struggle to beat back the coronavirus, they are unintentionally contributing to fresh explosions of illness and death from other diseases — ones that are readily prevented by vaccines.
This spring, after the World Health Organization and UNICEF warned that the pandemic could spread swiftly when children gathered for shots, many countries suspended their inoculation programs. Even in countries that tried to keep them going, cargo flights with vaccine supplies were halted by the pandemic and health workers diverted to fight it.
Now, diphtheria is appearing in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.
Cholera is in South Sudan, Cameroon, Mozambique, Yemen and Bangladesh.
A mutated strain of poliovirus has been reported in more than 30 countries.
And measles is flaring around the globe, including in Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Nigeria and Uzbekistan.
Of 29 countries that have currently suspended measles campaigns because of the pandemic, 18 are reporting outbreaks. An additional 13 countries are considering postponement. According to the Measles and Rubella Initiative, 178 million people are at risk of missing measles shots in 2020.
The risk now is “an epidemic in a few months’ time that will kill more children than Covid,” said Chibuzo Okonta, the president of Doctors Without Borders in West and Central Africa.
More Kung Flu fallout: "40,000 crew still at sea. Some call for change in cruise-Caribbean relationship"--Miami Herald. Historically, out-of-work sailors or fishermen that had fallen on hard times would turn to piracy. The problem in this case has been exacerbated by cruise-lines registering their ships with poor third-world countries, none of which will allow the ships to dock in those countries or otherwise have resources to evacuate the crews.
Though projected incendiary weapons such as Greek fire were used in naval engagements by ancient Byzantines and Chinese, the modern flamethrower made its debut in 1901, when Richard Fiedler submitted his "Flammenwerfer" design to the German Army.
Most flamethrower designs consisted of two tanks carried on a soldier’s back, one filled with a flammable liquid, the other with propellant gas. The squeeze of a trigger would send the liquid shooting across an igniter, projecting a jet of burning fuel at targets up to 18 meters away.
The first combat use of the flamethrower came on Feb. 26, 1915, against the French near Verdun. The usefulness of the weapon was limited by its short range and limited mobility. On July 30, 1915, flamethrowers were used effectively against British positions to flush soldiers out of their trenches and into the open.
The flamethrower, like poison gas, was a psychologically terrifying weapon, leading to its use by the German Army in more than 300 battles in the war. It was also adopted by the British and French over the course of the conflict.
"9mm v. 380 ACP Ammunition – Which is Better for Concealed Carry?"--Ammo Land. This is interesting testing because the author used essentially identical firearms in both calibers. Of course, the velocity and bullet weight of the 9 mm rounds handedly exceeded those of the .380, meaning that the 9 mm consistently had significantly higher muzzle energy. Unfortunately, the author did not do any tests with ballistic gel. But, as is especially pointed out in the embedded video, the hard numbers aren't the whole story. The author's wife did some shooting and had much faster and easier follow up shots with the .380 over 9 mm.
This looks like an interesting product: "Havoc Tactical Solutions’ Deflector Brake Controls Your Ejected Empty Brass"--The Truth About Guns. Essentially it is a bumper pad that adheres to the brass deflector on an AR, the purpose to protect the ejected case from being damaged and absorb some of the energy so the case falls closer to the shooter.
"Cleaning After Corrosive-Primed Ammunition"--Blue Collar Prepping. The author recommends several different methods and products for dissolving and cleaning out the corrosive salts, but I just use regular Windex with ammonia.
"Field Report: The 2020 Colt Python"--Revolver Guy. The author has no experience with the original Python, so his article is a straight up review and not a comparison like many other review articles I've read. Short story, however, is that the author liked the revolver and was impressed with the high polish on the stainless steel. His only complaint was a slightly heavier single-action trigger pull than he preferred, and he wished it had the smooth "combat trigger" rather than textured trigger.
Truth be known, there are a huge number of guides from which to choose should you be looking to learn about emergency medicine.
Pretty much every guide or handbook will cover the same medical emergencies and the same types of treatments. Setting out all this medical information in a way that makes it easier for readers to digest and remember, is what makes one guide stand out from the many others.
This is exactly what ‘The Prepper’s Medical Handbook’ does well.
This medical handbook covers everything from diagnostics, to suturing, to putting together a comprehensive medical kit ideal for preppers, and is laid out using simple yet detailed instructions alongside uncomplicated and clear line drawings.
All this makes ‘The Prepper’s Medical Handbook’ one of the best medical guides we at Alpha Survivalist have had the pleasure of reviewing and we believe it would make a fantastic addition to any prepper’s library.
"CIVIL UNREST FUELS GUN SALES"--Guns Magazine. "When it was revealed gun sales in May were up 80% over the same month in 2019 by Small Arms Analytics & Forecasting, the protests-turn-riots in several major cities was cited as the reason, replacing the COVID-19 pandemic panic of prior months."
He discusses the concept of "blood guilt" and how the Left is applying that to whites, suggesting that whites are of a lesser moral worth than other ethnicities.
