Money

The Triumph Of Materialism: The Average American Will Spend 830 Dollars On Christmas In 2015

November 24, 2015November 24, 2015 by Michael

Has there ever been a major holiday more focused on materialism than the modern American Christmas? This year, Americans are planning to spend an average of 830 dollars on Christmas gifts, which represents a jump of 110 dollars over the average of 720 dollars last year. But have our incomes gone up accordingly? Of course not. In fact, real median household income in the United States has been experiencing a steady long-term decline. So in order to fund all of our Christmas spending, we have got to go into even more debt. We love to pull out our credit cards and spend money that we do not have on lots of cheap, useless stuff made on the other side of the world by workers making slave labor wages. We do the same thing year after year, and most of us have grown accustomed to the endless cycle of growing debt. In fact, one Pew survey found that approximately 70 percent of all Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”. But then we have to work our fingers to the bone to try to make the payments on all of that debt, not realizing that debt systematically impoverishes us. It may be hard to believe, but if you have a single dollar in your pocket and no debt, you have a greater net worth than 25 percent of all Americans. I know that sounds crazy, but it is true.

Overall, when you add up all forms of debt (consumer, business, local government, state government and federal government), Americans are more than 60 trillion dollars in debt.

Let that sink in for a bit.

40 years ago, that number was sitting at about 3 trillion dollars.

We have been on the greatest debt binge in the history of the world. Even though we were “the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on the entire planet”, we always had to have more. We just kept on borrowing and borrowing and borrowing from the future until we completely destroyed it.

And we still haven’t learned anything. Instead, this Christmas season we will be partying like it’s 2007…

Americans are planning on celebrating Christmas like it’s 2007.

A November survey by Gallup found that US adults are planning on spending about $830 on average on Christmas gifts this year.

That’s a huge jump from last year’s $720 average.

Notably, American consumers haven’t suggested a number that high since November 2007, when they were planning on spending $866 on average.

Sadly, our incomes simply do not justify this kind of extravagance. As Zero Hedge has pointed out, household incomes “actually peaked at least 15 years ago in 81% of U.S. counties.”

So why can’t we adjust our lifestyles to match?

Why must we always have more?

Here are more details on our declining incomes from the Visual Capitalist…

Income peaked one year ago for many of the counties that are a part of the shale boom. This includes much of North and South Dakota, as well as parts of Texas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Income in Washington, D.C. and neighboring Arlington County also peaked then.
In 1999, a total of 1,623 counties had their households reach peak income. The majority of these counties are in the Midwest and Southeast.
The most southern part of California and parts of New England both peaked around 25 years ago.
Many states along the Rocky Mountains such as Wyoming and Montana had counties that peaked roughly 35 years ago.
Household income peaked in upstate New York, the northern tip of California, and southern Nevada at the same time that humans were first landing on the moon in 1969.

But you won’t hear this reported on the mainstream news, will you?

They want us to think that happy days are here again.

The following chart comes from the Federal Reserve, and it shows that real median household income in the United States has been trending down since 1999…

Americans should be having smaller Christmases instead of bigger ones, but that doesn’t fit the image of who we still think that we are.

Recently, I published an article entitled “Goodbye Middle Class: 51 Percent Of All American Workers Make Less Than 30,000 Dollars A Year” that was shared more than 44,000 times on Facebook. In that article, I included brand new figures that were just released by the Social Security Administration. As you can see, the quality of our jobs is not great…

-38 percent of all American workers made less than $20,000 last year.

-51 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

-62 percent of all American workers made less than $40,000 last year.

-71 percent of all American workers made less than $50,000 last year.

Without a doubt, most American families should not be spending hundreds of dollars a year on Christmas gifts.

At these income levels, most American families are just barely surviving.

But once again this year, millions upon millions of Americans will flock to the malls and big box stores in a desperate attempt to make themselves happy.

Sadly, those efforts will be in vain. In fact, in a previous article I highlighted the fact that Christmas is the unhappiest season of the year. The suicide rate spikes to the highest level of the year during “the holidays”, and 45 percent of all Americans report that they dread the Christmas season. The following is an excerpt from a Psychology Today article…

We are told that Christmas, for Christians, should be the happiest time of year, an opportunity to be joyful and grateful with family, friends and colleagues. Yet, according to the National Institute of Health, Christmas is the time of year that people experience the highest incidence of depression. Hospitals and police forces report the highest incidences of suicide and attempted suicide. Psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals report a significant increase in patients complaining about depression. One North American survey reported that 45% of respondents dreaded the festive season.

In recent years, an increasing number of Americans have given up the tradition of Christmas gifts entirely, and many of them that I know seem quite happy to have done so.

Of course most people are still quite satisfied with the status quo, and there are many that will get very angry with you if you dare to suggest that the way that Americans celebrate Christmas has gotten way out of hand.

But shouldn’t it alarm us that for most Americans the biggest holiday of the year is all about the “stuff” they are going to buy, the “stuff” they are going to give and the “stuff” they are going to get?

As a society, we are obsessed with things, but those things are never going to make us happy.

