South African mercenaries defeat Boko Haram in Nigeria

I note with amusement that the news of South African mercenaries becoming involved (with very effective results) in the fight against Boko Haram in Nigeria has just hit the headlines.

With their roots in South Africa apartheid-era security forces, they do not fit the standard image of an army of liberation. But after just three months on the ground, a squad of grizzled, ageing white mercenaries have helped to end Boko Haram's six-long year reign of terror in northern Nigeria.

Run by Colonel Eeben Barlow, a former commander in the South African Defence Force, the group of bush warfare experts were recruited in top secrecy in January to train an elite strike group within Nigeria's disorganised, demoralised army.

Some of the guns-for-hire cut their teeth in South Africa's border wars 30 years ago. But their formidable fighting skills – backed by their own helicopter pilots flying combat missions – have proved decisive in helping the military turn around its campaign against Boko Haram in its north-eastern strongholds.

The Islamists have now fled many of the towns they once controlled, leading to the freeing of hundreds of girls and women last week who were used by Boko Haram as slaves and bush wives.

The role of Col Barlow's firm in turning around one of the most vicious African insurgencies of modern times has been kept largely quiet by Nigeria's outgoing president, Goodluck Jonathan, who lost elections six weeks ago to ex-general Muhammadu Buhari.

But last week, Col Barlow discussed his company's role in a seminar at the Royal Danish Defence College, and in a separate interview with a Sofrep.com, a special forces website, he described in detail the "aggressive" strike force that was created to push Boko Haram onto the back foot.

“The campaign gathered good momentum and wrested much of the initiative from the enemy,” said Col Barlow, 62. “It was not uncommon for the strike force to be met by thousands of cheering locals once the enemy had been driven from an area.”

He added: “Yes, many of us are no longer 20-year-olds. But with our age has come a knowledge of conflicts and wars in Africa that our younger generation employees have yet to learn, and a steady hand when things get rough.”

There's more at the link.

I'm not surprised by this.  Former South African Defense Force troops have fought in many of the wars in Africa over the past two and a half decades, after their own country turned its back on veterans of the bush war after the advent of majority rule.  Many US servicemen have run into South African 'contractors' in Iraq and Afghanistan as well (a lot of them are still active in the latter country).  I was given an early heads-up about the Nigeria operation by an old comrade-in-arms late last year, who's kept me informed with a couple of letters and some very enlightening pictures as operations progressed.  (No, I'm not going to publish them here.  He specifically asked me not to do that.  I have a feeling he may be planning a book or a series of articles based on his experiences, so they'll be reserved for that.)

I understand the unit was technically a 'training mission' - but with only three months to 'train' troops who didn't really know what they were doing, it's obvious that most of the training was 'on the job', with the South Africans actually doing the 'job' while the Nigerians fought alongside them, learned by observation and by copying their mentors, and generally got the idea.  Well, I guess you could call that 'instruction' if you stretch a point!  The tactics and equipment involved hark back to the heyday of the Border War in South West Africa (today Namibia) and Angola, and will be completely familiar to all of us who served there.  They work just as well today as ever they did, to Boko Haram's bitter cost.  The South African unit has now withdrawn, after succeeding in disrupting Boko Haram over much of its former territory, setting the stage for the Nigerians to continue with their newly-learned tactics to finish the problem in the old-fashioned African way.

If you'd like to know more, there's a good overview and a six-part interview with Col. Barlow over at Sofrep at the following links, including photographs:

South African Contractors Take the Fight to Boko Haram

Eeben Barlow Speaks Out (Pt. 1): PMC and Nigerian Strike Force Devastates Boko Haram

Eeben Barlow Speaks Out (Pt. 2): Development of a Nigerian Strike Force

Eeben Barlow Speaks Out (Pt. 3): Tactics Used to Destroy Boko Haram

Eeben Barlow Speaks Out (Pt. 4): Rejecting the Racial Narrative

Eeben Barlow Speaks Out (Pt. 5): The External Drivers of Nigeria’s War

Eeben Barlow Speaks Out (Pt. 6): South African Contractors Withdrawal from Nigeria

I'm looking forward to learning more about this from an 'inside' perspective in due course.  If my buddy decides to write about it, I'll publicize the result here for your reading pleasure and military education.  It should be very interesting.

Peter

On the mend

I'm beginning to feel a little more human, after being hit with a steroid injection and five more medications to take every day (on top of those I already take post-heart-attack and post-spinal-fusion . . . I rattle like a pillbox when I walk!).

The doctor told me I didn't have flu, as I thought - I had an allergy that had weakened my immune system enough to allow a mold or fungal infection to 'piggyback' on top of it.  I wasn't in a good way at all when I saw him yesterday morning.  One of his assistants told me (rather crossly) that if I'd waited another day, it would have meant a hospital bed and IV infusions for a couple of days.  I'm glad it didn't come to that.  Still, it was bad enough.  (Miss D. has been displaying a lesser set of my symptoms recently.  She'll be seeing the doctor this morning to make sure they don't get any worse.  I wouldn't wish this crud on anyone!)

I'm now in the curious position of feeling worse for feeling better!  The medications are certainly working, and I can feel improvement already.  However, they're also loosening up all the crud and congestion that had accumulated, so it makes it difficult to sleep.  I had a good five-hour rest after taking the first pills, but last night I was up and down like a yo-yo, unable to stop the post-nasal drip producing coughing and spluttering whenever I tried to sleep.  I guess I'll have to put up with that for a couple of days while things drain.  I can cat-nap in a chair (if the cat will let me, that is . . . when I sleep in a chair, she seems to take it as a personal challenge to stalk and pounce me from every possible angle!).

Still, I'm glad to be on the mend.  I've still got a lot of work to do preparing my next book for publication.  I'd hoped to have it ready for Monday, but I suspect that won't happen - unless I can get the e-book version out then, and have the paperback edition ready later that week.  We'll see.  Thank you all for the good wishes and prayers.

Peter

I'm sicker than I thought

Turns out my fever over the past few days hasn't been the flu, but something nastier.  I saw the doctor this morning, and he thinks it probably started late last week as an allergy;  but with my system weakened, 'something nasty' decided to piggyback on top of it, producing the fever and swollen throat glands that have plagued me over the weekend.

I've been shot full of steroids, prescribed an antibiotic and a few other bits and pieces, and told to take it easy.  I've got to see him again in ten days if things don't improve (or if they get worse).

Sorry about the light blogging yesterday and today.  I'll put up something more later this afternoon.  Meanwhile, yours truly is going back to bed.

Peter

Blogger update problems?

Can my fellow bloggers help me out?

I've put up two blog posts since 'Tired Puppy' 22 hours ago;  but neither of them are reflected in the blog feeds of other blogs that link to me (e.g. the Gun Blog Black List).  Those feeds still show 'Tired Puppy' as the most recent post.