Millions of California homes were left in the dark last summer when a series of intentional power cuts by PG&E and Edison International temporarily suspended electricity to stop wildfires.
Big Tech firms in Silicon Valley managed to stay afloat during those electricity outages because of fortified power lines, but power cuts this summer could spark a catastrophic fallout for thousands of staffers who've set up home offices.
"Masks are not 100% protective. However, they certainly are better than not wearing a mask. Both to prevent you, if you happen to be a person who may feel well, but has an asymptomatic infection that you don't even know about, to prevent you from infecting someone else," said Fauci. "But also, it can protect you a certain degree, not a hundred percent, in protecting you from getting infected from someone who, either is breathing, or coughing, or sneezing, or singing or whatever it is in which the droplets or the aerosols go out. So masks work."
So, why weren't we told to wear masks in the beginning?
"Well, the reason for that is that we were concerned the public health community, and many people were saying this, were concerned that it was at a time when personal protective equipment, including the N95 masks and the surgical masks, were in very short supply. And we wanted to make sure that the people namely, the health care workers, who were brave enough to put themselves in a harm way, to take care of people who you know were infected with the coronavirus and the danger of them getting infected."
"Is This The World’s Next Oil Hotspot?"--OilPrice.com. The country is Namibia, and in particular, the Kavango Basin, a 6.3-million-acre basin with a 12-billion-barrel original oil in place potential, which was recently acquired by a Canadian company called Reconnaissance Energy Africa Ltd. Still have to do the test drilling, however.
Dubbed “Perseverance,” the SUV-sized rover would embark on a $2.7 billion exploration mission to search for ancient signs of life on Mars, and begin the first leg of an attempt to bring samples from the Red Planet back to Earth. Over the course of a mission that is expected to last some two years on the surface, the rover would also study the planet’s climate and geology and help pave the way for human exploration, NASA said.
The spacecraft also will be carrying a small helicopter, called “Ingenuity,” which would become the first rotorcraft to fly on another planet.
If all goes well, the spacecraft would lift off on an Atlas V rocket from the Florida Space Coast on July 20 and land on Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. For the landing site, NASA has chosen a crater called Jezero, the site of an ancient lake as well as a delta, where there are rocks that date back 4 billion years. Perseverance is expected to scour the area, drilling for samples and signs of habitable conditions and even signs of ancient microbial life.
Link here. If you are in a city experiencing much of the "peaceful protesting," you will definitely want to check out Greg Ellifritz's "Weekend Knowledge Dump" for this week. He has links to articles on preparing for civil unrest, an account from a National Guardsman about what really happened in Seattle, an article on whether insurance covers losses due to rioting or looting, and surviving a vehicle ambush. And there are a lot more links to articles and videos on other firearm and self-defense topics.
I've been looking for some shirts that work with using a shoulder holster, and started looking at 511's shirts that make use of their RAPIDraw™ system--basically snaps that look like regular buttons, intended so that you can simply rip the shirt open on the front to access a firearm without ripping off your buttons. It's a great concept. Unfortunately, it fell short in actual execution.
The two shirts I ordered were the Life's a Breach short sleeve shirt and the Carson short sleeve shirt. Quality was good--very well made shirts. The problem is that they were both in an athletic cut, which means that they slimmed down exactly where they needed to be left loose to conceal a firearm worn under the shirt. The holster and magazine pouch were very apparent under the covering garment (both my oldest son and I tried the shirts with our respective shoulder holster systems). I suppose that these might work with a sub-compact pistol in a belly-band holster or a similar firearm in some sort of close hugging under-the-arm holster, but completely useless for what I need. I'll be keeping the shirts because, as I noted, they were good quality shirts; just not as a cover garment for the shoulder holster systems.
Oh, the horror, the horror! CBS Baltimore reports: "‘White Lives Matter’ Sprayed On Arthur Ashe Memorial In Virginia." Per the article, "[a] statue of African American tennis legend Arthur Ashe on Richmond, Virginia’s, Monument Avenue has been vandalized with the words 'White Lives Matter'" as well as the initials "WLM." Although Richmond police appear to be unconcerned about black and antifa protesters recently having torn down a statue of Christopher Columbus, and the city of Richmond has itself been busy with removing statues of Confederate leaders and honoring police, the police are busy trying to catch the person that dared suggest that "white lives matter."
