Just how out of tune are the children of Progressivism?

This concept that 'Progressivism', that political movement to centralize private functions in the State, has been around since the State was first invented.  When there wasn't much in the way of private ownership of anything, the early States took it all.  Ancient Hydraulic Empires in China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and Central to South America all centralized functions around the State or Empire.  The use of waterways and early water power for navigation, transport and some larger scale projects meant that the only organization that could handle those things was the State.

The City State was an outgrowth of non-large waterway civilization, although most often associated with coastal waters and islands, they also popped up along trade routes, near mines and at oases.  City States did not depend on centralized works and administration but on this thing known as 'trade'.  Such trade was built up by diversity of production from a resident population and they would trade such goods they made or grew with others who wished to exchange their goods in trade for those produced elsewhere.  These could grow into Empires, like the Hittite and Assyrian, or form confederations, leagues and other such new forms of government, typical of the Greeks.  Hydraulic Empires did have trade craftsmen, miners, masons, farmers and such, but the centrality of the major river waterways centralized authority so that all goods came under the overview of the State.  Items for trade did build the interior of Empires and allowed external trade to flourish, but that was done with the cognizance and permission of the State. 

In the City States, due to their diversity, there was no centralizing authority, and even the Hittites dispersed powers to provincial governors and mayors of large cities to ensure that they had indigenous protections against foreign forces.  The Empire could, and would respond if it was able to, but time and distance meant that forward forces needed to be present in some form as a part of civil society.  Unlike the large centralized armies of Pharaoh or a Sun King, say, a dispersed army is generally weak, as it is not concentrated, but it is locally supported, which gives it moral and local knowledge as a benefit.  If local forces could hold up a larger force for a few weeks, then the Empire could respond with better and more numerous forces (or often just more numerous).  Thus when the Egyptians faced the Hittites, the Egyptians had extremely numerous and skilled forces, but centrally directed, and they faced a foe willing to go through multiple fall-back positions and perform supply line attacks with small forces, fending off the larger force until the Empire could respond.  At Kadesh the treaty there puts the battle, a long multi-week affair, at a draw.  In fact both forces lost: the Hittites had picked up a plague that would cause the downfall of the Old Kingdom and the Egyptians were so spent that when the Sea Peoples arrived, they could only fight a defensive action.

These armies were composed of different types and styles of troops, and the supply lines for the centrally supplied troops of Egypt was long and specialized, to meet up with their style of warfare.  The Hittites supplied a varied force and those that were local had no distance, at all, to get re-supplied with equipment, and any of the more centralized forces that utilized similar tactics and equipment were also better supplied.  Part of that is fighting on the defensive with interior lines: the defender gets better supplies.  The other part, that of adapting to local conditions, is a by-product of the way the civilization was created from a number of smaller City States and Kingdoms.  And if Kadesh happened after another major campaign, the decade of ravaging the coast around Troy plus outlying islands, then the collapse of the trade system that had been present meant that the Hittites and the rest of the Eastern Med. was put at dire peril as the City States broke from each other due to loss of funds, personnel, a constant drain of food supplies and, from that, a decreasing population.  This haphazard system that was made up as it went along fell, took the Hittites, Greek City States and other minor States with it, and nearly toppled Egypt and Babylon through attacks towards the former ravaging State farms and the cut-off of trade with the latter, which was a way point on east-west trade.

That was the last time a large set of centralized States or Empires survived the collapse of a major trade system locally.

It was circa 1100-700 BC.

After that the collapse of centralized trade empires, like the Macedonian/Greek, Roman, and Mayan civilizations would bring their own problems and cause a localized breakdown of States to less over-arching and more nearby control.  The slow collapse of the Roman Empire, West to East, between 900 -1500 AD did just that across the old holdings of the Empire, and the rise of the Ottoman Empire would see one of the last of the old style Empires arise only to slowly collapse inwards due to corruption and inability to handle trade well.

This stuff is all history and pretty old at that.

Now compare those motions of the old Empires and States to this thumbnail overview of Progressivism by Michael Barone ( Source: Washington Examiner, 31 MAR 2010):

The Progressives have always assumed that people needed safety nets and would welcome dependence on government. The public's clear rejection of the Democratic health care bills has shown that this assumption was unwarranted. Americans today prefer independence to dependence on government, just as they did 200 years ago.

All this was supposed to have been consigned to the past long ago. The Progressives of the early 1900s -- Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, New Republic founder Herbert Croly -- argued that in an industrial era of mass production and giant businesses, ordinary people were helpless and needed government's guiding hand. It would be more efficient, they argued, for centralized, disinterested experts to administer national institutions than to let chaotic markets operate freely and to observe the Constitution's horse-and-buggy limits on government power. The Founders were out of date.

Feel 'repressed' by Big Business?  'Helpless'?  Unable to cope with them?

That concept of America, itself, is rather dated to a period where modern communications structures had not gotten in place.  It was only somewhat suited to the latter 19th century, but even then the telegraph and later telephone and radio would start to shift the basis of understanding on how information about these large companies was moved around and understood.  Fast forward just to the 1970's and you get the 'mutual fund' which advertises for individuals to invest for fractional shares in a fund that invests widely across a set of industries.  Multiple different funds address multiple sectors of the economy and you can help in the ownership and make money off of them through investing in the economy.  Early and conservatively managed funds from Vanguard popularized this notion, and between 1972 and the mid-1980's the concept of using mutual fund investments as part of an Individual Retirement Account was born.  Thus demonstrated skill in understanding market segments could be analyzed not only in detail, but in grosser funds covering business sectors.

With that the idea of being 'repressed'  or 'helpless' against Big Business started to make less and less sense as individuals were cumulatively investing and making money off of these very same Big Businesses.  And small business.  And venture capital investments.  And bond fund investments, which had started the whole thing off even before Vanguard.  And overseas investments.  You could invest by company type, by market type, by company size, by company location... you now had the opportunity to start controlling your own destiny based on the success or failure of businesses and you were not exposed to just one company going up or down, but widely distributing funds across entire sectors so as to help insulate your investment against bad management at any single firm.  Or any single fund.

And that hasn't gotten us to the 1990's.

Still in the 1980's the PC revolution placed computers onto desktops and one of the foremost applications for it, and the reason so many businesses wanted them, was VisiCalc.  It was not a word processor but a spreadsheet.  With an interactive spreadsheet you could take those old, dusty formulas out of economics textbooks and apply them to your business situation and see if the damned things actually worked or not!  And once the $3,000 price barrier went down to Moore's Law, by the end of the 1980's these were becoming home PCs, with many of them running Lotus 1-2-3 and then Microsoft Excel.  You, as a savvy individual willing to learn some automated tools, could use the market data, trot out those lovely formulas from dusty economic texts and then apply them to larger parts of the market and make your own investing decision.

When the first person who had a PC with a spreadsheet to help them analyze the market as a personal investor actually did that, they were utilizing more information power, processing power, business acumen, and skills than Carnegie, Rockefeller, Standard Oil... combined for their era when they were Monopolies.  That date probably was in the early 1980's, and possibly even back in the late 1970's with early Apple II machines.