This has never happened to my posts before, and I'm not sure why it's suddenly started now.  Can anyone offer any suggestions?  Has it happened to you?  How did you resolve the problem?  Is there anyone at Google I should contact?

Thanks.

Peter

One heck of a Mothers Day treat . . .

Yesterday was Mothers Day, and it reminded me of this video clip. A couple of years ago, the Australian touring car series V8 Supercars decided to do something special for Mothers Day.  They invited a rather venerable mother to come for a ride around a racetrack in one of their vehicles.  Here's how it went.

She seemed to enjoy it in the end . . . but the first lap must have been a doozy!




Peter

More reactions to the Baltimore riots

Last week I cited a number of articles about the Baltimore riots:

• Baltimore: a perspective
• A grim reminder, courtesy of the Baltimore riots
• Don't rely on the police for protection
• "A race war in slow motion"
• "Baltimore and the Betrayal of Black Dignity"

I've been reading the developing reactions to the situation there with interest.  One of the most disturbing aspects, from my point of view, is the number of talking heads who are demanding or proclaiming that "the government" must do something to fix the problem - completely ignoring the fact that the government actually created the problem in the first place!  For example, in the New York Times we read:

In regard to black youth, the government must begin the chemical detoxification of ghetto neighborhoods in light of the now well-documented relation between toxic exposure and youth criminality. Further, there should be an immediate scaling up of the many federal and state programs for children and youth that have been shown to work: child care from the prenatal to pre-K stages, such as Head Start and the nurse-family partnership program; after-school programs to keep boys from the lure of the street and to provide educational enrichment as well as badly needed male role models; community-based programs that focus on enhancing life skills and providing short-term, entry-level employment; and continued expansion of successful charter school systems.

There's more at the link.

The NYT article ignores the reality that all those programs have been in existence, and funded to the tune of billions of dollars, for decades.  Remember Einstein's famous definition?  "Insanity [is] doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  The author is calling for yet more money to be poured into the same bottomless pits.  That's insane!

I've cited the 1965 Moynihan Report in these pages before.  I was pleased to see that the Economist built its article about the Baltimore riots around the Report's findings.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of a bold and controversial attempt to explain what has gone wrong in America’s inner cities: Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”. Moynihan, then a bureaucrat in the Department of Labour, made two main points. First, he argued that the lingering effects of two centuries of slavery had undermined the black family—at the time, 25% of black babies were born to unmarried mothers. Second, he argued that family instability was at the root of many other problems, from crime to poverty.

Fifty years later, black America still fares badly on many of the predictors of success and signals of distress that concerned Moynihan. If it were a separate country, it would have a worse life expectancy than Mexico, a worse homicide rate than Ivory Coast and a higher proportion of its citizens behind bars than anywhere on earth. This is despite the fact that, overall, America is home to the richest, most successful population of black African descent that the world has ever seen.

America is also far less racist than it was in Moynihan’s day, when interracial marriage was still illegal in 19 states. Now it has a black president—who won more of the white vote in 2008 than John Kerry, a white Democrat, won in 2004. The census form today allows people to identify themselves as white and black, too. In 2010 over 2m did so, breaking through the thickest wall in American history with a few strokes of a pen.

Yet an updated Moynihan report would also have to acknowledge the prescience of that tall white Irishman. The proportion of African-American babies born outside marriage has nearly tripled since 1965, to 71%. Though the crime rate has fallen across the country in the past two decades, casting some doubt on Moynihan’s link between single-parenting and disorder, black Americans are still eight times more likely to be murdered than whites and seven times more likely to commit murder, according to the FBI. An incredible one-third of black men in their 30s have been in prison. Blacks are also less likely to graduate from college than whites, and less socially mobile.

Again, more at the link.  The Economist also offers suggestions for how to improve the situation.

I think the late Senator Moynihan's report was prophetic (albeit without honor - at the time - in his own country).  The problem lies inside the culture of the Black community.  That poisonous culture has been subsidized and given preferential treatment by agencies of local, state and federal government, who've poured taxpayer dollars into creating, sustaining and abetting it.  Unless and until that changes, and responsibility for one's life is once again seen as an individual thing rather than a collective, statist thing, I don't see any improvement in sight.

Peter

Tired puppy

I'm still fighting the crud.  Been running a fever for the past four days - no fun at all.  I'm improving slowly.  I managed to get in four hours' editing today, which is progress towards getting my next book out in a week to ten days from now.  I'll be glad when I can shake off the rest of this bug and get back to a normal work routine.

Too tired to post much tonight.  I'll put up more in the morning.

Sleep well, y'all.

Peter

It seems most locks aren't as secure as I thought

I've recently had to look into buying a couple of decent padlocks to secure something, and did a fair amount of research to figure out which would be the best.  To my surprise, it seems padlocks aren't all they're cracked up to be.  Follow each link for some interesting information.


1.  Crack Any Master Combination Lock in 8 Tries or Less Using This Calculator.

(He's not joking.  I have a couple of Master brand combination padlocks, and tried his technique.  It worked every time.)

2.  How to Open a Padlock with a Coke Can.

If you’re like millions of Americans, you put a lot of trust in simple padlocks to secure your valuables.

Today we’re going to continue to break down the veil of security by showing you how easy it is to shim open a padlock with a coke can.

As far as lock security in general is concerned, try these two:


3.  Lockpicking and the Internet.

Physical locks aren't very good. They keep the honest out, but any burglar worth his salt can pick the common door lock pretty quickly.

It used to be that most people didn't know this. Sure, we all watched television criminals and private detectives pick locks with an ease only found on television and thought it realistic, but somehow we still held onto the belief that our own locks kept us safe from intruders.

The Internet changed that.

4.  ASSA CLIQ, MEDECO LOGIC, and SECURITY ENGINEERING: A Failure of Imagination.

We believe there are multiple failures in security engineering by some of the world's most respected lock manufacturers in conjunction with the deployment of the technology that involve electro-mechanical locks. Potential security vulnerabilities in these locks should cause every security officer and risk assessment team to re-evaluate individual facilities to determine their risk in the event of compromise and their inability to meet certain statutory requirements, such as Sarbanes Oxley or HIPAA.

In response to demonstrations and our disclosures about the bypass of Assa Cliq locks at Defcon 17, the product development manager of Assa in the U.S. told Wired Magazine that "From what I know of the CLIQ technology it can't be done ... And until I've seen it done, it can't be done."

We believe this statement typifies precisely the problem at Assa Abloy companies: a failure of imagination. It prompted our research and subsequent discovery of multiple vulnerabilities in Cliq, Logic, and NexGen locks. It is this attitude that will continue to allow us to break locks that are represented as the ultimate in security by these companies, and which often provide a false sense of security to the locksmiths and customers that rely upon these products.

All very thought-provoking stuff - and something to think about when you next buy or install any kind of lock.  I'm certainly doing a lot more research right now before I invest in another padlock.

Peter

Truth in advertising!

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

Living in Italy 30 years ago for a season of club rugby, I was always stunned at the Italians' skill at traffic lights.

