NC Renegades

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Between Greece’s tragic, Berlin-mandated descent into the Third World and the epic meltdown in China’s equity markets, it would be easy to forget that the US government is (re)annexing Texas next week.

For those unaware (or for anyone who might have lost track of the US Spec Ops schedule), the military is set to kick off Jade Helm 15 next Wednesday, which means the Lonestar lockdown is less than one week away. If you’re unfamiliar with the operation, here are the barebones basics:

Jade Helm is an eight-week joint military and Interagency Unconventional Warfare exercise conducted throughout Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado. Essentially, from July 15 to September 15 some military personnel are going to take a trip out west and pretend like they are conducting covert operations overseas.

On the surface, that doesn’t sound too exciting, but thanks to some very unfortunate wording in an official US military slide deck and an even more unfortunate map which designates Texas as “hostile” territory (of course the same map also identifies San Diego as harboring a militant insurgency, so the US Spec Ops Command probably assumed it wouldn’t be taken literally) quite a few Texans came to believe that the federal government was up to no good with Jade Helm.

The situation quickly spiraled out of control and became a veritable media circus after Texas governor Greg Abbott called up the state guard and “Texas Ranger” Chuck Norris pledged to defend the state from a Navy SEAL incursion. Topping it off was former Texas lawmaker Todd Smith — a 16-year veteran of the Texas House of Representatives and self-proclaimed Last of the Fact-Based Republican Mohicans — who, in a letter to Abbott, suggested that anyone who was suspicious of the federal government’s intentions in the state was a “hysterical idiot.”

With just six days to go until the government begins the exercise, expect the rumor mill to come alive because as The Washington Post reports, the media will be given no access to the drills. Here’s more:

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House GOP leaders abruptly canceled a vote Thursday on a spending bill for the Interior Department amid an intraparty split over the display of the Confederate flag.

The bill was pulled after the House moved to vote on an amendment to the measure that would continue to allow the Confederate flag to be displayed in certain federal cemeteries.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) offered that amendment late Wednesday night, triggering a furious blowback from House Democrats who ripped Republicans over the issue.

“Don’t Republicans understand that the Confederate battle flag is an insult to 40 million African Americans and to many other fair-minded Americans?” Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said on the House floor.

A series of Democrats went to the floor to denounce the vote, which they noted would take place the same day that South Carolina’s House had voted to remove the Confederate flag from its state capitol grounds.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters the spending bill had been pulled to avoid the issue from becoming a “political football.”

“That bill is going to sit in abeyance until we come to some resolution,” he said.

Boehner said he does not believe Confederate flags should be displayed at federal cemeteries. When asked why the amendment was added to the bill, he said he “supported the goal of trying to work with all the parties to address their concerns.”

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by Brandon Smith

The world is entering a kind of no man’s land, in between the realms of insane denial and utterly obvious crisis. Europe is now destabilizing amid the Greek soap opera (an event that I predicted in January would occur in 2015); China’s stock market bubble is bursting; and the U.S. dollar’s world reserve status is about to be decimated by the global shift toward the International Monetary Fund’s basket currency reserve system. I’m afraid I’m going to have to say this because I don’t know if anyone else will admit it: Alternative economic analysts were right, and the mainstream choir was either terribly wrong or disgustingly dishonest. However, as most of us in the liberty movement are well aware, being right is not necessarily a solution to disaster.

At the forefront of alternative economics and constitutional vigilance are the people doing the realwork in the movement: the preppers. These are the activists taking concrete action in the tangible world (as opposed to the ethereal laziness of the intellectual world) first to make themselves as independent as possible from the mainstream grid, thereby removing themselves as a potential refugee or looter in the event of national crisis. Second, they are the people mastering valuable and necessary skills that will allow them to rebuild any collapsed social and financial system. Third, they are the people most capable of defending our inherent freedoms and the principles of our founding culture, and they are the only people organizing locally for mutual aid and security. The fact of the matter is preppers are free, and almost everyone else is a slave — a slave to dependency, a slave to doubt, a slave to ignorance, a slave to fear and, thus, a slave to petty establishment authority.

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A U.S. District Court judge handed the Washington Redskins its greatest loss yet in a legal battle over the team’s trademarks.

Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled in favor of five Native Americans who argued the Redskins trademarks were derogatory. He found that the six trademarks at issue “consisted of matter that ‘may disparage’ a substantial composite of Native Americans.”

The cancellations of the six trademarks won’t take effect until the NFL team has exhausted all of its options in the federal appeals process, which could take the case to the Supreme Court. The ruling does not prevent the team from using the designs at issue.

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John Ainsworth,  KrisAnne Hall and Publius Huldah are our scheduled speakers so far.

Event will follow schedule of PATCONS before and will be updated as events/speakers are added.

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