Disease

The Mysterious New “SARS-Like Virus” That Is Killing People In China Has Now Spread To Japan

On top of everything else that has happened so far in 2020, a very mysterious “SARS-like virus” that doctors have never seen before is causing grave concern among global health officials.  It has been identified as “a coronavirus”, but that category covers a very broad range of illnesses.  If you have a common cold right now, it was caused by a coronavirus.  But SARS and MERS also came from the same virus family, and those two outbreaks made headlines all over the world.  In 2002 and 2003, SARS infected more than 8,000 people worldwide, and more than 700 of them ended up dying.  Global health officials are hoping that what we are now facing won’t be any worse than that, but at this point they just don’t know enough about this mysterious new virus to make any firm projections.

What we do know is that this outbreak just started, and China has just announced that this virus has claimed a second life.  The following comes from the BBC…

A second person has died in China from a new, pneumonia-like virus, local officials have announced.

They say the death was recorded in the eastern city of Wuhan, where the outbreak began in December.

And we also know that there have been at least two cases where people have transported the virus outside of China via airplane.

The first case happened earlier this week when a woman flew from China to Thailand…

The new virus, known for now as 2019-nCoV, was first identified on Jan. 7, about a week after officials first reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, WHO said.

Recently, officials reported the first “exported” case of the virus in Thailand. In that case, a resident of Wuhan got on a direct flight to Thailand along with several members of her family and a tour group, according to WHO. When the 61-year-old woman arrived at the airport, she was found to have a fever, and she was taken to the hospital where she tested positive for 2019-nCoV.

Subsequently, on Thursday we learned that a man that flew from China to Japan had also contracted the virus.  The following comes from Time Magazine…

Japan’s government said Thursday a man treated for pneumonia after returning from China has tested positive for the new coronavirus identified as a possible cause of an outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The man developed a fever and coughs on Jan. 3 while in Wuhan, returned to Japan on Jan. 6, and was hospitalized four days later due to persistent coughs and fever, with his X-ray image showing signs of pneumonia, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said.

At first, global health officials were greatly downplaying the possibility of human-to-human transmission.

But now even the World Health Organization has been forced to admit that “limited human-to-human transmission” may be happening…

There may have been limited human-to-human transmission of a new coronavirus in China within families, and it is possible there could be a wider outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

In other words, the evidence has forced them to change their tune, but they are still trying to not alarm the general public too much.

Unfortunately, the truth is that this outbreak is still very new, they have never seen this virus before, and they are still trying to figure out exactly how dangerous it is.

Hopefully this is not going to develop into a major pandemic.  Without a doubt, it is certainly possible that this whole thing could fizzle out even faster than the bird flu scare did.

But let us not forget that a horrific pandemic about 100 years ago killed between 50 million and 100 million people.  The following comes from Wikipedia…

The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918 – December 1920; colloquially known as Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus.[1] It infected 500 million people around the world,[2] including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic. Probably 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million (three to five percent of Earth’s population at the time) died, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.[3][4][5]

Bill Gates has identified pandemics as one of the three greatest threats that humanity is facing, and he says that we are woefully unprepared if one were to break out today.

In fact, he says that we should be preparing for one right now as if we were preparing for war…

“In the case of biological threats, that sense of urgency is lacking,” Gates said in a 2018 presentation hosted by the New England Journal of Medicine. “The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war.”

Sadly, authorities will probably never make preparation a true priority until a major pandemic has already begun.

The symptoms of this new mystery virus include congestion, headache, cough and fever.

Of course those exact same symptoms are associated with the common cold.

If you have shortness of breath, chills or body aches in addition to the other symptoms, that could be an indication that you should get checked out.

But there have been no reports of this virus reaching the United States yet, and hopefully we won’t see that happen at all.

For the Chinese, this outbreak comes at a particularly bad time, because their Lunar New Year celebration is on January 25th.  Hundreds of millions of people will be traveling around China, and that could potentially accelerate the spread of the virus.

It may have been prudent for Chinese officials to completely cancel all of the festivities, but at this point there are absolutely no plans to do that.

So we will watch and see what happens.  If this particular virus doesn’t become a pandemic, scientists assure us that it is only a matter of time before some other virus does.  And considering the hour in which we live, we are certainly very vulnerable to a potential pandemic right now.

Once again, I want to stress that there is no need for people in the U.S. to start freaking out about this virus just yet.  Only two people have died, and there have been no reported cases in the U.S. so far.