The gulf between how ancient states stood up and fell, and why, is well known and documented.

A concept of an eternally helpless individual against the power of a mere COMPANY is ridiculous on its face given how mankind creates new tools to manage our affairs as individuals.  Centralized State institutions of the philanthropic or 'good' kind depends on a subservient and dependent people who cannot imagine themselves taking care of themselves.  Michael Barone sums up these two parts of the massive fault line in western political ideology as it appears in the US as follows:

The Declaration of Independence's proclamation that "all men are created equal" with "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" has proved to be happily elastic. It still sings to us today, thanks to the struggles and sacrifices of many Americans who gave blacks and women the equality denied to them in 1776.

In contrast, the early Progressives' talk of an "industrial age" and an outmoded Constitution sounds like the language of an age now long past. Their faith in centralized planning seems naive in a time when one unpredicted innovation after another has changed lives for the better.

The Marxist theme of when the proletariat rises up and takes over the means of production sounds pretty damned outmoded when the workers are investing in the means of production so as to profit from it.  In an era with lawsuit happy lawyers willing to take on ANY Big Business and Class Action Lawsuits that go after abusive companies and oligopolies, this funny idea of trying to centralize ANY aspect of life because it is 'threatened' by Big Business is ludicrous.  You, as an individual, have more legal leverage and ability to tie a large corporation in knots than any other person in any era of any Nation in all of history. 

You are one of the most powerful people who have ever lived in the realms of economics, law and understanding of society.  A veritable god amongst men.

When 'the poor' have a problem of 'obesity' in a more decadent era that would just mean they were getting fattened up for ritual slaughter to some god that had to get appeased on an annual basis.  Today it means you wear $150 sneakers, have $40 jeans, $30 shirts, $20 sunglasses, $40 watch, $10 baseball cap you can't wear right, watch a color TV worth $400, have a $300 DVR or similar, have a $80 iPod with $250 worth of music, a good place to live in that is subsidized, a washing machine and drier for $600 or so, refrigerator for $100, stove for $350, a dishwasher for $150 and probably a fancy $60 coffee maker.  I'm sorry but this is not a poor person who gets subsidized food to the point where they can purchase junk food and get obese.

That is not a poor, helpless victim of Big Business but someone who has greater benefit from ALL BUSINESS than any person who ever lived before 1930.  Which includes all of the big capitalists that Progressives bitched about.

And this poor person pays NO INCOME TAX.

Say, maybe if they cut back on the lifestyle clothing, suffered with an older TV, and did without an amenity or two they could save up some money and PAY for their OWN healthcare! Because they are not suffering the ill-effects of not contributing to society, far from it.  If anyone is 'repressing' them it is the bureaucracy that makes not contributing an attractive lifestyle, encourages people to stay in poverty to get subsidies and goodies, and then puts ZERO penalty on them when they can't be bothered to spend all those goodies on watching their food intake and generally taking care of themselves.

What these poor folks need is a liberation movement to free them from the shackles of government that wishes to keep them oppressed to the benefit of the ruling class of elites.  Because it is the elites, thinking they are doing 'good' by handing the poor other people's money, that are doing the harm to society by trying to remove the burden we each have to care for our fellow man.

The poor must be saved and liberated from the chains of subservience. Those chains created and cared for by government.

Their precious liberty and freedom is at stake. And so is that of the rest of the Nation and each and every single citizen.

 

So which sounds like the future?

The political ideology that tells you that you are a weak, poor, miserable creature that needs to either have your money or liberty taken from you so as to have government decide how to run your life.  You need guidance, government will do that for you because you are incapable of it and you will do as you are told.

Or.

The political ideology that says that each individual is a mighty force in and of themselves with their self-evident liberty and rights allowing each man and woman to decide their own course and take in their hands, in a mighty grip, the course of industries and their Nation for the betterment of all and the disparagement of none.  You need no guidance and government had best get out of the way when it tries to stop YOU from leading YOUR life when YOU harm NONE.

 

One is the path to empires and their collapse.

The other is the path to freedom and liberty, to keep empires from happening so that mankind can thrive and prosper.

One sounds like the future, the other like the buggy whip of an ideology long past its expiration date.

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What you don't know, and neither does your Congresscritter

Yes the vim, vigor and vituperation surrounding the Health Care Bill has been astounding!  Well, mostly on the against side of things, on the for side it has been the usual platitudes of 'how much this needs to be done' and 'how good it is' and 'you will find out what is in it after it is passed'.  Unfortunately that latter is paraphrased from the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and if that had been spoken by, say, some Fifth Earl West San Francisco it would sound like an aristocrat explaining that the workings of government are just too complex for the 'little people' to understand.

Companies are pretty fast off the mark in 'understanding' things as their bottom line is something they care about, so they adjust the fastest to try and absorb the hits from changes in the tax code so as to properly structure their companies as to make a profit.  Any profit.  Thus the following are now taking charges to their bottom line this year to try and stay ahead of the curve:

1) Caterpillar Inc. - $100 million (Source: WSJ 25 MAR 2010)

2) Deere (of John Deere) - $150 million (Source: CNBC 25 MAR 2010)

3) AT&T - $1 billion (Source: Yahoo News 26 MAR 2010 article by Barbara Ortutay)

4) AK Steel (mentioned in the Yahoo News article above)

5) Valero Energy (ibid.)

6) 3M Co. - $85 - $90 million (ibid.)

That Yahoo News article is just full of fun stuff like this passage:

Under the 2003 Medicare prescription drug program, companies that provide prescription drug benefits for retirees have been able to receive subsidies covering 28 percent of eligible costs. But they could deduct the entire amount they spent on these drug benefits — including the subsidies — from their taxable income.

The new law allows companies to only deduct the 72 percent they spent.

AT&T also said Friday that it is looking into changing the health care benefits it offers because of the new law. Analysts say retirees could lose the prescription drug coverage provided by their former employers as a result of the overhaul.

Changes to benefits are unlikely to take effect immediately. Rather, the issue would most likely come up as part of contract negotiations between the company and unions representing its employees and retirees. AT&T is the largest private employer of union workers in the U.S.

Hey!  I thought the 2003 Medicare Bill was too big for a Nation at war, that we couldn't afford it, and that the shift to private plans, being something the government could allow also means the government could fool with it in the future.

Which it has done.

And if you like your health care plan and are getting it from an employer?  Its either changing, benefits are being reduced or just going away... so forget about keeping it.  That promise was a lie as anyone who looks at the system could tell you when you start doing wholesale changes to mandates and such.

Now a bit more for the above on folks losing benefits due to this bill from AP via Google 26 MAR 2010 in an article by John Funk:

The health care law signed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday prohibits companies from writing off the subsidies starting in 2011, meaning they will no longer be able to deduct them from their taxable income.

For example, if a company spent $100 on benefits, including a $28 government subsidy, it could write off the full $100 on its taxes under the old rules. The new rules would allow the same company to write off only $72.

The follow-up health care bill to reshape parts of the overhaul would delay the changes until 2013.

As many as 1.5 million to 2 million retirees could lose the drug benefits provided by their former employer because of the tax changes, according to a study by the Moran Company, a health care consulting firm.