In Australia, of course, with 10 cars lined up, first number one goes, then number two goes, then number three, etc – whereas in Italy 30 cars move forward on green, simultaneously! (Unless, of course, you are the dickhead Australian in the tiny Fiat, just arrived, who doesn't get it.)

There is a careless genius about them on the roads, and it endures still, as witnessed by a story sent to me this week by a reader. He notes the outcry in Italy over compulsory wearing of seatbelts, and how many cars now won't start unless everyone is buckled up.

What is now racing off the shelves however, is a fake seat belt buckle, no belt, which placates the vehicle's alarm system. The company selling these gadgets notes on its website, "an alarm is useful because it reminds us to wear an accessory that most likely, in case of collision, will save lives. But if we care little about our lives and don't mind flying through the windshield, we can purchase a Null Seat Belt. Once inserted, the alarm will stop bothering us and allow us to die in peace'."

Uh . . . yeah, I guess so!




Peter

Bidding farewell to an American hero

I'm indebted to Don Surber for bringing us the life story of the late Col. Melvin Garten.  Here's an excerpt.

Melvin Garten was born May 20, 1921 in New York City, where he became another smart Jewish boy attending City College of New York. Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, greatly altered his immediate plans. Upon graduation from CCNY, he joined the Army and became a paratrooper. He then married his girlfriend, Ruth Engelman of the Bronx, in November 1942. She was a war bride. Everyone said the marriage wouldn't last, and they were right because the marriage ended on January 9, 2013 -- the day she died.

Melvin went off to the Pacific Theater of the war, where he participated in what can only be described as an audacious airborne raid of Los Banos in 1945, rescuing more than 2,000 U.S. and Allied civilians from a Japanese prison camp. He was a highly decorated soldier, earning the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, a Presidential Unit Citation and the Purple Heart with three Oak Leak Clusters for his wounds in battle. He was tough and handsome and courageous.

. . .

At dawn on Sunday, June 25, 1950, with the permission of Stalin, the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel behind artillery fire. Melvin was back in combat. Captain Garten proved his mettle again as commander of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. President Eisenhower would award him the Distinguished Service Cross.

. . .

Their sons were in their teens when the Vietnam War erupted. Melvin would earn his Combat Infantry Badge for the third time -- perfect attendance as those men of that distinction of serving in those three wars called their service. The Army put him in command of the 2nd Battalion, 237th Infantry in 1968 and he reinvigorated the unit, calling it the No Slack battalion. Just as he almost completed the turnaround, his jeep ran over a Vietcong mine, sending shrapnel to his leg and to his head. Another war, another Purple Heart, only this time it cost him his leg. The military sent him to Walter Reed to recuperate.

. . .

He would retire as the most decorated man in the Army at the time with the Distinguished Service Cross, four Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, five Purple Hearts, two Legion of Merits, two Joint Service Commendations, a Combat Infantry Badge for each of three wars, and a Master Parachutist Badge with two combat jump stars. Melvin paid dearly for those awards, but so did Ruth. She was one of the few women to receive five telegrams over the years informing her that her husband was wounded in combat.

There's more at the link.

Here's Colonel Garten talking about his participation in the raid on Los Banos in 1945.

Colonel Garten died on May 2nd, and was buried yesterday alongside his late wife in Arlington National Cemetery.  May he rest in peace.  We are diminished by the loss of such men.

Peter

When you've just got to get it home somehow . . .

Peter

"Baltimore and the Betrayal of Black Dignity"

Following my linking to Fred Reed's thoughts on the Baltimore riots, courtesy of an e-mail from reader Mike T. my attention was drawn to an article with the above title over at Victor Hanson's Web site.  Here's how it begins.

Baltimore is the latest American city to become a stage for the farce that is our national racial discourse. The swift, politicized indictment of 6 police officers for the death of Freddie Gray––which brought down, for now, the curtain on this performance by abandoning all the canons of procedural justice–– is a fitting end to this sorry spectacle.

The winners of this shameful display are obvious, as they always are after these riots. Local thieves, gangsters, and thugs; bourgeois white “anarchists” out on a lark; junior-high posers indulging adult-sanctioned destruction; well-heeled black politicians fanning the flames and leveraging the violence for career advancement; race-baiting vultures like Al Sharpton, and the sensationalist national media all benefitted. Most important, the false narrative of a national conspiracy of racist cops itching to murder innocent black men was yet again perpetuated by race hustlers and their progressive enablers.

The losers are the local black businessmen, the law-abiding black residents, the blacks trapped in ghetto hellholes, and the principle of social order as the necessary foundation for individual autonomy and advancement. Worst of all, black Americans have been betrayed by yet another spectacle that reinforces every racist stereotype blacks fought against during the decades of Jim Crow.

There's more at the link.  Well worth reading.

Peter

"A race war in slow motion"

That's how the iconoclastic Fred Reed sees recent events in Baltimore.  I don't agree with all his points, but in many cases I do (see my previous warnings about urban areas - follow those five links for details).  (For those who aren't familiar with Baltimore pronunciation, Fred's use of the word 'Ballmer' reflects this.)

As a certified member of the curmudgeon's tribe, practicing our dismal and lonely trade, I am delighted by the events in Baltimore. Among curmudgeons, almost our only joy is the gratification of confirmation of our dark expectations of humanity. In the case of Ballmer, a particular source of somber joy is the gap separating the Talking-Heads Chorale and reality. Wanton foolishness is ever a curmudgeonly delight.

The Talking-Heads Chorale will see the riots, are seeing the riots, not as an intensification of the undeclared racial war, but as a protest against racist police or the racism of whites. Oh, quite. Never mind that Ballmer’s black government sets standards for the hiring, training, and behavior of its police, and half of the accused cops are black. But the conduct of their police cannot be the fault of blacks, because nothing is.

. . .

The fundamentally racial attitudes of blacks from Obama down appear in the one-sided approach to racial violence. Our black president and black attorney general express sympathy for any black who runs afoul of the police, but none at all for the victims of the unending, undeniable, multitudinous, vicious racial attacks on whites by blacks: The Knockout Game. Obama and Holder cannot possibly be unaware of these attacks.  Obama and his tribe are not neutral.

The Chorale says that the Knockout Game is a “myth,” but it demonstrably is not. For any who have the slightest doubt, I recommend Colin Flaherty’s latest, Don't Make the Black Kids Angry, documenting, in Kindle format with countless clickable links to original sources, attacks on whites. “Low-intensity race war” is not wild exaggeration, and summer comes.

There's much more at the link.  Food for thought.

Peter

Quote of the day

From Victor Davis Hanson:

"When the law becomes negotiable, civilization utterly collapses."

Word.

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #833

Pity the luckless driver of this Russian 2S3 Akatsiya 152mm. self-propelled howitzer.  He makes several attempts to load it before the final one (which is fairly spectacular, thereby earning him an instant Doofus award).

