From Around The Web

West faces decade of conflict in North Africa.

60 School Shootings linked to Psychiatric drugs. I think this article confuses causation and correlation. This often happens. A great example is when we see the articles about how something (yoga, green tea, whatever) makes you fitter/ skinnier or healthier. The point is that person who does yoga or drinks green tea also does a variety of other things to be healthy like eating reasonably and exercising. Fat slobs who eat whole pizza's for lunch on a regular basis do not do these things.

Southern Prepper 1 Video and Tab Clearing

Hat Tip to Modern Survival Online for highlighting this excellent video by Southern Prepper1.

The points about working on your fitness, confirming zero's and testing weapons are excellent. Also the reminder about web gear/ chest rigs/ something to carry ammo, spare parts and such is very valid. Personally it reminded me that we need a couple of good schematic books and do not really have a solid dedicated rig for the AK. Sure I could slap something together from the various pouches that are lying around and worst case could use one of those com bloc 5 mag(?) pouches that were tossed into mag deals forever but but that is not idea. More stuff to add to the list I guess.

French soldiers are joining the fight against Islamic rebels in Mali. 

Dangerous Old Men. I would humbly submit that the last decade of war has produced a whole lot of dangerous young men. Many of whom are right minded and bought an AR on leave or shortly after getting out.

Precedent Teaches Us The Left Really Wants ALL Our Guns by Charlie Daniels. Yes, that Charlie Daniels.

Saw this picture of Rick Perry on the drudge today and could not help but share it. It went up awhile back in conjunction with Texas allowing law abiding concealed weapons permit holders to carry on campus. While he came off as the stammering idiot of the group during the Republican Primaries, which says a lot; he actually seems legitimately pro gun which is cool.

Anyway I hope you all have a great Sunday.

Book Review: Wars of National Liberation by Daniel Morgan

Commander Zero loaned me this book with the conditions that it is eventually returned and I share my thoughts on it. Figured a book review is as good of a way as any to share my thoughts. So here we go.

Good:
Comprehensive- This book talks about a whole lot of different conflicts. China, Algeria, French in Indochina, Jews vs the Arab world I, II, III, IV, Vietnam and touched on themes of African and South American conflicts.

Well Researched- The guy definitely knew what he was talking about. The sheer amount of research put into this book is impressive.

Brought home key themes- Successful insurgencies have safe havens behind international borders, foreign support and tend to be fighting against unmotivated outside forces. Stuff I have talked about before.

Bad:
Bounces Around- This book seems to have sort of gone regionally then by time but could have been organized better. Specifically a set framework for discussing conflicts and another for battles would have been a huge help to this book.

Dove deep into some random conflicts/ battles but light in other probably more applicable ones. Talked a lot about Korea which was a pretty conventional fight. Also went deeply into a few other conventional battles. There really wasn't any rhyme or reason here. It was almost like they just made some old work fit into this project. They failed to really be descriptive enough to make sense when they tried to go deep too fast relying heavily on small diagrams Either needed to go deeper into battles or just stick to themes.

Ugly:
Misses significant conflicts like Chechnya and Northern Ireland. Also the Israelis vs the PLO (instead of the conventional fights vs the Arab world) would have been good. Some really useful stuff could have come from this.

Briefly and half heartedly mentioning Afghanistan in what they try to pass off as a closing. The Afghan war vs the Soviets is a great case study for a whole lot of information. The books failure to meaningfully discuss the Soviet Afghan War is almost irredeemable. It would be like talking pistol development through the 18th century and not mentioning Colt.

Sorely needed a good conclusion. Seriously they were going through the case studies then had a half halfhearted confusing chapter that vaguely mentions Afghanistan and mumbles about some other stuff and the book just ends.

Discussion: I got a lot out of the part on China which is a chapter of history I wasn't well informed on. The pieces on conflicts I was more familiar with were good and usually had an interesting new tid bit or three.  For a nonfiction book it managed to be informative while staying lively enough to stay interesting which is a definite balancing act.

This book would probably be on my fairly short list for studying insurgencies/ guerrilla war. It probably wouldn't make the top 5 but would definitely be in the top 10.

Overall assessment: Buy and read. The price on Amazon is like 7 bucks. I got stuff out of this book and considering my study of the field is pretty solid and I have some decent practical experience that says something.

quote of the day

"I've owned .375, .416, and/or .458 caliber elephant rifles when I lived in New Hampshire, and when I lived in Florida.
During all that time, no elephant has ever attacked me or my neighbors. One can only conclude that there is a deterrent effect at work here. You'd think my Yuppie neighbors in the New England suburbs would have appreciated more than they did, the fact that I, alone, obviously kept herds of elephants from trampling their Volvos into their rock gardens."
-Massad Ayoob 


Read the rest here. For whatever it is worth this guy is pretty happy carrying a 9mm. Especially since when one gets past the hype given decent JHP ammo it is equal to the other common semi auto pistol calibers.

