NC Renegades

A witness of the Iraqi army’s efforts to seize back Ramadi described a macabre scene, telling CNN dogs were eating the heads of the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) jihadists killed in the fight, while those who survived are trying to use civilians, including kids, as “human shields.”

She noted that most of the ISIS terrorists had either fled the fight for Ramadi or were executed by the Iraqi security forces, which were backed by the U.S.-led coalition in the air and allegedly by some Iran-backed Shiite militias on the ground.

“We saw them when we left our houses, we saw their dead bodies in the streets,” she told CNN on condition of anonymity after reaching a camp in Habbaniyah with her family on Saturday. “Dogs are eating their heads. We only saw their hands and their legs.”

The conditions in Ramadi are dire, according to the witness.

“We have been without food for two months, no water for the past 10 days,” she told CNN from the camp in Habbaniyah, located a nearly 25-mile drive east of Ramadi. “We were surprised when we left our home and drove outside the city, we only saw destroyed houses and roads. We could not recognize the city. It looked like another city.”

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With a “good old boy” southern accent and a cheerily named organization, the head of the “Hershey’s for Heroes” organization has been disseminating anti-Islamic and Evangelical Christian sentiments on a regular basis to soldiers on IDF bases, apparently with the army’s sanction.

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h/t Watcher

So why are the schools closed for a week?

David DeGerolamo

An unedited comment from a troll today concerning NCRegenade.com’s dubious honor for being listed as a hate group by the SPLC:

SLPC is a reputable organization and if th list you as a hate group it is almost certainly true.  Do you stand up for the right of gay people to be treated equally like all citizens of the U.S.?  Do you stand up for women to have complete control of their medical decisions?  Do you stand up black people to be safe from being gunned down by out of control cops?  Do you stand up for innocent refuges fleeing violence and oppression to settle without harrassment in the U.S.?

If you do not stand up for these thing you are on the wrong moral side, you are on the side of darkness and evil.

Bob H

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Actually, I am surprised at the low number of trolls that I have to put up with. Most fall under the category of not fighting a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

Is this a classic ad hominem attack?

David DeGerolamo

Even as increasingly more parts of the economy, especially those with exposure to manufacturing and industrial production, sink into the recessionary quicksand, one sector that was seen as immune from the malaise gripping US manufacturing and was outperforming the overall growth rate of the US economy, was housing, and specifically spending on private and public construction: a direct input into the GDP model.

That all changed today when the US Census released its latest, November, construction spending data, which not only missed expectations of a 0.6% increase, but tumbled -0.4%, the most since June of 2014, while all the recent changes were mysteriously revised lower.

And then the source of the mystery was revealed: in the fine print of the release, the government made a rare admission: all the construction spending data for the past 10 years had been “erroneous.”

In the November 2015 press release, monthly and annual estimates for private residential, total private, total residential and total construction spending for January 2005 through October 2015 have been revised to correct a processing error in the tabulation of data on private residential improvement spending. An Excel file containing all of the revisions can be found here
The result of the “revision” of the processing error is shown below: every month starting with April and going through October, was “found” to have been a lower increase than according to the previous data. Not only that, but the October print which had been the strongest since May, confounding many data watchers as it did not fit with anecdotal evidence of a dramatic slowdown in energy-related construction, suddenly was barely positive, leading to the November sequential decline, the worst since the -0.7% drop in June of 2014.

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by Brandon Smith

Well, there is whole host of things wrong with this situation, which is why I never supported or endorsed “Operation Hammond Freedom” to begin with.  There is a lot of misinformation out there at this time on the debacle in Oregon, and certain alternative media outlets seem to be conveniently overlooking particular facts.  I suspect that some people in the movement simply want to “kick it off” (a second American revolution), and they don’t care if the circumstances of that kick-off are favorable or terrible (I realize “favorable” is relative, but starting this fight from a much stronger position is more than possible).  This attitude was prevalent among some at Bundy Ranch, as certain groups refused to dig in positions for a real fight in the hopes that they would be “martyred” for the cause.  This, in case you were wondering, is idiotic.

Oath Keepers including founder Stewart Rhodes was the only organization to predict how Ammon Bundy’s vague calls for action on the part of the Hammond Family would actually play out.  They received a lot of ignorant attacks in response, and yet, they were absolutely right.

Ammon, apparently trying to recreate what cannot be recreated, is looking for another Bundy Ranch stand-off.  First, I would point out that such events can’t be artificially fabricated.  They have to happen in an organic way.  Whenever a group of people attempt to engineer a revolutionary moment, even if their underlying motivations are righteous, it usually ends up kicking them in the ass (Fort Sumter is a good example).  Ammon’s wingmen appear to be Blaine Cooper aka Stanley Blaine Hicks (a convicted felon), and Ryan Payne (who claimed falsely during the Bundy Ranch standoff that he was an Army Ranger and who worked diligently to cause divisions between involved parties on the ground).  This was the first sign that nothing good was going to come from the Hammond protest.

I have watched extensive video from the event in Oregon and am privy to accounts from participants.  From the information at my disposal, it would appear that Ammon and team did NOT make clear their intentions to occupy the federal wildlife refuge building except to a select few, inviting protesters to “take a hard stand” without revealing what this would entail until they were already in the middle of it all.  OPSEC?  No, I think not.  Obviously the goal was to lure as many protesters to Oregon as possible to the event in the hopes that they would jump on board with the stand-off plan once they were more personally involved.  Numerous protesters were rightly enraged once they discovered the ultimate motives behind the event.

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With the world once again gripped by the latest Middle East snafu in which suddenly every Gulf State has found itself in the worst diplomatic crisis with Iran in 30 years which, incidentally, started after Saudi Arabia executed a Shiite cleric in its biggest mass execution yet, unleashing righteous Iranian anger at its action, many have forgotten – if only temporarily – about Europe’s biggest crisis at the moment: the onslaught by over one million refugees, who are desperate to escape from the political disaster that are the broken states of Syria and Iraq.

The same migrants who are unwelcome not only across most of Europe, but increasingly more at the country which started the entire migrant exodus in the first place: Germany.

According to AP early on Monday, gun shots were fired at a home for asylum seekers in western Germany and one resident was lightly injured, police said.

The shots were fired at a window of the building in the town of Dreieich at around 2.30 a.m (0130 GMT), and one hit a 23-year-old asylum seeker who was sleeping,according to police in Offenbach, near Frankfurt. He was taken to a hospital, but was able to leave shortly afterward.

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It is not a question of IF there will be a WW III, only which flashpoint will kick it off.

David DeGerolamo