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Is Dr. Anthony Fauci Really a Dr. Josef Mengele?

Josef Mengele

A new book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says that Dr. Anthony Fauci is America’s Joseph Mengele for what he did to poor orphan minority kids in the 1980s, specifically that Dr. Fauci tested harsh chemotherapy drugs on orphan children in order to determine their potential for AIDS treatments; that he got control of foster homes in 7 states that served as sources for the youngsters; that these children were denied guardians and any kind of legal protector; that most of the children did not have HIV/AIDS, they were just used as guinea pigs to see if they could survive the harsh drug regimen; and that as a result, at least 85 children died as part of these experiments.

The selection ramp at Auschwitz. The column on the left will head directly to the gas chambers. The column on the right will enter the camp and be worked to death. Mengele is the officer in the right-center.  He is looking for twins.

I do not know how true these allegations are, but I do know who Dr. Josef Mengele was and you should know about him also or this comparison means nothing.

Josef Mengele, also known as the “Angel of Death,” was a German Waffen-SS captain and physician during World War II.  For decades after the war, and continuing today in some circles, the fable has remained alive that the SS personnel who served in the concentration camps were somehow different from their honorable brethren, who fought at the frontline in the Waffen-SS, in units.  Thus, those in the combat units have earned a pass from some historians, who believed the former Waffen-SS General Paul Hausser story Soldaten wie andere auch (Soldiers Like Any Other.)

But Hausser was incorrect.  As The Camp Men demonstrates with irrefutable proof from the official SS personnel file for each officer, almost half of the concentration camp officers also served in Waffen-SS combat divisions.  Mengele served in the 5th Waffen-SS Division in Russia.

But the real shocker is how many physicians, like Mengele, in Germany supported the Nazi Party.  More than 38,000 doctors, nearly half of all the physicians in Germany, joined the Nazi Party.  None were forced to join; they saw it as an opportunity to advance their careers.  At least 316 doctors served in the concentration camps, as well as at least 57 dentists.

Before the war, Mengele had received doctorates in anthropology and medicine, and began a career as a researcher.  He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1938.  In early 1943, assigned to the Auschwitz concentration camp, he saw the opportunity to conduct genetic research on human subjects.  His experiments focused primarily on twins, with no regard for their health or safety; many died.  Mengele later served at the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.  But don’t take it from me; here are a few quotes from The Angel of Death:

“It would not be humanitarian to send a child to the ovens without permitting the mother to be there to witness the child’s death.”  The ovens here refer to the crematoria at Auschwitz, where the dead were burned.

“I don’t have anything to hide.  Terrible things happened at Auschwitz, and I did my best to help.  One could not do everything.  There were terrible disasters there.  I could only save so many.  I never killed anyone or hurt anyone.”

“Scientists have always been able to study twins after they have been born together.  But only in the Third Reich can Science examine twins who have died together.”

SS-Hauptsturmführer Josef Mengele; Mengele served in the 5th Waffen-SS Division Wiking, winning the Iron Cross 1st Class, before transferring to Auschwitz and subsequently Gross-Rosen.  

Josef Mengele drowned in 1979 after suffering a stroke while swimming off the coast of Bertioga, Brazil and was buried under the false name of Wolfgang Gerhard.  Dozens of Nazi doctors did not escape justice and were hanged after the war for Crimes Against Humanity.  You can read about some of them in American Hangman.

Maybe Anthony Fauci had nothing to do with the orphans and AIDS experiments on children at all; if so, Mr. Kennedy owes him an immense apology.  Maybe Dr. Fauci did play a role, but believed that their suffering, and the death of many of them, would do a greater good for mankind as a whole.  But as the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg, Germany showed after the war, their are limits to medical experimentation covered in Crimes Against Humanity.  And if the allegations in Kennedy’s book are accurate, in my opinion those experiments were clearly in in violation of that category.

If you have any actual information about the New York experiments, you can stand up for these kids — who could not stand up for themselves.  If you are reluctant to contact Children’s Health Defense at 1227 North Peachtree Pkwy, Suite 202 in Peachtree City, GA 30269 at 202-618-2477, contact this website and I’ll forward your evidence.

Is Dr. Anthony Fauci Really a Dr. Josef Mengele?2022-02-16T18:27:21-06:00

Versatility – A Jack for All Trades

 

Glock 40 MOS 10mm

You’ve heard the phrase: “A Jack of All Trades, Master of None.”  However, in the world of firearms, versatility – the quality of being useful for or easily adapted to various tasks, styles, and fields of endeavor – often means that a single weapon can be a Master for All Situations.

It may not be a function of caliber, nor the capacity of the magazine, or the optic on top.  It is a function of ammunition.  And there are two weapons that stand head and shoulders above most others in this respect – the shotgun and the 10mm pistol.

The ubiquitous shotgun; it has been around for over 400 years and is often called a scattergun, or historically as a fowling piece.  Calibers have been many; for this discussion we will stick with the always-popular 12 gauge and what a variety of ammunition we have!

