Self-Defense and Firearms:
"TRIGGERNOMETRY"--Suarez International. Gabe Suarez explains that you cannot expect good accuracy if you keep your finger off the trigger until the moment you decide to fire. Or, as he expresses it, "[t]he trigger is to be understood, and operated with grace and skill rather than feared and avoided until the last moment." He also notes that "[t]he trigger can be touched, staged, and broken. There is more to it than 'On or Off and nothing else'. The gunmen of past ages knew this. There are four stages to operating the trigger: Off Trigger, Touching Trigger, Staging Trigger, and Breaking Trigger." The article then goes on to discuss these stages in context of a potentially violent encounter.
Related: "Math not Myth: Action v Reaction"--Recoil Magazine.
"Israeli 7.62x39mm Gilboa M43 coming to U.S. market"--The Firearms Blog. Another AR variant that is designed to shoot the 7.62x39, including accepting magazines with the greater curvature needed to reliably feed that round. As such, it is similar to CMMG's "Mutant".
"Hats Off to DDI – US Made AK Milestone"--Jerking the Trigger. A 100% American made AK.
"5 Useless Gun Mods For Concealed Carry."--Alien Gear Holsters. Some of these points will probably be hotly debated. Nevertheless, they are: (1) extended or oversized magazines (because they print); (2) optical sights (difficulty to conceal, possibility of catching on clothing during the draw); (3) threaded barrels (can snag on drawing); (4) compensators (additional length, can catch on clothing); and (5) laser sights (limited holster options).
"Chinese Vigilantes In-group As K Approaches"--Anonymous Conservative. A discussion of how the Chinese community in Sacramento, California, has formed a volunteer security patrol for its community.
"Black Hawk! Omnivore holster system"--The Firearms Blog. Blackhawk's solution for a "universal" holster: the holster merely acts as a cover for a locking mechanism that attaches to the Picatinny rail on the front of the handgun. Obviously, this will not work if you have anything on said rail.
"Marines Dump .45s for GLOCK 9mm for Special Ops"--The Truth About Guns. Another military service votes for the Glock 19.
Diversity:
"Utopia's Classes"--Sultan Knish. Greenfield explains:
Utopia has a class system. At the top are the thinkers, the philosopher kings who develop plans based on how things ought to be and then turn them over to lesser men to actually implement. They are the priestly class of an ideological movement whose deity is politics and whose priests are politicians.
In a planned economy, they are the titans of industry and finance, they are the heads of banks and the men who move millions and billions around the board, and they are utterly unfit for the job. But they also make decisions in matters of war and science. And in all things. They measure political heresy in all things and all the activities of man are measured against their dogma and rewarded or punished.
This is the way it was in the Soviet Union or Communist China. But take a closer glance at the White House and see if you don't spot the occasional similarity.
In the middle of Utopia's class system is the middle class. This is not the middle class you are familiar with. There are no small business owners here. No one striving to make it up the ladder. Utopia's middle class is the bureaucracy, the interlinked hive mind of government and non-profits.
At the top of Utopia's class system are the philosopher-planners who issue the regulations. Or rather they offer objectives. The bureaucracy filters them through successive layers, transforming grandiose ideas into stultifying regulations and each successive layers expands them into further microcosms of unnecessary detail. This expansion of regulations also expands the bureaucracy. One feeds off the other.
Utopia has no lower class. That would be dystopian. Instead it has a client class. The client class is what used to be known as the working class. Utopia however transforms it into the welfare class.
Clienture transforms the working class into the welfare class. The destruction of the conditions under which the working class can exist forces its members either upward into the bureaucracy, a feat that is only possible for the younger generation willing to undergo the educational process, or downward into the welfare class.
Related: Actually, the Leftist Utopia does have a lower class: the Deplorables that are forced out of the working class, but not worthy of client status. E.g., "The white ghettos that blight South Africa: 20 years after the fall of apartheid it is now white people who live in squalid camps after falling into poverty"--Daily Mail.