Meanwhile, for those disinterested in merely using spray paint, Popular Mechanics has published an article on the topic of "How to Topple a Statue Using Science." From the article:
1. The Physical Approach
The force required to pull down a statue isn’t as great as you think, says mechanical engineer Scott Holland. Most statues are bronze, using an alloy of 90 percent copper and 10 percent tin and a maximum thickness of 3/16 of an inch. The Statue of Liberty’s copper sheeting is only 3/32 of an inch thick, for comparison. Holland says your average statue of a person tops out at around 3,500 pounds. (FYI: A horse statue is approximately 7,000 pounds.) Meanwhile, the OSHA-mandated upper force limit for horizontal pulling per person is 50 pounds of force—“but that’s for working every day,” he says, “so you could probably do twice that.” At 100 pounds of force, then, we’re talking about a 35-person job to drag the statue, Holland says. But to pull it down, “let’s assume twice the force—so you’ll need twice as many people.” So before you start toppling, you’d better recruit 70 buddies with a bit of muscle. Now that you have your crew, you’ll need the right tools. Holland suggests grabbing a few 4x4 recovery straps, which can be rated to over 32,000 pounds and are far less cumbersome than a chain. Once you’re properly equipped, you want to get leverage, Holland says, “so you need to get the straps around the head or the neck [of the statue].” To break the statue from its base, split into two teams on either side and work in a back-and-forth motion. Most statues are attached to the base by 2 to 3 feet of rebar, so you’ll actually be breaking it at the bronze above the rebar—not the rebar itself, says Holland. (That’s steel.) “When the U.S. took down that statue of Saddam Hussein, you can see it folds at that spot where the rebar is in the base of it,” he says. Let’s say you can’t find 70 friends. If you still want to attempt this with a smaller removal squad, you have to weaken the monument itself. That’s where temperature comes in. Yield strength changes a lot with temperature. A 90 percent copper/10 percent tin statue, for example, will have a yield strength at room temperature of 31.4 megapascals—that’s compared to 275 MPa for 6061 aluminum—“so structurally,” Holland says, “it’s not hard to break.” With 35 people, you need to cut the statue’s yield strength in half by heating it up. And how do you do that? For a bronze statue, your target temperature is around 450 degrees Celsius, or 842 degrees Fahrenheit. “You could use a butane torch,” says Holland, “but it would be much quicker with a propane torch. Those burn hotter. You’ll be there for 15 to 20 minutes, but it’s a lot easier.” Just make sure you use the proper protective equipment and look to see that nobody is underneath the statue when it falls. That means using a long rope to make sure the first person on the rope is farther away from the statue than the statue is tall. Use this handy Pythagorean triangle calculator to help figure that out. 2. The Chemical Approach
Maybe you’re operating with an even smaller team—or toppling the statue all by yourself. In that case, your best bet is melting the damn thing. So let’s make a thermite reaction. “The formula is very simple,” says Chris Harrison, a chemistry professor at San Diego State University. “It’s 3:1 by mass of rust and aluminum powder. You mix those together and use a piece of magnesium to use as a high temperature fuse. And if you don’t have one, you could use a sparkler.” The melting point of the hypothetical bronze statue is 1,742 degrees Fahrenheit, but even if you come across a racist cast in copper (melting point: 1,984 degrees), you can still easily melt both with thermite, as it burns at 2,500 degrees. While thermite might burn nearly half as hot as the sun, it isn’t explosive. “You could pack the thermite around [the statue’s] ankles using a plastic or metal bucket with the base removed,” Harrison says. “You could invert the halves of the bucket and place them on either side of the feet, and then pour in the thermite, packing it down as best as possible. The more open space there is, the less efficient the reaction will be.” Once you melt the statue’s ankles, it should just fall over, Harrison says, as that metal likely supports everything above it. If you’re out of sparklers, snag some liquid nitrogen from a distributor like Airgas or Praxair. Then, drill a hole in the statue and pour the nitrogen inside to shatter the ankles. Or you could combine the two, says Harrison. “If the liquid nitrogen is above the height of the thermite, you’ll have some very cold metal, right next to some metal getting very hot,” he says. “This should induce a lot of thermal strain, likely causing the metal to crack in that region.” Just keep that hole way above your thermite, or you’ll be spraying incredibly hot molten metal into the air. And here’s a fun bonus: The liquid nitrogen will quickly turn to a gas and come shooting out of that hole you drilled, says Harrison, which will almost certainly cause a high-pitched squeal. “One could imagine it sounding something like the sound a confederate general would make if their feet were on fire.”
Fairly often, I’ve seen people misunderstand things about life expectancy. They would talk about the olden days ( Rome, for example ) , when the average life expectancy ( at birth !) could be as low as 25 years. They mistakenly thought this implied that people died around 25, that few people lived longer than that, that around 25 years your warranty ran out, like a salmon. Not so: most of the difference stemmed from higher infant mortality, and evil old farts existed and often played a key part in history. Augustus died at the age of 75, Tiberius at 77, Claudius at 63, Galba at 72 ( murdered), while Vespasian became a god at 69, baby. Certainly some emperors died young, of malaria or strangulation, but it was by no means rare for people to live into their 70s. Narses started his successful military career at age 60, and lived to at least 86.
I had an argument with an archaeology professor (at BYU of all places!) on this point at one time when he tried to assert increasing life expectancy as evidence of continued human evolution. I pointed out that life expectancy had gone up because of factors such as lower infant mortality, better sanitation, better food, and medical advances, and not because people actually were able to live for a longer duration. He thought I was stupid. You can probably guess what I thought of him. Luckily the class was large enough that he didn't know my name and so it didn't influence his grading.