Birdshot is probably the most common type of 12-gauge shotgun load, comes in at least 12 sizes, and allows hunters to target small to medium game (or skeet and trap shooters to hit clay “birds.”)  For birdshot, the larger the number, the smaller the pellet (size 8 has more, but smaller diameters of pellets than a size 6, for example.)

But wait!  Many 12 gauge shotguns now come with the ability to fire three chamber sizes – 2.75-inch, 3-inch and 3.5-inch.  The longer the size, the more pellets there are inside, plus the velocity is often higher which extends the range a bit.  Then there is BB shot that comes in at least 3 sizes, used for larger birds like ducks and geese.

Leaving the search for aerial targets and going to the ground gets us into buckshot and there are five rounds in that (#4 buck, #1 buck, 0 buck, 00 buck and 000 buck.)  For example, #00 buckshot throws eight or nine balls (some magnum loads contain 12-15 balls!), #1 buckshot holds 16 and #4 buckshot has 24 to 27 balls.  Then there are the “tweeners” like T-shot that I put in the category of hunting large waterfowl like geese.

Finally are the slugs that are used for deer, and really any other large game; some hunting guides even opine that a 12-gauge slug is the best antidote for an attacking bear.  Almost every 12 gauge round can kill a man; there are tragic hunting accidents every year involving even very small size birdshot rounds.  For the intentional dispatching of an armed criminal trying to kill you, buckshot is probably the best way to go.  The versatility comes in when analyzing the environment of the shot.  Inside the home or outside?  Is the attacker on foot on in a motor vehicle?  Behind a barrier?  What is the expected distance between you and your would-be killer?  More than one assailant?  There will be an optimum-size shotgun round for every situation.  That is what gives it the ultimate in versatility.

But you know that already.  The second weapon with immense versatility is the 10mm pistol – which you may not be familiar with – and it also centers on the large variety of ammunition available for it.  MidwayUSA lists sixty-six 10mm rounds (unfortunately most have to be back-ordered, but that’s a different issue.)  By my count, 10mm rounds range in weight from 100 grains to 220 grains, which is close to a .380 auto round weight on the small end, to a .44 Magnum on the large end.

10mm rounds come in various bullet shapes, each with a different purpose in mind: hard-cast-flat-nose and lead-round-nose for large game hunting; jacketed-hollow-point, full-metal-jacket, “fluted”; bonded-jacketed-hollow-point; and fragmenting-hollow-point; full-metal-jacket-flat-nose.

Just a few 10mm options

But it is velocity that provides even more versatility.  Muzzle velocities range from about 1030 feet-per-second to 1875 feet-per-second.  There is one type of round, an RBCD Performance Plus out of San Antonio, that advertises a 10mm 77 grain total-fragmenting-soft-point that comes out of the muzzle at 2420 feet-per-second, but I can’t find any for sale, which might be a good thing.

What versatility does velocity provide you?  Well, in potentially crowded urban areas, in a self-defense situation where you don’t want your bullet going through your erstwhile killer – and subsequently killing an innocent person, you can do your homework and pick the round type and velocity to ensure it doesn’t “over-penetrate.”  In rural areas, you can use heavier and faster rounds, because you are not concerned with bystanders, but are concerned about dangerous four-legged animals, as well as two-legged ones.

I wish I had figured out the versatility of a 10mm years ago.  I have been firing a 12-gauge shotgun for four decades and a 10mm (with 18 different ammunition types and speeds) for just four weeks.  But who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?

Versatility – A Jack for All Trades2023-10-08T14:50:18-05:00

Bonnie and Clyde

Lately I have been reading a lot about the days of Bonnie and Clyde, and what we can learn from back then.

The country was a mess.  This “Public Enemy Era” spanned from 1931 through 1935, during the depths of the Great Depression that crushed the economy, and the Dust Bowl – a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the agricultural output of the American and Canadian prairies – that caused mass hunger.  10,000 banks went out of business, taking $3 billion of depositor’s life savings with them, leaving account holders penniless.  With 80% unemployment in some areas, those unfortunates would remain destitute, unless they took matters into their own hands, and some turned to crime.

Today, rampant government spending is out of control, leading to increasing inflation that steals buying power.  We have some wealthy people, but as I travel around the U.S. – my latest trek a 1,081-mile drive from Decatur, Illinois to Worcester, Massachusetts, I’ve seen a lot of help-wanted signs; undocumented illegal aliens working for far less than minimum wage; obscenely-high gas prices; rental cars that have over 40,000 miles on them and are in constant need of maintenance yet sometimes costing $100 a day; and infrastructure problems (read bad roads, run-down bridges) that will remain poor, because these big spending programs always end up targeting pet projects of the rich and voting constituencies of the lazy.

For the first two years – 1931-1933 – it was a stupid era.  Prohibition in the United States, beginning in 1920 and ending in 1933, was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages.  While some people regarded the attack on alcohol as a noble cause, an overwhelming number did not, and Prohibition single-handedly caused tens of millions of Americans to view the law as lacking any moral obligation to follow it; they became felons overnight and they felt no remorse at doing so.  This disregard for law and order became a cancer in society; one day citizens refused to follow Prohibition; the next they began to support organized crime to provide the illegal goods they wanted.