"Columbia University to host no-whites-allowed student leadership retreat"--The College Fix.
"Fighting breaks out as hundreds of migrants march towards the Hungarian border to plead for entry to the European Union"--Daily Mail. The article reports:
The group, made up of mainly young men and boys, chanted 'Open Hungary Borders' and held banners saying 'we don't need food, water or nothing, we want you to open the borders' as they marched north in a long column from Belgrade along a road leading toward the Hungarian border 120 miles away.
To dissolve the people and elect a new one: "Census: Record 42.4M immigrants, 23% of school kids, Muslims biggest jump"--Washington Examiner. (Warning: video plays automatically).
Related: "Backlash to World Economic Order Clouds Outlook at IMF Talks"--Bloomberg. From the article:
“The backlash against globalization is manifesting itself in increased nationalistic sentiment, against the outside world and in favor of increasing isolation,” said Louis Kuijs, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics in Hong Kong and a former IMF official. “If we lose consensus on what kind of a world we want to have, the world will probably be worse off.”
"Worrying spread of mysterious polio-like illness has left more than 100 children paralyzed across America with little hope of recovery - as doctors warn of a new surge in cases"--Daily Mail.
The New Normal:
"FBI Colluded with Democrats, Team Clinton on Email 'Prosecution'"--Michael Walsh at PJ Media. Walsh warns: "The Obama administration has corrupted and weaponized the major enforcement agencies of the federal government, including the IRS and the FBI, and now is reaching down to the local level in order to bring municipal police forces under Washington's control."
Related: "The FBI’s Hillary email probe is looking even more like a coverup"--New York Post.
"Students Lose, Wall Street Wins in Blue Model Merry-Go-Round"--The American Interest. Word: "The catastrophic fiscal mismanagement of Chicago’s public schools is creating a windfall on Wall Street as the district borrows from big banks at ruinous rates."
"Russia holds massive nuclear war exercise involving 40MILLION people as military tensions rise with US"--The Sun. "The fear that the West is set for war with Russia is being spread throughout media reports and official statements."
Other Stuff:
"Alpine Advantage: Unconventional Warfare in Mountainous Terrain"--Forward Observer. The author notes:
From the historical perspective, successful guerrilla warfare operations by irregular forces have usually been conducted in three environments: thick deciduous forests (as in partisan resistance to the Nazis during World War II), swampy, lowland-jungle environments (most notably like the Vietnamese Communists in that conflict), and alpine environments (the Afghan resistance to the Soviets and our own conventional-force incursions since 2002, and numerous resistance forces in World War II).
Of these three environments, however, the author notes that only the alpine environment (or mountainous terrain in general) is present over any great area within the United States. He then goes on to discuss the advantages and challenges presented by such environments.
Just to play devils advocate, the problem, as I see it, is that an insurgency limited to mountainous terrain in the United States would be in regions that are largely irrelevant to the nation as a whole. The targets, and the people to be influenced (and hopefully brought into the fold, as it were), are in towns and cities, largely east of the Mississippi and along the West Coast. I think that one of the reasons that Colombians rejected a proposed peace with FARC is that the FARC guerrilla movement is largely irrelevant because it is a rural based group. Moreover, although mountain regions often serve as training and staging areas for insurgents, the Alpine terrain in the United States is too distant from major cities (other than Denver and Salt Lake) to serve as a staging area or a place that could be quickly retreated to for safety.
"A how-to guide for counterinsurgency – by a former insurgent"--Global Risk Insights.
"Satellites suffer mystery blackouts: Thunderstorms on the edge of space may be causing loss of GPS signals"--Daily Mail. From the article:
Scientists were left puzzled about why the three satellites launched by the European Space Agency have regularly lost their navigation signal when passing over the equator above the Atlantic Ocean.
Now they believe they may have uncovered the underlying cause of the strange loss in the GPS signal that helps control the satellites – thunderstorms high in the ionosphere.