Perhaps we should all take some time to reflect on the traditions that we choose to participate in and what they really mean to us during this “holiday season”…

America Is Charlie Sheen: The CDC Says There Are 20,000,000 New STD Cases In America Each Year

November 17, 2015November 17, 2015 by Michael

Charlie Sheen’s announcement that he is HIV positive has created a huge uproar as critics attack him from every direction, but the truth is that Charlie Sheen is simply a reflection of our society as a whole. You see, the truth is that it isn’t just big Hollywood stars that are engaged in insanely risky sexual behavior. According to the CDC, there are 110 million cases of sexually-transmitted disease in America today, and another 20 million STD cases are added to that total every year. The United States has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world, and more than half of all Americans will have a sexually-transmitted disease at some point during their lives. Approximately one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease, and our nation spends $16,000,000,000 a year treating STDs. So go ahead and point a finger at Charlie Sheen if you want, but just remember that he is only a very small part of a raging national epidemic.

Now don’t get me wrong – I am certainly not defending Charlie Sheen. I am simply pointing out our hypocrisy. We love to tear others down while not realizing our own faults.

On Tuesday morning, Charlie Sheen told the world that he is HIV positive. The following is how USA Today announced the story…

Charlie Sheen is HIV positive, he told Matt Lauer during a much-touted exclusive Today show interview Tuesday morning.

The actor, whose drug use, rehab stints, legal issues, outbursts, on-set antics and many romantic entanglements have shaped his bad-boy image, confirmed the news, which had been swirling since Monday.

Of course Charlie Sheen is not being criticized for being HIV positive. Rather, the reason why so many people are jumping on him is because he continued to have unprotected sex even after he learned that he had HIV…

When Lauer asked Sheen if he had engaged in unprotected sex since his diagnosis, the actor responded in the affirmative. “The two people I did that with were under the care of my doctor and they were completely warned ahead of time.”

Talk about stupid.

And yet millions of other Americans are also running around having casual sex with people even after becoming infected with a sexually-transmitted disease.

For example, let’s take a look at chlamydia. According to the CDC, last year we broke the all-time record for the number of new chlamydia cases reported…

Chlamydia cases had dipped in 2013, but last year’s total of more than 1.4 million — or 456 cases per 100,000 — was the highest number of annual cases of any condition ever reported to the CDC.

The chlamydia rate was up almost three percent from 2013, new figures revealed.

The CDC is also reporting that cases of gonorrhea and syphilis are rising as well…

The CDC report revealed gonorrhea cases totaled 350,062, up five percent from 2013, and the most contagious forms of syphilis jumped 15 per cent to 20,000 cases.

What makes these numbers even more heartbreaking is the fact that our young people are being disproportionately hit by these diseases.

Of the 20 million new STD cases each year, Americans from the age of 15 to 24 account for about half of them.

This should not be happening. We have dramatically failed our young people, and the numbers just keep getting worse.

But instead of changing course and trying to do things differently, our entire culture continues to promote casual sex. As I wrote about just recently, the average American spends an average of 293 minutes a day watching television. And these days it is hard to find any show on television that is not talking about sex, and sometimes the commercials are the worst. I get so disgusted when I am trying to watch a football game and a Viagra commercial comes on. The reason I get so disgusted is that I know that millions of little boys are watching the games along with their fathers, and these commercials are communicating things to them that they do not need to know yet.

We need to teach our young people that there are rules, and that there can be very serious consequences for breaking those rules.

Above, I wrote about the latest numbers for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, but there are other STDs that are raging out of control as well. The following statistics for HBV, genital herpes and HPV come from the American Sexual Health Association…

One out of 20 people in the United States will get infected with hepatitis B (HBV) some time during their lives. Hepatitis B is 100 times more infectious than HIV.
Approximately half of HBV infections are transmitted sexually. HBV is linked to chronic liver disease, including cirrhosis and liver cancer.
It is estimated that as many as one in five Americans have genital herpes, a lifelong (but manageable) infection, yet up to 90 percent of those with herpes are unaware they have it.
With more than 50 million adults in the US with genital herpes and up to 776,000 new infections each year, some estimates suggest that by 2025 up to 40% of all men and half of all women could be infected.
Over 14 million people acquire HPV each year, and by age 50, at least 80 percent of women will have acquired genital HPV infection. Most people with HPV do not develop symptoms.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we have a massive problem in this country.

But we certainly don’t want to hear about “morality”, do we?

We don’t want it anywhere in our schools, in our courts, in our government or in our entertainment.

We just want to do whatever we want to do, but then we are shocked when we learn that there are very serious consequences for being so reckless.

This STD epidemic is going to continue to rage out of control until we find a solution.

So how do we solve this problem?

Is there any hope that things can be turned around?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

Russia’s New ‘Nuclear Torpedo’ Can Create Giant Tsunamis And Wipe Out Entire Coastal Cities

November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 by Michael

While the eyes of the world are on ISIS, Russia is creating weapons unlike anything the world has ever seen before. Plans for a giant self-propelled nuclear torpedo that can create a giant tsunami more than 1,000 feet tall were recently “leaked by mistake” by the Russian media. Apparently the warheads on these torpedos are designed to create so much radiation “that everything living will be killed” – including those that try to survive the attack by hiding in underground shelters. These “robotic mini-submarines” would have a range of up to 10,000 kilometers and would be able to evade all existing U.S. detection systems. To say that such a weapon would be a “game changer” would be a massive understatement.

I know that you are not just going to take my word for any of this. So like I do in all of my articles, I am going to carefully document what I am saying.

The reason why we know about the plans for this new nuclear torpedo is because they were displayed on Russian state television for a few moments during a recent broadcast. According to Russian officials, this was an “accident”. The following comes from a report in the Independent…

Secret plans for a new Russian nuclear torpedo system have been shown on state-controlled television in what the Kremlin said was an accident.