Today’s version of Prohibition aims at stripping Americans of their right to bear arms, another stupid idea.  Were it to get close to happening, tens of millions of us – maybe more – will become felons overnight, because we will not comply, and organized crime will start a shipping tsunami of firearms into the country, just like it did booze.

Bonnie and Clyde

For the first years of Bonnie and Clyde, most regular folks hated the police and were on the side of the renegades, even though they were a far cry from modern day Robin Hoods portrayed in movies.  It was only after several murders of police, including one trooper on his first day of the job and another scheduled to be married in three weeks before he was cut down by Clyde in cold blood – the bride-to-be wore her wedding dress to her fiancée’s funeral – that attitudes toward the police changed.

Today, police are equally disrespected – mostly in big cities from Portland to Atlanta.  I’d like to think that Champaign Police Department Officer Chris Oberheim didn’t die in vain, and it seems like many folks in central Illinois know that too, but this country is in a whole lot of trouble right now with its negative view of the “thin blue line”.  What doesn’t help is when senior FBI personnel start helping one political party against another, though.  That convinces many people that the law is unfairly enforced; today citizens may just mistrust high-level leaders of the FBI.  Tomorrow that mistrust, which often evolves to not cooperating with career FBI agents, can lead to the bureau being ineffective.  Lots of folks knew where Bonnie and Clyde were hiding out and operating, yet the stayed quiet.

There’s another takeaway from Bonnie and Clyde.  In our era of concealed carry and the ubiquitous Glock-this and Glock-that, maybe we put too much emphasis on pistolcraft – not that we shouldn’t be proficient with these weapons.  But Clyde Barrow didn’t terrorize people with a pistol; he did it with Browning Automatic Rifles, BARs, whose .30-06 rounds would go through one side of a car and out the other, killing anyone in between.  And when the law finally did catch-up with Bonnie and Clyde one morning on a Louisiana dusty dirt road, what put finis to the two marauders were a couple of Remington Model 8s, a BAR, a Colt Monitor, and some Remington Model 11 semi-automatic 12-gauge “riot guns”.

Texas Ranger Frank Hamer (played by Kevin Costner in the excellent movie The Highway Men), who led the posse that nailed Bonnie and Clyde, was a big believer in the old phrase, “A handgun is for fighting your way to a long gun you shouldn’t have left behind.”  While he was an excellent shot with a .45 Colt and a .44 Special, mostly it was a long gun that got Frank’s bacon out of the fire.  We might want to consider that today.  And the FBI may want to consider the public’s perception of them.

 

Bonnie and Clyde2023-10-08T14:47:35-05:00

The Battle of Algiers

Movie poster for The Battle of Algiers

What if I were to tell you that a movie, with a budget of only $800,000 made in 1966, was so profound that it significantly influenced revolutionaries throughout the world like Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Fidel Castro, the Black Panthers (as a training manual for violent uprising,) the Provisional Irish Republic Army, and the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front to such an extent that the 120-minute film was banned in France for five years, that the Israeli government banned the film until 1975 for fear that the emerging Palestine Liberation Organization would use it as an inspiration for attacks on Israelis, but on the other hand, the movie was even screened at the Pentagon by the Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict in 2003/2004 with respect to the insurgency in Iraq?

Director Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is a guidebook for how to build a secret organization (in this case the Algerian independence movement, National Liberation Front, Front de Libération Nationale, FLN) as the most lethal means of striking civilian targets, which often leads to a successful revolution.  Pontecorvo greatly details the methods of indoctrination in these groups – techniques that if most Chicago street gangs do not acknowledge where they learned them, they should be sued for plagiarism.

Scene from The Battle of Algiers

The classic film is based on events that actually took place during the 1954-1962 Algerian struggle for independence from France.  The action follows a small group of FLN rebels, and their charismatic leader, Ali La Pointe, who use all means at their disposal to induce the French to leave their country.  A petty criminal serving a two-year prison sentence in Algeria in 1954, Ali was recruited in the infamous Barberousse prison (US prisons are also hotbeds for terrorist recruitment) by FLN militants, and became one of the FLN’s most trusted lieutenants in Algiers, the capital of Algeria – until French security forces killed him there on October 8, 1957 in the Casbah.

The FLN, created in March 1954, merged numerous, separate opposing factions of the nationalist movement so as to better wage war against French colonial presence in Algeria.  A modern comparison would be if some overarching anarchist group in the U.S. formed and was able to subsequently unify: Antifa, Communist Party USA, Earth Liberation Front, La Raza, Youth Liberation Front, and so forth.  Add in American cells of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Hezbollah – all anti-American with a bloody history.  And what if they also united with basic criminal street gangs, super gangs like Los Zetas, Aryan Brotherhood, and Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and elements of Central and South American drug cartels?