But as we have seen in the past, global air travel can spread a virus around the world very quickly, and authorities are still trying to figure out how dangerous this new mystery disease really is.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of 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 have written four books 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 those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. 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. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

40 Facts That Prove That America’s Moral Collapse Is Spinning Wildly Out Of Control

According to a brand new survey that was just conducted by the Pew Research Center, 77 percent of all Americans are either “very worried” or “fairly worried” about America’s moral health.  Of course the truth is that we should all be deeply concerned, because we can see evidence of the cancerous moral decay that is eating away at the foundations of our society all around us.  In life, each one of us gets to make choices, and some of those choices can lead to very bad outcomes.  We all have old friends that “got on the wrong path”, and their lives ended up becoming cautionary tales.  Well, the same principle applies to nations as a whole.  America has been given very clear choices between good and evil, life and death, blessings and curses over and over again, and we have consistently made the wrong choices.  If we stay on this road, there is only one result that will be possible.

As long as we are drawing breath, there is always an opportunity to turn things around.  That is true for individuals, and it is also true for our entire nation.  But if we continue running toward evil, it is only a matter of time before exceedingly painful consequences overtake us.

The following are 40 facts that prove that America’s moral collapse is spinning wildly out of control…

#1 America has killed more than 60 million children since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.  The federal government endorses this activity by heavily funding the country’s leading abortion provider, and after that abortion provider harvests the organs of the dead children, the federal government also heavily funds the research that is conducted on those harvested organs.

#2 According to a Quinnipiac University poll from last year, 63 percent of all Americans want to keep Roe v. Wade in place.

#3 America is a global leader in sexual depravity.  If you doubt this, just check out what is going on in Cleveland at the end of this month.

#4 Americans are now more likely to die from an opioid overdose than they are from a car accident.

#5 In the city of Baltimore, approximately one out of every four babies is born as an opioid addict.

#6 Overdosing on drugs has now become the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50.

#7 McDonalds feeds approximately 70 million people a day globally. Pornhub gets more than 78 million visits a day.

#8 The teen birth rate in the United States is higher “than in any other industrialized country in the world”.

#9 According to the CDC, approximately 110 million Americans have a sexually-transmitted disease right now.

#10 The CDC also tells us that there are approximately 20 million new sexually transmitted disease cases in the U.S. every single year.

#11 The number of married couples with children in the U.S. just reached a 56 year low.

#12 According to the United Nations Population Fund, 40 percent of all births in the U.S. now happen outside of marriage. But if you go back to 1970, that figure was sitting at just 10 percent.

#13 At this point, approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.

#14 Approximately one-fourth of the entire global prison population is in the United States.

#15 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television.

#16 According to a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are on at least one prescription drug.  An astounding 20 percent of all Americans are on at least five prescription drugs.

#17 According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doctors in the United States write more than 250 million prescriptions for antidepressants each year.

#18 Over half a million people are homeless in the United States right now, but more cities than ever are passing laws making it illegal to feed them.

#19 One recent study found that the average American spends 86 hours a month on a cell phone.

#20 A different study found that one-third of all American teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year.

#21 Americans are obsessed with material things and are willing to go deep into debt to get what they want.  At this point, 480 million credit cards are in circulation in this country. That number has risen by nearly 13 percent since 2015.

#22 37 million credit card accounts in the U.S. are “seriously delinquent” at this moment.

#23 According to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately two-thirds of all Americans in the 15 to 24-year-old age bracket have engaged in oral sex.

#24 It has been reported that one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease.

#25 It has been estimated that 30 percent of all Internet traffic now goes to adult websites.

#26 According to the Pentagon, 71 percent of our young adults are ineligible to serve in the U.S. military because they are either too dumb, too fat or have a criminal background.

#27 The city of San Francisco handed out a total of 5.8 million free syringes to drug addicts in 2018.

#28 During one seven day stretch last summer, a total of 16,000 official complaints were submitted to the city of San Francisco about piles of human feces littering the streets.

#29 When you include unfunded liabilities, the true size of our national debt is 222 trillion dollars.  What we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

#30 The suicide rate in the United States is up 34 percent since the year 2000.

#31 Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for Americans from age 15 to age 24.

#32 We are literally destroying the planet that we have been given.  It is being projected that the total amount of plastic in the oceans of the world will exceed the total weight of all fish by the year 2050.

#33 There are more than 850,000 registered sex offenders in the United States today.

#34 The number of American babies killed by abortion each year is roughly equal to the number of U.S. military deaths that have occurred in all of the wars that the United States has ever been involved in combined.

#35 About one-third of all American women will have had an abortion by the age of 45.

#36 Approximately 3,000 Americans lost their lives as a result of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11.  Every single day, more than 3,000 American babies are killed by abortion when you include all forms of abortion.

#37 One very shocking study found that 86 percent of all abortions are done for the sake of convenience.

#38 An average of more than 100 churches are dying in the United States every single week.

#39 Only about 27 percent of all U.S. Millennials currently attend church on a regular basis.