A close-up of a confidential document detailing “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” was broadcast for several seconds by Channel One Russia and NTV during coverage of a meeting between Vladimir Putin and military officials.

Could it be possible that this “accident” happened on purpose?

Could it be possible that it was intended as a warning for the Obama administration?

You never know.

But without a doubt, this is the kind of weapon that would keep military planners up at night. According to RT, this new nuclear torpedo is designed to create “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that no “military, economic, business or other activity” would occur in that area for a very long time…

The presentation slide titled “Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6” showed some drawings of a new nuclear submarine weapons system. It is apparently designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems, while also causing heavy damage to “important economic facilities” along the enemy’s coastal regions.

The footnote to the slide stated that Status-6 is intended to cause “assured unacceptable damage” to an adversary force. Its detonation “in the area of the enemy coast” would result in “extensive zones of radioactive contamination” that would ensure that the region would not be used for “military, economic, business or other activity” for a “long time.”

In addition, Konstantin Sivkov of the Russian Geopolitical Academy told the BBC that this kind of weapon could be used to create a tsunami more than 1,000 feet high…

“A warhead of up to 100 megatons could produce a tsunami up to 500m (1,650ft) high, wiping out all living things 1,500km (930 miles) deep inside US territory“

As I have written about previously, a whopping 39 percent of all Americans live in counties that directly border a shoreline. The detonation of just a handful of these weapons could wipe out the entire east coast and kill off a very substantial percentage of the U.S. population.

On top of all that, the BBC is reporting that a state-run Russian publication is suggesting that these new torpedos are being fitted with extremely radioactive cobalt warheads…

According to state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the destructive power attributed to the new torpedo’s warhead would fit the description of a cobalt bomb.

That would be a type of thermonuclear warhead with a layer of cobalt-59, which on detonation would be transmuted into highly radioactive cobalt-60 with a half-life longer than five years.

Such a weapon would guarantee “that everything living will be killed”, the paper said – there would not even be any survivors in bunkers.

A cobalt bomb has never been tested because of the devastating radiation it would unleash.

Worst of all, we would have no advance warning that these torpedos were coming. They can be launched from anywhere, they reportedly have a range of up to 10,000 kilometers, and they are designed to “avoid all acoustic tracking devices and other traps”…

On the diagram the giant torpedo’s range is given as “up to 10,000km” (6,200 miles) and depth of trajectory is “up to 1,000m” (3,300ft).

It was developed by Rubin, a submarine design bureau in St Petersburg.

It would, apparently, be launched by nuclear-powered submarines of the 09852 “Belgorod” and 09851 “Khabarovsk” series.

Rossiiskaya Gazeta called the torpedo a “robotic mini-submarine”, travelling at 100 knots (185km/h; 115mph), which would “avoid all acoustic tracking devices and other traps”.

We already know that Russia has been building “black hole submarines” that NATO officials admit are undetectable.

So Russia already has the capability to approach our coastlines without us even knowing about it.

But these new nuclear torpedos take the game to an entirely new level.

And of course this is not the only new weapons system that Russia has been developing in anticipation of World War III. Earlier this year, I discussed several more in an article entitled “The Next-Generation Weapons That Russia Will Use Against The United States In World War III“.

Sadly, the Obama administration seems almost totally oblivious to this threat. Our strategic nuclear forces are so outdated that floppy disks and rotary phones are still being used, and Barack Obama is fond of saying that “the Cold War’s been over for 20 years“.

Unfortunately for us, the Russians do not see things the same way. Anti-American sentiment inside Russia is at an all-time high, and every time the U.S. interferes in Syria or Ukraine the Russians get even angrier.

Just like we do, there are “talking heads” on Russian television that tell people what to think. And many of these “talking heads” on Russian television are openly talking about how war with the United States is inevitable. These days, the Russians consider themselves to be the great force for good in the world, and they consider America to be the great force for evil in the world. In fact, one of their most popular talking heads named Alexander Dugin has publicly called the U.S. the “kingdom of the Antichrist”.

And even though the Russian economy has dipped into recession, the Russians continue to feverishly prepare for war. This year alone, Russian military spending is up 33 percent.

Yes, ISIS is a far greater threat than most Americans would even dare to imagine as I discussed yesterday. In the times to come, I fully expect to see terror attacks inside this country unlike anything we have ever seen before.

But I am completely convinced that the greater long-term strategic threat is Russia.

The Russians are feverishly preparing for World War III while Barack Obama acts like it could never possibly happen.

Hopefully Obama is right, because if he is wrong the consequences for this nation will be absolutely unthinkable.

Ted Koppel Is Buying Freeze-Dried Food For The Day When A Cyberattack Takes Out The Power Grid

November 10, 2015November 10, 2015 by Michael

Most Americans have absolutely no idea how incredibly vulnerable our electrical grid is, but Ted Koppel does. For many years, Koppel was the level-headed host of Nightline on ABC, but now he is issuing a very chilling warning to America. For more than a year, he investigated potential threats to our power grid, and he has detailed what he discovered in a new book entitled “Lights Out“. He is convinced that a massive cyberattack could take down our entire electrical grid for an extended period of time, and he was horrified to learn that the Department of Homeland Security really doesn’t have a plan for how to deal with this kind of a scenario.