You might say, “That couldn’t happen here,” but the FLN started small, initially with just twenty-two members, and an “exterior delegation” in Cairo, Egypt to solicit foreign support, including funding (there were George Soros’ back then too.)  They divided Algeria into five zones and placed a colonel in charge of each.  Their primary mission was to provide “ideological awareness” backed by violence, so for each Algerian killed by the security forces, a French citizen would be killed by the FLN.  The FLN organized as a cell-based pyramid structure, so a member only knew a maximum number of three other insurgents.  Thus, if an insurgent were captured and tortured, he could only give up a few fellow terrorists.  You’ll also see in the movie that the FLN followed the motto of “snitches get stitches.”

Through the use of terror, the FLN was able to persuade regular, non-violent Algerians, that not only were they NOT French, but that France had to renege on its core values.  Sound familiar?  Today’s anti-American anarchists stress hyphenated-Americans instead of American unity.  They spit on American core values such as the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and trample American history at every turn – attempting to stifle freedom of speech that defends American values.  Disagree with the mob and Facebook, Twitter or other social-disease media platforms ban you.  The Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del never had it so good.

The novel, The Centurions, written in 1960 by Jean Larteguy, presents much of the same subject.  The story, centering on some French Legionnaires, begins with the fall of the French fortress Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, and subsequently leads to Algeria.  It’s central theme is: how is war waged in a new global order, when the “age of heroics is over.”  I first read this book at West Point for a Revolutionary Warfare elective, and if you like to curl up with a good read, here’s one.

You can get both the movie and the book online.  Organize a Watch Party!  You can – and should – see this movie because America’s enemies, both foreign and domestic, almost certainly already have.

The Battle of Algiers2022-09-12T07:30:54-05:00

Don’t Look Up — Satellites

Osama bin Laden’s Compound — A Good Use of Satellites

What if a few men had a billion eyes?  What would we call them?  Well, we’re about to find out.  In one of my old jobs, I used to surf the net and pick out 20 articles per week, copy them, put them in seventeen binders and provide those binders to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard and fourteen other folks around Washington, DC.  All the articles were “open source” – unclassified – the key was knowing where to look for pieces of information they needed to make decisions, and probably wouldn’t get this info from their subordinates who processed data in traditional Washington ways, where sometimes the boss doesn’t find out what’s going on.  Think The Swamp.

Nowadays, sometimes I go geeky and surf around like the good old days, and I found this article from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which is full of geeky folks researching geeky things.  Its about satellites; how there are at least 768 commercial ones up there zooming around; how US federal regulations limit images taken by commercial satellites to a resolution of 25 centimeters, about the length of a man’s shoe; how their orbits pass over every place on Earth sometimes 15 times a day.  Then it discussed a company called BlackSky Global that promises to have their satellites fly over most major cities up to 70 times a day.  As MIT says: “That might not be enough to track an individual’s every move, but it would show what times of day someone’s car is typically in the driveway.”

Now go to Google Earth Pro.  Type in your address, and voila you’ll see your house from above.  But what is really interesting is it has a feature that shows you the overhead views beginning many years ago.  Look to see how the resolution gets better over time; what you couldn’t see in 1995, you sure can see in 2010; and what you couldn’t see in 2010, you can see now; that evolution isn’t going to stop.

That’s just commercial; military and national intelligence satellites (ours and other nations) have resolutions and linked recognition software that make commercial satellites seem tame.  In an open source, US astronomer Clifford Stoll,  former systems administrator at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, remarked that a really good satellite platform, orbiting at 155 miles up, could have a resolution of “a couple of inches.  Not quite good enough to recognize a face.”  But that disclosure was several years ago, and technology always marches on.

That’s just satellites.  What about ground imaging cameras?  Well, it is estimated that there are already 1 Billion ground imaging cameras on Earth.  That is one camera for every eight people.  You may well have some in your home security system, or the trail cameras you set up to spot that Boone and Crockett Club record buck you just “know” is out there.

However the revolution in electronic security is not in image producers; it is in image interpreters – the artificial intelligence (AI) systems that are lashed up with the cameras.  Let’s look at the Chinese, pardon the pun.  The security system for the city of Guiyang, about 3,500,000 people, has the image of every single resident.  The cameras read faces, and the AI estimates age, gender, and ethnicity and matches every face with an ID card that every Chinese must have.  Chinese engineer Yin Jun says that the system can “trace all your movements back one week in time.  We can match your face with your car…match you with your relatives and the people you’re in touch with.”

A recent exercise, monitored by the BBC, took seven minutes for the system to identify and surround a new visitor to Guiyang.  But it gets better.  It appears that AI now includes Emotion Recognition to track traits such as facial muscle movements, vocal tone, and body movements in order to infer a person’s feelings.  Perhaps that could be used to incarcerate a person before they commit a crime – arresting them for their thoughts!

A few months ago, we attended a wedding held outside.  During the service, I heard this buzzing above my head.  Thinking it was a hornet, I looked up, but it was a small drone taking photos of the wedding, mine included.  Then I wondered: what else is up there, so high no one would ever know it is there, or its purpose?  Was it also looking at me?  Does it know my name?  Does it know what I am thinking?

