NC Renegades

If you are looking for a “canary in a coal mine” type of warning for the entire global economy, you have a whole bunch to pick from right now. “Dr. Copper” just hit a six year low, Morgan Stanley is warning that this could be the worst oil price crash in 45 years, the Chinese economy is suddenly stalling out, and world trade is falling at the fastest pace that we have seen since the last financial crisis. In order not to see all of the signs that are pointing toward a global economic slowdown, you would have to be willingly blind. In recent months, I have been writing article after article detailing how the exact same patterns that happened just before the stock market crash of 2008 are playing out once again. We are watching a slow-motion train wreck unfold right before our eyes, and things are only going to get worse from here.

Copper is referred to as “Dr. Copper” because it does such an excellent job of indicating where economic conditions are heading next. We saw this in 2008, when the price of copper started crashing big time in the months leading up to the stock market implosion.

Well, now copper is crashing again. Just check out this chart. The price of copper plunged again on Wednesday, and it is now the lowest that it has been since the last financial crisis. Unfortunately, the forecast for the months ahead is not good. The following is what Goldman Sachs is saying about copper…

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Islamic State affiliates in Sinai and Libya have banded together with the Palestinian Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip for the shared goals of capturing northern Sinai from the Egyptian army and staging an assassination coup against President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report.

They are in the throes of four steps for promoting their objectives:

1.  Monday, June 29, a rogue group of Egyptian Special Forces accessed the heavily-guarded upscale Cairo district of Heliopolis to plant a bomb car, which they remotely detonated as the convoy of their target, Egypt’s general prosecutor Hisham Barakat, went by. He was killed on the spot. The assassins were members of the Egyptian elite force which had defected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Three weeks later, on July 16, notwithstanding reinforced security in Heliopolis, ISIS killers reached inside the neighborhood once again and planted a roadside bomb. It was detonated as an Interior Ministry special forces security patrol moved past.

Because of the tight official blackout on the event, there are no reliable accounts on casualties. The authorities in Cairo reported that one Egyptian soldier was injured, but this is no doubt only part of the picture.

The following day, July 17, a violent clash erupted In the Talibiya neighborhood of Giza near the pyramids between Egyptian Special Forces and Muslim Brotherhood’s underground cells. Five MB adherents were reported killed, but again no word on military losses.

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by Robert Gore

Pope Francis has been in the news lately with blistering criticisms of capitalism. According to a New York Times‘ article:

Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.” “In Fiery Speeches, Francis Excoriates Global Capitalism,” July 11, 2015

As far as SLL knows, the Pope has never defined the capitalism he condemns, so SLL will do it for him. Here is the definition from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary: “an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision rather than by state control, and by prices, production, and the distributions of good that are determined mainly in a free market.” It’s not a perfect definition, it omits the term “voluntary exchange,” but voluntary exchange is the necessary foundation of free markets so this definition will suffice. Importantly, the definition notes that economic decisions are made by “private decision rather than by state control.”

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The usual argument by Statists is:

“we have a social contract …if you don’t like the rules here, just leave”.

Lysander Spooner had a more succinct response…

This is courage in the face of the enemy.

David DeGerolamo

h/t frLarousse2

3-D printing has taken its next logical step as a defense contractor has engineered a way to use the manufacturing process in the creation of guided missiles.

Raytheon, one of the U.S.’s largest defense contractors, has built a missile almost entirely from 3-D printing technology.

“The day is coming when missiles can be printed,” Raytheon said in a press release. “Researchers at Raytheon Missile Systems say they have already created nearly every component of a guided weapon using additive manufacturing, more commonly known as 3-D printing. The components include rocket engines, fins, parts for the guidance and control systems, and more.”

“You could potentially have these in the field,” Raytheon engineer who has printed working rocket motors Jeremy Danforth said in the release. “Machines making machines. The user could [print on demand]. That’s the vision.”

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HB562 SENATE JUDICIARY II HEARING

Pro-gun bill, HB 562, will be heard tomorrow (Thursday, July 23). Insist on committee support …

The pro-gun bill, HB562, for which GRNC and its supporters has fought so hard, has moved beyond the House, and is now scheduled for an important hearing in the Senate Judiciary II Committee. GRNC would like to thank Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger and Senator Tom Apodaca for making sure this bill had a proper hearing. Of course, now that HB562 is receiving its proper hearing, it is critical that the Republican committee members know that you expect them to support this bill, and move it toward final passage.

In order to show your support, and encourage committee members to act in accordance with their campaign promises, there are a couple of things you can do. Attend Thursday’s committee meeting, sending an in-person message that gun owners are serious about what they expect from the politicians they put in place. This is short notice for meeting attendance, but if you can make it, it will go a long way to securing and furthering gun rights in North Carolina.

You can also send an email message to the members of the committee to sway them in the right direction—should they have any doubts about which direction they’re expected to go.

Below, find details about meeting attendance. Also find copy/paste contact information and a message you can use to send to the Judiciary II Committee members.

IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED!

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is final appearance on the Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show Tuesday, President Obama said the IRS scandal wasn’t his fault nor really that of anyone at the agency. The real blame, he made clear, should fall on the (Republican-led) Congress, which he said “passed a crummy law” that didn’t provide enough guidance for the hapless IRS employees, and that continues not to provide enough funding for the agency.

When Obama was pressed on why his administration had presided over so many scandals, he pointed to the IRS as an example of how none of it’s his fault.

As the Washington Times points out, despite the IRS internal auditor verifying that conservative and Tea Party groups were indeed targeted and an ongoing investigation into the incident by the DOJ, Obama suggested that the targeting was just simply a mistake made by IRS employees who implemented the law “poorly and stupidly.”

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I can only hope that he uses this excuse for his defense at his trial for treason.

David DeGerolamo

Republican 2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson recently asserted on a Des Moines, Iowa conservative radio show that the purpose behind Margaret Sanger’s founding of the abortion mill Planned Parenthood was to “eliminate black people.”

Carson was asked by a WHO Radio host to comment on an Obama speech from last year in which the president defended Planned Parenthood and even said “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.” Carson replied:

You wonder if he actually knows the history of Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, who was trying to eliminate black people. That was the whole purpose of it.

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