What Koppel found out during the course of his investigation freaked him out so much that he actually decided to buy freeze-dried food for himself, his children, and even his grandchildren. The following comes from CBS News…

In “Lights Out,” Koppel paints a grim picture of a paralyzing power outage in the form of an all-out cyberattack on the nation’s electrical grid.

“It’s frightening,” Koppel said. “I mean, it is frightening enough that my wife and I decided we were going to buy enough freeze-dried food for all of our kids and their kids.”

Koppel believes that Russia, China and Iran already have the ability to conduct such attacks. And actually, the truth is that many other nations such as North Korea have been rapidly developing the capability to conduct such operations as well.

It is only a matter of time until we see absolutely massive cyberattacks unleashed against national power grids, and the United States is the most likely target. Unfortunately for us, our government has done very little to prepare for this eventuality. Here is more from CBS News…

Koppel says the one agency that would be ready to counter a cyberattack such as this is the Department of Homeland Security. But are they ready?

“No,” he said. “I’ve talked to every former Secretary of Homeland Security, and they all acknowledge there is no plan.”

And the current Secretary, Jeh Johnson, didn’t offer much guidance to Koppel, either: “I kept asking ‘What’s the plan?’ Why wait until disaster strikes? Why not tell ’em? Do you have a plan?’ And he just sort of pointed up at a shelf filled with white binders and he said, ‘Look, I’m sure there’s something up there somewhere.'”

But we have been warned. In fact, just recently there was a major congressional hearing about this. At that hearing, one member of Congress explained that there is a significant attack on our power grid once every four days…

Such attacks hit the nation’s electric grid once every four days, according to estimates, Rep. Randy Weber, a Texas Republican, said at the House Subcommittee on Research and Technology hearing. The session was focused on better protecting the nation’s power grid and identifying its vulnerability to cyberattacks.

“In over 300 cases of significant cyber and physical attacks since 2011, suspects have never been identified,” Weber said.

And of course it isn’t just a cyberattack that we need to be concerned about. As I wrote about just over a month ago, a giant electromagnetic pulse either from the sun or from a weapon could fry our grid at any time as well.

Perhaps this is not something that you are making preparations for personally, but the White House sure is. According to the Houston Chronicle, the White House just released a plan that details how it would respond to an EMP event…

The White House Thursday released a contingency plan for about the most terrifying scenario possible: a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that wipes out the power grid.

Just imagine no more cell phones, Internet, credit cards, gas pumps, running water, electric lights or industry in a single fateful moment.

It could come from a solar flare that sends ultra-high-energy particles cascading toward the earth, frying every electrical transformer they encounter. So the White House, in conjunction with 24 other federal agencies, published a “National Space Weather Strategy” and accompany action plan, outlining a response if such a disaster were to occur.

I don’t know if any of us can really imagine how crazy things would get if the lights went out and never came back on. We have all become so incredibly dependent on computers, cell phones, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators, hospital equipment etc. What would life be like if suddenly we couldn’t use any of those things anymore?

At some point there will be a massive power grid failure. It is just a matter of time. And as space weather consultant John Kappenman recently told Gizmodo, when it happens power might not be restored for months or even years…

“If you take electricity away, either immediately or within a short period of time, you’ll suffer the failure of all critical infrastructure,” Kappenman said. This includes things like water, sewage treatment, gas stations, banks and hospitals. “One of the concerns that we have is that in the worst case scenarios, we could be looking at weeks, months, maybe even years before restoration of the grid.”

That’s why preppers are taking a longer view. “I have a five year supply of food for employees and family,” a source who requested anonymity told Gizmodo. This individual says he’s rigged up a 12.5 kW solar array in the “remote wilderness,” complete with “power outlets and water spigots about every 50 feet” to support a small fleet of RV trailers for the long haul. Other preppers agree that a multi-year food and water supply is crucial. Some are also stockpiling large quantities of medications (“five year supplies of meds can be obtained from Asia without prescriptions,” one source told Gizmodo).

For much more on what we could potentially be facing, I encourage you to check out the following articles…

-“Electromagnetic Pulse: One Day We Will Wake Up In An America Without Electricity And Society Will Totally Break Down”

-“The EMP Threat: All It Would Take Is A Couple Of Explosions To Send America Back To The 1800s”

-“What Are You Going To Do When A Massive EMP Blast Fries The U.S. Electrical Grid?”

So how can we get prepared? The YouTube video that I have posted below was produced by Infowars, and it contains advice from renowned survivalist experts including James Wesley Rawles. I think that you will find it to be very helpful…

Violent Shaking Along The Ring Of Fire Continues A Progression Of Disasters That Began In September

November 8, 2015November 8, 2015 by Michael

Have you noticed that seismic activity along the Ring of Fire appears to be dramatically increasing? According to Volcano Discovery, 39 volcanoes around the world have recently erupted, and 32 of them are associated with the Ring of Fire. This includes Mt. Popocatepetl which sits only about 50 miles away from Mexico City’s 18 million inhabitants. If you are not familiar with the Ring of Fire, it is an area roughly shaped like a horseshoe that runs along the outer perimeter of the Pacific Ocean. Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire. Just within the last 24 hours, we have witnessed a 4.4, a 5.4 and a 5.7 earthquake in Alaska, a 6.8 earthquake in Chile and 20 earthquakes in Indonesia of at least magnitude 4.3. And as you will see below, this violent shaking along the Ring of Fire seems to continue a progression of major disasters that began back during the month of September.