James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, said between 6 million and 7 million retirees currently get the benefits. But the number of companies offering them has been dwindling for years.

Generally, retirees would prefer to stay with prescription drug coverage provided by their companies as opposed to enrolling in a Medicare Part D plan, said Marilyn Moon, a health care economist with the nonpartisan American Institutes for Research.

She said most of the company-sponsored plans are more generous and almost none have the coverage gap that comes with Part D plans.

Private plans more generous than what the government can do?  And they keep the retired better cared for without having to spend US taxpayers money?  And the benefits are more generous than what the US government can do under Medicare?

Say, why is Medicare such a great system for retirees if it is stingy, can't fully reimburse medications, costly and, oh, going broke with the approaching retirement of the 'Baby Boom' generation? Because it is what people will be falling back to, once the bite of this stuff fully takes place.  Notice that most of that starts to disappear just before an election year and then fully in place after it?

But the kicker is what those companies that DON'T change their benefits will do, and its a real kicker:

Consumers Energy, a Michigan gas and electric company with 2.9 million customers, said it will not take a big first-quarter charge because, like most utility companies, it can try to recover the added costs from its customers through rate hikes.

It has got to suck to be in MI with such bad tax codes and businesses fleeing Detroit that the city wants to turn some of the abandoned lots back into farmland (Source: AP via Washington Times 09 MAR 2010) .  Costs too much to turn the Motor City into the Farm City, however, so get used to vacant lots and abandoned buildings in Detroit for the foreseeable future.  Just watch RoboCop and you will get the idea, there.  So if you live in Detroit you will pay for the unsubsidized health benefits of Consumers Energy via rate hikes in gas and electric bills.  And through increased federal taxes, too.

Ed Morrisey at Hot Air (25 MAR 2010) hosted a video clip of Bill O'Reilly trying to get a straight answer on who collects the penalties if you don't enroll in Obamacare and he also put up the bill so you could search it yourself.  He came up with the IRS on p. 345 of the bill under its Section 5000A powers given to it by Congress in 1986.  Dutifully I looked that up:

From Title 26 (26 USC 5000) which is under Subtitle D – Miscellaneous Excise Taxes – Chapter 47 Certain group health plans, which has this as its taxing provision:

Sec. 5000. Certain group health plans

(a) Imposition of tax

There is hereby imposed on any employer (including a self-employed person) or employee organization that contributes to a nonconforming group health plan a tax equal to 25 percent of the employer’s or employee organization’s expenses incurred during the calendar year for each group health plan to which the employer or employee organization contributes.

There you go, Section 5000A of Title 26!  So if you get income that isn't employment income, say you get unemployment benefits or are rich and live on the earnings of off-shore accounts, you don't have to comply.  You have just gotta love how the very poor and very rich are BOTH able to get away from this junk, but the middle class gets screwed.  But don't worry, we Daniel Foster on 26 MAR 2010 at NRO (h/t: Morgen Richmond at BigGovernment)has found out that whatever the bill may say in one place, it might just contradict in another as found in the Joint Committee on Taxation on 21 MAR 2010 on p. 33 :

The penalty applies to any period the individual does not maintain minimum essential coverage and is determined monthly. The penalty is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code.68 The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

Yes, that's right, there is no penalty for not getting a health care plan that can be assessed against you.  Basically its 'pretty please sign up or if you want to pay a fine you can but if you don't that is a-ok, too'.  Thus we will get 16,500 brandy-new IRS agents to... send you imploring letters to please, please, pretty please get health care and, if you could, send some cash to the IRS for your trouble, would ya?

Oh, joy!

Oh, rapture!

Then at the CampaignSpot at NRO on 24 MAR 2010 Jim Geraghty found the tampon tax:

b) TAXABLE MEDICAL DEVICE.—For purposes of this section— (1) IN GENERAL.—The term "taxable medical device" means any device (as defined in section 201(h) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) intended for humans. (2) EXEMPTIONS.—Such term shall not include— (A) eyeglasses, (B) contact lenses, (C) hearing aids, and (D) any other medical device determined by the Secretary to be of a type which is generally purchased by the general public at retail for individual use.

Yes and in that latter category is: tampons.  That sort of thing was brought up months ago... last year around this time if memory serves, but Harry Reid decided to keep such language in the bill.  Say, you can get a pacemaker, but if you need special lenses to see your way around the house, you gotta shell out for those through the nose. PLUS 2.3%  Good job!

From AP via Hot Air on 24 MAR 2010:

Hours after President Barack Obama signed historic health care legislation, a potential problem emerged. Administration officials are now scrambling to fix a gap in highly touted benefits for children.

Obama made better coverage for children a centerpiece of his health care remake, but it turns out the letter of the law provided a less-than-complete guarantee that kids with health problems would not be shut out of coverage.

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday.

Yes the 'For The Children' folks who pushed this from Congress were lying.  Young adults are under that too, so sorry.

It was such an important thing to do, they forgot to do it.

I am sure, very, very sure, that the Harry Reid Bill to bring us Obamacare will be chock-a-block with goodies like this because this landmark legislation was so important, so damned necessary, and had to do so very much that no one in Congress could bother to read it.

Just like the 'stimulus' which hasn't stimulated a damn thing save the pocketbooks of Congressional cronies.

I really do think that such behemoth bills should be read out on both floors of the Chambers of Congress.

So that it goes completely on record as having been read out so there are no excuses, no blathering, NOTHING that can be used to defend the passage of such bills.

It is one thing to have a bleeding heart.

It is quite another to slit one's wrists to prove just how much you care.

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Hitting the target, but missing the mark

Or: Something President Obama is doing right, but not fully.

From Hot Air came a post on Leon Panetta talking about how Predator strikes are damaging al Qaeda and that al Qaeda may have to go to a 'lone gunman' form of terrorism.  Part of the  problem with al Qaeda is that it is not a highly centralized system for terror attacks: Hambali, as an example, didn't need bin Laden or Zawahiri to approve his operations which have killed many in Indonesia.  The highly integrated, top-down directed attacks are a hallmark of al Qaeda, but so are car bomb factories set up by purely local operatives in Iraq.  For every Red Mosque in Pakistan you get a no-name, small mosque in the Caribbean or South America generating small amounts of income and recruits.  al Qaeda went from core group systems, in the early 1990's, that had to work with other groups to stage attacks (like the 1993 WTC bombing) and then took a page from Aum Shin Rikyo's Sarin Gas Attack in Tokyo to plan and execute tighter and nastier plans.  Yet their small scale capability inside Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir demonstrate purely local terrorism and their branching out to Hambali and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines shows the affiliate/franchise type of operation, with the attacks in Madrid being of that type and hard to directly trace to anyone.

Keeping that in mind, I responded at HA thusly, all spelling and syntax errors kept intact for the amusement of the audience:

It is damned good that the Predator strikes are happening in coordination with the Pakistani take-downs. These are not unrelated as someone realizes that you cannot win a ground war from the air: you need ground forces for clean-up and to take advantage of a disorganized foe.

That is a strategy, the Predator strikes are tactics for the Af-Pak theater.