Oregon Trail series #1 You Have Died of Dysentery

Alternate title: 3rd World Living Conditions: Water Filtration, Sanitation and OTC Meds

 Yesterday Wifey and I drove a long way. We don't listen to the radio and instead talk to each other while driving. What a novel concept. Anyway we passed a car with a trailer and a single horse somehow we got to talking about how it would be cool to have draft animals and a wagon and go camping Oregon Trail style. I said we would need an extra kid because one of them would die of dysentery. It is sort of a funny joke and I have been meaning to order the T shirt.

We both got a good laugh. Wifey then said we would also need lots of oxen to replace the ones that would die and 3 times the amount of food we actually need because it always seems to fall out of the wagon and get washed downstream at fording sites. After a second of silence I thought of something. People still die of dysentery. Almost never in America or western Europe or pretty much any other country that doesn't suck but by the thousands in Africa, less developed parts of Asia and South America. I would wager it will get some folks in Pakistan and China because of the recent flooding.

Dysentery is caused by poor hygiene. Basically you ingest some nasty stuff. In any case you catch it and start shitting your guts out. You then dehydrate massively and keep shitting and eventually you die. Dysentery spreads like wildfire because people are in close quarters and it is an environment with poor sanitation and hygiene. If 12 people are living in a little shack/ hut with poor sanitation and hygiene and one gets massive diarrhea it is going to spread.

Part of the reason that dysentery is so sad is that it is so avoidable. A bit of common sense sanitation and decent hygiene are enough to prevent dysentery all together. Prevention is as simple as regularly washing your hands, especially after going #2 and before cooking/ eating. Treatment is super simple. Re hydration and good cleanliness are usually enough. For worse cases a course of antibiotics are necessary. Simply keeping some pedialite or gatoraide around as well as soap, etc and having a plan to deal with waste is sufficient.

Our life patterns have changed dramatically in the last 100 years or so. In particular population densities in urban areas have increased and this whole suburb thing popped up. These work because almost limitless clean water is piped in and waste is piped out. However it doesn't take much to at least temporarily break those systems. Especially in densely populated areas such as the Gulf Coast all it will take is a hurricane to bring back a primitive standard of living in a hurry. If you exclude medical personnel and those with primitive outdoor experience via rugged camping or the military knowledge of primitive sanitation is woefully lacking. You can't take care of everybody but should certainly have a plan to take care of your own.

The Debt Trap

Some time ago I heard the phrase "debt trap". A nation falls into the debt trap when they get into debt so far that they are borrowing more to service their old debt. Pretty quickly their lenders realize things are getting bad and jack up the interest rates. With the huge amounts of money we are talking about a point or two is a real problem and beyond that. A nation can then choose to deflate their way out (Argentina and Russia), default on the debt (pretty much every country in Africa and Central/ South America at some point or another), go to war (Germany) or do some combination of the three.

I think there is a debt trap of sorts for individuals. This trap is when you have so many payments that it is basically impossible to pay cash for anything. All your income is going to basic life expenses (food, shelter, etc) or to payments. You can't buy a damn toaster without financing it. How does it end? One option is that something happens and the whole apple cart is knocked over. When you have no savings and the whole paycheck has to go to pay for junk you already have it doesn't take much to have a real problem. The good news is that there is another way out. Go to the library and get a copy of Dave Ramsey's book and read it. Check out Suze Orman's stuff also. Make your own decisions about what is important. Get some discipline and come up with a plan that gives your finances some order, cuts expenses drastically and improve your situation.

Don't fall into the debt trap. If you are closer to the debt trap than you care to admit then start improving your situation. If you are in a good place then do not become complacent and continue to improve.

Book Review: The International Fugitive By Kenn Abaygo

Awhile back a wonderful reader (If I had a fan club he could be the VP of awesomeness or something) sent me a Glock mag and a bunch of books. A couple days ago I picked up The International Fugitive by Kenn Abaygo  from the stack on my end table. The VP of awesomeness was a bail bondsmen for awhile and said he learned a few things from this book which got my attention.

Like a lot of Paladin Press books this was a pretty quick read at 144 pages.  There are chapters on crossing borders, traveling by water and ground as well as air. It talks at least briefly about traveling in basically every way possible on every continent. Some of the stuff was pretty obvious but there were a lot of real gems. Towards the end it touched on citizenship issues as well as finding a place to settle down and getting a job.