#40 The number of Americans with “no religion” has increased by 266 percent over the last three decades.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Harvard Professor Warns That The Current Ebola Outbreak In Africa Could Spread To The United States

Could it be possible that we are on the verge of a major Ebola pandemic?  In 2014, the worst Ebola outbreak in history resulted in 28,637 cases and more than 11,000 deaths.  But we were very fortunate.  Even though the virus started to spread across national lines, health authorities were able to quickly identify new cases and isolate those that were infected.  But just because that outbreak ultimately fizzled out does not mean that we can let our guard down.  In 2014, a single Ebola case absolutely overwhelmed an entire hospital here in the United States, and a full blown global Ebola outbreak would definitely have the potential to kill millions of people.

So how far away are we from such a scenario?

Well, one British news source is reporting that this current outbreak is “not under control”…

THE EBOLA outbreak is “not under control” and has started to spread across the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), killing dozens in its path, as the Health Minister urges people to be vaccinated before the virus reaches pandemic levels.

And Harvard professor Dr. Ashish Jah has publicly stated that if this outbreak spreads to the capital city of Kinshasa, it “could spread to Europe and the US”…

Dr Ashish Jah said the spread of the disease to the urban city of Mbandaka last week poses serious concerns as to how far it spreads.

The World Health Organisation said today there have been 22 confirmed, probable or suspected deaths from Ebola since April 4.

But Dr Jah warned it could spread to Europe and the US if it reaches the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, which has an estimated population of 12 million.

Was it responsible for Dr. Jah to talk about this disease potentially spreading to the United States and Europe?

Is he being way too alarmist?

We shall see what happens.

What we do know is that this current outbreak of Ebola spread to a city of more than a million people earlier this month…

A new case of Ebola has emerged in an urban area of Democratic Republic of the Congo, a troubling development in the country’s new outbreak of the contagious and often fatal virus. Until now, the outbreak had affected a rural area.

Dr. Oly Ilunga, Congo’s minister of health, announced Wednesday that a suspected case was confirmed in Mbandaka, a city of about 1.2 million people, and the capital of the Équateur Province.

If that case was identified and isolated in time, there may not be that much to be concerned about.  But it is important to note that one prominent WHO official is saying that we are definitely facing the potential of “an explosive increase in cases”…

“This is a major development in the outbreak,” said Peter Salama, the WHO’s deputy director general of emergency preparedness and response. “We have urban Ebola, which is a very different animal from rural Ebola. The potential for an explosive increase in cases is now there.”

The key is for everyone to act in a responsible manner.  Anyone with symptoms needs to report them immediately, and those that have caught the virus need to be strictly isolated from the general population.

Unfortunately, that is not happening.  In fact, two Ebola patients were recently taken out of an isolation center on motorcycles by their relatives…

Two dying Ebola patients were spirited out of a Congo hospital by their relatives on motor-bikes, then taken to a prayer meeting with 50 other people, potentially exposing them all to the deadly virus, a senior aid worker said on Thursday.

Both patients were vomiting and infectious and died hours after the prayer session in the river port city of Mbandaka, Dr. Jean-Clement Cabrol, emergency medical coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), said.

So now everybody at that prayer meeting could have been exposed to the virus, and in turn all of those people could have exposed it to countless others.

And it is being reported that the two patients that were taken out of the isolation facility were “in the active phase of the disease”…

“The escape was organised by the families, with six motorcycles as the patients were very ill and couldn’t walk,” Cabrol told a news briefing in Geneva after returning from the affected region.

“They were taken to a prayer room with 50 people to pray. They were found at two in the morning, one of them dead and one was dying. So that’s 50-60 contacts right there. The patients were in the active phase of the disease, vomiting.”

The good news is that global health officials appear to be right on top of this crisis, and they are constantly monitoring for any new cases.

So hopefully this outbreak will end very soon.

But we would be very foolish not to take this outbreak seriously.  Ebola is the kind of virus that they make science fiction movies about.  In a typical outbreak, 40 to 50 percent of the people that get the virus won’t make it, and it truly is a horrible way to die.

So far the mainstream media in the United States has largely ignored this crisis, and most people don’t seem too concerned about a repeat (or worse) of 2014.

Hopefully they are right and there is no cause for alarm.  But without a doubt, many of us will be keeping a watchful eye on these developments…

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

How A North Korean Electromagnetic Pulse Attack Could Kill Millions And Turn America Into A Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland

This is why North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile is so important.  North Korea had test fired a total of 22 missiles so far this year, but this latest one showed that nobody on the globe is out of their reach.  In fact, General Mattis is now admitting that “North Korea can basically threaten everywhere in the world”, and that includes the entire continental United States.  In addition to hitting individual cities with nukes, there is also the possibility that someday North Korea could try to take down the entire country with an EMP attack.  If the North Koreans detonated a single nuclear warhead several hundred miles above the center of the country, it would destroy the power grid and fry electronics from coast to coast.

I would like you to think about what that would mean for a few moments.  Suddenly there would be no power at home, at work or at school.  Since nearly all of our vehicles rely on computerized systems, you wouldn’t be able to go anywhere and nobody would be able to get to you.  And you wouldn’t be able to contact anyone because all phones would be dead.  Basically, pretty much everything electronic would be dead.  I am talking about computers, televisions, GPS devices, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, refrigerators, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, hospital equipment, traffic lights, etc.

