NC Renegades

by Brandon Smith

Those people who do not avidly track global economic events may be a bit confused by the growing tensions surrounding the U.K. referendum to exit the European Union, otherwise known as the “Brexit.” Or, they are completely indifferent. Unfortunately, the potential fallout surrounding the event could very well affect the entire world, but perhaps not in the manner the mainstream media and international financiers would have us believe…

I would point out that under normal global economic conditions, the Brexit really shouldn’t matter much to anyone outside of the U.K. If the EU was fiscally stable, if its banks were solvent and its national debts well in hand, if the EU was actually a practical and successful supranational body, then the damage done by a British vote to leave the union would be minimal. Of course, this is not the case. As many other independent economic analysts and I have been outlining for years, the European Union is on the verge of economic breakdown. Look at it this way — if financial turmoil in a tiny member state like Greece can cause widespread doubts about the EU’s stability, then there is something fundamentally volatile about the entire structure.

The Brexit matters greatly to the future of the EU because, theoretically, if one of its most prominent members says adios, then other members may do the same. As it stands now, the EU cannot afford to have even one member, economically large or small, drop out of the system.

The Brexit matters to the rest of the world including the U.S. because of the brilliantly-destructive program of interdependency and globalism that has shaped our financial house for decades. Interdependency leads to extreme economic weakness because no piece of the global system has the tools to survive without the other pieces; and on top of this, when one part of the machine goes down, ALL the other parts are affected.

It is a truly horrible and seemingly idiotic system; but not so idiotic if you accept the reality that it is deliberately engineered to fail.

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If you were going to commit suicide, would you cut your throat?

David DeGerolamo

To gun lovers, you can’t even have an opinion on assault rifles — unless it’s theirs. Here’s the proof

The gun debate is also a gender war.

In all my years in journalism — coming up on 30 (thanks) — I have never received so much angry mail as I did after yesterday’s story, “What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud.”

I don’t mind spirited debate, but many correspondents told me that even expressing an opinion about today’s high-powered weaponry is off-limits to those of us who don’t own such guns.

To reiterate, the goal of the story was simply to share with readers my experience of firing an AR-15, which very few of them have done. I found the sheer power of the weapon horrifying. I found the noise deafening and anxiety provoking. I was frightened by its potential for rapid, catastrophic, Orlando-like carnage with similar weaponry. Using an AR-15 made me irritable and jittery for hours afterwards. To me, it felt like a bazooka.

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For the first time, scientists have produced a computer image showing huge sections of California rising and sinking around the San Andreas Fault.

The vertical movement is the result of seismic strain that will be ultimately released in a large earthquake.

The San Andreas Fault is California’s longest earthquake fault, and one of the state’s most dangerous. Scientists have long expected that parts of California are rising — and other parts sinking — around the fault in a way that is ongoing, very subtle and extremely slow.

Such vertical movement makes a lot of sense. California sits on the border of two gigantic tectonic plates — the Pacific and North American — that are constantly grinding past each other.

But actually observing how California’s landscape is rising and falling from seismic strain has been an elusive goal, until now.

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This is a different side of the meeting than what is being portrayed on the regular media.

David DeGerolamo

by Robert Gore

An institution that claims the right to initiate force and has the means to do so is an institution to be feared. History confirms the fear: government has been responsible for more deaths and destruction than any other human instrumentality. That the hallmark of government—legally sanctioned violence—produces carnage should come as no surprise. Remarkably, over the last century fear of government has been transmuted to fear of its absence, even as governments have racked up new records for carnage. The shift has been marked by a widespread psychological and moral deterioration that evades the reality of state destructiveness and insists on more of it.

While fear can be quite rational and produce a rational response—rushing to higher ground because of a looming tsunami—it is emotionally corrosive, stifles reasoned analysis or deliberation, and magnifies itself in groups. As such, it’s a lever for mass manipulation. Manipulative maestro Franklin Delano Roosevelt pivoted the US from its traditional skepticism of government to wholehearted embrace. The stock market crash of 1929 and ensuing recession were the inevitable bust of the credit-fueled boom, sponsored by the Federal Reserve, that preceded it (see America’s Great Depression, Rothbard, 1963, and The Great Deformation, Stockman, 2013). The New Dealers claimed that capitalism had failed, but it was central bank-promoted credit, untethered from the real economy, that had failed.

Roosevelt converted that failure into a fear-based demand for more government. Somehow, in a way that was never logically explained (because it was impossible to do so), coercive redistribution would ensure economic security. It self-evidently diminished the economic security of the coerced, but it didn’t do much for the beneficiaries either; the economy in 1938 was in worse shape than when Roosevelt took office in 1933. The many New Deal programs, regulatory agencies, taxes, laws, and regulations meant to improve upon “failed” capitalism distorted or destroyed the regulation inherent in competition, took money from productive individuals and businesses for nonproductive purposes, created a class of agents dependent on rent seeking from the government, and burdened the economy with uneconomic mandates.

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Target the children and the government’s policies are secured within one generation. Under Obama, the government has taken complete control of student loans. This one transformative policy has enslaved millions of children. And we sit and watch.

David DeGerolamo

The State Department on Tuesday welcomed Boeing’s announcement of a deal to sell aircraft to Iran, but spokesman John Kirby seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion this marked the first time a U.S. aircraft manufacturer has been given a license to sell planes to a state-sponsor of terrorism.

Still, he confirmed that he did not believe it had been done before.

Kirby said the deal constitutes the type of business activity allowed under the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“I can tell you that the State Department welcomes Boeing’s announcement of this deal with Iran Air, which involves the type of permissible business activity envisioned in the JCPOA,” he said.

“We committed, as you know, to licensed sales of civil passenger aircraft and will continue to implement this and all of our JCPOA commitments,” Kirby said, adding that the deal provides an opportunity for U.S. and other aviation companies “to pursue legitimate commerce with Iran.”

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