Don’t Look Up — Satellites2023-10-08T14:55:16-05:00

Dare to Dream

Luis Ángel Colón World Record Cuatro

Sometimes you run across a person with a special talent, and even if you don’t know that individual well, you want success for them.  Such is the case of Luis Ángel Colón, whom I met while researching for maybe a new novel on Puerto Rico.  He lives in a modern, wooden house high on a hill outside Barranquitas.  He built the house because that is what Luis does – build incredible things with wood.  Not only houses, he may be the best craftsman currently constructing the Cuatro Puertorriqueño.  Known as a Cuatro for short, it is Puerto Rico’s most popular melodic instrument, and is played in both secular and religious music.  It sort of looks like a violin, or more accurately a violin-shaped guitar.  The Cuatro originally had four double-strings (hence cuatro for four) but at the end of the nineteenth century a fifth was added as its popularity rose on the island.

Cuatro by Luis Ángel Colón

Luis’ Cuatros are wonderful instruments, but don’t take my word for it.  The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City [Accession Number: 2003.216.1] has one of Luis’ creations.  An artist himself, Luis is proud when Cuatro-players around the island tell him what a great instrument he has made for them.

But like almost all artists, Luis dreams big and at first that meant creating the world’s largest-playable Cuatros, which he did several years ago.  The result was a 30 foot-long, Puerto Rican cuatro that weighs 1.4 tons.  Up to 15 people can fit inside Luis’ giant instrument, which you can actually tune, and play its chords with a giant guitar pick.  However, Luis is not finished.  In addition to building a second house, crafting exquisite  regular-size Cuatros, and also producing the Guiro Clásico Puertorriqueño, Guiro, a hollowed out gourd, about sixteen inches long, that has been dried and treated so that it can be used as an instrument.  Notches are carved on one side of the gourd, and the musician uses a stick or tines to create various raspy tones.  Johnny Pacheco was a famous Guiro player.  Janis Joplin was a famous singer who tried to play the Guiro, they key word being tried.

Guiro by Luis Ángel Colón

“Do It Again,” by Steely Dan, has prominent Guiro tones, as does “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing,” by Stevie Wonder.  If you are a Santana fan, you know all about this instrument; “I Ain’t Got Nobody That I Can Depend On” is a great one, as is “Guajira.”

Luis’ Dream — A Cuatro Museum and Restaurant

However, Luis has his sights set higher…much higher.  He has begun to organize architectural drawings of an entire building shaped as a Cuatro, possibly solar powered, here in Puerto Rico, that might be able to serve as a combination Cuatro museum and restaurant (with dishes named after parts of the Cuatro) in a unique fusion of music and food.  Luis Colón just might have an idea for you.

Create your own dream by checking out Luis’s dreams.  If you are a guitar player, broaden your horizons with your own Cuatro, maybe even one built by him.  Play along with Stevie, or Carlos and Jorge Santana with your own Guiro – you can get a good one for a very reasonable price.

Or just maybe you want to spend some quality time down in the Caribbean and want to open a one-of-a-kind restaurant.

Dare to Dream2021-09-04T16:54:41-05:00

West Point, Class of 1974

1974

Admitted

1967 – 1

1968 – 1

1969 – 12

1970 – 819

Graduated – 833

Time at West Point:

Upon arriving at West Point in the summer of 1970, the question every new cadet tacitly pondered was whether they would serve in Vietnam at some point during their time in service.

The country was deeply divided over the war, and nationwide anti-war demonstrations came to a tragic climax with the killing of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970.

Despite division over the war, 1377 new cadets entered the Academy out of over 6,000 applicants. On his way to perform for the troops in Vietnam, Bob Hope and his entourage, stopped at West Point on December 15, 1970, for a special Christmas show. And on May 29, 1971, President Nixon visited the academy with a message of assurance that no graduates from the Class of 1974 would be deployed to Vietnam, although this news was a little late for our future First Captain Jack Pattison, who had fought on Hamburger Hill in that conflict as an enlisted man, before attending the Prep School and subsequently West Point.

French & Dad at Graduation; it had been a LONG way from Summer School for Chemistry

While most of the class members were on summer leave, a few to summer school, army orientation training, or airborne school, a federal appeals court ruled on June 30, 1972, that mandatory chapel was unconstitutional, thus ending a years-long tradition at West Point. On July 1, 1973, President Nixon fulfilled a re-election promise by ending the draft and ushering in the era of an all-volunteer army.

Distinguished scholars among the 833 graduates included Andrew Green and Thomas Downar recognized with the Hertz Foundation Award; Dwight Helton and Willis Marti awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship; Kerry Pierce awarded the Rhodes Scholarship; and Michael Reopel awarded a White House Fellowship. French was not distinguished, attending summer school in 1972 for Chemistry, and graduating number 724 of 833!