For the first couple of days life would continue somewhat normally, but then people would soon start to realize that the power isn’t coming back on and panic would begin to erupt.

The intercontinental ballistic missile that North Korea just launched traveled almost 1,000 kilometers and reached a maximum altitude of 4,500 kilometers.  We have been told for decades that this would never be allowed to happen, but now it has happened…

This is concerning for one big reason: according to General Mattis, the North Korean ICBM “went higher, frankly, than any previous” and “North Korea can basically threaten everywhere in the world.” This was confirmed by North Korea missile analyst, Shea Cotton, who cited Allthingsnuclear author David Wright, and who told the BBC that the initial estimates of the ICBM test mean that North Korea can now reach New York and Washington DC.

If we had been working hard to develop our anti-missile technology all these years, this wouldn’t be a problem.

But at this point we are way behind the Russians in this regard, and there is a very real possibility that a missile launched by the North Koreans could make it through the very limited anti-missile defenses that we do have.

Once upon a time, discussions about a North Korean EMP threat were mostly hypothetical, but now that has completely changed.  North Korea has clearly demonstrated that they are able to deliver such an attack, and last September Kim Jong Un publicly admitted that North Korea intended to develop this capability…

But most reporters missed a key threat that appeared at the bottom of Kim’s public statement, when he bragged that North Korea had harnessed “a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack according to strategic goals.”

So now we know. Launching an electromagnetic pulse attacks against its enemies is one of North Korea’s strategic goals. And for North Korea, the United States is the top enemy.

And like I said earlier, all it would take would be a single well placed nuclear detonation to fry electronics from coast to coast.  The following comes from the Daily Mail…

Theoretically, a sufficiently powerful bomb detonated at an altitude of 249 miles would wipe out all electronics in the US, save the southernmost top of Florida and the easternmost states – as well as affecting Canada and Mexico.

Without power, nothing would get distributed.  That means that very rapidly there would be no food, no water and no medicine available in your community.  An article posted by Fox News this week used the term “post-apocalyptic” to describe what we would be facing…

It all starts to sound very post-apocalyptic when you realize this means no lights or other electric-powered devices in homes and businesses, no water filtration, no regional food hubs, no transportation grid – none of the things we take for granted in modern civilization.

Like I stated earlier, things would be relatively fine for a few days, but then once everyone realizes that the power isn’t coming back on there would be chaos on a scale unlike anything we have ever seen before.  The following comes from an article by Mac Slavo…

The first 24 – 48 hours after such an occurrence will lead to confusion among the general population as traditional news acquisition sources like television, radio and cell phone networks will be non-functional.

Within a matter of days, once people realize the power might not be coming back on and grocery store shelves start emptying, the entire system will begin to delve into chaos.

Within 30 days a mass die off will have begun as food supplies dwindle, looters and gangs turn to violent extremes, medicine can’t be restocked and water pump stations fail.

So what kind of a “mass die off” would we be talking about?

Well, some of the top experts in the field believe that “up to 90 percent of all Americans” could end up dead if the power outage lasted long enough…

William Graham, chairman of the former EMP commission and its former chief of staff, Peter Vincent Pry, warned the hearing that such an attack could “shut down the US electric power grid for an indefinite period, leading to the death within a year of up to 90 percent of all Americans.“

Others believe that the figure would be lower, but pretty much everyone agrees that the death toll would be in the millions.

This is one of our greatest strategic vulnerabilities, and our power grid could be hardened against an EMP attack for just a few billion dollars.  This is something that I am pushing very hard for, but right now it is just not a priority for our leaders in Washington.

In fact, they have actually pulled funding from the commission that was looking into the EMP threat…

On Sept. 30, the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat of Electromagnetic Pulse to the United States of America shut its doors after a failure to secure funding from Congress.

Sometimes I find it difficult to come up with the words to describe how incredibly foolish Congress is being.

An EMP attack is a greater threat than ever before, and yet Congress didn’t even want to come up with a little bit of funding for the commission that was working on a plan to protect us.

This is yet another example that shows that we need new leadership on Capitol Hill, because right now the people that we have “representing” us in Washington seem to be completely and utterly clueless about almost everything.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Broken America

Is this the beginning of the end for the United States of America?  It has been said that a house divided against itself will surely fall, and today we live in a shattered union.  In all my years, I have never seen so much strife, discord, bitterness and resentment in this country.  Everyone can see what is happening, but nobody can seem to stop it.  Politically, you have got tens of millions of people trying to pull America one way, and you have got tens of millions of people trying to pull it the exact opposite way.  As I discussed in a previous article, the term “civil war” is now being thrown around by some pundits even though nobody has started shooting yet.  We are a deeply divided and broken nation, and if we don’t find a way to fix things America will not survive.

