NC Renegades

Two people have fallen ill with Ebola in Guinea after two weeks with no new confirmed cases of the disease in West Africa, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told a U.N. briefing in Geneva that one case was in Forecariah, western Guinea, and appeared to be linked to a previously known chain of infection, while the other was in the capital Conakry.

Ebola transmission is considered to be over once a locality has gone 42 days without a new case of the disease. The other two countries that were worst hit by the epidemic were Liberia, which was declared transmission free on Sept. 3, and Sierra Leone, which is counting down another 22 days until it is clear.

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Palestinians have torched a Jewish holy site in the West Bank city of Nablus, amid soaring tensions with Israel.

Rioters set fire to a tomb revered as that of the biblical figure Joseph. The site, where Jews go to pray, was badly damaged.

It came hours after Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Palestinian leadership to stop a wave of attacks.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the arson and said the site would be repaired.

Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian disguised as a news photographer stabbed and moderately wounded an Israeli soldier, the Israeli military said.

It said the Palestinian attacker was shot dead in the incident in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, next to Hebron.

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Over the course of Russia’s involvement in Syria, the tension between Moscow and Ankara has grown steadily.

In short, NATO-member Turkey has accused Russian fighter jets of violating its airspace as they buzz the border on the way to hitting anti-regime targets. The escalation of hostilities between the two countries now threatens to derail billions in trade and energy deals as Erdogan recently warned Putin that Ankara may go elsewhere for its natural gas needs.

Ultimately, it isn’t about Turkey’s airspace. It’s about Ankara wanting Assad gone and Moscow wanting Assad to remain in power and indeed, the US is already using a Turkish air base as a kind of forward operating center for bombing runs, meaning NATO may well use Turkey to float conflict trial balloons to see just what the West can get away with in terms of challenging the Russians in Syria (incidentally, Erdogan has an election coming up in two weeks and a key part of the push to restore AKP’s absolute majority in parliament is scaring the public into believing that Turkey is under attack and only a strong government can save it). And here’s proof of that assessment:

• US OFFICIAL SAYS SUSPECTS DRONE WAS A RUSSIAN DRONE: RTRS
• UNITED STATES SUSPECTS THAT PLANE SHOT DOWN BY TURKEY WAS A RUSSIAN DRONE AIRCRAFT – U.S. OFFICIAL TELLS REUTERS

With that in mind, consider that just moments ago, Turkey shot down an unmanned drone that Ankara says violated its airspace:

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Star didn’t waste time getting to the bottom line.

“Well, we had five, white, wealthy liberals trying to convince us — to one-up each other — that black lives matter so much to them that they’re going to do more of the same: big government. They’re going to have more policy to trap them in poor communities. They’re going to have more policies to trap them in failing schools. They’re going to ensure policies that Planned Parenthood continues to traffick in their potential…[babies’] body parts. And then they’re going to let more criminals out on the street, while at the same time make sure that black lives won’t be able to defend themselves, because they’re going to take away what’s left of the Second Amendment rights.”

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The final report (PDF) from the Council on Foreign Relations in association with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales on The North America Community outlines their plan to make a North American Union as Publius Huldah explains in the above video. You will see Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi mentioned four times in the report.

The Constitution does guarantee state sovereignty:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

However, the federal government has usurped power and no longer recognizes the compact between the people and the states. Which means the rule of law does not exist.

David DeGerolamo

By John W. Whitehead

In an age dominated with news of school shootings, school lockdowns, police shootings of unarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry (leaving children devastated and damaged), reports of school resource officers tasering and shackling unruly students, and public schools undergoing lockdowns and active drills, I find myself wrestling with the question: how do you prepare a child for life in the American police state?

Every parent lives with a fear of the dangers that prey on young children: the predators who lurk at bus stops and playgrounds, the traffickers who make a living by selling young bodies, the peddlers who push drugs that ensnare and addict, the gangs that deal in violence and bullets, the drunk drivers, the school bullies, the madmen with guns, the diseases that can end a life before it’s truly begun, the cynicism of a modern age that can tarnish innocence, and the greed of a corporate age that makes its living by trading on young consumers.