Dave Petraeus and fiancée at graduation

Environment upon Graduation:

The Class of 1974 entered a peacetime Army divided between draftees and enlistees who served in Vietnam, and volunteers who had no combat experience. Graduates were immediately challenged to address post-war issues such as low morale, racial tensions, and unit readiness as the Army transitioned from the Vietnam war to more defensive missions in Western Europe and South Korea. The class also provided exemplary leadership regarding the integration and development of women into combat support units. Missions and training broadened to include desert warfare in anticipation of conflicts in the Middle East.

Receiving Diploma from Superintendent, Lieutenant General William Knowlton. The “Supe” was probably more surprised than I was!

Career Highlights:

Members of the Class of 1974 served in assignments around the globe and played a key role in providing frontline combat leadership in the Gulf War (1990-1991), the Iraq War (2003-2011), and the Global War on Terror. No members of the Class were killed in action or died while in captivity. Twenty-five members of the Class became General Officers, including four 4-star generals, three 3-star, eleven 2-star, and seven 1-star. Completing over forty years of active service, GEN Martin “Marty” Dempsey served as the 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 1, 2011, until September 25, 2015. GEN Keith Alexander, serving in the United States Army for nearly forty years, served as director of the National Security Agency, chief of the Central Security Service, and commander of the United States Cyber Command. GEN David “Dave” Petraeus served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency after serving 37 years in the United States Army. Highlighting nearly thirty-seven years of service in the United States Army, GEN Walter “Skip” Sharp last served as the Commander, United Nations Command, Commander, ROK-US Combined Forces Command and Commander, U.S. Forces Korea. After retiring as a Colonel, Matthew S. “Matt” Klimow (who was Keith Alexander’s roommate at West Point) went into the U.S. State Department; his career there culminated as the U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan. Keith Alexander, Marty Dempsey, and Skip Sharp were each awarded the USMA Distinguished Graduate Award in 2016, 2017, and 2019, respectively.

West Point, Class of 19742023-06-21T15:00:52-05:00

In the Land of the Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is King

Henry .45 Long Colt

Sometimes you have everything you need in fighting a war.  Overwhelming troop strength; some kind of technological advantage; holding the high ground and a whole bunch of other factors make it a lot easier to defeat your opponent.  But sometimes, you just have to be a little bit better and you can win.  In regione caecorum rex est luscus is an old Latin saying that I’ve adopted for looking at things in a different way, but since I don’t speak Latin, “In the Land of the Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is King” will have to do.

For example, let’s just say that the politicians decide that semi-automatic pistols, semi-automatic rifles, and semi-automatic shotguns should be prohibited from civilian ownership.  If those types of weapons go away and that’s all you had before the laws took effect, you are now living blind in the self-defense world.

But even though, in our scenario, you do not have a semi-auto anymore, if you have revolvers as  handguns, lever-actions as a carbine/rifle, and a pump or double barrel shotgun, you may have a reduced capability (figuratively one eye instead of two), but you can defend yourself really well, if you are proficient in these older-style weapons.  And you aren’t limited to just one.

In fact, you will have significant advantages with these “less capable” weapons, but first let’s dispel a few myths.  There aren’t any zombies.  The odds of you having to defend your home against hundreds of firearm-equipped attackers are staggeringly low.  Two, almost any individual attacker will not go kamikaze on you after running through multiple hits to his body.  Pain deters; if it doesn’t, then just decline Novocain next time at the dentist.  And meth-heads have diminished combat capacity when they put that junk in their bodies.

Let’s take revolvers.  Most hold six rounds; a few snubbies hold only five; and newer models over the last fifteen years can hold up to seven or even eight (an S&W Model 617 holds ten .22LR.)  If you can’t hit center of mass on a guy’s chest with one of 6-7-8 rounds you haven’t practiced enough.  Its important you hit because reloading a double-action revolver – except for Jerry Miculek – is painfully slow.  And reloading a single-action revolver is lethally slow.  And revolvers generally have more “felt” recoil because they don’t have a slide eating up part of that.

That’s the sour news; now the good.  You can conceal small revolvers.  You have more caliber choices in revolvers than you do in semis.  .357 Magnum comes to mind, and yes there is a Desert Eagle but those are really expensive and almost nobody has one and after a ban on semis, you won’t either.  But you can easily have a .357 revolver, which also will shoot .38s and .38 Plus, which means you have a greater chance to find ammo in an ammo-shortage era.  Ruger, Colt, Smith and Wesson and others make some pretty good models that I would stake my life on.

That’s because in a self-defense fight, you can’t afford any technical problems.  Most encounters will not be under optimum conditions (read low-level light, cold temperature – so you are wearing bulky gloves – initial surprise disadvantage, etc.)  The last thing you want is a failure to extract, failure to feed, or failure to fire – all three of which can happen in a semi-auto.  A failure to fire (firing pin hits the primer in the rear of the case but the powder fails to detonate) can happen in a revolver, but if that rare event happens (especially in factory ammo; I would never trust my life to ammo I had reloaded), you just pull the trigger again.  No need to re-rack it.  There are a few guys online that assert revolvers are less reliable.  Go ahead and believe that if you want.  But in this scenario that you can’t have a semi-auto, you basically can have a revolver, or nothing, so make your choice.  In regione caecorum rex est luscus.