Every survey and opinion poll that has been taken recently backs up what I am saying.  For example, a Gallup survey that was conducted after the election in November found that an all-time record high 77 percent of all Americans believe that “the nation is divided on the most important values”…

Seventy-seven percent of Americans, a new high, believe the nation is divided on the most important values, while 21% believe it is united and in agreement. Over the past 20+ years, the public has tended to perceive the nation as being more divided than united, apart from two surveys conducted shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

So how do you fix this?

Nobody can force half the population to suddenly change their views on the most important issues of the day.

Earlier today, I wrote an article about how America is becoming a “politically-correct madhouse“, and there really is no compromising with the forces of political correctness.  Either you get in line or you are the enemy.

Once upon a time the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution by our founders united us, but today about half the country has completely rejected those values.

Those that would like to restore our constitutional values find themselves diametrically opposed to the agenda that progressives are trying to shove down our throats, and personally I don’t see much room for compromise between the two sides.

Given enough time, one side would ultimately vanquish the other side, but I don’t know if America has enough time left for that to happen.

There were some that had been hoping that our new president would unite the country, but you can throw that idea right out the window.  According to numbers from Public Policy Polling, nearly half the nation already wants him to be impeached…

On our first poll of his Presidency voters were evenly divided on Trump, with 44% approving of him and 44% also disapproving. Now his approval rating is 43%, while his disapproval has gone all the way up to 53%. If voters could choose they’d rather have both Barack Obama (52/44) or Hillary Clinton (49/45) instead of Trump.

Just three weeks into his administration, voters are already evenly divided on the issue of impeaching Trump with 46% in favor and 46% opposed.

The political divisions in this nation are just going to grow worse and worse.

But just because we vehemently disagree with someone politically does not mean that we should hate that person.

I know that it can be infuriating to see some politician get up and start spouting off ideas that would be extremely damaging to this country.  But if we choose to hate our political “enemies”, we become part of the problem.

It is easy to love someone that agrees with you about most things.  The real challenge is finding a way to love those that believe things that you may find truly repulsive.

That doesn’t mean that you have to agree with what they believe.  I am not saying that at all.  You can disagree very strongly with someone and still love that person.

Unfortunately, the hearts of most people have grown cold in America.  As hatred, anger and frustration continue to grow, it is only a matter of time before we start seeing outbursts of violence.  Rioting, looting and civil unrest are going to become commonplace in communities all over the U.S., and eventually some of our major cities will burn.  In my latest book I warned that the “thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted will disappear”, and thousands upon thousands of Americans that can see this coming are already fleeing the big cities.

What particularly disturbs me is when I see people that are supposed to be on the same side fighting each other.

If you are around someone long enough, eventually they are going to do or say something to offend you.  None of us is going to agree 100 percent on everything, and it is a horrible shame to allow one disagreement to ruin what should be a great relationship.

If you do not learn to forgive, every relationship that you ever have in your life will ultimately fail, because everyone is going to let you down at some point.

And you may think that you are making the other person pay a price by refusing to forgive, but the truth is that you will be the one that will end up suffering.  Even medical science has found that there are health benefits to forgiving and that unforgiveness can actually help bring on serious illnesses.  The following comes from the official website of Johns Hopkins Medicine…

Whether it’s a simple spat with your spouse or long-held resentment toward a family member or friend, unresolved conflict can go deeper than you may realize—it may be affecting your physical health. The good news: Studies have found that the act of forgiveness can reap huge rewards for your health, lowering the risk of heart attack; improving cholesterol levels and sleep; and reducing pain, blood pressure, and levels of anxiety, depression and stress. And research points to an increase in the forgiveness-health connection as you age.

“There is an enormous physical burden to being hurt and disappointed,” says Karen Swartz, M.D., director of the Mood Disorders Adult Consultation Clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. Chronic anger puts you into a fight-or-flight mode, which results in numerous changes in heart rate, blood pressure and immune response. Those changes, then, increase the risk of depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions. Forgiveness, however, calms stress levels, leading to improved health.

There are people that are reading this article that need to pick up the phone right now and apologize to someone that they have been refusing to forgive.

Yes, without a doubt that would be difficult.  But you might just be surprised how much grace a little humility can unleash.

You may not be able to fix our broken nation, but you certainly can fix the broken relationships in your own life.

And if millions of Americans decided to choose love and forgiveness rather than hatred, anger, bitterness and resentment, it would most definitely have a transformative effect on the entire country.