Miculek explains that certain rifle designs depend on the bolt being slowed on closing by the magazine to prevent slam fires, so if you just stick a round in the barrel and then release the bolt to slam shut over the cartridge, it can cause a slam fire. He also notes that doing the same to the Colt 1911 risks damaging the extractor, especially if using an internal extractor.
Low cites Tiger McKee for the following three questions to help you stay alive when faced by violence against a third party: (1) Do you know the details? (2) Am I going to contribute to solving the problem? and (3) Is this worth risking my life for?
Low recommends using photo realistic targets, including showing the target at various angles and positions, as well as negative targets (see this video explaining negative targets).
Low notes that the average human reaction time to a KNOWN stimulus is .25 seconds; i.e., it takes, therefore, on average .25 seconds to initiate an action and .25 seconds to initiate stopping an action. This means is that it is quite easy to shoot someone in the back if the target suddenly turns away. In other words, as Low explains, "it takes a long time to react to an unknown stimulus. And once the stimulus ceases (which is also an unknown stimulus), it takes a long time to react to that too. So, in a real combat situation where everyone is translating and rotating, the wise person would want to shoot the minimum number of shots (as there is a finite probability that you will get unintended hits with each shot). So, [as Marty Hayes reasons] to minimize the number of rounds required to stop the attack, it makes sense to shoot more massive bullets."
Low is a big fan of ambidextrous handguns, even if it is just having an ambidextrous magazine release (i.e., one that can be actuated from either side of the firearm without having to modify the firearm). Thus, even if you can switch the magazine release button between sides (such as in more recent generations of Glock), it is no ambidextrous because you still have to make a mechanical modification. In any event, he has a list of firearms that are truly ambidextrous (both magazine release and slide release), as well as firearms that have ambidextrous magazine releases. I would add to the latter list the Remington R51.
Anyway, a lot more including detailed exercises for improving your grip on the firearm so as to not disturb your sight and shoot accurately, zeroing your pistol so it works with you, some methods to preventing printing, whether you should talk to police after a shooting, and a lot more. Read the whole thing.
"How to Survive Riots and Civil Unrest"--Organic Prepper. The author describes the signs of building civil unrest, the psychology behind mob violence, and rules or guidelines on surviving riots. An excerpt:
Civil unrest can be predicted to some degree. Jose shared some of the warning signs he has observed and they all share their part in this pattern.
Here’s how a protest turns into a riot:
A perceived outrage occurs.
Good people react and protest the outrage.
Sometimes there are not-so-good people in the group, those who want to see violence.
Those perpetrating the outrage try to quell the protest because they don’t think that the outrage was actually outrageous.
Others react to the quelling and join the protest.
A mob mentality erupts. Thugs say, “Hey, it’s a free for all. I’m gonna get some Doritos and while I’m at it, beat the crap out of some folks for fun.”
All hell breaks loose.
The police and military get called in.
The city burns, and neighborhoods get destroyed, and no one in the area is safe.
Cops act preemptively, out of fear, and for a time, there is no rule of law.
If you happen to be stuck there, know this: you’re completely on your own.
Of course, the primary rule of surviving a riot is to not be there, which means that you may want to pay attention to any news reports of the times and locations of planned protests, staying out of minority dominated neighborhoods, and leaving a location if you start to see groups of young men and women showing up.
"Backup rifle sights - some useful things I've learned"--Bayou Renaissance Man. A look at using the offset style of sights. Grant notes: "Three factors are causing me to reconsider my earlier, negative opinion about offset backup sights. The first, below, demonstrates that if the front and/or back lenses of the primary sight are affected by weather or debris (i.e. sand, mud or what have you), co-witnessed iron sights will suffer from the same problem."
There are many ways to build a bullet resistant wall. Or to beef up the resistance to slow or stop a bullet. This particular recommendation was made to the city of Boulder following a series of bullet penetration tests conducted by the city facility manager there.
He concluded that the best bullet resistant wall construction (versus cost) would be poured concrete filling the cavity between 2″X4″ studs, using 1-1/8″ OSB (oriented strand board) fastened to both sides, followed by 5/8″ Gypsum.
The OSB would be screwed to to the 2×4’s and used as a material strong enough to hold the poured concrete. Then apparently left in place afterwards as an integral part of the wall. The Gypsum (drywall) is fastened for the interior wall aesthetic appearance.
I would observe that reinforced concrete using rebar is going to be substantially stronger. Also be cognizant of the weight: it may not be possible to do this in your structure without significant structural changes. But you could always add some "grow boxes" or a low patio wall.
Yet another article on the difference between .223 and 5.56 NATO: ".223 Remington Vs. 5.56: What's in a Name?"--American Rifleman. But it does go into more detail about why you would see excessive pressure from the 5.56 when shooting it in .223.
The greatest advantage of the flamethrower is its ability to penetrate small openings and fill fortified positions with both fire and smoke. Thus, the enemy either burns or asphyxiates due to the lack of oxygen available to breathe. In the urban environment, the flamethrower can shoot fire around corners to enhance movement past dead or blind angles. Besides causing death and destruction, the flamethrower can greatly impact an enemy psychologically. According to several historical examples, the enemy normally surrenders before submitting themselves to a flame attack. They would rather be captured than burned.