Oops; I forgot.  There are Bond Arms derringers that are obviously not revolvers; I have fired Bonds in .410, .45LC, 9mm, and .38/.357 and all were really well-made and fill a small niche in anyone’s arsenal.  A very small niche that might be counter-car-jacking or something like that, because they have just a two-round capacity and are also slow to reload.  But since you can buy replacement barrels that all work on the same frame, they may be the most flexible firearm to have during ammo shortages because of that.  In fact, Bond now even has a derringer called the Cyclops — and it fires a .45-70 !!!!!  The Cyclops features a 4.25″ stainless steel barrel that is bored out as a single-shot to add weight and comfort and also sports their new, proprietary B6 grips which fill the hand properly and lend to a pleasant shooting experience.  I guess we’ll have to define “pleasant”!!!

Now to carbines/rifles.  So if we can’t have a semi-auto, might want to consider a lever-action.  They come in a lot of calibers but seem limited in 9mm and .45ACP.  Why am I singling those two out?  Well, if you have your rifle in the same caliber as your revolver it makes it logistically easier on you.  Henry weapons generally hold about ten rounds give or take.  They used to be a pain in the rear to reload in the tubular magazine but maybe the gals and guys at Henry anticipated this situation and now many models also have side loading gates.  Also, when you have a 16 to 20-inch barrel, rounds like .357 and .44 pick up a whole lot more velocity and become even more lethal.  If you don’t care for a Henry, Marlin or Winchester are great also.

And most of the optics you can put on a semi will work on a lever-action, especially newer ones that have Picatinny rails on them.  For shotguns, you go through the same logical process; heck, treat yourself and have a pump, an over-under and a double barrel side by side.  Or a really cool German or Austrian combination weapon that might be an over-under shotgun/rifle like something from Ludwig Borovnik or Johann Fanzoj.  You’ll need to get one used, and you’ll need to be REALLY nice to your better half, and when you see the prices you’ll know why!

With weapons getting scarcer in stores try GunBroker.com, GunsAmerica.com, or Gunsinternational.com so at least you can see price ranges and determine what’s reasonable.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to have this discussion.  But we don’t live in an ideal world; in fact, we never did, because life isn’t that way.  So make the best of it and be that one-eyed shooter when a lot of folks are going to be “blind” because they haven’t prepared.

In the Land of the Blind, The One-Eyed Man Is King2023-10-08T15:04:30-05:00

Night Vision (2)

View through a Thermal Sight

In Night Vision (1) we started discussing night vision.  We’ll continue that now, as there are a lot of threats you may run into that require even more sophisticated equipment than just Night Infrared (IR).  Or as Bela Lugosi remarked as Count Dracula: “Listen to them, the children of the night.  What music they make!”

Today it’s all about detecting HEAT through Thermal Imaging.  All objects absorb, reflect, and sometimes transmit energy at different levels.  Different materials give off heat or cold energy at different rates.  Thermal imaging devices detect small differences in heat; they do not require visible light to produce an image, so can be used day and night (unless the manufacturer says not to in daylight.)  Mammals generate heat; birds and reptiles absorb heat, so all are often warmer than their surroundings, and can be detected at greater distances with thermal imaging than with basic night vision.  Cars, trucks, and boats generate heat.  With thermals, you see engines and exhaust pipes brightest, because they are the hottest; if a car has been outside on a sunny day, the hood and roof will stick out.  Tires and brakes are often warm from friction.

Thermal devices often have a switch that in one position the warm/hot image is bright white, and the surrounding is dark, or the picture is reversed, and the warm/hot image is black.  You may  have a third option of color where objects are in red, orange, and purple tones.  Different targets show up best in certain options for me, so try and get one with all three, because we all see differently.

The more you play with thermal sights, the better you’ll understand what you are seeing (i.e., a mammal’s chest has more heat than its ears or tail.)  Thermal sights often have zoom magnification, but sometimes at higher magnification the image blurs a bit; you’ll figure out the right power by using it.

Sixty years ago, U.S. Army scientist John Johnson developed a system to evaluate thermal sight capabilities by three measurements:

Detection: detecting whether an object is present.  Usually expressed in yards or meters (for our purposes meters and yards are about the same.)  “Something is there, and it bears watching” is my equivalent.  The better the device, the further this is and can approach 3,000 yards.

Recognition: recognizing which class an object belongs to, such as a house, boat, truck, animal, or man.  This will be less than detection range.  In a 3,000 yard detection range device, recognition range may be 1,300 yards.

Identification: identifying descriptive details of the object, whether a vehicle is a car, Jeep,  pickup or minivan.  With practice, for a human, you can often determine number of men, if they appear in uniform, and if they appear to be holding rifles.  In our 3,000 yard detection range example, identification range may be 700 yards.

For some excellent info on thermals, go to www.atncorp.com.