Of greater worry in Af-Pak is the non-al Qaeda, non-Taliban, cross-functional ‘Shadow Army’ that is becoming a cross-terrorist organization able to garner support from local groups and regional operators, like Gulbudden Hekmatyar. In targeting aQ/Talibe we are letting this new cross-group go unmolested as it has diverse means of support beyond the external. It is good that some of the most capable of the aQ/Talibe/Mehsud organizations are being taken down and out. I have heard nothing on Hekmatyar’s organization that stretches from China to London.

In Yemen we also have some on-the-ground support from the government, but it has proven to be an incompetent government willing to let known terrorists go either officially or unofficially through not following up prison escapes. Like the leader of the USS Cole attack. Again that is trying to use the air assets to enable the ground assets, but the coordination is not so hot there.

Then there is the slow return of al Qaeda to Somalia via the Islamic Courts Union. They seem to have gotten help from terrorists coming from… the US, Minnesota in particular. When we worked with the Ethiopians on getting the ICU chased out by utilizing air and naval assets, we unfortunately left open the quick jaunt to KSA where many ICU members fled to. Too bad we couldn’t get KSA’s cooperation on doing anything about that. Additionally the Somali minority in places like Northern Kenya have proven to have good hiding places and recruiting agents for the ICU/al Qaeda.

The ‘lone gunman’ strategy is not new to al Qaeda, either. Part of my looking at low-level activities when many low-level operatives were caught before doing anything is seeing why these who are not ‘professional’ can be quite dangerous with a minimal amount of help. And not via high value items or training, either. President Bush did a good job going after some of the most noxious enablers and helping others to do so, like Victor Bout and Monzer al Kassar, both extremely able supporters for the right cash or cause. They are just examples of the big ticket traffickers, and for each of those there are ten or so at the next rung who might not be able to get you SAMs but can get you Chinese attack helicopters.

After that things get dicey in the Caribbean as al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood (often working together), KSA radical clerics, Iranian clerics and some splinter groups have targeted that area for recruitment and new ‘lone gunman’ style operations in the past. While they may seem more comical than effective, stopping a small splinter group planning on hijacking a LNG carrier and detonating it in Hartford or possibly Boston is not only chilling but a typical ’small unit’ operation of under 5 people with only a few weapons and modicum of explosives necessary to rupture the containment of the LNG. Be a nasty thing to wake up to, a few square blocks of waterfront Hartford or Boston gone flat.

‘Lone gunman’ does not mean low casualty and does mean much more inventive, if less well skilled. They don’t have to be ‘Professionals’, just able and effective… once. It is not al Qaeda’s preferred mode of operations, but they have done with it in the past to ‘lie low’. They really do mean to wage war upon us, and all of civilization so as to get their way. They declare themselves enemy of mankind and want to be its rulers. Never forget these things.

al Qaeda does not operate alone and while it contributes some functionality to the terror organizations in Pakistan, it is not their leader.  The 'Shadow Army' has stood up from components of the Taliban, al Qaeda, Mehsud family fighters (or Lashkars), Lashkar e Toiba (or whatever their current name is), plus parts of Gulbudden Hekmatyar's Hizbi-i-Islami being run out of a refugee camp in Pakistan.  Together they offer cross-functional cooperation for operations, training, personnel and funding.  Saudi funds that used to go directly to al Qaeda now see a number of other, smaller groups, getting funding as well as that heading to al Qaeda (usually in the form of supplies, not direct cash).  When any group can offer 'suicide bombers for hire', which the 'Shadow Army' can do, for commercial venues (such as attacking the guy who owns a competing business across town) you are no longer in the great and lovely world of top-down, leader led terrorism.  You are now in local, retail terrorism.

You can go after the chain, but the links reassemble into different chains when the main one is attacked.  It doesn't matter if it is cocaine smuggling from S. America, Heroin smuggling from China, emeralds from Kashmir, murder for hire in Pakistan, car bombs to go in Iraq, radical Mosques in London, or sending supplies to Mexican Syndicates and Gangs to get favor and entrance to the US: these are not indicative of a large-scale, big operation organization but one that can capably shift from wholesale to retail warfare.  What's worse is that you can't dry up their supply houses as it is 'Just In Time' production.

Who said these guys couldn't learn anything from the West?

Stopping terrorism is a local affair, done through Counter Insurgency (COIN), and that has been successfully applied in Iraq, Colombia, Philippines, and Sri Lanka.  Although terror operations are not kaput in ANY of those Nations, the forces of the nation states involved have the upper hand.  Pakistan is starting its bloody attacks on terror groups, but the question is: from what angle?  Is it the 'end all this terrorism' angle or the 'lets get rid of groups we can't control to empower those we can'?  For the past 50+ years it has always been the latter, and nothing going on contradicts that view today.  The attacks on Kashmir and India have not stopped nor have their Pakistani support bases been attacked, and since many of those groups operate in BOTH Afghanistan and Kashmir/India, the idea of stopping some near border facilities close to Afghanistan and not addressing those in the rest of the Nation puts the question in doubt. 

Afghanistan is starting to realize that the US may just 'cut and run' and hang everyone in the region out to dry, which will be the case until a long-term accommodation with the Pashtuns can be done.  That will require the generally ungovernable border provinces of Pakistan plus some of the family/clan lineages in Afghanistan to finally come to an agreement on either having the Pashtuns:  a) settle as a Pakistani Province, b) settle as an Afghan province, or, c) become their own mini-state.  This is as full provinces or a Nation State, no more of this 'tribal lands' deal and being able to foster and get away with murder whenever you please.  That border is not written in stone, but in an old British document that put a 100 year timeframe on solving the problems of the Pashtuns.  The Pashtuns ran out the clock on the British Empire.

Predator attacks are all well and good: I applaud them as one of the very few laudable things that President Obama has done.  It is, unfortunately, minimum compared to his campaign rhetoric.  You cannot win a ground war from the air, and we are not intent on breaking up the entire terror complex of which al Qaeda is one section and not even the largest section nor even the largest section involved in Afghanistan.  The most virulent, yes, the largest, no.

And the further away you get from semi-competent ground support, going from Pakistan to Yemen, the further away you get from effectiveness.  In case it has been missed, drone attacks and missile attacks without ground forces is seen as weakness by terrorists as you are unwilling to get your hands dirty to stop them.  Friends and allies can be a great help in that, doing some of the dirty work that needs to be done... and it would be a damned good idea to stop talking them down in Europe and elsewhere and implore them to get in the fight a bit more.  Say, by removing our bases in Nations with overly restrictive ROEs or ones with the population unhappy that the US wants to go after these international war criminals.

As a side-light, when did war crimes get trumped by mere civil criminality?

That didn't work up to 2001 and the only thing that has worked since then is pulling terrorists out of the general human population.  KSM even dared us to do our duty under the Geneva Conventions, which is not to get him a nice life-time cell, but to execute him for waging war and being part of no army and accountable to no nation state.  When these beasts can taunt us to do our duty as they are not afraid of it, and we are afraid of doing our duty, we are no longer civilized but decadent.