For whatever reason, our planet suddenly seems to be waking up. Unfortunately, the west coast of the United States is one of the areas where this is being felt the most. The little city of San Ramon, California is about 45 miles east of San Francisco, and over the past several weeks it has experienced a record-breaking 583 earthquakes…

A total of 583 small earthquakes have shaken San Ramon, California, in the last three weeks or so – more than five times the record set 12 years ago, according to the latest US Geological Survey updates.

“It’s the swarm with the largest number of total earthquakes in San Ramon,” said USGS scientist David Schwartz, who is more concerned about the size of quakes than he is the total number of them. Still, the number tops the previous record set in 2003, when 120 earthquakes hit over 31 days, with the largest clocking in at a magnitude of 4.2.

Could this be a prelude to a major seismic event in California?

We shall see what happens.

Meanwhile, records are being shattered in the middle part of the country as well.

For instance, the state of Oklahoma has already set a brand new yearly record for earthquakes…

The state recorded its 587th earthquake of 3.0 magnitude or higher early this week, breaking the previous record of 585. That record was set for all of 2014, meaning that Oklahoma has now had more 3.0 magnitude or higher earthquakes so far in 2015 than it did in all of 2014. So far this year, E&E News reports, Oklahoma’s averaged 2.5 quakes each day, a rate that, if it continues, means the state could see more than 912 earthquakes by the end of this year.

Oklahoma has also experienced 21 4.0 magnitude or greater earthquakes so far this year — an increase over last year, which saw 14.

And just over this past weekend there was a very disturbing series of earthquakes in the state…

Starting with a magnitude-4.1 temblor at 5:11 a.m. close to the Oklahoma-Kansas border, the region experienced a series of six earthquakes within a 75-minute period Saturday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website.

The largest earthquake Saturday morning was the 4.1, which had an epicenter nine miles northwest of Medford, Okla., 59 miles southwest of Wichita.

That was followed by five more quakes near Medford with magnitudes of 2.5, 2.8, 2.5, 3.1 and 2.9 – the last of which came at 6:24 a.m.

A seventh earthquake – this one a magnitude-4.2 temblor – was recorded at 12:29 p.m., 10 miles north-northwest of Medford.

So why aren’t more Americans alarmed that these records are being broken?

We are seeing things that we have never seen before, and I believe that it will soon get even worse.

And this dramatic increase in seismic activity that we are now seeing appears to fit into a larger pattern of major disasters that we have been witnessing over the past couple of months.

As we approached the end of the summer, all of a sudden massive wildfires erupted all across the western third of the country. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the only time in U.S. history when wildfires had burned more acres by the end of October was during the record-setting year of 2006.

In 2015, a lot of these wildfires have really been threatening highly populated areas. I know, because at one point a major fire came within about 10 miles of my own house. Since the beginning of August, Barack Obama has made an astounding 25 disaster declarations related to fires, and by the end of September the horrible fires that were threatening key areas of the state of California were making headlines all over the world.

Then as we got to the very end of the month of September, a new kind of disaster began to take center stage. As I wrote about just recently, the storm that would later became known as Hurricane Joaquin developed into a tropical depression on September 28th.

Even though that hurricane never made landfall in the United States, moisture from that storm caused a tremendous amount of chaos along the east coast.

The governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, said that it was the most rain that some areas of her state had witnessed “in a thousand years”, and it is being projected that the economic damage that was done by all of the flooding “will probably be in the billions of dollars”.

Shortly after the flooding in South Carolina, a massive storm dumped an enormous amount of rain on southern California. Because that area had been experiencing severe drought for so long, all of that rain caused tremendous flooding and massive mudslides. Rivers of mud literally several feet thick completely stopped traffic along many major roads across the region. If you got caught in those rivers of mud, you were lucky to get out with your life. In fact, authorities pulled one dead man out of a vehicle that got completely buried by mud several days after the storms had passed. It took them that long to finally get to him.

The middle of the country was not spared either. Hurricane Patricia ended up being one of the strongest hurricanes ever measured, and the remnants of that storm dumped an incredible amount of rain on the state of Texas. There was so much flooding that a train was literally knocked off the tracks by the water. And about a week after that there was more flooding in the state that caused at least six deaths.

Overall, it has really been a bad couple of months for major disasters, and this sequence of events seems to have begun during the month of September.

So what should we make of all this? Please feel free to add your voice to the discussion by posting a comment below…

The UN Plans To Implement Universal Biometric Identification For All Of Humanity By 2030

November 1, 2015November 1, 2015 by Michael

Did you know that the United Nations intends to have biometric identification cards in the hands of every single man, woman and child on the entire planet by the year 2030? And did you know that a central database in Geneva, Switzerland will be collecting data from many of these cards? Previously, I have written about the 17 new “Global Goals” that the UN launched at the end of September. Even after writing several articles about these new Global Goals, I still don’t think that most of my readers really grasp how insidious they actually are. This new agenda truly is a template for a “New World Order”, and if you dig into the sub-points for these new Global Goals you find some very alarming things.