Now it’s time to answer your first question: what do you want this thermal device to do?  Hunting feral hogs or vermin on a farm?  Detecting would-be criminals?  Detecting heat leaks in buildings?  Power line maintenance technicians locate overheating joints, and sometimes faulty electrical wiring.  Firefighters use thermals to see through smoke, find people and localize fire hotspots.  They are also common tools used by many home inspectors; even home-buyers are realizing that thermals can save them thousands later.

Will you be stationary in your activity or moving?  A thermal sight can get bulky; if you are stationary, that is less of an issue.  What is your climate?  Rain and heavy fog can severely limit the range of thermal imaging because light scatters off of droplets of water.

Since we are often looking at $1,500-$4,500 for a thermal device (sometimes more), we need an acquisition strategy.  If you need more than a night sight (IR), delaying thermal a little bit may allow you to buy a better capability later.  And consider buying both night vision (IR), and thermal from the same manufacturer, so accessories will almost always fit both.  For a thermal sight there is one more consideration.  Find a legitimate business use for the thermal.  Then toward the end of the year determine if the tax break of the thermal is more advantageous this year or whether you should buy it early next year.

Either way, remember In regione caecorum rex est luscus.  With a thermal sight, you will be able to see an enemy at night much, much better than he will be able to see you, if he can see you at all.  Let him be the blind man.

Night Vision (2)2023-10-08T15:05:48-05:00

Night Vision (1)

IR Image at 89 yards at night

Show me the man or woman who says that they are not afraid of walking alone in the dark of night and I will show you a fool, a liar, or someone with night vision equipment.  Because in the dark, there’s a lot of opportunity to run into things that go bump in the night.

Flashlights are great; everyone should have one in the car, when out walking, and in several areas of your house – with spare batteries and periodic function checks.  If you have a flashlight and a bad guy does not, you have an edge, with one exception: as soon as you pop it on, everybody knows where you are.

Maybe it’s time to get an extra CAPABILITY rather than buy your ninth pistol, so let’s shed  light on seeing at night.  Were it possible that I could tell you exactly what brand of night vision equipment to buy, it would be easy, but I can’t!  This is because each of us “sees” differently, and then our brains “translate” that vision in their own way, so what works for me may or may not work the same for you.  In an ideal world, before buying you could field test night vision equipment, but in reality you probably can’t.  You may find a video online showing the view through a device, but in the absence of handling one for a night, you need to know some fundamentals.

Today we’re visiting night vision scopes, binoculars, or monocular (basically half a bino) that rely on some ambient light, such as moonlight and starlight.  Many come with internal infrared (IR) illuminators, or an external IR which looks like flashlights but transmits light that cannot be seen by the naked eye, but can be seen by the night vision device.  Within range, you’ll see phenomenal details.

Night vision devices with IR have been around a while.  The Germans fielded one, aptly called “Vampire” in 1945, but its problem was weight.  The rifle weighed 11 lb.; the scope and IR source 5 lb.; and the battery and backpack 30 lb.  Today, this capability generally weighs 2-4 lb.

Looking through night vision (IR), you generally see images in shades of gray (such as above of the wild hog) or green.  An animal’s eyes will often glow.  You can see hair, fur, movement, but it is not a pure optical view like a daylight scope; you are looking at something like a tiny TV screen that shows the image.  Generally, you see things a few hundred yards away, depending on the power of the IR light.

Night vision IR can “see” cars, boats, buildings, and trucks.  You see animals on the edges of cornfields, but generally not too far inside the cornfield.  Night vision IR devices have zoom magnification, but sometimes at higher magnification the image blurs a bit; you’ll figure out the right power and what you are seeing by using it.

What do you want this device to do?  Hunting feral hogs at night?  Looking for vermin around a grain silo?  Detecting would-be criminals bent on breaking and entering?  Detecting heat leaks (thermal can; night vision can’t) in insulation?  Finding your pet dog if he runs outside?  Looking for rats and mice does not require long range.  But concerning criminals in a rural area, the further out you see them, the longer you have to make a decision what to do.

Many devices have GPS, are Wi-Fi capable, can record what you see and transmit that in near real time to your associates – or even the police.  Many have range finders and one-shot zeroing.  Some can withstand recoil up to a .375 H&H or .416 Barrett, but verify before you buy.  And you can use them on a weapon or off.  Go to www.atncorp.com.  Their videos are typical of possibilities, especially the one on ATN RADAR.

Will you be stationary in your activity or moving?  A night vision scope, with an external IR, on a rifle can get bulky; if you are stationary, that is less of an issue.

Since we are often looking at $500-$1,000 for a night vision device (sometimes more); and $1,500-$4,500 for a thermal device (sometimes more), we need an acquisition strategy.

Consider buying night vision (IR) first.  As you’ll read next month, advances in thermal technology occur frequently; delay buying thermal may allow you to buy a better capability later.  Plain night vision does not seem to be making these rapid advances: IR is IR, and will be less expensive.

Most importantly In regione caecorum rex est luscus.  With night vision IR, you will be able to see better than almost any adversary out there.

 

Night Vision (1)2023-10-08T15:07:19-05:00
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