NC Renegades

A leader of the small armed group that has been occupying a remote national wildlife refuge in Oregon said Tuesday that they will go home when a plan to turn over management of federal lands to locals is implemented.

Friend —

President Obama just took bold action to help remedy the gun violence epidemic in our country.

This morning, the President announced a set of executive actions that will close loopholes and expand background checks on gun purchases — real steps toward making our communities safer.

This Friday, OFA is bringing supporters together to talk about the work ahead on gun violence prevention, and President Obama is joining us to talk about his executive actions. Will you join?

The President’s executive actions are a big step forward and have the potential to save lives, but the comprehensive solution America needs has got to come from Congress. So far, despite bipartisan support and the overwhelming majority of Americans that want reform, they have done nothing to act.

It’s up to all of us to keep up the pressure on Congress, and OFA organizers and supporters are going all in to bring about the kind of change our country needs.

President Obama has committed to doing the same, and this is your chance to hear directly from him. Show your support for action on gun violence, and RSVP to hear from the President:

https://my.barackobama.com/Hear-From-President-Obama

Thanks,

Jack

Jack Shapiro
Director of Policy and Campaigns
Organizing for Action

Yesterday, we were shocked to learn that as German anger boils over at the country’s unprecedented refugee wave, one or more so far unknown assailants fired shots through the window at a home for asylum seekers in western Germany injuring one resident as he was sleeping. As AP noted it wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible for the incident or what the motive was. However, Darmstadt prosecutors’ spokeswoman Nina Reininger told news agency dpa: “If someone shoots at housing which has people inside, I assume that it is a targeted attack.”

Today, we are just as shocked to read that, even as we expected, the animosities between the two groups have dramatically escalated, and that the mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after nearly 100 women reported they were robbed, threatened or sexually molested at the New Year’s celebrations outside the city’s cathedral by young, mostly drunk, men, police said on Tuesday. One woman said she was raped.

According to BBC, “the scale of the attacks on women at the city’s central railway station has shocked Germany.” About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved.

The initial shock will quickly transform to furious anger, because more important in this specific case was the origin of the 1,000 drunk assailants, who split into groups, and attacked women in the square. Citing the police chief Wolfgang Albers, BBC notes that the men were of “Arab or North African region“, adding that they were mostly between 18 and 35 years old. He added that the attack was a “completely new dimension of crime”.

BBC adds that what is particularly disturbing is that the attacks appear to have been organised. Around 1,000 young men arrived in large groups, seemingly with the specific intention of carrying out attacks on women.

Fearing a public backlash, Cologne mayor Henriette Reker said there was no reason to believe that people involved in the attacks were refugees. Nonetheless, after a crisis meeting, she admitted the attacks were “monstrous” adding that “we cannot allow this to become a lawless area.”

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Western governments and the media under their control can only suppress the truth for a limited amount of time. It appears that time is now.

David DeGerolamo

President Barack Obama is talking tough about a new series of executive orders that are designed to curb gun ownership and trample Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

But his latest measures likely don’t have much of a chance of ever surviving a judicial review.

…

While presidents have worked to expand the use of executive orders (originally designed to handle administrative tasks) over the years, the law has remained clear on how they can be used.

The United States Supreme Court issued a ruling in Youngstown v. Sawyer more than 60 years ago forbidding presidents from using executive orders to defy the will of Congress. And Congress has repeatedly failed to pass the gun control measures that Obama is now proposing.

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h/t frLarousse2

The first trading day of 2016 was full of chaos and panic.  It started in Asia where the Nikkei was down 582 points, Hong Kong was down 587 points, and Chinese markets experienced an emergency shutdown after the CSI 300 tumbled 7 percent.  When European markets opened, the nightmare continued.  The DAX was down 459 points, and European stocks overall had their worst start to a year ever.  In the U.S., it looked like we were on course for a truly historic day as well.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 467 points at one stage, but some very mysterious late day buying activity helped trim the loss to just 276 points at the close of the market.  The sudden market turmoil caught many by surprise, but it shouldn’t have.  The truth is that a whole host of leading indicators have been telling us that this is exactly what should be happening.  The global financial crisis that began in 2015 is now accelerating, and my regular readers already know precisely what is coming next.

The financial turmoil of the last 24 hours is making headlines all over the globe.  It began last night in China.  Very bad manufacturing data and another troubling devaluation of the yuan sent Chinese stocks tumbling to a degree that we have not seen since last August.  In fact, the carnage would have probably been far, far worse if not for a new “circuit breaker” that China recently implemented.  Once the CSI 300 was down 7 percent, trading was completely shut down for the rest of the day.  The following comes from USA Today…

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North Korea’s military carried out a successful ejection test of a new submarine-launched ballistic missile recently, an indication that an earlier test failure has not derailed the underwater missile program, U.S. defense officials said.

The test of the submarine-launched missile, or SLBM, which the Pentagon has called the KN-11, from a submerged submarine on Dec. 21 took place near the port city of Sinpo, where the capability is being developed. The facility is located along the North Korean coast of the Sea of Japan.

The test followed a Nov. 28 ejection tube launch failure that damaged North Korea’s first missile submarine, which officials identified as the Gorae, Korean for whale.

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Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot on Tuesday inaugurated by the speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, Tasnim news agency, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported.

A one-minute video of the facility broadcast on state television showed Iran’s Emad precision-guided ballistic missile which was tested in October.

The United States has said Emad would be capable of carrying a nuclear payload and violates a 2010 U.N. Security Council resolution.

Source