‘Hamas will be hit in ways that it does not expect,’ Netanyahu said. ‘We have eliminated commanders, hit many important targets and we have decided to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks.’

Joe Biden and other world leaders are begging for peace, but neither side appears to be inclined to back down.

Every time Israel retaliates, Hamas just launches even more rockets at Israeli cities, and they are insisting that this is their “right”…

“We have the right to respond to the Israeli offensive and protect the interests of our people as long as the Israeli occupation continues the escalation,” Hamas said in a statement.

So here we go.

As I discussed yesterday, this situation has the potential to get wildly out of control very rapidly.

On Tuesday, the skies above Tel Aviv looked like something out of a science fiction movie as Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted countless incoming rockets from Gaza.  Could you imagine living in fear that a rocket could explode right next to you at any moment?

If that was happening in this country, millions of Americans would be screaming for Biden to nuke somebody.

Meanwhile, the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack has caused massive gasoline shortages up and down the east coast of the United States.  On Tuesday evening, the Drudge Report breathlessly declared that more than 1,000 gas stations had run out of gasoline, and Zero Hedge was reporting that some people were waiting in line for up to five hours in a desperate attempt to fill up their vehicles.

Up until recently, just about the only thing that we were missing from the economy of the 1970s was the long gas lines, but now here we are.

North America’s largest petroleum pipeline has been shut down for just a few days, and now much of the southeastern quadrant of the country is absolutely paralyzed.

Do you think that there is a lesson to be learned here?

Of course there is.  Once again we see how incredibly vulnerable we are to any sort of a major disruption.  If the unprecedented power grid failure in Texas a few months ago was not enough of a wake up call for you, this definitely should be.

At this point, we are being told it is uncertain whether or not the Colonial Pipeline will be able to restore operations by this weekend…

If the Colonial Pipeline is not back in business by the weekend, prices could continue to rise at the pump and there will be broader localized fuel shortages across the southeast and mid-Atlantic regions.

Eventually, the flow of gasoline will be restored and everyone along the east coast will be able to fill up their vehicles again.

But the crazy inflation that we are witnessing right is not going to go away.

For years, economic “doom and gloomers” have been warning that if we kept recklessly creating, borrowing and spending money that really bad things would happen.

How many times have we heard about “the death of the dollar” and the dangers of wildly inflating our currency?

Well, it turns out that the “doom and gloomers” were dead on accurate.  Inflation is one of the biggest stories of 2021 so far, and we just got another confirmation of how bad things are getting out there…

The median price for a single-family home in the U.S. rose the most on record in the first quarter, as buyers fought over a dearth of inventory, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Prices jumped 16.2% from a year earlier to a record high of $319,200. The growth eclipsed the 14.8% rate in the fourth quarter, which was the highest in data going back to 1989, the group said in a report Tuesday.

But at least home prices are not rising as fast as the price of cotton is.

If you can believe it, the price of cotton is up more than 50 percent over the past year.

Of course the price of corn is rising even more rapidly.  As I discussed the other day, the price of corn is up about 50 percent just since the turn of the year.

Needless to say, lumber still has everyone else beat.  The price of lumber has actually risen more than 200 percent over the past 12 months.

A lot of comparisons have been made to the horrible inflation that the U.S. experienced during the 1970s, but really I think that we need to go all the way back to the 1930s for a more accurate parallel to our current situation.

At this point, we are becoming more like the Weimar Republic with each passing day.

But if you think that things are really bad now, just wait, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Everywhere you look, systems are failing, society is crumbling and evil is growing.  Even the Secret Service, who are supposed to be the best of the best, are now plagued by endless scandals and widespread incompetence.

This is not a drill.  A widespread societal collapse is now underway, and it is going to get progressively worse.

This is the time of our endless nightmare, but nobody is going to ever be allowed to wake up from it.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

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At this point, the attacks have become so frequent that there is literally no break between them.  According to the Telegraph, major financial institutions are continually under assault, and the total number of attacks is constantly increasing…

Every minute, of every hour, of every day, a major financial institution is under attack.

Threats range from teenagers in their bedrooms engaging in adolescent “hacktivism”, to sophisticated criminal gangs and state-sponsored terrorists attempting everything from extortion to industrial espionage. Though the details of these crimes remain scant, cyber security experts are clear that behind-the-scenes online attacks have already had far reaching consequences for banks and the financial markets.

The amount of money that some of these hackers are stealing is absolutely staggering.  For example, during “Operation High Roller” thieves got away with somewhere between 78 million and 2.5 billion dollars…

Dissected last year, Operation High Roller marked one of the biggest online thefts to have been made public. According to details of the investigation, somewhere between $78m (£48m) and $2.5bn was last year stolen from thousands of bank accounts across Europe, the US and Latin America.