Traditional metal detectors throw up a lot of alarms for innocent metallic objects, creating a chokepoint for paying customers who just want to get to their seat in a stadium or concert hall.
This very high alarm rate prompted Evolv to blend AI software with radar to cut down on false alerts and keep the crowds flowing into a venue without irksome interruptions.
This is not just looking for the shape of a gun as defined by the software, but also for small shards of metal packed into a confined space to create shrapnel around an explosive device as was tragically demonstrated in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.
Evolv's software engineers have written algorithms that interpret shapes as signatures, with the outlines of knives and guns catalogued as reasons to alert an operator.
The density of metal is one key indicator of a weapon's presence and Mr George says his colleagues have programmed the system to react in 1/38th of a second.
The AI software analyses the results it gets from each crowd and this is uploaded automatically into Evolv's own database.
Although the article is rather lacking on details of the technology involved (mostly talking about the AI learning to improve the system), it appears to use millimeter radar, as well as optical and thermal cameras.
For years, the conventional carry position for handguns has been the shooter’s strong side hip. This position makes the handgun easy to reach in many circumstances, and allows the firearm to be tucked out of the way and concealed if necessary. But hip carry has its issues. For starters, carrying a heavy firearm (especially something as large as a big-bore revolver) on the hip causes imbalance and even discomfort while you’re walking several miles. In many cases, such as when sitting on a bike, on horseback or in a canoe, accessing a hip-mounted handgun can be difficult. And fly-fishing? Forget it; it simply isn’t an option when you’re wearing waders.
Enter the chest rig. For starters, chest holsters offer rapid access to your firearm when you need it most. It may initially seem that the hip position is easiest to access—after all, your arms hang down at your sides, right? Think again. Begin tracking your arm position throughout the day and you’ll find your hands are most often in front of your body. This is particularly true when you’re in the outdoors. You’re using your hands to clear brush, to paddle, support a bike, tie a fly to a tippet, or you’ll simply loop your thumbs in your pack straps. In any case, a chest holster offers the fastest, easiest access point if you need to reach your gun in a hurry. Many backpackers mount their firearm to their pack straps, but that’s not the ideal carry solution because if you drop your pack—and you inevitably will—you’re unarmed.
Comfort is another reason why many shooters are turning to chest holsters. Anyone who has carried a large handgun in a belt holster while walking long distances understands how irritating that extra weight can be (not to mention having to hike up your pants over and over and again). Chest holsters balance the gun and distribute weight evenly across the shoulders.
Holosun says the gold reticle was developed partially because it's not affected by the most common form of color-blindness. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, red-green color vision deficiency affects 1 in 12 males and 1 in 200 females in population groups with Northern European ancestry. In comparison, blue-yellow color vision defects are far rarer, only affecting about 1 in 10,000 people worldwide. If you were born with red-green color-blindess, a yellow reticle should be much easier to spot than either of those colors.
The Gold Dot concept is just as valid as red, or green dots… I appreciated the dot outdoors as it was bright and obvious against foliage. It may be weaker against white backdrops and bright weapon lights, but I was unable to wash it out until danger close distances to the target. Like any reticle/color choice, it has its ups and downs.
Violent encounters don’t happen at random. Attacks follow a cycle. This cycle is broken down into six stages: target selection, observation of the target, attack planning/training, execution, escape, and exploitation. The six stages fall into three phases: Pre-Attack, Attack, and Post-Attack.
There is no set time frame for an attacker to complete the cycle, and it is the attacker who chooses when to move forward or backward in stages. The time it takes to complete each stage will greatly depend on a number of factors, such as, type and goals of an attack, experience of the attacker and the victim, to name a few. For example, a snatch and grab robbery may go through Pre-Attack and Attack phases within seconds, but domestic violence may stay in the Attack phase for years.
Back in Kansas, I followed Hall through one of the 16,000lb (7.2 tonne) blast doors that can be "locked down" at a moment's notice. He waved me over to the nuclear, biological, and chemical air filtration unit for the condo and explained that they had three military-grade filters each providing 2,000-cubic feet per minute of filtration, that "were $30,000 (£24,400) a pop", says Hall. "I put $20m (£16m) into this place and when you start buying military-grade equipment from the government you wouldn’t believe how quickly you get to that number," he said.
Hall’s team had drilled 45, 300-ft (91m) deep subterranean geothermal wells and built in a water filtration system that used UV sterilisation and carbon paper filters. The system can filter 10,000 gallons (45,400 litres) of water a day into three electronically-monitored 25,000-gallon (113,500-litre) tanks. Power to the bunker is supplied by five different redundant systems – so, if one goes down, there are four backups. This is crucial, since as a life support system, losing power would kill everyone in the facility.