This book was enjoyable for multiple reasons. It got me thinking about stuff I have never considered. Mostly how decent normal folks could find themselves in a situation where vanishing forever is probably the best course of action. Admittedly most of us will not end up in that situation but who knows what could happen. If Johnny "Knuckles" Giordano was after me because I happened to see something on a Sunday drive then getting out of the area where he has reach would be essential. Also keeping a low profile for the foreseeable future would be prudent.

It is very important to consider who wants to find you when choosing how to disappear. Knuckles Giordano might be big Mojo in his neighborhood and even the region. However the odds that he has border guards in Blane, Washington on the payroll are infinitesimal. While a lawyer who is chasing you to get money for something (rightly or wrongly) may ask a relative where you are they are not going to stick their head in a vice like Knuckles might. Then again a lawyer might be more skilled at finding you through various innocuous databases and information pools.

My only real criticisms would be that the author seems to either be 100 years old or have somewhat embellished his experiences. Also it is worth keeping in mind that the book was written in 1999 so a lot of things have changed. For instance I laughed heartily when he suggested Zimbabwe as a good place to go in Africa! Lots of stuff has changed but that can easily be verified via numerous up to the minute resources. Probably more importantly the profusion of computers and sophisticated tracking have probably made international travel a lot more difficult for those who need discretion.

Another good think the book mentioned that was interestingly reinforced by the Crotch Bomber about a month back is to look for weak points. For instance getting onto a plane in NY and flying to Paris with anything less than perfect papers is probably impossible. However if you flew from Mexico City to Serbia then traveled by private boat to Italy you would be in the EU and instead of being a victim of first world airport scrutiny you would be free wheeling in the EU. [Please don't tear my example to shreds, I didn't research it for an hour. Just came up with it off the top of my head.]

I enjoyed this book and it got me thinking about some interesting stuff. While it isn't the first book I would suggest for preparedness I think most people would say it is worth the $15 or so it costs. Who would get something out of this book? People who think they might need to drop under the radar would be well advised to pick it up and likely the others in the series. If your situation is tenuous enough that keeping a wad of running money and maybe even building a fake identity (it is illegal, blah blah blah) and acquiring a vehicle registered to said person is worth the time, expense and risk then reading this book certainly is. Most of us however are not in that situation. Maybe we want to have some options for discrete travel or just find the topic interesting.

Also those who have considered moving out of the US and becoming ex pat's would get a lot out of this book. It talks about many out of the way, enjoyable, discrete, and safe areas where the dollar goes a long way.

I seriously doubt anyone will regret reading this book.

Thanks again VP of Awesomeness

Enfields, Still Killing People

I am having a pretty quiet morning of a bit of coffee and some news. Just saw a piece about some problems in Sudan. On a tangent is there anybody left alive in Darfor? Or did that humanitarian disaster get resolved by everyone dying. I try to keep up with the news and such but Africa is always in such a state of turmoil that it is difficult to do so with any accuracy. Anyway while they were giving the spiel about this group not being happy with the peace and getting ready to fight that group or whatever they showed some footage of some sort of military or paramilitary group. They were at least semi organized because they had uniforms, some level of drill and ceremonies and an obvious leader. Also they were all armed with the same weapon. The good old Enfield bolt action rifle.I can't say which side is which and they are both probably bad but it is interesting that Enfields are still killing people.

Just thought it was interesting. I would like to own an Enfield some day. Who knows what will happen though. Some of my most favorite guns are ones I would never have though of purchasing and I still don't have a few I would conceptually like.

An Interesting Conversation

I was talking with a nice older lady today. I figured she was German but it turns out she was actually Rhodesian. A couple minutes later I asked her how she ended up here. Turns out her husband is German and as she said "Everything was comrade this and comrade that and our oldest son was about to start school so we decided to start him here". I said all things considered it is probably for the best they got out before it really went downhill. She said it is a shame what has happened and that her country used to be the bread basket of Afrika. I said Zimbabwe was a testimonial to the effectiveness of communism. We all had a good laugh at that one.

One of the most interesting observations from Neil Strauss's book is that a significant amount of American survivalists have a plan for if swine flu happens during an EMP and there is a flood while Norway is invading but have not considered the possibility of needing to get the fuck out of the US.

This nice old lady was a good testiment to the fact that one country can go completely to shit while the rest of the world goes on more or less business as usual.

A variety of peoples throughout history can also testify that sometimes a certain people (or everybody) would be well advised to leave their homeland because something very bad is about to happen.