It’s difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the police state into the mix—with its battlefield mindset, weaponry, rigidity, surveillance, fascism, indoctrination, violence, etc.—it becomes near impossible to guard against the toxic stress of police shootings, SWAT team raids, students being tasered and shackled, lockdown drills, and a growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

Children are taught from an early age that there are consequences for their actions. Hurt somebody, lie, steal, cheat, etc., and you will get punished. But how do you explain to a child that a police officer can shoot someone who was doing nothing wrong and get away with it? That a cop can lie, steal, cheat, or kill and still not be punished?

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I never thought that I would have this kind of talk with my children. Apathy and fear have consequences when the government is evil.

David DeGerolamo

Now that a major global recession has begun, you would expect major retailers like Wal-Mart to run into trouble as consumer spending dries up, and that is precisely what is happening.  On Wednesday, shares of Wal-Mart experienced their largest single day decline in 27 years after an extremely disappointing earnings projection was released.  The stock was down about 10 percent, which represented the biggest plunge since January 1988.  Over 21 billion dollars in shareholder wealth was wiped out on Wednesday, and this was just the continuation of a very bad year for Wal-Mart stockholders.  Overall, shares had already declined by 22 percent so far in 2015 before we even got to Wednesday.  Here is more on this stunning turn of events from Bloomberg…

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. suffered its worst stock decline in more than 27 years after predicting a drop in annual profit, underscoring the giant retailer’s struggles to reignite growth.

Earnings will decrease 6 percent to 12 percent in fiscal 2017, which ends in January of that year, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company said at its investor day on Wednesday. Analysts had estimated a gain of 4 percent on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

If it was just Wal-Mart that was having trouble, that would be bad enough.  But the truth is that signs that the U.S. economy has entered another major downturn are popping up all around us.  Just consider the following list of economic indicators that Graham Summers recently put out…

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h/t John P

Russia’s top diplomat held talks with his U.S. counterpart after President Vladimir Putin derided American policy on Syria as weak and lacking objectives, while his air force continued bombing raids to support Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the situation in Syria by phone on Thursday and expressed satisfaction on the progress of military talks to improve “security in the Syrian airspace in the context of anti-terrorist actions,” the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said in a website statement. They agreed to continue contacts on Syria and on resolving the Ukrainian conflict, it said.

Amid growing friction over the Russian military intervention that began Sept. 30, the U.S. rejected Putin’s offer to send a delegation led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Washington to explain the campaign against Islamic State and other militants, Lavrov said on Wednesday. Putin accused some states of having “oatmeal in their heads” on Tuesday for failing to understand that the air strikes seek to defeat terrorism.

“I don’t really understand how the U.S. can criticize Russia’s actions in Syria if they refuse to have direct dialogue,” Putin told reporters earlier Thursday during a visit to Astana, Kazakhstan. “The basic weakness of the American position is that they don’t have an agenda, though we’re keeping the door open” for high-level discussions, he said.

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Earlier this week, US officials indicated that they are set to go through with a plan to sail warships around China’s man-made islands in the Spratlys.

“It’s just a matter of time when it happens,” one government source told WSJ.

Over the course of the last six months, we’ve seen China’s land reclamation efforts go from oddity, to spectacle, to alleged “provocation”, to excuse for war as Washington feels compelled to come to the aid of its allies in the South Pacific who cried foul after it became apparent that this was no “normal” dredging effort.

In short, China has created some 3,000 acres of new sovereign territory and the US claims Beijing is effectively trying to redraw maritime boundaries on the way to establishing new military outposts. For its part, China denies the allegations and has responded with a peculiar mix of veiled threats (tweaking the wording of its official maritime strategy), not-so-veiled threats (telling a US spy plane with a CNN crew on board to “go now”), and humorous propaganda (a series of pictures from Fiery Cross depicting women, puppies, and gardens).

Despite efforts to de-escalate the matter when Xi visited the US this month, Beijing looks set to draw a line in the sand (no pun intended) when it comes to allowing the US to sail warships near the islands.

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Another Obama dilemma: go through with his childish rhetoric or back down.

Got war?

David DeGerolamo