Hall says: “We’ve got a bank of 386 submarine batteries with a life of 15 or 16 years. We’re currently running at 50–60kW, 16–18 of which are coming from the wind turbine... However, we can’t do solar here... because the panels are fragile, and this is, after all, tornado alley. At some point we know that wind turbine is going to go too. I mean it won’t make it through five years of ice storms and hail, so we’ve also got two 100kW diesel generators, each of which could run the facility for 2.5 years.
Survival Condo has both private and communal areas, as you might find in any high-rise development. But in this tower block, during full lockdown mode there can be no external support. It must function as a closed system, where people are kept both healthy and busy until they are able to emerge.
Experiments in enclosed life-support systems conducted by the military (for submarines) and scientists (for spacecraft) have often neglected to consider social systems after lockdown. Hall says he recognises that sustainability is not simply about technical functionality. On my tour he opened another door to a 50,000-gallon (227,000-litre) indoor swimming pool verged by a rock waterfall, lounge chairs and a picnic table. It was much like a scene from a holiday resort – but without the Sun.
The "guards" should like that after they have taken over the shelter for their own families and kicked out or enslaved the condo owners.
Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.
Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.
There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.
So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.
Now two weeks of nationwide protests have led some to call for defunding the police, while others argue that doing so would make us less safe.
The first thing to point out is that police officers don’t do what you think they do. They spend most of their time responding to noise complaints, issuing parking and traffic citations, and dealing with other noncriminal issues. We’ve been taught to think they “catch the bad guys; they chase the bank robbers; they find the serial killers,” said Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, in an interview with Jacobin. But this is “a big myth,” he said. “The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”
We can’t simply change their job descriptions to focus on the worst of the worst criminals. That’s not what they are set up to do.
Second, a “safe” world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.
I’ve been advocating the abolition of the police for years. Regardless of your view on police power — whether you want to get rid of the police or simply to make them less violent — here’s an immediate demand we can all make: Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half. Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people. The idea is gaining traction in Minneapolis, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities.
A large number of studies report that delinquents have a lower verbal IQ compared with nondelinquents, as well as lower school achievement (Fergusson and Horwood, 1995; Maguin and Loeber, 1996; Moffitt, 1997). Antisocial youth also tend to show cognitive deficits in the areas of executive functions1 (Moffitt et al., 1994; Seguin et al., 1995), perception of social cues, and problem-solving processing patterns (Dodge et al., 1997; Huesmann, 1988). The association between cognitive deficits and delinquency remains after controlling for social class and race (Moffitt, 1990; Lynam et al., 1993).
There is another point that I find interesting to all of this. If you had any exposure to the militia movement in the 1980's and 1990's, even just scholarly books writing about the movement, you would quickly learn that the "bogeyman" often raised by members of the movement was that of liberals deploying squads of gang members in the stead of police to, among other things, confiscate firearms. So here we see another situation where life seems to be mimicking art.
Doctors kill 250,000 people a year. They call them “medical mistakes” because society understands that they do a very difficult job under high stress and they must make the best possible decision in the moment.
Law enforcement is tasked with the same and we are highly successful. Despite the most violent society we have ever seen, less than 1,000 suspects are killed a year. 96% are attacking us with weapons and all but a few others are attacking us with their cars or their fists and more and more with simulated guns so Benjamin Crump can help their family win the lottery.
I’ve seen cops risk their own lives when they shouldn’t have…….just to keep from taking one.
They never get the credit that other professions get.
Cowards are all around us. From chiefs to sheriffs to politicians, no one has our back.
Now, the little we have, we are told they are going to defund us or even abolish us. Citizens with a political agenda will reign over us and all you have to do is wake up and put on a uniform to be a racist.
This weekend I received death threats for just doing my job. It would have been outrageous a decade ago and made national news.
Now, it’s just a Monday.
There will be more threats, more accusations of racism and more lies told about us.
I used to talk cops out of leaving the job. Now I’m encouraging them.
It’s over America. You finally did it.
You aren’t going to have to abolish the police, we won’t be around for it.
And while I know, most Americans still appreciate us, it’s not enough and the risk is too high. Those of you that say thank you or buy the occasional meal, it means everything.
But those of you that were silent while the slow turning of the knives in our backs happened by thugs and cowards, this is on you.
Your belief in hashtags and memes over the truth has and will create an environment in your community that you will never expect.
If you think Minneapolis will turn into Mogadishu and that is far from you, it’s coming.
And when it does, remember what your complicity did.
Related: "A silent majority? Black Americans reject violence, looting in neighborhoods after Floyd death"--Just The News. "The rioters are 'reflective of a small subset of black America that is jobless, lawless, wild, and capable of the brutality we saw,' said Rob Smith, a black conservative activist and decorated Iraq War veteran, but 'the silent majority will always stay on the side of law and order.'"
An honest conversation on race would include discussion of plenty of inconvenient facts, such as the fact that black men disproportionately commit violent crime or that police almost never kill unarmed black men. Indeed, the facts show that nearly 40 percent of cop killers are black and that a police officer is more than 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black American than for a law enforcement officer to kill an unarmed black person.