For example, Goal 16.9 sets the following target…

“By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration”

The United Nations is already working hard toward the implementation of this goal – particularly among refugee populations. The UN has partnered with Accenture to implement a biometric identification system that reports information “back to a central database in Geneva”. The following is an excerpt from an article that was posted on findbiometrics.com…

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is moving forward with its plans to use biometric technology to identify and track refugees, and has selected a vendor for the project. Accenture, an international technology services provider, has won out in the competitive tendering process and will oversee the implementation of the technology in a three-year contract.

The UNHCR will use Accenture’s Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) for the endeavor. BIMS can be used to collect facial, iris, and fingerprint biometric data, and will also be used to provide many refugees with their only form of official documentation. The system will work in conjunction with Accenture’s Unique Identity Service Platform (UISP) to send this information back to a central database in Geneva, allowing UNHCR offices all over the world to effectively coordinate with the central UNHCR authority in tracking refugees.

I don’t know about you, but that sure does sound creepy to me.

And these new biometric identification cards will not just be for refugees. According to a different FindBiometrics report, authorities hope this technology will enable them to achieve the UN’s goal of having this kind of identification in the hands of every man, woman and child on the planet by the year 2030…

A report synopsis notes that about 1.8 billion adults around the world currently lack any kind of official documentation. That can exclude those individuals from access to essential services, and can also cause serious difficulties when it comes to trans-border identification.

That problem is one that Accenture has been tackling in collaboration with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been issuing Accenture-developed biometric identity cards to populations of displaced persons in refugee camps in Thailand, South Sudan, and elsewhere. The ID cards are important for helping to ensure that refugees can have access to services, and for keeping track of refugee populations.

Moreover, the nature of the deployments has required an economically feasible solution, and has demonstrated that reliable, biometric ID cards can affordably be used on a large scale. It offers hope for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of getting legal ID into the hands of everyone in the world by the year 2030 with its Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative.

The Identification for Development (ID4D) initiative was originally launched by the World Bank, and they are proud to be working side by side with the UN to get “legal identity” into the hands of all. The following comes from the official website of the World Bank…

Providing legal identity for all (including birth registration) by 2030 is a target shared by the international community as part of the Sustainable Development Goals (target 16.9). The World Bank Group (WBG) has launched the Identification for Development (ID4D) cross-practice initiative, with the participation of seven GP/CCSAs sharing the same vision and strategic objectives, to help our client countries achieve this goal and with the vision of making everyone count: ensure a unique legal identity and enable digital ID-based services to all.

Of course all of this is being framed as a “humanitarian” venture right now, but will it always stay that way?

At some point will a universal biometric ID be required for everyone, including you and your family?

And what would happen if you refused to take it?

I could definitely foresee a day when not having “legal identification” would disqualify you from holding a job, getting a new bank account, applying for a credit card, qualifying for a mortgage, receiving any form of government payments, etc. etc.

At that point, anyone that refused to take a “universal ID” would become an outcast from society.

What the elite want to do is to make sure that everyone is “in the system”. And it is a system that they control and that they manipulate for their own purposes. That is one of the reasons why they are slowly but surely discouraging the use of cash all over the world.

In Sweden, this movement has already become so advanced that they are now pulling ATMs out of even the most rural locations…

The Swedish government abetted by its fractional-reserve banking system is moving relentlessly toward a completely cashless economy. Swedish banks have begun removing ATMs even in remote rural areas, and according to Credit Suisse the rule of thumb in Scandinavia is “If you have to pay in cash, something is wrong.” Since 2009 the average annual value of notes and coins in circulation in Sweden has fallen more than 20 percent from over 100 billion to 80 billion kronor. What is driving this movement to destroy cash is the desire to unleash the Swedish central bank to drive the interest rate down even further into negative territory. Currently, it stands at -0.35 percent, but the banks have not passed this along to their depositors, because depositors would simply withdraw their cash rather than leave it in banks and watch its amount shrink inexorably toward zero. However, if cash were abolished and bank deposits were the only form of money, well then there would be no limit on negative interest rate policy as banks would be able to pass these negative interest rates onto their depositors without adverse consequences. With everyone’s wages, salaries, dividends etc, paid by direct deposit into his bank account, the only way to escape negative interest rates would be to spend, spend, spend. This, of course, is precisely what the Keynesian economists advising governments and running central banks are aiming at….a pro-cash resistance movement is beginning to coalesce and the head of a security industry lobbying group relates, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks won’t accept it.”

If you aren’t using cash, that means that all of your economic activity is going through the banks where it can be watched, tracked, monitored and regulated.

Every time the elite propose something for our “good”, it somehow always results in them having more power and more control.

I hope that people will wake up and see what is happening. Major moves toward a one world system are taking place right in front of our eyes, and yet I hear very, very few people talking about any of this.

So where do you think that all of this is eventually heading? Please feel free to share your thoughts with all the rest of us by posting a comment below…

The Calm Before The Storm

October 26, 2015October 26, 2015 by Michael

Have you noticed that things have gotten eerily quiet in the month of October? After the chaos of late August and early September, many had anticipated that we would be dealing with a full-blown financial collapse by now, but instead we have entered a period of “dead calm” in which things have become exceedingly quiet in almost every way that you can possibly imagine. Other “watchmen” that I highly respect have made the exact same observation. Even though the economic numbers are screaming that we have entered a global recession, they aren’t really make any headline news. A whole host of major financial institutions around the planet are currently in danger of collapsing and creating the next “Lehman Brothers moment”, but none of them has imploded just yet. And of course Barack Obama seems bound and determined to start World War III. On Monday, it was announced that he is sending a guided missile destroyer into Chinese waters in the South China Sea. The Chinese have already stated that they might just start shooting if this happens, but Barack Obama doesn’t seem to care. But until the shooting actually begins, that is not likely to upset the current tranquility that we are enjoying either.