Using Hellfire missiles to wipe out a few terrorists, here and there, is great retail COIN, semi-functional on the strategic scale and pretty damned useless on the global scale given how these operations morph when attacked.  So far we don't have a global COIN strategy.  Bush didn't have one and Obama is clueless on what the concept means.  Breaking al Qaeda is necessary but not sufficient to the job we are getting handed, as al Qaeda as it was is no longer the way it is.  Its next structure to replace the current one is already in-place... and working very well at the retail level and ready to go wholesale in a different form.  Losing top-level effectiveness will not help when low-level diversity, spread and ability to cross-work shows up.

Its already done that in the 'Shadow Army'.

It can easily do that for groups with joint aims, if different goals.

The aim of al Qaeda has always been on the United States.

And the shadow of the US falls stronger the closer you get to home... look for conflict nearby and you just may see a new 'Shadow Army' arise of different form but with the same virulence and aims, which is to bring war and disorder to the US so as to bring it down, not in a Statist grip, but in the fullness of blood from our bodies.  They seek not to crush our souls, but our very lives from this Earth.

And Predator strikes aren't stopping that any time soon.

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Survival - Pack Concepts - 1

When examining emergency preparedness and if you are pre-planning JIC (Just In Case) you have to 'bug out' (leave home with whatever you can carry) I have found one of the most contentious areas to be that of the backpack/rucksack area as it has numerous supporters of different ideas of what to have, but also why you want it. This is, however, one of the more personal decisions as it depends on your ability to carry much of anything. And the variables in that will, naturally, lead to different final end-goals and what can and will fit those end goals. I have hiked with various types of packs, depending on situations, but most of that was pre-1990 and I needed to update my views and expectations in the packing realm.

That realm started with a mammoth sized Duluth pack, that included a forehead strap to help you 'lean into' the load. I've hiked with one of those fully loaded in my younger days and, at one point, had that and a medium ALICE pack plus canoe on my shoulders. Really, as the ALICE pack went in front and the canoe was up top, I had a reasonable center of mass, and I have no estimation as to final weight of all that, save the canoe was 50 lbs. all on its lonesome.

What did I learn from that experience?

Pack sparingly.

At that point I was carrying the load for myself (a young teen) and five children aged 9-12. For a week's outing I brought all of two changes of clothes: one for the camp and one to hike back in if I couldn't get my first day's set dry. Which I couldn't. Out of the 10 miles, I would estimate that 7 of them were with that large load, and I did take breaks and sucked down water at a phenomenal rate. Mind you getting to the camping site was then a few miles of canoe trip, a portage and then a mile or so hike in from the disembarking point.

So, pack sparingly.

Really!

As a geologist and recreational packer I used a Kelty pack that was lightweight and had decent cargo space, and an internal frame. At Field Camp the base camp would handle food and cooking, so all I had to do was handle myself, tent, sleeping bag, ground cloth, clothing, medical supplies and miscellaneous supplies necessary for highland desert camping. A 1 Gal. canteen also found its way into the kit during a 'clean yourself and your clothes' break at a small town. Add in good Swiss hiking boots and I was set. For personal hiking, that would only be for a day or two, and for those it was usually a smaller pack that was actually just a 'day pack' that I could wedge my tent and stuff into. The Kelty was more an Alpine pack (long and less than shoulder width) which suited the few places I actually did have to rock climb with the thing.

Thus my experience has been with commercial 1970-80's and 1970's vintage military packs.

Today, the updating of my expectation and knowledge has taken some time and the design idea of 'modular pack loading' has come into being. That is not just the concept of similar sizing and mass for certain loads, but an entirely new system to allow the easy placement of pouches and other equipment on to packs or less than packs. I will start with the older system and work to the newer one on the military side.

ALICE - All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment

ALICE, from what I can read on it, is an outgrowth of the Viet Nam war experience, and the problems faced with the older Model series of packs (M.1956, M.1944, M.1936, M.1922). I have, actually, picked up an M-1936 pack/haversack and it is an unfolding affair that, if you have all the interior equipment, then allows for the nestling of said equipment compactly into the pack once you wrap it all up. Plus it has a strap arrangement for a bedroll, and an internal ammo belt for storing extra rounds for your rifle. That series also had a backboard added to it in WWII so that bulkier containers (gasoline, ammo, etc) in cans could be lashed to it. The board, itself, was normally plywood and used the canvas strap arrangement of whatever the pack system was at the time. Unfortunately those were designed with a series of supply depots in mind, and moving supplies constantly forward so that one was never far away from a depot. At Bastogne that would see major problems when US forces were cut off from their supply lines during the Battle of the Bulge. Similarly, in Korea, when the front line collapsed, the entire supply system then became a 'use it or lose it' affair as the amount of troops from China could not be handled by then modern mechanized warfare until their supply lines were cut.

Airpower was making a difference in how we fought on the ground and Viet Nam would be the first conflict to see many older ideas of supply lines had to be re-thought. Additionally the older weapons systems for soldiers (M-1, M-14, M-1A1) were getting replaced by more modern weapons (M-16) that were more lightweight. Finally, jungle warfare is not open ground, flatland warfare and while there was still a 'front line' the fighting often took place where there was no 'front', no overland supply routes and where jungle conditions often made air-resupply problematical. Air Cavalry meant that a new way of approaching the entire system of what you took and how you took it had to move from an essential design dating back to the first armies and reformulate them for the modern age. If you have no supply lines, then you are stuck with what you have with you and the type of mission then drives what you have to carry. Even though ammo in magazines had been around for a long time, Viet Nam was the first war of lightweight, fully automatic weapons with selective fire and they ate up ammo at a fast rate. No longer was it possible to sit down and unpack some loose ammo or from belt loop ammo in your pack into a clip or magazine... especially when you were waist deep in water. What came out of that, starting in the early 1960's, was the idea of a 'sustainment pack' and a 'patrol pack'. If you were going out on a day or two patrol, you needed one set of equipment for a given time in the field between drop-off and pick-up, and if you were moving from one forward base to another or being put on a long mission of a week or more, you needed to carry everything you needed with you for that time period.

How you fought also required a change in the idea of how you carried things. This meant that larger magazine/clip storage containers needed to be 'handy'. 'Handy' being right at your hand where you could easily reach it without digging into your pack. Clothes and cooking supplies don't need to be handy, ammo, medical supplies, water, entrenching tool (e-tool) and things like bug spray did need to be handy, and so must migrate from inside the pack to outside the pack to an easy to reach position. As the pack load, itself, would increase, the entire system required an external frame that was lightweight yet sturdy, and that would be aluminum. Packs would come in a variety of materials, but nylon would slowly replace canvas. Finally light patrols, long patrols, and sustainment based missions would each gather their own pack size (small, medium, large) but only after the Viet Nam conflict had ended. The Medium Pack was one that could do without the frame, in a pinch, if you packed it well, and the Small Pack (mostly civilian use) was likewise so endowed. In theory you could do that with the Large Pack... in theory.