Remembering my own military service, I can't help but wonder how many push-ups he'll have to do to pay for that . . .

Peter

Spider crab pyramid

Apparently spider crabs form pyramids to move across the sea floor during migration, as a defense against predators.  I'd never heard of it until I came across this video, filmed near Melbourne, Australia last month. (The video is silent, so don't adjust your volume setting.)

All I can say is, it looks creepy - literally!

Peter

I did not know that

I've wondered sometimes why almost all the nail salons I pass on local streets appear to be owned and/or staffed and/or run by Vietnamese.  I've just learned how that came about.  Apparently a US actress, Tippi Hedren, was behind it all.

Forty years ago, the Hollywood actor traveled to Hope Village, a Vietnamese refugee camp near Sacramento, California, to meet with a group of women who had recently fled the takeover of South Vietnam by the armed forces of Communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Hedren was aware of the difficulties the refugees had faced and had been trying before her visit to think of a skill or trade she could help the women learn so they could support themselves in their adopted country. When she met with the group, she was surprised to find they were enamored with her manicure.

“We were trying to find vocations for them. I brought in seamstresses and typists—any way for them to learn something,” she told the BBC. “And they loved my fingernails.”

Thuan Le was there for the lightbulb moment. “A group of us were standing close to her and saw that her nails were so beautiful,” she recalled to TakePart. “We talked to each other and said they looked so pretty. I looked in [Hedren’s] eyes and knew she was thinking something. She said, ‘Ah, maybe you can learn nails.’ And we looked at each other and she said, ‘Yes, manicures!’ ”

Hedren flew in her own beautician and enlisted a local beauty school to teach 20 of the women how to execute the perfect manicure. Many of these women later settled in Southern California, where they soon were offering manicure services at a lower price than the existing competition. This quickly and dramatically changed the face of the industry in the region. Manicures and pedicures that cost upwards of $50 in luxury salons can cost 30 to 50 percent less at a Vietnamese American–owned salon, according to trade publication Nails. Today, the nail industry is worth $8 billion, and 80 percent of nail technicians in Southern California are Vietnamese (51 percent across the U.S.). Many of them are direct descendants of the 20 women Hedren met with that fateful day in Sacramento, according to the BBC.

There's more at the link.  Interesting reading, particularly how reliant the Vietnamese economy has become on funds remitted to family members by their relatives overseas.  Every time you have your nails done, you may be part of the process.

I remember reading about the Vietnamese 'boat people', refugees trying to escape Communism after the fall of South Vietnam.  I'd never have thought that one of the consequences was a virtual lock on the nail salon business in the USA by their descendants.

Peter

The red tape is mind-boggling

El Capitan is in the process of buying a house.  He lists all the forms he has to complete and return as part of the process.  Go read them for yourself, and marvel at the bureaucratic mindset that requires all of these to buy a house.  Just think . . . our forefathers managed to build, buy or exchange houses without any of them!  How inefficient!




Peter

Awwww!

From the video description:

My buddy and I were clearing a right of way for the electric lines and came across this fawn trapped in the fall path of the tree we were about to trim. He was tangled in some thorns and was pretty shaken up after we cut him loose, so we started rubbing his belly to calm him down.... which worked a little too well, as you can see.

He followed us around the job site like a lost puppy for about an hour until I noticed a doe watching us from the hillside. Assuming this was his mother, I carried him about halfway up the hill while she watched attentively. I sat him down, he ran straight to her, and they walked off together.

I recommend watching it in full-screen mode.

All together, now:  Awwww!




Peter

Economic news roundup

Several interesting articles have come to my notice during the past week.  Click each link to read the whole thing.


1.  Bill Gross Investment Outlook, May 2015.

A “sense of an ending” has been frequently mentioned in recent months when applied to asset markets and the great Bull Run that began in 1981. Then, long term Treasury rates were at 14.50% and the Dow at 900. A “20 banger” followed for stocks as Peter Lynch once described such moves, as well as a similar return for 30 year Treasuries after the extraordinary annual yields are factored into the equation: financial wealth was created as never before. Fully invested investors wound up with 20 times as much money as when they began. But as Julian Barnes expressed it with individual lives, so too does his metaphor seem to apply to financial markets: “Accumulation, responsibility, unrest…and then great unrest.” Many prominent investment managers have been sounding similar alarms, some, perhaps a little too soon as with my Investment Outlooks of a few years past titled, “Man in the Mirror”, “Credit Supernova” and others. But now, successful, neither perma-bearish nor perma-bullish managers have spoken to a “sense of an ending” as well. Stanley Druckenmiller, George Soros, Ray Dalio, Jeremy Grantham, among others warn investors that our 35 year investment supercycle may be exhausted. They don’t necessarily counsel heading for the hills, or liquidating assets for cash, but they do speak to low future returns and the increasingly fat tail possibilities of a “bang” at some future date. To them, (and myself) the current bull market is not 35 years old, but twice that in human terms. Surely they and other gurus are looking through their research papers to help predict future financial “obits”, although uncertain of the announcement date. Savor this Bull market moment, they seem to be saying in unison. It will not come again for any of us; unrest lies ahead and low asset returns. Perhaps great unrest, if there is a bubble popping.

2.  We haven't heard Carl Icahn this bearish in a long time.

Carl Icahn ... was more bearish than Business Insider has heard him in some time.

. . .

"I'm very concerned about the market," he said. "I think that you have a situation where this market keeps going up ... and yet a lot of the economic news isn't all that good, and also more importantly, earnings aren't good."

. . .

"What's even more dangerous than the actual stock market," he said, "is the high-yield market. Junk bonds. "

Icahn is so worried he said he wanted to start putting out information about how dangerous he thought the hunt for yield was getting. Two weeks earlier on Wall Street Week, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach expressed the same concern.

"I think default rates are going to go up in this market," Icahn said. "You see all these high-yield funds ... money keeps going into them. ... When they [the bonds] start coming down there's going to be a rush for the exits."

. . .

And that's a scary prospect — that's when things can go south, fast.

3.  Beware of the phantom: ‘New jobs’ hoax.

Each spring, Labor starts adding phantom jobs to its count — jobs they guess have been created but can’t prove have been created.

Some of that phantom spirit is tied to the weather. No, really. At Labor, good weather = the birth of companies = more jobs.

And even in this day and age of instantaneous knowledge of everything, Labor still guesses at how many jobs these newly born companies are generating.

When it reports April employment numbers this Friday at 8:30 a.m., Labor will include about 263,000 phantom jobs.

At least, that is how many phantom jobs it factored in last May.

This May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will add around 204,000 phantom jobs. In June through August, that number falls to 129,000 and then to 122,000 and then 104,000.

And there is no telling if any of those jobs actually exist. In fact, what if companies were quietly dying this spring instead of sprouting up like so many daffodils? Well, Labor would worry about that later on.

Of the 263,000 or so phantom jobs that will be added through guesstimates in April, probably 50,000 or so will — thanks to seasonal adjustments — be added to the “realer” number to produce the total Labor will announce.