To me, what we are experiencing at the moment would best be described as “the calm before the storm”. If you are not familiar with this concept, this is how it is defined by How Stuff Works…

Have you ever spent an afternoon in the backyard, maybe grilling or enjoying a game of croquet, when suddenly you notice that everything goes quiet? The air seems still and calm — even the birds stop singing and quickly return to their nests.

After a few minutes, you feel a change in the air, and suddenly a line of clouds ominously appears on the horizon — clouds with a look that tells you they aren’t fooling around. You quickly dash in the house and narrowly miss the first fat raindrops that fall right before the downpour. At this moment, you might stop and ask yourself, “Why was it so calm and peaceful right before the storm hit?”

Like so many others, I believe that a great storm is coming, and yet right at this moment things seem so peaceful.

Unfortunately, this period of peace and quiet is not going to last for long, and most Americans know deep down that something is seriously wrong with our nation. In fact, a new WND/Clout poll has found that 85.3 percent of all likely voters in the United States believe that our country is going in the wrong direction…

The poll found 92.6 percent of those who identified themselves as conservative believe the nation is on the wrong track. Among those who call themselves liberal, 90.9 percent said it is going the wrong direction.

When asked what they think of the American economy after seven years of Obama’s leadership and economic policies, nearly 80 percent described it as “very fragile” or “somewhat fragile.”

Self-identified Democrats, Republicans, liberals and conservatives were in general agreement, with about 75 percent to 80 percent describing the economy as “somewhat fragile” or “very fragile.”

But even though we are steamrolling in the wrong direction, we haven’t suffered any incredibly serious consequences for it yet.

For the moment, this is allowing the mockers to have a field day. They are fully confident that Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve knew what they were doing after all, and they are gleefully taunting those of us that have been warning of the great disaster that is heading our way.

However, those that are wise are getting prepared.

I think that we could all learn some lessons from what Overstock.com Chairman Jonathan Johnson is doing. The following is an extended excerpt from a recent Zero Hedge article…

*****

One week ago Johnson, who is also candidate for Utah governor, spoke at the United Precious Metals Association, or UPMA, which we first profiled a month ago, and which takes advantage of Utah’s special status allowing the it to use gold as legal tender, offering gold and silver-backed accounts. As a reminder, the UPMA takes Federal Reserve Notes (or paper dollars) which it then translates into golden dollars (or silver). The golden dollars are based off the $50 one ounce gold coins produced by the Treasury of The United States. They are legal tender under the law and are protected as such.

What did Johnson tell the UPMA? Here are some choice quotes:

We are not big fans of Wall Street and we don’t trust them. We foresaw the financial crisis, we fought against the financial crisis that happened in 2008; we don’t trust the banks still and we foresee that with QE3, and QE4 and QE n that at some point there is going to be another significant financial crisis.

So what do we do as a business so that we would be prepared when that happens. One thing that we do that is fairly unique: we have about $10 million in gold, mostly the small button-sized coins, that we keep outside of the banking system. We expect that when there is a financial crisis there will be a banking holiday. I don’t know if it will be 2 days, or 2 weeks, or 2 months. We have $10 million in gold and silver in denominations small enough that we can use for payroll. We want to be able to keep our employees paid, safe and our site up and running during a financial crisis.

We also happen to have three months of food supply for every employee that we can live on.

*****

Why would such a seemingly intelligent and successful CEO of a large Internet company do such things?

It is because he can see the writing on the wall.

This period of calm will not last. A great storm is coming, and when it does arrive those that have not prepared for it are going to suffer tremendously.

Most people have no idea just how fragile our system really is. Today, some of these “too big to fail” banks supposedly have trillions of dollars in assets, but if you want to withdraw $10,000 or more in cash you have got to give them 24 hours notice to get enough money…

This is just the beginning. As anyone can tell you, it’s all but impossible to move large amounts of money into cash in the US. Even the large banks will routinely ask you for 24 hours notice if you need $10,000 or more in cash. These are banks will TRILLIONS of dollars worth of assets on their books.

And with each passing day we see even more signs of the global economic slowdown that is emerging all around us. For example, we just learned that the China Containerized Freight Index has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded. China accounts for more global trade than anyone else, and so this is a very clear sign that global economic activity is slowing down dramatically…

By early July, the index dropped below 800 for the first time in its history, which started in 1998 when the index was set at 1,000. It soon recovered to about 850. And just when bouts of hope were rising that the worst was over, it plunged again and hit even lower levels.

The latest weekly reading dropped another 1.7% from the prior week to 752.21, the worst level ever. The CCFI is now 30% below where it had been in February this year and 25% below where it had been 17 years ago at its inception.

But for those that don’t want to believe that hard times are on the way, they can take comfort in the eerie period of calm that we are experiencing right now.

What they don’t realize is that this truly is “the calm before the storm”, and the global economic crisis that is ahead of us is going to be far beyond what most people ever dared to imagine was possible.