I would like to close with some very wise words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The Global Famine Begins: UN Announces That The Worst Food Crisis Since World War II Is Happening Right Now

Horse Famine - Public DomainWe always knew that this would start happening.  Earlier this month, I wrote about the severe economic problems that are plaguing South America, but up to this point I have neglected to discuss the horrific famines that are breaking out all over Africa.  Right now there is a desperate need for food in South Sudan, Somalia, northeast Nigeria, Eritrea and Kenya.  And Yemen, even though it is not technically part of Africa, is being affected by many of the same factors that are crippling nations all over eastern Africa.  The United Nations says that more than 20 million people could die from starvation and disease if nothing is done.  When I write about economic collapse, this is the kind of thing that I am talking about, and we are starting to see alarming conditions spread across the globe.  Many believe that we could never possibly face this kind of food crisis in the western world, but unfortunately wishful thinking will only get you so far.

The United Nations was formed in 1945, and the UN has just announced that what we are facing this year is “the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN”.  The following comes from a CNN article entitled “20 million at risk of starvation in world’s largest crisis since 1945, UN says“…

“We stand at a critical point in history. Already at the beginning of the year we are facing the largest humanitarian crisis since the creation of the UN,” UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said Friday.

“Now, more than 20 million people across four countries face starvation and famine. Without collective and coordinated global efforts, people will simply starve to death. Many more will suffer and die from disease.”

It would be hard to overstate the level of human suffering that we are witnessing in many parts of Africa at this moment.  In Somalia, the UN estimates that more than 6 million people are in desperate need of food aid…

As Somalia inches closer to a calamitous famine, the prospect of utter devastation and colossal loss of human life is once again becoming an imminent reality. The humanitarian situation in Somalia is deteriorating by the day with up to 6.2 million people in need of urgent aid. People across Somalia have been forced to walk hundreds of miles in search of food, water and shelter- with women and children disproportionately affected. Over 300,000 children under the age of five are severely malnourished, with over 200,000 more children at risk of acute malnutrition.

In South Sudan, close to half the population is in dire need of assistance, and things have gotten so bad there that people will literally eat grass if they can find it…

Across South Sudan more than one million children are believed to be acutely malnourished and UNICEF have said that if urgent aid does not reach them, many of them will die. “There is no food, we eat anything we can find,” one South Sudanese mother told ITV. “We will find grass, we will eat it. That’s just the way it us for us now.”

Over in Yemen, there are about seven million people in need of food help, and authorities are warning that if nothing is done “millions of children” could starve to death…

“The numbers affected are absolutely extraordinary,” said Mark Kaye, Save the Children’s Yemen spokesperson.

“We keep on talking about a country that’s on the brink of famine, but for me these numbers highlight that we’re at the point of no return. If things are not done now we are going to be looking back on this and millions of children will have starved to death, and we’ll all have been aware of this for some time. That will shame us as an international community for years to come.

Eritrea was not specifically included in the recent UN alert, but it should have been.  Much of the country has been hit by a crippling drought, and approximately half of all children in Eritrea are stunted…

But we cannot understand why Eritrea is not included in the appeal. Unicef has confirmed what we know from our friends and families inside the country. In a report in January, the agency said that the El Niño drought has hit half of all Eritrea’s regions. Acute malnutrition is widespread. As Unicef put it: “Malnutrition rates already exceeded emergency levels, with 22,700 children under five projected to suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2017 … Half of all children in Eritrea are stunted, and as a result, these children are even more vulnerable to malnutrition and disease outbreaks.”

We have been warned that there would be famines in diverse places in these times.  But here in the western world we tend to be lulled into a false sense of security by our comfortable lives, not realizing that the massively inflated standard of living that we have been enjoying has been fueled by the largest mountain of debt in the history of the planet.

In Kenya, a national emergency has been declared due to drought and famine.  For those of you that are parents, what would you do if your children were crying out for food but you didn’t have anything to give them?  The following story from Kenya is beyond heartbreaking…

Emmanuel Ayapar is three years old and can no longer walk. The flesh on his legs, which dangle from his mother’s hip as she carries him around, is wasting away.

He seems listless and sad, tongue flicking repeatedly in and out of his mouth.

‘We do not have enough food,’ said Veronica, his 28-year-old mother. ‘We eat only once a day.’

The little boy is suffering from severe malnutrition and is at risk of starving to death. He weighs just 15lb – half the typical weight for a boy of his age.

I don’t even know what to say after that.

In the western world we can be so incredibly self-absorbed that we don’t even realize that children are literally starving to death on the other side of the planet.

Hopefully those of us that live in “wealthy” western countries will step up to the plate and aid those in need, and hopefully this crisis will also help us to understand that we need to prepare for the day when things get difficult in our own nations too.

Activists Are Hoping To Turn Donald Trump’s Inauguration On January 20th Into One Of The Biggest Riots In U.S. History

inauguration-white-house-photo-by-chuck-kennedyRadical leftists are planning to make January 20th the most chaotic Inauguration Day in American history.  Their stated goal is to “disrupt” the Inauguration festivities as much as possible, and they are planning a wide range of “actions” to achieve that stated goal.  Some of the more moderate groups are using terms such as “civil resistance” and “civil disobedience”, but others are openly talking about “blockades”, jumping barricades, throwing projectiles and “citywide paralysis”.  My hope is that all of their efforts will turn out to be a big flop, but it is important to understand that these groups are well funded, highly organized and extremely motivated.  The election of Donald Trump has been perhaps the single most galvanizing moment for the radical left in modern American history, and they are working very hard to turn January 20th into a major political statement.