An honest conversation on race would express horror at the fact that somewhere around three-quarters of black men are raised without fathers and note the tremendous societal damage this causes.
An honest conversation would ponder why black American homicide-victimization rate is three times the rate of Hispanics and seven times the average white rate, almost exclusively murdered (94%) by other black Americans.
Related: "The Color of Crime"--a post of mine from 2016 looking at an analysis of crime data by Edwin S. Rubenstein.
Yes. "Do black Americans commit more crime?"--Channel4.com. A comment to one of this TV station's stories on blacks disproportionately dying at the hands of the police led them to check into black crime statistics. The station's finding:
It’s true that around 13 per cent of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau.
And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. Homicide is a broader category than “murder” but let’s not split hairs.
The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.
A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining some of the documents I attach at the end of this email.
Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black. Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in multiple countries. And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department.
According to a 2019 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, white officers are not more likely to shoot black civilians than black or Hispanic officers are. According to the study, there is “no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers. Instead, race-specific crime strongly predicts civilian race. This suggests that increasing diversity among officers by itself is unlikely to reduce racial disparity in police shootings.”
Other studies have reached similar conclusions, including a Harvard study that found no racial bias in police using deadly force, though there is some disparity when it comes to physical force. With regard to lethal force, however, no disparity exists. “A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing,” explained Heather Mac Donald of the Manhatten Institute in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. “Crime and suspect behavior, not race, determine most police actions.”
The numbers are staggering — and frightening. On July 24, the moratorium on rental evictions will expire. At that point, 26 million apartment dwellers will be at risk of losing a place to live. That number is an estimate of renters who will be unable to come up with a rent payment by September.
At least 44 percent of blacks who rent say they are unsure if they can make the next payment. Needless to say, it’s a combustible situation.
Flashback: "Issues 2020: Mass Decarceration Will Increase Violent Crime"--Manhattan Institute. This September 2019 article warned that "[s]lashing the prison population to match levels in the Western European democracies would require releasing significant numbers of violent and chronic offenders serving time for crimes that most Americans agree should lead to prison. Reducing or eliminating sentences would diminish the incapacitation benefits of incarceration and, given the extremely high rates of recidivism, would expose society to large numbers of people likely to commit more crimes."
Two original sins have plagued this nation from its inception: the destruction of its native inhabitants and the institution of slavery. Both sprang from a failure to see an equal in the racial other. As Bishop Claude Alexander has said, racism was in the amniotic fluid out of which our nation was born. There was a virus present in the very environment that nurtured the development of our country, our culture, and our people. The virus of racism infected our church, our Constitution and laws, our attitudes and ideologies. We have never fully defeated it.
After presenting a historically ignorant view of slavery and a false account of its importance to the national economy, Dalrymple continues:
But repentance is not enough. The other biblical narrative that comes to mind is the story of a tax collector in Jericho. Zacchaeus was a collaborator with the occupying Roman authority, and by adding his own extortionary fees, he plundered the wealth of his neighbors and enriched himself. Jesus encountered him and shocked the crowd by going to his home. Salvation came to the house of Zacchaeus on that day. He proclaimed, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will give back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8).
Zacchaeus had not personally designed the unjust system of Roman taxation. But he had not denounced it either; he had participated in it and profited from it. So Zacchaeus did not merely repent of his ways; he made restitution. He set up what we might call a “Zacchaeus fund” in order to restore what belonged to his neighbors. Are we willing to do the same? Black lives matter. They matter so much that Jesus sacrificed everything for them. Are we willing to sacrifice as well?
Perhaps the country is not ready to make reparations. But the history of racial injustice demands personal and corporate response. Perhaps the church can lead the way in biblical restitution. I am aware of one “Zacchaeus fund” in Atlanta, where Christians who believe that African Americans have been subjected to four centuries of injustice and plunder are beginning to do their humble part to make it right. A majority-black committee assigns the funds to support rising black leaders in the church and in the marketplace. It will not be enough, but it will be something. What if there were Zacchaeus funds in every city and believers gave sacrificially, so our brothers and sisters could be restored and so our neighbors could see once again the Christlike love that overcame the world?
So what does God say about this? Well, in Ezekiel 18:20 it states: "... The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him." I would, therefore, consider Dalrymple to be one of those who "draw near to me [i.e., Christ] with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.” JS-History 1:19. See also 2 Timothy 3:5.
The Cathedral of the Rockies installed stained-glass windows for its then-new building in downtown Boise in 1960. Church documents show that the window, featuring Lee standing with Presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, was meant as an “inclusive nod to Southerners who have settled in Boise,” said the Rev. Duane Anders, senior pastor.
“Clearly, white Southerners,” Anders said.
I had been wondering why police have not been using LRADs to break up the riots. Apparently it was just that the protesters/rioters have not been going to the right (or is that wrong?) neighborhoods: "Beverly Hills Police Deployed Tear Gas as Protesters Gathered Friday Night"--Los Angeles Magazine.