ALICE modularized things to an extent and the place to attach 'handy' materials was on to your belt. Thus the ALICE belt clip became the fasten-all way of adapting anything (military or civilian) to the ALICE pack/belt/load bearing system. Georgia Outfitters has a nice scan of the 1973 year of issue manual for the ALICE equipment system and I will use here:

The belt clips are spring metal clips, normally in a three piece affair, that slide one piece up and down into a hole for the tab of the piece being slid up and down. And a load carrier looks like this:

Even better is that the ALICE packs come with nylon strap webbing sewn at a few places on the outside that allow you to put equipment on the outside of the pack, along with grommets in case you need to do some lashing with paracord or carabiners. Additionally the ALICE frame can have two shelves for those bulky items (like ammo cans or gas cans) and still have room for a small pack or you can just haul a lot of ammo or other bulky goods on base:

The lower shelf, all on its own, helps get the ALICE pack out of its primordial state by giving it a foundation: it is no longer without shape nor without form. That last is the truth as ALICE has one, central, huge compartment. How big? I've seen other 'large' packs from the Swiss, Swedes and even Germans that can fit INSIDE a large ALICE pack. The thing is huge.

Photo: J and A Discount Military, LLC

So, an integrated load-bearing system with huge pack (at the Large size, at least) and a number of outside pockets plus a handy-dandy way to keep handy goods at hand! What could go wrong?

If you need to carry a lot on a budget, it is the way to go, but there are some things that need serious updating on the pack.

First the outer pockets of the pack, itself, are not easy to get at when you are wearing them, which is why all the really handy stuff needs to be on your belt or side panels of the pack. The pack has no side panel pockets.

Second, the webbing system is straight out of the early days of packing, without an easy buckle or quiet zipper to be seen, and noisy velcro for the map pocket at the top (which lacks a clear plastic window to see the map without opening the pocket.

Third, those small pockets are small and really too small to carry all but bare essentials.

Fourth, the frame is not adjustable, which is a popular aftermarket DIY thing to do if you like drilling out rivets and putting in bolts and then getting the frame anodized.

Fifth, the pack lacks side-to-side stability that a couple of easy straps could have solved at the start, but become an aftermarket thing for you to do.

Sixth, ALICE clips work can work free with the rubbing of the metal tab on fabric as you hike, thus making re-adjustment necessary.

There are, actually, a lot of quibbling problems with what is, essentially, a low cost pack. That rig from J&A up there is $25, and you can't go wrong for that if all you want is to haul a lot of stuff around. And if you don't have a tailor that can do modifications locally, there is always Tactical Tailor who can do a number of modifications for you that are standard and are able to do some non-standard ones as well. Once I found them, I knew that there really were a number of things that needed to be done to make the ALICE concept 'user friendly'.

I will skip ahead a couple of decades to the next pack system.

MOLLE - MOdular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment

MOLLE is all about keeping the handy stuff handy and doing so in an extremely modularized way. The MOLLE system, like the ALICE system, has its own way of integrating equipment, and the MOLLE way is via webbing of set size and spacing with a strap/clip that then weaves between the webbing of the equipment you wear and the equipment you carry. There are also ALICE to MOLLE (and vice-versa) adapters so that the two equipment systems cross-integrate with each other. The MOLLE frame is polycarbonate with set spacing openings so that MOLLE and even ALICE packs can be secured to it, and that system eliminates precious weight from the frame. MOLLE starts out with coated ripstop nylon (aka. cordura) as its preferred cloth both for its rain shedding capacity and tear resistance, which tends to add some weight back to the system. A number of MOLLE packs don't need the frame, however, and civilian versions will use aluminum stays inside packs to form an internal frame while keeping MOLLE attachment loops all over the outside of the pack to add on to it.

For me trying out the MOLLE system was an experience and I went with a milsurp MOLLE II Rifleman's Pack:

Photo courtesy: LoadUp.com

I will give you the idea of scaling and sizing in a bit, but the main point of the MOLLE system are those horizontal lines of webbing that are evenly stitched onto the back of the pack, and the sides which have sustainment pouches on them. to give a better idea of this, here is a High Speed Gear Inc. T.R.A.S.H. Bag Pack that is nearly all MOLLE loops:

Photo courtesy: HSGI

Yes that is a MOLLE pack attached to an ALICE frame. And the HSGI TRASH Bag pack starts to hit into the ALICE realm of hauling...

The milsurp Rifleman's set is about $60, tax and shipping not included, and the HSGI one is $220, tax and shipping not included.

Now there are newer military MOLLE packs, most notably if you can get your hands on the ones the 10MD orders, you will get a truly awesome pack that holds a ton of stuff right into the ALICE range of things. But I don't have that sort of cash for either the HSGI or newer 10MD milsurp if you can find it.

I have bulky materials for two, plus standard survival equipment and need weapons carrying capability with a pack... but hauling is first and foremost, and I may still spring for the HSGI TRASH Bag at some future point in time for its true adaptability. Hauling is the key, and that means cubic inches of space which can, actually, be somewhat divided and apportioned out. That led me to a little item on the cheap which is the Mounted Crewman Compartmented Equipment Bag (MCCEB):

Photo courtesy: Gunnys Surplus

That is actually a huge pack, clocking in at over 6,000 ci (if you count the pockets you are well and away over 6,000 ci), and available suplus used from Gunnys for $25 in the Bag section. This bag was designed for the tankers of the M1 Abrams and falls between the ALICE and MOLLE period.

Its features are many: reinforced lower compartment good for tools or (as intended) for your sleep carrier system, a good sized central compartment that would easily fit a daypack into it, and a drawstring top compartment just a bit smaller than the central compartment. The top main pocket is large, I've packed 6 MRE entrees along with some emergency supplies in it, and the smaller pockets on the central compartment are hefty affairs for those smaller things you may need in the way of tools or ammo carrying. It has the standard velcro map pocket on top. The added feature is the reinforced bottom compartment has outside tool pockets for your wrenches, screwdrivers, hammers or pistol of choice.

Its lacks are killer: miniscule carrying harness, not fit for a day pack, no MOLLE or ALICE loop rigging, no waist pad. Its not made for hauling a rifle or shotgun and the internal compartment dividers are permanent: if you take them out they are out forever.

One weirdness is that the truly huge zippers go all the way to the back so you can easily set the thing on its side, open each compartment and pull back on top and bottom to get at all compartments simultaneously. Also it is trapezoidal so your largest compartment is at the bottom, the smallest at the top though only by a few inches... its 16" wide at the middle, 19" wide at the bottom and about 14" wide at the top. If there were a $200 MOLLE version of this to go with the frame, I would buy it at a shot: put fully MOLLE webbing along the sides, attachment points for a frame along the front, put a hydration system on the inside and sacrifice half the size of the top pocket and it would be awesome.

Instead I sent it to Tactical Tailors, paid more but it was worth it to get something adaptable to the modern era.

Its a beast, but a primitive one.

So what do the packs look like with my stuff in them? The first batch of ALICE and MOLLE ones are from my old camera, so you will suffer with poor quality images, but should be able to get the idea. First is the ALICE pack with MOLLE sleep system carrier which I found to be necessary for what I wanted to carry:

Front/frame side. Rear.

Chock-a-block loaded to the gills, including the sleep carrier (MSSC). That is one loaded pack.