Journalists and economists will report whatever Labor puts in the headlines without question.

But now you know better.

4.  Celebrate the Strong Dollar.

It is amazing to me that the US dollar can be strong at all right now, given the actions of the Fed.  With its near infinite QE and zero-interest rate programs, one would expect the dollar to be weak (Oversimplifying, driving down the returns on financial assets reduces the overseas demand for them, thus reducing the demand for dollars, driving down the price of dollars).  But it turns out that the rest of the world (esp. Japan and the EU) are actually working twice as hard to trash their own currencies (they are actually heading into negative interest rate territory, not just zero) and thus on a relative basis, the dollar is stronger.

5.  The great unraveling of globalization.  (NOTE:  This article should be read in conjunction with my post a few days ago titled 'The plain, unvarnished truth about why our economy sucks'.)

“Even for the most successful multinationals, profit margins in international markets are on average lower than margins in the domestic market,” said Robert Salomon, aprofessor of international management at the NYU Stern School of Business. “It’s the liability of foreign markets. By virtue of the fact that you are foreign, you are at a disadvantage.”

That’s a far cry from the way globalization was pitched, as the strategic imperative du jour nearly two decades ago. It was supposed to act like a rising tide, lifting all boats in poor and rich countries alike. Buoyed by hundreds of thousands of new assembly line jobs courtesy of multinationals in emerging nations, the middle class would swell, which in turn would propel higher local consumption. More factories would be needed to meet the demand, further raising local standards of living and handing the largest non-domestic companies a vast and enthusiastic new customer base.

Meanwhile, in the United States and Europe, consumers would have their pick of inexpensive items made by people thousands of miles away whose pay was much lower than theirs. And in time trade barriers would drop to support even more multinational expansion and economic gains while geopolitical cooperation would flourish.

Western corporations — hoping to find new fast-growth revenue channels and inexpensive manufacturing opportunities to augment mature, developed economies at home — moved to set up shop in far-flung regions like China, Brazil, Russia and India, where the greatest GDP gains were anticipated, as well as in so-called second tier emerging nations such as Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Nigeria.

Yet despite all this activity and enthusiasm, hardly any of the promised returns from globalization have materialized, and what was until recently a taboo topic inside multinationals — to wit, should we reconsider, even rein in, our global growth strategy? — has become an urgent, if still hushed, discussion.

6.  The Cash Value of Home Gardens.

The ROI (return on investment) of a home garden can be $1,000 a year and $30/hour.

. . .

A major point of value that this overview doesn’t show is the huge improvement in the ‘quality’ of the product being consumed as prices are only for ‘supermarket grade’ product. I believe that the real value amount should be raised by somewhere between 50% and 100% of the amount shown to reflect the improved quality.

. . .

One hour in your own garden means 4 hours you don’t have to spend shifting stock at Walmart to earn money to buy food.

All interesting and thought-provoking reading.

Peter

Good tactics, good skills, good outcome

More details are emerging of how a Garland, TX police officer took down two fundamentalist Islamic terrorists a couple of days ago.  Bob Owens has a very informative analysis.  Here's an excerpt.

At the point of the attack, the two suspects apparently drove up and opened fire upon an unarmed security guard who was accompanied by a 60-year-old Garland police officer. The unarmed guard was struck the volley of gunfire. The veteran Garland officer then drew his duty-issue Glock pistol and opened fire on the suspects.

The officer killed one terrorist and wounded the other in his initial volley of return fire. Witnesses claim there was a brief pause, and then the officer fire two more shots to kill the still-moving terrorist as he appears to be reaching for a backpack. The entire event lasted 15 seconds, with heavily-armed Garland SWAT converging on the scene immediately afterward.

. . .

The evidence markers at the bottom of the photo above show us a remarkable story, as they denote the final locations of the shell casings ejected from the officer’s Glock duty pistol. While every pistol is different from another in its ejection pattern, and the movement of the officer and the cant of his gun precludes us from knowing exactly where he was, there, is a distinct trial of shells showing that the officer was moving forward from the bottom left of the photo above towards the terrorists at the rear of the vehicle.  He appears to have opened fire from 20 yards away, and fired at least a dozen shots by the time he reached an area near the traffic cones, roughly 7-10 yards from where the terrorists died.

. . .

No matter how you break down the details, this was an incredible display of bravery and marksmanship by this 30+ year veteran of the Garland Police Department, who not only resisted the natural urge to create distance between yourself and rifle-armed assailants, but who appears to have done precisely the opposite, and who advanced while firing accurately, bringing the attack to a swift conclusion without a single additional casualty once he brought his weapon to bear.

There's more at the link.  Well worth reading as an example of how to use controlled aggression, skill with one's weapon and courage to deal with an attack.  Recommended reading.

(Such tactics may not always be appropriate, of course;  every situation will have its own peculiarities that will help to dictate how one should respond.  Nevertheless, in this situation, under the circumstances then prevailing, the officer did very well indeed.  I'd like to buy him a beer sometime.)

Peter

Doofus Of The Day #832

When Borepatch put up this video this morning, I could hardly believe my eyes.  I would never have imagined that I'd see so many doofi assembled in a single five-minute clip of extreme failures!  I can only confer a collective Doofus Of The Day award upon all concerned.

A pogo stick? On a treadmill??? Verily, the mind doth boggle . . .




Peter

Heh

Shamelessly borrowed from Wirecutter:

Peter

Mad Mike's latest is out in hardcover

Last month I mentioned friend, author and blogger Michael Z. Williamson's latest book, 'A Long Time Until Now'.

Tomorrow, May 5th, it'll be released in hardcover.  That in itself is a sign of how successful Mike's becoming:  very few publishers put out hardcover editions of science fiction books, because they seldom sell enough to justify the expense.  Mike's one of the exceptions to that rule.  (Miss D. has already ordered our hardcover copy - we'll get Mike to autograph it at LibertyCon next month, which all of us will be attending.)

Customer reviews of the e-book edition are very good.  If you like science fiction and fantasy, particularly that based on harder scientific fact and reasoning, you'll love this one.  I'm not just recommending it because Mike's a friend - I'm doing so because I know Miss D. and I are going to have a lot of fun reading it.  I hope all of you will enjoy it too.

Peter

Awwww!

Ain't he cute?

Peter

Family defensive firearms

Following the Baltimore riots, and the posts I've done on related defensive subjects over the past few days, I've had several queries asking me what firearms should be considered for defensive purposes when a family is involved.  There may be several people, all needing to use a firearm, covering each other, defending a vehicle or vehicles when traveling, that sort of thing.  The inquirers fell into two camps.  In some cases each individual already had a favorite firearm, but there wasn't much commonality in terms of caliber, magazines, etc.  In others the family were all relative novices, wanting advice on how to select firearms and get training.