The protest began on the edge of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills on Santa Monica Boulevard and Doheny at 10 p.m. Organizers had planned on marching down Santa Monica, through a few residential streets, and ending at the Beverly Hills sign for a night of music, poetry, and history lessons.
“The plan was to have a conversation and then dance and play music,” said James Butler, a model and YouTuber who organized the event. Butler chose Beverly Hills to expose the wealthy enclave to the conversations currently taking place at protests across the country. “I was saying, wake their rich asses up.”
The march barely made it onto a residential street, North Alpine Drive, before a fleet of police officers arrived at the other end in full riot gear and with an armored vehicle.
A voice blared out from the loud speaker on the armored car: “As a peace officer with the Beverly Hills Police Department, I hereby declare this to be an unlawful assembly and in the name of the people of the State of California, I command all those assembled…to immediately disperse.”
Members of the group held their ground, chanting popular protest phrases at the officers in front of them and at the stately homes on either side. “Whose streets? Our streets!” they yelled, taking a knee before the line of officers.
Butler stood in front of the crowd and spoke directly to the officers. “We just to educate you,” he said through a megaphone. “The first ever police system in the United States of America was KKK.”
“This is a test of the Long Range Acoustic Device,” came a prerecorded voice from the armored car, referring to a sonic weapon device used for crowd control. Immediately, protesters began to back up and return to the main street below.
Soon, though, even after using the LRAD twice, plumes of smoke appeared at the front of the line of protesters followed by loud popping sounds. Calls for a medic ran through the ranks of protesters.
“Fuck you! We walk back and you fire?” one protester shouted, his voice horse [sic] from chanting.
I'm guessing that the Hollywood liberals will not be defunding their police.
Talcott explained that tensions have been high because not everyone agrees that Raz Simone, the man who has declared himself to be the “warlord,” should be the leader.
“A lot of these protesters do not agree with Raz becoming this warlord,” Talcott said. “We spoke to a few of them that were manning the entry points here in Seattle, and they say that his idea of what he wants CHAZ to become is not what the majority of the people inside want. So it is a little bit difficult, because they want no rules, but this is a society used to living by rules.”
Talcott also shared part of an interview with a local resident who was only willing to give only his first name — Brandon — because he feared reprisal.
“You can see for yourself, you can see that we don’t have the right to vote for stuff here anymore,” Brandon said. “You can see the demands when they say the that we want the pensions away from every police officer in Seattle. They took our rights away. That’s not okay. It’s not political. It’s just not okay.”
Michael Rozin, President of Rozin Security, said his team of former special operations forces members helped track the violence and also were involved in protecting key sites on the streets.
Rozin said, for the most part, the fires and gunshots during the worst three-day stretch of the unrest, May 28 through May 30, were connected to known anarchists and some neo-Nazi groups who traveled to the Twin Cities metro in the days after George Floyd's death.
"The anarchists, the extremist groups, were operating in an organized fashion," Rozin said. "They were operating in what almost appears to be an asymmetric warfare manner."
Rozin said the anarchists were communicating with one another in a "sophisticated manner" and were moving around Minneapolis and St. Paul where the peaceful protests were occurring.
"They were operating small cells, and they would move from one point to another point," Rozin said. "They would set up barricades, they would open fire, they will know how to control the cities in such a way that police almost become irrelevant to an extent. It was remarkable."
Rozin said the intent of the anarchists and neo-Nazis is not necessarily to induce race riots but rather to undermine the trust of the people with their government and they use whatever emotion is prevalent to exploit the situation and gather strength for their goals.
"They would shoot at law enforcement and were not necessarily shooting at peaceful protesters," Rozin said. "They were trying to incite the police to shoot back and quite possibly create another tragic situation that would cause even more rioting and violence."
The value of the net short dollar position was $9.51 billion for the week ended June 9, compared with a net short position of $8.17 billion for the week before that.
The net short position was the largest bearish position speculators have held in six weeks, the data showed.
U.S. dollar positioning was derived from net contracts of International Monetary Market speculators in the Japanese yen, euro, British pound, Swiss franc and Canadian and Australian dollars.
More: "America’s currency is losing its exceptionalism"--Bloomberg. "Already stressed by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. living standards are about to be squeezed as never before. At the same time, the world is having serious doubts about the once widely accepted presumption of American exceptionalism. Currencies set the equilibrium between these two forces — domestic economic fundamentals and foreign perceptions of a nation’s strength or weakness. The balance is shifting, and a crash in the dollar could well be in the offing."
Using techniques similar to those employed by intelligence agencies, the research team behind the study analyzed commercial satellite imagery and "observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019," according to Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard Medical professor who led the research.
Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, said the traffic increase also "coincided with" elevated queries on a Chinese internet search for "certain symptoms that would later be determined as closely associated with the novel coronavirus."
Though Brownstein acknowledged the evidence is circumstantial, he said the study makes for an important new data point in the mystery of COVID-19's origins.
“Something was happening in October,” said Brownstein, the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and director of the medical center’s Computational Epidemiology Lab. “Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”