The problems with it are that it needed lashing every which way to keep things secure. A 1.5" cotton webbing strap goes around the entire pack between the top and bottom pockets to give it lateral stability and to get a better attachment to the frame (which is that big strap draped over the back of the pack). The MSSC needed lashing straps on the sides to pull it up and give it lateral stability, as it bounced up and down and from side-to-side. Not pictured is the ALICE shelf between the main pack and the MSSC to allow for lashing of the main pack and MSSC to the shelf and, thusly, the frame. At this point there were three additional pouches/pockets/waist pack added to the pack: a long ACU pocket, an olive drab pouch, plus a woodlands camo MOLLE waist pack done vertically along the side of the pack. With those extras I was able to get some excess cargo space for small items which was a first in my pack journeys. ALICE Large packs are for pure haulage and it shows.

Note the upgraded waist belt, that is damned necessary as the standard one is not padded enough to be worth anything. It added some nice MOLLE tabs on the waist, but not enough to actually make a difference. I was also seriously thinking of upgraded shoulder straps but the lack of weapons capability finally dissuaded me from further investment in the ALICE system.

ALICE systems lack any easy attachment system for weapons carriers, and lashing straps with your creativity is the order of the day. No matter how I tried it I could never integrate an Eberlestock Tactical Weapon Scabbard with the ALICE pack:

Photo courtesy: Eberlestock

To be seen in a bit in ACU.

That is meant to be a centerline part of a pack system, inboard of the pack. ALICE with shelf doesn't like that. ALICE without shelf has too much stuff flopping around. I did try a verticle lashing down the back of the pack, but it left a lot to be desired and shifted the center of balance back when two guns were put in the scabbard and nothing would actually get the top of the scabbard to where I could grab anything and still have the scabbard be secure.

What is really needed is a carbon fiber rod frame to attach to either a MOLLE or ALICE frame to leave room for the scabbard and impede the area of the pack a bit, if you are doing a buy a piece here and there deal. I do not have the time or skill necessary to make one.

Thus for all the cargo hauling ability I love for ALICE packs, if you have to do an add-on for it for weapon hauling, it had better be just for hauling and not ready access. I do not have short long guns that really permit the use of the smaller scabbards.

So on to a MOLLE II Rifleman's pack:

Front/frame side Rear

Yes these are sitting on a large trash can!

By this point I had unpacked the the Rifleman's pack as it was just too damned small, even without the scabbard inboard of the pack and MSSC. If I was going solo, then this would be the pack I want... then the scabbard and the rest do a good job working together. But packing for two means that no matter how lovely the pack is, it just isn't up to the job. It now has a nice home with a family member. I had added the MOLLE waistpack and was barely able to fit the majority of equipment, and with lashing straps it held together. It could be made about as stable as the ALICE pack, but it was meant as a one person general base change pack not a full haul everything pack. It is interesting that the 5 quart water bladder I picked up fit easily into the MOLLE radio pouch but only with difficulty into the ALICE top flap pouch.

All original straps. This one was just close enough that it convinced me the Tanker's Pack was worth getting MOLLEfied by Tactical Tailors.

I needed a new frame and pads so I went to ArmyGear.net for those in Desert camo/tan. They proved to be even cheaper than an Ebay buy, which amazed me no end. So what you will see is woodland camo on desert camo/tan, and the slow disappearance of that as more and more stuff is put on it.

As I had to do a bit of re-packing I decided to take pictures so you could get an idea of how it all fits together. I took out a rifle case with the Mosin-Nagant opposite the scabbard, but they both do fit and balance relatively well. With that said here is the first set:

Frame side top right. Frame side, left.

Now that's a pack!

The folks at Tactical Tailors did a great job on the attachment points, as well as you can do for a pack never made to be on a frame, at least. I utilized the existing pads and straps from the pack and attached them around and through the frame, itself, which is critical for dampening side-to-side sway. Most of the frame has disappeared under all the straps and the additional couple of pads I've made for it to help distribute the weight a bit better on my hips and back. Note the Eberlestock scabbard on the pack. Still not perfectly situated but it is adjustable via lashing straps so that it can be shifted forward for easier access. Note that I've removed one lashing strap normally used to keep it in place so as to look more closely at other work

Back right. Back, center. Back, left.

Here you get a good back view of the modified pack. Note the three MOLLE panels, one per side and one over the top pocket flap. The garish green camo is a Czech e-tool which needs a better pouch. Inside the scabbard is a Browning Auto-5 that comes in about 48" long, and it goes a bit into the top cover area.

When I noted previously that those pockets on the pack were large, I meant it. When you consider I can get at least 6 MREs plus extras into the top pocket and could put 2-3 e-tools per pocket in the bottom ones, you have a lot of capacity on the outside of the pack beyond just the internal areas. The top cover also has a zipper to replace the velcro that was there on the original.

I am particularly pleased that from the direct back and low angle sides you cannot see the desert camo and tan of the frame: a MOLLE frame and its straps disappear completely from view. I do need to make a woodland camo shroud for the scabbard, but that is minor compared to the benefits of actually being able to carry it. I have had it centerline, inboard of the pack, but then it is nearly impossible to get anything out of it, and there is no how, no way, that it fits between the frame and the straps.

Now a close-up or two fo the Tactical Tailor work:

MOLLE panel, left. Top pocket, MOLLE half panel. Top compartment, rain cover.

Excellent work!

For the rifle case, I just slip it between the sustainment pouch and the pack on the right side and use a lashing strap between the frame and the MOLLE loops. That makes it fixed position, but it balances out the A-5 nearly perfectly.

Beyond the MOLLE panels the rain cover allows for even more material to be stuffed into the upper compartment. I pulled it up a bit to expose it, normally it sits under the map flap.

Some final close-ups:

Back, lower pockets. Side tool pocket, with scabbard. Bottom compartment unzipped. Bottom with unit marking.

So is this a Bug Out Bag?

If you use the traditional sense of 'Dear God I only have 10 minutes to get everything I need to survive and high tail it out of here' sort of Bug Out Bag... well, yes, but a damned heavy one. This is not a grab'n'go bag.. it is a get your boots on with a decent shirt and heft the bag to the car and rush back to get any other important items sort of bag. If it came to no transportation available beyond feet, then this is the 5 mile bag: with a good morning start I can get 5 miles to somewhere to think about what to do next. If I can get a car journey in, then that widens many options as to destination, plus the car has its own emergency supplies.

This is the 'Staged Regrouping Bag'. By geography and climate there are very, very few things that will make a Bug Out necessary where I live... yes I can think of what they are, and those that could make it necessary also remove the infrastructure of the region. A slower, longer term set of problems, however, are more likely and this is the sort of thing that is necessary to prepare for that. For that you must prepare seasonal adjustments which require a second bag per major season, save Summer which you pack for to have some clothes in the bag.

As a pack, however, its wonderful. And if we can get past the major problems ahead of us, then this is the sort of pack well suited to carrying a full camping suite for 3 or 4 people, while they carry their own clothes and food.