I'm going to approach this from the second perspective, that of a family wanting to equip themselves for defensive purposes and starting with a relatively clean slate.  If you and your family are already trained and experienced in the use of firearms, you'll probably know enough about your needs that you won't need me to tell you about them.

All right. Let's begin with a few basics.

1. A handgun is the most difficult firearm to learn to use effectively.  It requires a lot more training, and a lot more practice to keep one's skills at an effective level.  A long gun (rifle, carbine or shotgun) is usually simpler and easier to learn to use, and skill with a long gun is easier to retain than it is with a handgun.  However, a long gun is seldom easily concealed, and is much more difficult to carry on one's person or in one's car unobtrusively.  There's a trade-off between size, ease of use, and concealability.
2. For basic home defense, a simple long gun such as a pump-action shotgun is probably the quickest, easiest and most cost-effective option.  I've already covered that in a three part article some time ago.  Follow those three links to learn more.
3. For concealed carry, vehicle defense, etc. a handgun is going to be far more practical - but also more demanding in terms of time, skills and commitment.  If you aren't willing or able to commit to those needs, you may end up being more of a danger to yourself and your loved ones than to a would-be attacker.

We'll proceed on the assumption that you're going to invest in handguns for yourself and your family.  Here are my suggested important considerations.  For considerably more detail, I highly recommend my friend and fellow blogger Kathy Jackson, a very experienced instructor with particular expertise in helping women get up to speed on shooting - something very important in the context of a family.  Her articles and blog are indispensable reading for me, and I recommend them to all my students.

First, even before you select your handguns, start training.  You can do this with BB or Airsoft copies of well-known handguns, which are freely available at very reasonable prices.  I've covered the subject in an earlier article, which I recommend you read before proceeding further with this one.

Second, remember that caliber, cartridge, etc. are not, repeat, NOT the primary consideration in the selection of firearms for the whole family.  You're looking for a basic common handgun that can be used by all the members of your family.  That allows you to maintain a common stock of ammunition, magazines, holsters and other accessories that everyone can use (and, more important, know how to use), and not have to worry about incompatible equipment or accessories.  Considerations include:

• Does this type/model of firearm 'fit' everyone's hands?  Can everyone hold it comfortably, reach the trigger, extend it at arms length without too much strain from the weight, etc.?  It's no good giving a humongous pistol or revolver to someone with upper body strength limitations.  Pick something everyone can hold and use.
• Can everyone operate all the controls and moving parts?  Some people have difficulty operating the slide of some semi-automatic pistols.  Others have dexterity issues, making it tricky for them to manipulate controls such as a revolver's cylinder release or the disassembly/takedown catch on a pistol.  Try to find a firearm that everyone can operate.  (This may be less important when it comes to takedown, cleaning, etc. if someone in the family will be primarily responsible for this.  If a younger person can't take down a pistol, his or her father or mother probably can.  As the youngster grows older, it'll become easier for them to do it too.)
• Are holsters, magazine carriers, etc. available to fit everyone in the family?  Some may have different carry needs to others - for example, a man who habitually wears a business suit and drives to different locations might find a shoulder or cross-draw holster the most appropriate method of carry, whereas someone working on a farm might prefer a strong-side holster offering greater protection to the firearm from thorn bushes, etc.  Women often can't comfortably wear the same holsters that men use, due to their different body shape and composition.
• Finally, can everyone handle the muzzle blast and recoil of the weapon?  So-called "manly men" love to pick calibers and cartridges that have a reputation for greater stopping power, forgetting that the more power comes out of the muzzle, the greater the kick at the other end of the gun.  A lot of smaller-statured people find powerful handguns very uncomfortable to shoot.  Guys, don't try to 'prescribe' to your family what they will, repeat, WILL learn to love!  It doesn't work that way.  Try to rent firearms at ranges that offer that facility and let everyone try them for themselves.  Talk to friends who have different models, and ask whether they'll demonstrate their chosen weapons to your family and let everyone try them.  (By all means buy them a box or two of ammo to do that, so that you aren't a drain on their resources.)  Let everyone have a say in the choice, and choose a firearm that most (preferably all) of your family can shoot well.

It's been my experience (in well over three decades of instructing shooters) that .38 Special in revolvers, and 9mm. Parabellum in semi-automatic pistols, are the biggest, most powerful cartridges that can be handled and controlled well by almost any shooter.  When you get bigger or more powerful than that, some shooters start to get very uncomfortable.  "Manly men" will doubtless claim that "Bigger is better", and "the only reason they carry a .45 is because nobody makes a .46".  Good luck to them.  Those slogans were accurate in the era before modern bullet technology became available, and are still somewhat valid when you're talking about hardball or full-metal-jacket bullets, but modern expanding bullets are pretty effective across most calibers and cartridges.  This image (taken from this excellent discussion of the topic, which I highly recommend) conveys the point very well.

So, pick a firearm chambered for one of those cartridges that can be operated by anyone in the family and that fits everyone's hands (if necessary with different backstraps, for pistols offering that facility).  Standardize on it, and stock up on ammunition, magazines (at least 5 per pistol) or speedloaders (5 per revolver) and holsters.  Practice (and get training) until everyone's competent, and then stay that way.  Don't let your skills atrophy.

My personal recommendation?  It's the same I made a couple of months back - I recommend the Ruger SR9c pistol (and/or its big brothers, the SR9 or the new, lower-cost 9E, both of which use the same 17-round magazines as the SR9c, but can't use the latter's smaller 10-round version) as very cost-effective, reliable solutions.  (Shop around for those magazines - they're often available from online retailers for much less than Ruger's asking price.)  Their grips appear to fit most hands well, they've proved very reliable in my hands and those of my students, and there don't appear to be many problems with their controls and operation.  No, I'm not being paid or sponsored in any way to recommend them!  I've just had good experiences with them.

Peter

A worthwhile defensive consideration

We're talking a lot this weekend about issues arising from the Baltimore riots.  Here's another one.  Let's say you're driving down the road when you're confronted with a scene of violence - a crime in progress, a riot, urban unrest, whatever.  You feel threatened, and are forced (as you see it) to defend yourself using a firearm or any other weapon that comes to hand - even your vehicle.

What if you have bumper stickers or other material on your vehicle that suggests you may be a violent person who doesn't care much for the lives of others?

We've all seen this sort of thing.  (Click each image to go to its source page.)

A prosecutor - particularly one under pressure to make the 'right' decision - might have a field day using these stickers in evidence against the driver.  A Texas legal defense plan makes the point very well in this video clip.

Food for thought in these politically correct times.

Peter

A tragic lesson in the reality of self-defense

A fatal crime underlines once again the reality that you can't always rely on the police to defend you, even when they're already on the scene.  Some threats are so sudden, so violent, that unless you're in a position to do something about them yourself, right there and then, you're going to die.

A 27-year-old teacher at a New Jersey charter school was shot dead in front of her home late Friday in front of a police officer she had flagged over as she argued with the father of her child, authorities said.

There's more at the link.  Bold, underlined print is my emphasis.