In fact, just recently one activist group took out a full page ad in the New York Times…

Thousands of activists, journalists, scientists, entertainers, and other prominent voices took out a full-page call to action in the New York Times on Wednesday making clear their rejection of President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence with the simple message: “No!”

“Stop the Trump/Pence regime before it starts! In the name of humanity we refuse to accept a fascist America!” the ad states, followed by a list of signatories that includes scholar Cornel West; author Alice Walker; Chase Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux; educator Bill Ayers; poet Saul Williams; CNN‘s Marc Lamont Hill; Carl Dix of the Communist Party USA; and numerous others.

The ad pointed people to refusefascism.org, and it asserted that Trump must be stopped whether he was legitimately elected or not…

Trump promises to inflict repression and suffering on people in this country, to deport millions, to increase violence up to the use of nuclear weapons on people across the globe, and to inflict catastrophes upon the planet itself. He has assembled a cabinet of Christian fundamentalist fanatics, war mongers, racists, science deniers. NO! His regime must not be allowed to consolidate. We REFUSE to accept a Fascist America!

If you go to refusefascism.org, you will discover that the protests that they are organizing in Washington D.C. will begin on January 14th.  They say that they want to “stop the Trump-Pence regime before it starts”, and they hope to have protests going “every day and every night” without interruption through at least January 20th.

Another group that plans to kick things off on January 14th is DisruptJ20.  Of course that is short for “Disrupt January 20th”.  If you go to their official website, you will find a long slate of events that have already been scheduled.

According to Legba Carrefour, a spokesperson for DisruptJ20, one of the goals of the group is to block major transportation routes into and throughout our nation’s capital.  And he is not shy about the fact that they literally want to “shut down the Inauguration”…

“We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that’s the short of it,” he says. “We’re pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don’t think has been seen in D.C. before. We’re trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.”

If Carrefour and his fellow conspirators are able to actually accomplish that, it truly would be unprecedented.

And while DisruptJ20 is not publicly advocating violence, they are not exactly discouraging it either…

Carrefour says DisruptJ20 has no publicly announced plans to jump barricades along the inauguration parade route or throw projectiles at the new president, but that autonomous direct actions are encouraged.

“I can’t comment on specific stuff we’re doing like that, mostly because that would be illegal. But, yeah, it will get pretty crazy, I expect,” he says. “‘Have fun!’ I say.”

After the rioting that we have seen in Baltimore, Ferguson, Charlotte and many other communities around the nation in recent years, I hope that authorities are taking these threats quite seriously.

Once Donald Trump won the election, many conservatives seemed to think that the war was won.  But the truth of the matter is that many on the left were completely blindsided by Trump’s surprise victory, and now that they are fully awake they are gearing up for battle like never before.

And these protests are not going to end on January 20th.  In fact, abortion advocates are hoping to get close to a million women into Washington D.C. on the day following the Inauguration to protest for abortion rights.  Filmmaker Michael Moore is hoping that this march will be the beginning of “100 days of resistance” against Trump’s presidency…

Filmmaker and liberal icon Michael Moore has announced his plans to attend the Women’s March on Washington to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration later this month and has called for sore loser liberals to go further — by staging protests acts of resistance through the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency.

In an appearance, this weekend on MSNBC’s The Last Word, the 62-year-old Trumpland and Fahrenheit 9/11 director made a “call to arms” to those opposed to Trump’s presidency to join the Women’s March on Washington scheduled for January 21, the day after the presidential inauguration.

“It’s important that everybody go there,” Moore told MSNBC’s Ari Melber.

Of course it is easy to imagine how all of this could spiral wildly out of control.  If Trump cracks down on these protests really hard in an attempt to restore law and order, that could end up sparking a dramatic backlash against his “police state tactics”.  And if the protests become even bigger and more violent, Trump could respond by cracking down even more harshly.

Let us hope for some really cold weather in D.C. at the end of January so that as many troublemakers as possible get discouraged and stay home.  Violent protests, blockades and riots aren’t going to solve anything, and they could easily open fresh wounds in a nation that is becoming more divided with each passing day.

About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The Most Important News. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

If Our Mayors Are THIS Corrupt, What Is The Rest Of The Population Like Behind Closed Doors?

CorruptionIt isn’t just the politicians in Washington D.C. that are deeply corrupt.  In this article you will read about two prominent mayors that have engaged in absolutely horrific behavior, and you will read about a sex scandal out in California that involved 24 different police officers sleeping with the same prostitute.  The reason why I write about these things is not to gross you out.  Instead, the goal is to get America to take a long look in the mirror.  Ultimately, we aren’t going to turn this country around by electing the right president, because the truth is that the biggest problem with this nation is in our own hearts.  Until we get our hearts right, nothing is going to really change.