Among the customers targeted were rich individuals and high-value commercial accounts, with sophisticated software identifying the victims’ main bank accounts and transferring money to prepaid debit cards which could be cashed anonymously. Once the money had been taken, the hackers were able to hide their thefts by changing the victims’ bank balances so they appeared unaltered.

Do you find it unsettling that the authorities don’t even know how much money was actually stolen?

I do.

And earlier this year, another gang of cyberthieves was able to steal 45 million dollars from ATM machines…

A global posse of cyberthieves, armed with laptops in place of guns, hacked into financial institutions and stole $45 million from automated teller machines in a first-of-its-kind heist made for the 21st century, authorities in New York said Thursday.

Over a seven-month period ending last month, the authorities said, hackers broke into computer networks of financial companies in the United States and India and eliminated the withdrawal limits on prepaid debit cards.

Then, people involved in the heist withdrew tens of millions of dollars from ATMs in Manhattan and more than 20 other places around the world. In one case, surveillance cameras picked up a member of the “cashing crew” going from machine to machine, his cash-stuffed bag growing bigger with each hit.

But thefts involving tens of millions of dollars are just the beginning.

In the future, gangs of hackers, terror organizations or even foreign governments could use cyberattacks to bring the entire system down.

John McAfee (formerly of McAfee Associates) recently warned that we are now entering an era of apocalyptic cyberattacks.  He said that in the “next world war … the aggressors will be people sitting at home in armchairs while their software turns … all of our guns, our bombs … against us.”

The truth is that it is not just our financial system that is vulnerable.  Literally anything that is connected to the Internet could be attacked.

And that is a lot of stuff.

But for now, the big financial institutions remain the most prominent target.  Just this week, we learned that a successful cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase resulted in the theft of the personal information of close to half a million corporate and government clients…

Personal information of nearly half a million corporate and government clients who hold prepaid cash cards issued by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) may have been compromised in a cyberattack that took place on the bank’s network in July, the bank warned on Wednesday.

Corporations use JPMorgan’s cash card, known as UCard, to pay salaries, while government agencies use it for issuing tax refunds and unemployment benefits. JPMorgan said it discovered in September that web servers supporting its site, www.ucard.chase.com, had been hacked, potentially involving unauthorized access to the personal information of 465,000 cardholders, according to a Reuters report.

The issue was soon fixed and the incident has been brought to the attention of law enforcement authorities, JPMorgan said, adding that the bank has been trying to identify how many accounts were compromised in the attack.

Of course this was not the first major “technical glitch” that JPMorgan Chase has encountered this year.  In fact, earlier this year thousands upon thousands of their customers logged into their bank accounts only to discover that their balances had all been reset to zero.  That problem was fixed shortly thereafter, but I guarantee you that all of the customers that witnessed that “glitch” will remember it for a very long time.

And certainly JPMorgan Chase is far from alone in dealing with these kinds of issues.  In fact, major U.S. bank websites were offline for a combined total of 249 hours during just one six week period earlier this year.

When it comes to the Internet, nobody is ever entirely safe.  Every major website and every major company are being targeted.  According to USA Today, a cyberattack that began on October 21st has resulted in the theft of the login information for about 2 million Internet accounts…

Almost 2 million accounts on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and other social media and Internet sites have been breached, according to a Chicago-based cybersecurity firm.

The hackers stole 1.58 million website login credentials and 320,000 e-mail account credentials, among other items, the firm Trustwave reported. Included in the breaches were thefts of 318,121 passwords from Facebook, 59,549 from Yahoo, 54,437 from Google, 21,708 from Twitter and 8,490 from LinkedIn. The list also includes 7,978 from ADP, the payroll service provider. According to a Trustwave blog, “Payroll services accounts could actually have direct financial repercussions.”

So be cautious on the Internet.  The bad guys are out there, and they are becoming more sophisticated with each passing day.

And if you think that “the government will protect us”, you are just being naive.

In fact, government agencies cannot even protect themselves from these guys.  For example, identity thieves have been making fools of the IRS for years…

The Internal Revenue Service sent 655 tax refunds to a single address in Kaunas, Lithuania — failing to recognize that the refunds were likely part of an identity theft scheme. Another 343 tax refunds went to a single address in Shanghai, China.

Thousands more potentially fraudulent refunds — totaling millions of dollars — went to places in Bulgaria, Ireland and Canada in 2011.

In all, a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration today found 1.5 million potentially fraudulent tax returns that went undetected by the IRS, costing taxpayers $3.6 billion.

So if you are waiting for the incompetent U.S. government to fix this problem, you are going to be waiting for a very, very long while.

As a society, we are constantly becoming even more dependent on the Internet.

Meanwhile, the attacks on the Internet are continually becoming even more sophisticated.

At some point those attacks are going to cause some major league problems.

It is just a matter of time.

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