Why Is This Happening? Unprecedented Flooding Has Hit The U.S. Within The Last 30 Days

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 by Michael

Over the past 30 days, major floods have hit the east coast, the west coast and now the middle part of the country. So why is this happening? Why is the U.S. being hit by so many catastrophic weather events all of a sudden? During the past month flooding has caused billions of dollars in damage, and in many areas the clean up is going to take well into next year. Some pundits are blaming El Nino, but others are pointing to other potential reasons for why this may be happening. Let’s start by taking a look at some of the biggest flood events that have happened over the past 30 days…

Hurricane Joaquin never made landfall on the east coast, but moisture from the storm had a tremendous impact – particularly in South Carolina. In fact, the governor of the state said that the region had not seen that type of rain “in a thousand years”…

“We haven’t had this level of rain in the low-country in a thousand years — that’s how big this is,” said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. Days of record rainfall and catastrophic flooding left at least seventeen people dead in South Carolina and two dead in North Carolina, Oct. 6, 2015. Thirteen dams have failed.

It would be very difficult to overstate the amount of damage that was caused by this storm. Some officials are estimating that the total amount of economic damage done “will probably be in the billions of dollars”…

The rains may have stopped in South Carolina, but the danger and the work to rebuild are far from over.

“I believe that things will get worse before they get better,” Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin told reporters Monday.

“Eventually the floods will abate, but then we have to access the damage, and I anticipate that damage will probably be in the billions of dollars, and we’re going to have to work to rebuild. Some peoples’ lives as they know them will never be the same,” he said.

Of course this is far from the only destructive flooding event that we have seen in recent weeks.

Out in California they have been getting hit with disaster after disaster. First, the wildfire season came very close to setting a national record this year, and it was particularly bad out west. The following comes from USA Today…

The amount of land burned by wildfires in the U.S. this year has surpassed 9 million acres, according to data released Thursday by the National Interagency Fire Center.

This is only the fourth time on record the country has reached the 9 million-acre mark, center spokesman Randall Eardley said in an e-mail. The area burned is roughly equivalent to the size of New Jersey and Connecticut combined.

All of the top years for acres burned have occurred since 2000, Eardley said. The worst year occurred in 2006, with 9.8 million acres. In 2007 and 2012, 9.3 million acres were burned, he said. If another 800,000 acres are burned this year, an all-time record would be set.

I have a feeling that when the final numbers are all in and tallied that 2015 will end up setting an all-time record for wildfires.

But after a really dry, hot summer, southern California got surprised by a deluge of heavy rain this month and the results were absolutely catastrophic. The following comes from Fox News…

A flood of mud and debris triggered by heavy rainfall in Southern California rushed onto streets and highways Thursday, stranding hundreds in their cars and closing a major interstate.

Nearly 40 miles of Interstate 5 north in Los Angeles were still closed Friday afternoon after heavy rainfall sent mud, debris and even boulders streaming into the north-south running freeway, according to the California Department of Transportation.

Some people, stuck in up to 5 feet of mud, were forced to camp overnight in their vehicles, according to NBC Los Angeles. Pictures on social media showed some cars submerged in debris up to the windshields.

Authorities are still digging people out from this mess several days later. In fact, the dead body of one man was just pulled out of a van that had been encased in several feet of mud…

Southern California fire crews discovered a man’s body Tuesday inside a van that had been buried under several feet of mud after a flash flood overran a road near Los Angeles last week.

And just over this past weekend, the middle part of the country has had to deal with tremendous flooding as well. Hurricane Patricia turned out to be the world’s strongest hurricane since at least 1970, and the remnants of this storm are hitting the state of Texas quite hard.

The small town of Powell, Texas got 20 inches of rain in just 30 hours, and a Union Pacific train that was running nearby was derailed by the heavy flood waters…

A Union Pacific freight train carrying cement derailed in Navarro County after a creek overflowed, washing out the tracks. Locomotives and rail cars were pushed on their sides, and a two-person crew was forced to swim to safety.

Repair teams cleared the derailed cars by Sunday morning, but they were not expected to be righted for several hours and a locomotive was not seen being moved until later in the day, Union Pacific spokesman Jeff DeGraff said on Sunday afternoon.

All of this has happened within the past 30 days.

So is there a reason why all of these events have happened?

Of course some people say that it is just a coincidence that all of these storms have hit us in such close proximity.

Others are pointing to the extremely strong El Nino that has developed. Here is an excerpt from a recent Bloomberg report…

It has choked Singapore with smoke, triggered Pacific typhoons and left Vietnamese coffee growers staring nervously at dwindling reservoirs. In Africa, cocoa farmers are blaming it for bad harvests, and in the Americas, it has Argentines bracing for lower milk production and Californians believing that rain will finally, mercifully fall.

El Nino is back and in a big way.

Its effects are just beginning in much of the world — for the most part, it hasn’t really reached North America — and yet it’s already shaping up potentially as one of the three strongest El Nino patterns since record-keeping began in 1950. It will dominate weather’s many twists and turns through the end of this year and well into next. And it’s causing gyrations in everything from the price of Colombian coffee to the fate of cold-water fish.

That certainly doesn’t sound promising for the months ahead.

But some climate “experts” are really playing down the impact of El Nino. Instead, they are attempting to convince us that what we are witnessing is simply the result of “man-made climate change”, and they are using this as an opportunity to promote their agenda.

And there are yet others that see a spiritual dimension to all of this. In fact, there are some out there that believe that all of this flooding could be a sign that the judgment of God on America has begun.

So what do you think?

Do you believe that there is a reason why the U.S. is experiencing so much flooding lately?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

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