From this experience I can say that the modular concept of equipment and how one packs is a far, far change from my early packing and hiking days. The hard work done by the military to regularize and adjust equipment types to fit in with carrying systems has brought great benefits to civilian life, if not civilian packs. While a sleek alpine pack is perfect for alpine conditions, most people aren't packing into such conditions and require a somewhat more varied pack load and system to allow them to adjust to different climate regimes over multiple trips. Polyurethane coated cordura is not a modernistic, lightweight fabric, but a rugged one made to resist rips, tears and weather simultaneously. MOLLE webbing is extra weight, but it adds versatility and makes equipment secure and handy at the same time, which means you don't carry the sleekest of outlines but do have a wide array of options of what you can do with the pack still on your back. That trade-off between weight and versatility will be with us for awhile yet as carbon nanotube technology hasn't gotten into the fabric industry to offer low weight, weather durability and tear resistance.

When it comes to internal vs. external frame, I'm an agnostic. I will say that if you are to have an external frame, then it really should be able to do more than just support a pack. The MOLLE frame is perfect for that as it allows a wide array of attachment options for more than just packs. What it isn't good for, and what the ALICE frame is good for, is changing regimes from pack to heavy gear hauling: without a shelf the MOLLE system does less well with gas cans or ammo cans than the ALICE frame. Thus while the MOLLE frame is good for things made to be packed and lashed, the ALICE frame is adaptable to those that aren't made that way and are bulky and oblong without web attachment points. MOLLE is more rugged and ergonomic, ALICE is more suited to the really heavy stuff and just getting it there, don't mind some chafing along the way. Internal frame packs are excellent for low visibility and not having a frame to catch on things as you hike, while offering lightweight stability and lateral mass control. Internal frames don't give you great external options if you have to go from a pack to hauling 5 gallon fuel cans around.

Thus what you choose is based on what you expect to need and designing your equipment type around your needs. The benefits of one way of doing things at the start then determine the types, kinds and amount of choices you have to deal with later. Yet the concepts of economizing your load and packing efficiently are as important as the style and type of pack you get, and what you expect to need and the types of events you expect to encounter then starts to point out which way you should go. Economics then limits your purchase decisions, and those are prioritized by your expected needs.

For myself, at some point, I will probably end up constructing a pack to suit my needs. But that will be awhile.

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The things I do waste time on

Another of those rare postings on what I am doing to take away from my time seated in front of the computer glazing my eyes out looking at historical documents.

Or... how I make sure I can still feel my feet!

One of the things that I've been doing is getting a lovely Thompson rig together.  Really if one is to have a Tommy Gun the least you can do is get a few things for it so it doesn't feel so lonely.  Thus my dissatisfaction with the first digital camera came to the forefront as it took awful pictures close-up in what should be a macro-mode.  They didn't have that when I first bought a camera, so I did the best possible I could with what I had.  So when one of the first major acquisitions for the Thompson came through I was less than satisfied with the pictures, but they did serve the purpose.  Luckily the folks at storeplay.net took a few of the first shots:

You see to me a violin case is... well... a violin case.  Here it is to an era toy gun, at least I assume that, which was made, in that era, full-size.

How do I know it was made full size?

Well its obvious:

This and the rest of the pics courtesy your host.

A full size Thompson fits in it, plus if it was one with a stock there is more than enough room for that, too.  Plus a drum magazine and a few stick magazines.  Now mine is a M1927 not an M1921, but a good case is a good case, and if I need to go somewhere and not take the big, hulking modern padded plastic case, I can take this one and go in style.  Still, I'm not much for a Zoot Suit.

Now my ill time spent doing other things has included sewing, on a lovely White 565:

Its a real champ!  I have had problems with it going through rigger's webbing and coated cordura at the same time and will take it into the shop to have it looked at and, if necessary, worked on.  Still its gone through a few projects, chowing down MOLLE webbing and structural webbing, cordura, fleece and all sorts of material that would choke a lesser machine.  At this rate I will need something a bit sturdier at the industrial level, but the amount I've learned from the White 565 is worth the money I paid for it.  The equipment I've made certainly paid for the cost of it and the raw materials involved.

So on to more of the time wasting stuff I've done using that, and I'll put the major project up next.

That is the main case with the barrel portion, the top part is a separate MOLLE magazine carrier for the 30 round stick magazines.  All things done in digital tigerstripe cordura are prototypes and leave a lot to be desired on fit and finish, but are functional.  I could not find, anywhere, a Thompson MOLLE case and I've looked.  Now I could find MOLLE stick magazine carriers but for something like what I have it would cost what the sewing machine cost.  Plus I made an extra singleton you can see in each of the pics as it swaps out top to bottom.  I still have to make the drum magazine carriers, but have found the 2 qt. carriers for water bottles to fit them quite nicely.  When I get the 565 back up and going I need to make those into full MOLLE carriers to attach next to the barrel and square out the case, as I would much rather have them on the outside of the case than the inside.

Now for what I pack in that case:

What you have there is the Thompson plus two 50 round drum mags, three 30 round stick mags and five 20 round stick mags.  That last is in a WWII original magazine carrier.  Also included are two Thompson spare part bags from WWII, a WWII brass cleaning rod, plus oiler and pull-through.  Basically the only thing missing would be a 100 round magazine, but that isn't in the cards until the economy improves.  I have more 30 round stick mags... those I can find on the cheap still.

Loose ammo is Federal Blazer and Aguila.  I've had some issues with Aguila ammo both in 45 ACP and 22 lr in the FTF arena.  It seems that there is just something a little off on the specs... either that or the guns are damned finicky.

I'm pretty happy with the rig to-date!  I got the mag catch modified at a local gunsmith's so I can use the original USGI magazines and not have to go drilling into historical pieces to get them to meet the minor mag catch change done in the '70s to the design when Numrich had it.

My other great time eater has been scrounging parts for the Vz.61 Skorpion build which is now complete, but not test fired.

I've put snap-caps through it and am not impressed with the tiny indentation being made, but it could be that the snap-caps aren't behaving like actual rounds for recording the impact of the firing pin.  So a test-fire is in order.  No one seems to make a testing rig so this means yet another DIY project.  Something simple would be best, and its looking like the articulated arm with clamp and piece of string will be in order.  Even though its only 32 ACP, I will not be holding it for a test fire or even the first magazine's worth of firing.  Fire and inspect thoroughly is the order of the day with this.

Its been a great time-waster, getting the parts for it.  Its part kit and a large number of parts from Czech-Point USA, like the SA frame and trigger group.  Had to get rid of a few parts from the kit to make it compliant, and I couldn't pass up a deal on the full SA trigger from CPUSA.  Still some of the stuff, like decent priced 20 round mags and a carrier for them, just couldn't be found easily.  Getting the barrel in was a real PITA and finally took some dremel work to make sure it got a snug fit.  Its a fascinating piece, and the only screw parts on it are for the handle.  The rest is all springs, plates, ends on springs, indentations and the barrel pin.  I finally used a small screw for the trigger guard, but that is due to me not being able to figure out how to get the tiny rivet put in.

There you have just a couple of the things I've been putting time into.  I won't even start on the emergency supplies, but should have a post on backpacks up soon.  Really!  They can be a great time waster...

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