This is a ghastly situation overall.  A young mother is dead and her child is orphaned, and a cop who couldn't act fast enough to stop a killer will likely live with post-traumatic guilt for a long time, perhaps for the rest of his life.  The fact remains, that policeman was not able to act fast enough to stop the killer.  At point-blank range, action beats reaction most of the time in almost every scenario.

I don't know whether the young woman could have moved fast enough to save her own life, if she'd been armed.  Perhaps she couldn't.  Nevertheless, her tragic example proves that even when the police are on the scene, they can't always prevent violence and murder.  She chose to enter a relationship with a man who ultimately killed her, and didn't withdraw from it at what must have been earlier signs that he wasn't a good choice.  Judgments like that are as much a part of your defensive reality as weapons and tactics . . . and sometimes more important.

Your security and safety are ultimately in your own hands.  You can't delegate that responsibility.

May Ms. Latrena May rest in peace.

Peter

The plain, unvarnished truth about why our economy sucks

The inimitable Karl Denninger has (IMHO) hit another one out of the park.  I think his article is so important I'm going to quote it in full, to preserve it for future readers (because his links usually expire within a few weeks).  Please take the time to read it.  I concur with his reasoning.

You knew it would come, right?

The attempt to blame all on.... liberalism.

Of those governments, perhaps the most salient fact to the objective political scientist, tasked with anatomizing the failed system, would be that both governments have long effectively functioned as one-party systems. Baltimore last had a Republican mayor, Theodore M. McKeldin, in 1967. (A wire photograph from April 1966 captured McKeldin, a bear of a man, chatting amiably with Dr. King in Baltimore, two years before the civil rights leader’s assassination in Memphis.) Maryland elected its incumbent Republican governor, Larry Hogan, in November – but that made Hogan only the second GOP governor in the Old Line State since 1969.

Incumbent mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, deals with a city council comprised 100 percent of fellow Democrats. Other important power blocs in the political and civic life of Baltimore are likewise controlled by Democrats, such as educational institutions and public-sector unions.

See, that's easy.  Just blame "one party" rule, as if the Republicans have "better ideas" without demonstrating how their ideas are better or even providing examples of alleged ideas to be implemented.

Nobody, of course, wants to ask the salient question: Exactly how did these cities become one-party political machines?

That, of course, is because if you were to go there you'd expose the soft underbelly of corruption in the political process -- the making of political promises that the maker knows cannot be fulfilled but doesn't care as he or she is buying votes, not results.

In the meantime behind the scenes even more-perverse and outrageous corruption is taking place; the selling of America, literally, to the highest bidder.  And rather than perform its job as a guardian at the gate the press fawns over such people and their espousing of various programs without a single critical examination of the issues at hand or a question being raised.

Let us put reality out there for everyone: No, not everyone is exceptional.  In fact most of us are downright ordinary and even there, if we're in the middle of the bell curve somewhere instead of out on the ends, fully half of us are on the wrong side of it!

The question to ask becomes simply this: What are you going to do about that fact given that we all must somehow manage to find our way in the world?

This is a cancer that we invited into our nation with so-called "free trade" and the exporting of our manufacturing base.  It is the one we refuse to discuss and debate, yet we must.  We instead try to placate and paper over it while at the same time destroying the programs and structures that led individuals in that situation to have productive, happy lives.

We then wring our hands when despair turns to crime and rioting.

Baltimore was a thriving industrial community that produced, among other things, a huge amount of steel.

But Baltimore lost over 100,000 manufacturing jobs by 1995, all due to foreign imports produced under near or actual slave labor conditions with zero regard for environmental impact.  One third of the residents of Baltimore fled the city.  Worse, 90% of the jobs in Baltimore today are low-paying and often part-time service-sector jobs.

Did liberals promote all the so-called "free trade" that led to this manufacturing displacement?  Hardly; that charge is equally leveled against conservatives; that is, Republicans.

At the same time deficit spending, which both political parties consider sacrosanct, has destroyed the ability to accumulate wealth for anyone that is in the lower economic classes.  Adding to this was outright and documented predatory behavior by financial institutions toward city residents, especially black city residents, in the 2000s via subprime lending.

Where is the debate on these topics?  It's missing from the political sphere for a very good reason: To address this you must address facts -- such as the fact that if the "average" IQ is 100 then half of the people will be above and half below; unless you're willing to literally murder the lower half of the population you need a social, employment and political system that provides opportunity for all.  That in turn means you cannot export your lower-wage and lower-ability-required manufacturing jobs to places like Vietnam and China as they must be retained so your citizens have gainful employment available to them.

At the same time you cannot deficit spend because for the person in the lower economic and intellectual quantum there is no defensive move available to them to mitigate the damage done to their financial security by such policies.

Finally, accountability for every dollar spent is far more important when you have few dollars to contribute to government programs in the form of taxation.  In this regard both Democrat and Republicans fail; our current so-called "educational" system is an utter and complete joke when looked at in terms of return-on-investment.

Are you ready to have a debate on these topics yet, America?

Or will you wring your hands and point fingers, as is often the case, at this bogeyman or that while ignoring the elephant in the room -- the intentional destruction of working-class jobs in this nation over the last 40+ years, and our utter refusal to put a stop to the abusive and outrageous "trade policies" that enable it.

Please pass the link along to your friends (or, if that link goes dead, provide the link to this article instead).  This needs to be more widely discussed - particularly because he points out, as I've been saying for years, that both major political parties are responsible for this mess, and neither of them can be trusted to solve it.

Only when Americans demand accountability from their politicians for these policies will we see any improvement.  I fear greatly that our refusal to demand that accountability means that we're all going to suffer when our economic house of cards comes crashing down.  Allow me to quote from a 2005 article in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan.

It is not so hard and can be a pleasure to tell people what you see. It's harder to speak of what you think you see, what you think is going on and can't prove or defend with data or numbers. That can get tricky. It involves hunches. But here goes.

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."

. . .

Roiling history, daily dangers, big demands; a government that is itself too big and rolling in too much money and ever needing more to do the latest important, necessary, crucial thing.

It's beyond, "The president is overwhelmed." The presidency is overwhelmed. The whole government is. And people sense when an institution is overwhelmed. Citizens know. If we had a major terrorist event tomorrow half the country--more than half--would not trust the federal government to do what it has to do, would not trust it to tell the truth, would not trust it, period.

. . .