When I was growing up, mayors were people that you looked up to and respected.  But these days many of them appear to be sex-fueled maniacs.  Just consider the case of Fairfax, Virginia mayor R. Scott Silverthorne.  If you are not familiar with Fairfax, it is an upscale D.C. suburb that is only about 20 miles away from the White House.  Silverthorne was serving his third-term as mayor, and most people thought he was a good guy until it was discovered that he was trading meth for group sex with men…

The mayor of Fairfax, Virginia, is resigning following his arrest for allegedly attempting to trade methamphetamine for a group sex session with men he met online.

City officials said in a news release Monday that R. Scott Silverthorne’s resignation will take effect at noon Thursday.

Silverthorne was arrested last Thursday on a felony drug distribution charge.

Following his arrest, Silverthorne was also fired from his job as a substitute teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools.

In case you don’t already know, the Washington D.C. area is one of the hotbeds for gay culture in the entire country.  In fact, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority runs extremely graphic gay hookup ads while at the same time absolutely refusing ads that promote the Christian faith.

Meanwhile, the mayor of Stockton, California has been arrested for playing strip poker with boys and girls at a disadvantaged children’s camp…

A California mayor has been accused of playing strip poker with six members of a disadvantaged children’s camp after plying them with alcohol.

Anthony Silva, 41, the mayor of Stockton, was arrested on Thursday morning after police say they found an audio recording of the poker game on his phone.

Investigators say Silva invited at least three girls and two or three boys into his bedroom at the camp in August last year before convincing them to strip off.

I think that the question I posed in the headline is quite legitimate – if this is how our mayors are behaving, what is the rest of the population doing behind closed doors?

Elsewhere in California, an 18-year-old prostitute is at the center of an almost unbelievable police sex scandal…

The 18-year-old girl goes by the name “Celeste Guap,” and admits she’s slept with two dozen officers from various police departments.

Guap told KPIX she had sex with 14 officers from Oakland Police Department, 5 from the Richmond Police Department, 3 Alameda County Sheriff’s deputies and one Livermore cop.

She says in exchange some officers gave her protection and tipped her off about undercover operations while she was working as a prostitute.

Reportedly, she first began to have sex with police officers when she was 16 years old, and they would pass her around like a trading card.

And these are the men that we are relying on to enforce the laws and to protect our families?

This is not a matter of just two or three police officers engaging in illicit behavior.  We are talking about two dozen men that were brazenly betraying their communities and making a mockery of everything their police departments are supposed to stand for.

This is the kind of nation that we have become, and signs of our moral decay are everywhere.

For instance, we just learned that in 2015 more than 40 percent of all babies born in America were born to unmarried mothers for the eighth year in a row…

Of the 3,977,745 babies born in the United States of America in 2015, 1,600,208 of them—or 40.2 percent–were born to unmarried mothers, according to data released this month by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

That makes 2015 the eighth straight year that 40 percent or more of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried mothers, according to CDC data.

But prior to 2008 this had never happened before in our entire history.  And if you go all the way back to 1940, only 3.8 percent of all babies were born to unmarried women…

In 1940, 3.8 percent of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried women. The percentage first went as high as 10 percent in 1969, when it was 10.0 percent. In 1983, it surpassed 20 percent for the first time, hitting 20.3 percent. In 1992, it exceeded 30 percent for the first time, hitting 30.1 percent.

At the same time, crime and violence continue to rise in this nation.  Last month was the deadliest July in 10 years for the city of Chicago, and police officer shooting deaths for the country as a whole were up an astounding 78 percent during the first half of this year.

It is getting to the point where it is starting to become difficult to blame people that are afraid to leave their own homes.  Our streets are becoming increasingly dangerous, and there are some very, very sick people out there.  If you doubt this, just consider what just happened to a young and promising Google employee…

A Google employee from New York City who disappeared on an afternoon jog while visiting her mother in Massachusetts has been found murdered in the woods.

Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early Jr. said Monday that 27-year-old Vanessa Marcotte was reported missing after failing to return from a run between 1pm and 4pm in Princeton.

Her body was discovered at around 8.20pm Sunday by a state police K9 unit near Brooks Station Road, about a half-mile from her mother’s home.

A source told Fox25 in Boston that investigators were examining the possibility that Marcotte was sexually assaulted and set on fire, with burns to her hands, head and feet.

How twisted and evil do you have to be to do something like this?

It is election season, and a lot of people out there truly believe that America will be turned around if we elect Donald Trump.  Others are completely convinced that Hillary Clinton is the solution to what ails us.

But in the end, no election can fix what is wrong in our hearts, and that is the biggest problem facing this country.

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