NC Renegades

Senator Harry Reid, the tough tactician who has led Senate Democrats since 2005, will not seek re-election next year, bringing an end to a three-decade congressional career that culminated with his push of President Obama’s ambitious agenda against fierce Republican resistance.

Mr. Reid, 75, who suffered serious eye and facial injuries in a Jan. 1 exercise accident at his Las Vegas home, said he had been contemplating retiring from the Senate for months. He said his decision was not attributable either to the accident or to his demotion to minority leader after Democrats lost the majority in November’s midterm elections.

“I understand this place,” Mr. Reid said. “I have quite a bit of power as minority leader.”

He has already confounded the new Republican majority this year by holding Democrats united against a proposal to gut the Obama administration’s immigration policies as well as a human-trafficking measure Democrats objected to over an anti-abortion provision.

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Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have created new structures that exploit the electromechanical properties of specific nanofibers to stretch to up to seven times their length, while remaining tougher than Kevlar.

These structures absorb up to 98 joules per gram. Kevlar, often used to make bulletproof vests, can absorb up to 80 joules per gram. The material can reinforce itself at points of high stress and could potentially be used in military airplanes or other defense applications.

In a study published by ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, a journal of the American Chemical Society, researchers twisted nanofiber into yarns and coils. The electricity generated by stretching the twisted nanofiber formed an attraction 10 times stronger than a hydrogen bond, which is considered one of the strongest forces formed between molecules.

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Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said on Wednesday that the Air Force has failed to allay concerns about the deactivation of the 440th Airlift Wing, a vital support unit for training U.S. special operations and airborne forces.

The Air Force has signaled in recent months that it plans to phase out the 440th, which has shed about 200 airmen and reduced its flights in response to budget cuts. The Airlift Wing, an Air Force Reserve unit, flies the only C-130 planes that are permanently stationed at the Pope Airfield at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Critics of the Air Force’s move say it does not make strategic or financial sense to remove airmen from the base that serves some of the Army’s top airborne units, including the 82nd Airborne Division and special operations forces.

After meeting with Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, Tillis said in a statement that “questions I have been asking for months regarding the Air Force’s short-sighted plans to deactivate the 440th Air Wing remain unanswered.”

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Did you know that the Russians have a massive underground complex in the Ural mountains that has been estimated to be approximately 400 square miles in size?  In other words, it is roughly as big as the area inside the Washington D.C. beltway.  Back in the 1990s, the Clinton administration was deeply concerned about the construction of this enormous complex deep inside Yamantau mountain, but they could never seem to get any straight answers from the Russians.  The command center for this complex is rumored to be 3,000 feet directly straight down from the summit of this giant rock quartz mountain.  And of course U.S. military officials will admit that there are dozens of other similar sites throughout Russia, although most of them are thought to be quite a bit smaller.  But that is not all that the Russians have been up to.  For example, Russian television has reported that 5,000 new emergency nuclear bomb shelters were scheduled to have been completed in the city of Moscow alone by the end of 2012.  Most Americans don’t realize this, but the Russians have never stopped making preparations for nuclear war.  Meanwhile, the U.S. government has essentially done nothing to prepare our citizens for an attack.  The assumption seems to be that a nuclear attack will probably never happen, and that if it does it will probably mean the end of our civilization anyway.

Needless to say, the Russians are very secretive about their massive underground facility at Yamantau mountain, and no American has ever been inside.  The following is what Wikipedia has to say about it…

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On this week’s episode of the Forward Observer Podcast (tune in below), I talked about the concept that “every patriot is a sensor.”  That maxim comes from the Army, where every soldier is a sensor.  Whether you’re on patrol, on guard duty, talking to detainees, or just being on base, every soldier has a responsibility to remain situationally-aware and observe his environment.

The military has Intelligence collectors that are involved in active collection.  But if that’s the only information the Army relied on, they’d only be seeing several pieces of the Intelligence pie.  The irony of Intelligence collection is that line units out on patrol are generally the first to collect threat intelligence information and are also the first ones to use it.  So in addition to combat skills, soldiers also need to be aware of changes in their operating environment — that’s passive intelligence collection and it’s extremely vital to the security of organizations under threat.

We want to build the same culture in our security groups by encouraging our members to passively collect intelligence information.  We’re not tasking them to go out of their way; all we’re asking is, in the course of their normal duties, if they come into contact with something that sounds like it could be important, to report it back to the Analysis & Control Element (ACE).

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I am taking a short break from my latest series on the real numbers behind our failing economy to address an issue within the Liberty Movement that I find a bit disturbing; namely the issue of inadequate strategic thinking and common sense amongst a certain new crop of survival writers, “gurus”, and their fans. I have only been a survival and prepping enthusiast for ten years, and I have been training in tactical methodologies for six years, but I think the near constant saturation of training I have received over that time makes me at least moderately qualified to discuss survival philosophies. During my work in the alternative media, I am also exposed to all of the undercurrents and trends within the movement, including many negative and destructive trends.

The following article is only a summation of my personal observations. I am sure some people will disagree with my conclusions and claim that the exact opposite reality is true for them, and that’s great. If they don’t see the same problems around them that I see, then they are lucky. I can only relate my experiences based on my dealings with hundreds of thousands of liberty proponents on a monthly basis.

Survivalism has become in some ways a mainstay of popular culture over the course of the past few years. The mainstream still calls us “paranoid kooks” and “doom and gloomers”, but they can’t seem to get rid of us. Survivalists are a fact of American life now. However, survivalism as a philosophy remains in the infant stages of its progression.

Most of us have never lived through a full spectrum crisis event. Most of us have not lived through the peak damage of an economic collapse. Most of us have not been trapped in a war zone (except by choice through enlistment). Most of us have NO real world experience whatsoever in terms of surviving a true catastrophe. Therefore, it behooves us to NOT make detrimental assumptions where such an event is concerned.

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The co-pilot “voluntarily” initiated the descent of the Germanwings flight that crashed into the French Alps and refused to open the door to the pilot who was outside the cockpit, the lead investigator said on Thursday.

“The co-pilot is alone at the controls,” said prosecutor Brice Robin, recounting information gathered from the “black box” recorder. “He voluntarily refused to open the door of the cockpit to the pilot and voluntarily began the descent of the plane.”

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Related Article:

Plane hit the Alps on purpose, prosecutor says

I would not normally put up information to make someone look intentionally bad. And Eleanor Holmes Norton does look like a fool. Here is an example of this delegate defending Dr. Gruber’s disparaging remarks concerning the American people.

I know there is no political solution to restoring the rule of law and our honor. Holmes is a disgrace to her office, her constituents and this country. Unfortunately Holmes is not the exception in Washington.

David DeGerolamo

Star Wars Tatooine set now a terror warzone

The crisis that has engulfed the Middle East thanks to the rise of ISIS (or ‘Daesh’ as Coalition forces prefer to refer to it) continues to march through the African continent and now threatens the small Tunisian town which served as the backdrop of the original ‘Star Wars’ film shoot in 1976.

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