Do people fear the wheels are coming off the trolley? Is this fear widespread? A few weeks ago I was reading Christopher Lawford's lovely, candid and affectionate remembrance of growing up in a particular time and place with a particular family, the Kennedys, circa roughly 1950-2000. It's called "Symptoms of Withdrawal". At the end he quotes his Uncle Teddy. Christopher, Ted Kennedy and a few family members had gathered one night and were having a drink in Mr. Lawford's mother's apartment in Manhattan. Teddy was expansive. If he hadn't gone into politics he would have been an opera singer, he told them, and visited small Italian villages and had pasta every day for lunch. "Singing at la Scala in front of three thousand people throwing flowers at you. Then going out for dinner and having more pasta." Everyone was laughing. Then, writes Mr. Lawford, Teddy "took a long, slow gulp of his vodka and tonic, thought for a moment, and changed tack. 'I'm glad I'm not going to be around when you guys are my age.' I asked him why, and he said, 'Because when you guys are my age, the whole thing is going to fall apart.' "

Mr. Lawford continued, "The statement hung there, suspended in the realm of 'maybe we shouldn't go there.' Nobody wanted to touch it. After a few moments of heavy silence, my uncle moved on."

Lawford thought his uncle might be referring to their family--that it might "fall apart." But reading, one gets the strong impression Teddy Kennedy was not talking about his family but about . . . the whole ball of wax, the impossible nature of everything, the realities so daunting it seems the very system is off the tracks.

There's more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Ms. Noonan's article was written a decade ago, but it might as well have been written yesterday, because it's dealing with the same tomorrows.  They're going to be our tomorrows, soon enough . . . and that frightens the hell out of me.

Peter

Sad Puppies attack!

A few days ago I put up an article titled 'When SWAT teams meet their (literary) match'.  It linked to a series of very funny vignettes by fellow author and blogger Declan Finn about various individuals involved in the controversy over the Hugo Awards.

Declan's concluded his series with a final article, providing a couple more vignettes and a magnificent all-out brawl at this year's WorldCon (where the Hugos will be awarded).  Here's a sample.

WORLDCON, SPOKANE WASHINGTON

[WorldCon is practically empty, for a Con. A borderline ghost town of two thousand people.  If DragonCon is New York City, WorldCon is Detroit.  Suddenly, the ground shakes. The front windows rattle. It feels like an earthquake!  Suddenly, the squeal of brakes as a tank rumbles to a stop outside.]

[Tom "His Tankness" Knighton pops out of the Abrams] We're here everybody!

[The International Lord Of Hate himself, Larry Correia, pulls himself out. He is bristling with guns -- handguns in hip, thigh, ankle, and shoulder holsters, a bazooka and two automatic rifles on his back, and a LMG cradled in his hand like a baby.  His MOLLE vest is covered with ammo. He looks like a heavily-armed mountain] Thanks for the lift, Tom.

[Sarah Hoyt, the Beautiful Yet Evil Space Princess beams herself onto the sidewalk from inside the tank. She is dressed like Erin Gray from Buck Rodgers, wrapped in tin foil, with a bubble helmet] I'm just glad that there wasn't another stop for gas.

[Knighton shrugs]  Sorry. Cruddy mileage. Could have been worse --

[A belch of flame comes out of the top of the tank, Brad Torgersen, the Warm and Cuddly Skeletor bounds out like a kid with a toy]  Whhhheeeee!!!

[Knighton sighs] --we could have left the flamethrower with Brad on the way here.

[Brad sprays the air with the flamthrower for a bit, then stops, and notices that everyone is looking at him. Like a kid with a cookie jar, he puts the flame on "cigarette lighter" and lowers it]  Sorry.

[Sarah pats him on the head] It's okay.

There's more at the link.  Great fun, and highly recommended reading.

Peter

Quote of the day

From the inimitable, the one and only Og, the Neanderpundit:

It’s probably not nice to paint Ben-gay on the feeder poles to keep the squirrels off them, but it’s a hoot watching them scrub their nuts on the grass afterwards.

Peter

Too cute!

I had to smile at this video of excavators 'breeding'.  The narration is in German, but the images speak for themselves.

Kudos to the filmmaker for some very creative work.

Peter

Cheating leads to epic revenge

I regard cheating on one's spouse (or in any committed relationship) as one of the less forgivable sins.  It destroys trust, sometimes to the point that it can never be rebuilt.  In the few cases where the wronged party is indeed willing to forgive and rebuild the relationship, it can be overcome;  but in my experience as a former pastor they're the exception rather than the rule.  I also prefer to try to resolve the situation as peacefully as possible, with as much mutual respect as possible, for the sake of both parties in the future.

Nevertheless, sometimes one side decides to throw gasoline on the flames instead of water.  One such epic occasion has just come to my attention, and even though I can't approve, I had to laugh out loud reading it.

“So I know something is up and after finding a bottle of champagne and two glasses hidden in my closet something in me snaps. So I do what any sensible man would have done. I leave and go to my friends house pretending like I am going out of town. While there I call up her mother, father, sister and several of her friends. I tell them how I want to give her a big surprise by sneaking into our room with party streamers, kazoos and a big cake with candles. Sounds fun, right?! Well, boy was it.”

There's more at the link.  Go read, and (hopefully) give thanks no-one's ever done that to you!

Peter

Don't rely on the police for protection!

If you're one of those who says that you'll rely on the police to protect you, rather than take steps to be able to defend yourself and your family if necessary, consider this.

Michael Lewis is the Sheriff in Wicomico County, and was also a Sergeant with the Maryland State Police. He joined Ed Norris and Steve Davis on Thursday to talk about the alleged controversial orders the police were given during the riots.

. . .

“They said we could have handled this, we were very capable of handling this, but we were told to stand down, repeatedly told to stand down,” he said. “I had never heard that order come from anyone — we went right out to our posts as soon as we got there, so I never heard the mayor say that. But repeatedly these guys, and there were many high-ranking officials from the Baltimore City Police Department … and these guys told me they were essentially neutered from the start. They were spayed from the start. They were told to stand down, you will not take any action, let them destroy property. I couldn’t believe it, I’m a 31-year veteran of law enforcement. … I had never heard anything like this before in my life and these guys obviously aren’t gonna speak out and the more I thought about this, … I had to say a few things. I apologize if I’ve upset people, but I believe in saying it like it is.”

Lewis said though he didn’t hear the order to stand down come from the mayor, he did hear it from police officials.

“I heard it myself over the Baltimore City police radio that I had tethered to my body-armor vest, I heard it repeatedly. ‘Stand down, stand down, stand down! Back up, back up, retreat, retreat!’ I couldn’t believe those words. Those are words I’ve never heard in my law enforcement vocabulary,” he said. “Baltimore City police, all law enforcement agencies are very capable of handling that city. They’re trained to handle that city. These guys were hearing words that had never been echoed in their lives, in their careers.”

There's more at the link.

What happens if you rely on the cops to protect you, but the politicians in charge of those cops think it's more important for their image, or their re-electability, or for whatever politically correct reasons, to stop the cops from doing their job?  It matters not whether it's a riot situation such as Sheriff Lewis is describing, or a problem with community relations that stops police from carrying out their normal duties.  Where does that leave you?

I'll tell you where it leaves you.  Up the creek without a paddle.

I only hope that all my readers have the sense to read Sheriff Lewis' words and draw the appropriate conclusions from them.  Your safety is first and foremost in your hands - no-one else's.  Train and prepare accordingly.

Peter