Painful

Is Something Strange Happening Inside The Earth?

Volcano Lava Landscape - Public DomainWhy are “giant fountains of lava” suddenly pouring out of some of the most dangerous volcanoes on the entire planet, and why are so many long dormant volcanoes suddenly roaring back to life?  The spectacular eruption of Mt. Etna in Italy is making headlines all over the world, but it is far from alone.  According to Volcano Discovery, 35 major volcanoes either are erupting right now or have just recently erupted, and dozens of others are stirring.  So what is causing this upsurge in volcanic activity?  Is something strange happening inside the Earth?

According to the USGS, magma is “molten rock underground”, and lava is molten rock “that breaks through the Earth’s surface”.  Right now, something is pushing magma up through the crust of the Earth at a number of key spots around the planet.  On the island of Sicily, the “giant fountains of lava” that are coming out of Mt. Etna can be seen 30 kilometers away…

Giant fountains of lava could be seen sprouting from the volcano, located on the isle of Sicily, as far away as Catania, around 30 kilometres away, and the resort town of Taormina.

The Meteorological Observatory in Nunziata said: “You can clearly see the lava fountains, although currently modest, as it escapes from the crater in the southeast.”

An orange air alert has been issued, meaning that airspace will remain open but authorities will continue to monitor the situation.

On the other side of the world, a constant stream of molten rock has been springing out of Guatemala’s “Volcano of Fire” since February 25th…

Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire erupted Saturday (Feb 25), spewing lava and sending up plumes of ash that rained down on nearby communities and could eventually reach the capital, civil protection authorities said.

The Volcan de Fuego, one of the country’s three active volcanoes, is located about 45km southwest of the capital Guatemala City. It was the volcano’s second eruption this year.

And in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a “firehose of lava” has been pouring out of the Kilauea Volcano since December 31st.

Meanwhile, a number of large volcanoes that have been dormant for a very long time all over the world have started springing back to life.

For instance, the only active volcano in India has suddenly started “spewing lava and ash” after being silent for 150 years…

Barren Islands volcano, India’s only active volcano, is reportedly spewing lava and ash after a gap of 150 years. It erupted for about four hours in January, scientists from the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) claimed.

The volcano is situated in Barren Islands in the Andaman & Nicobar archipelago. Some unsubstantiated reports even claim that it is South Asia’s only active volcano.

Its first recorded eruption dates back to 1787. Since then, the volcano has erupted more than ten times, including the one this year.

At one time scientists would speak of “dead volcanoes”, but now we learning that it really isn’t safe to speak of any volcano as being completely “dead”.  So many of these long dormant volcanoes are roaring back to life, and why this is suddenly happening now is puzzling many of the experts.

And as you have seen, this isn’t isolated to just one or two geographic regions.  It literally is happening all over the globe.

Last month, Indonesia’s Mount Sinabung in the southern hemisphere erupted seven times in the space of a single day, and meanwhile authorities in the northern hemisphere were warning us that four of Iceland’s biggest volcanoes are preparing to erupt.

Indonesia and Iceland are about as far apart as you can get, and yet they are both being affected by this worldwide phenomenon.

Without a doubt, something definitely appears to be causing a significant increase in worldwide seismic activity.

Let’s talk about earthquakes for a moment.  A website known as the Big Wobble recently published an article that included two extraordinary maps.  The first map showed the number of major earthquakes from January 1900 to January 1917, and the second map showed the number of major earthquakes from January 2000 to January 2017.  The difference between the two maps was startling to say the least.

Big Wobble 1

Big Wobble 2

It is becoming extremely difficult to deny that something is happening to the crust of our planet, and many are becoming concerned about what we could soon experience if the level of seismic activity continues to rise.

We already talked about Mt. Etna, but a much greater threat in Italy appears to be awakening under the city of Naples.  A massive supervolcano known as “Campi Flegrei” is close to a “critical state”, and if it erupts the consequences will be beyond catastrophic.  The following comes from National Geographic…

A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a “critical state,” scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, “we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed,” wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome.

If that supervolcano were to fully erupt, millions could die, the skies in the northern hemisphere would be darkened for months and the resulting “volcanic winter” would cause famines all around the globe.

And the same things could be said about the supervolcano that is awakening in North Korea too.

In the United States, we should be watching the volcanoes on the west coast for signs of trouble, and my regular readers know that I am particularly concerned about Mt. Rainier.  There is an eruption of Mt. Rainier in “The Beginning Of The End“, and it is in there for a reason.

Someday Mt. Rainier will erupt, and the horror that this will mean for the Northwest is beyond anything that I could put into words for you right now.

We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and a major natural disaster could change all of our lives in a single moment.

Just because our lives have been somewhat “normal” for an extended period of time does not mean that they will always be this way, and those that are ignoring the rumblings of our planet do so at their own peril.

Why Is NASA Using The Discovery Of 7 New Earth-Sized Planets To Promote The Idea That Alien Life May Exist?

TRAPPIST-1f - Photo by NASANASA told us in advance that there would be a huge announcement on Wednesday, and it certainly was not a disappointment.  NASA’s declaration that 7 new Earth-sized planets had been discovered approximately 40 light years away from our sun made headlines all over the globe, and the Internet immediately started buzzing with lots of discussions about the possibility that these newly discovered worlds may have life on them.  This isn’t the kind of thing that I normally write about on The Economic Collapse Blog, but some of the things that were being said by the scientists involved in this discovery seemed quite odd.  It is one thing to say that some new planets have been found, but it is another thing entirely to start speculating about life on those planets.  With each new discovery that is made, why does it always seem like NASA is trying to promote the idea that alien life may exist somewhere out there?  Could it be possible that they are trying to mentally prepare us for something?

After the announcement was made on Wednesday, I went to the official NASA website, and sure enough in the article that had just been posted about this new discovery there was discussion about the possibility of alien life…

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have liquid water.

The discovery sets a new record for greatest number of habitable-zone planets found around a single star outside our solar system. All of these seven planets could have liquid water – key to life as we know it – under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.

“This discovery could be a significant piece in the puzzle of finding habitable environments, places that are conducive to life,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Answering the question ‘are we alone’ is a top science priority and finding so many planets like these for the first time in the habitable zone is a remarkable step forward toward that goal.”

If this discovery is confirmed, it is definitely quite remarkable.

But why engage in speculation about whether or not we are alone in the universe?

You can view a YouTube video from NASA about this new discovery right here.  As you can see from the video, the scientists involved in this project are extremely excited…

Of course we must acknowledge that nobody has actually seen any of these planets.  Based on data that astronomers have been able to observe, they assume that those seven planets must be there.  The following comes from Smithsonian Magazine…

To detect these other worlds, Gillon and his team used the so-called “transit” method, one of several techniques for hunting planets. Other techniques include measuring the wobble of a star caused by a planet’s gravitational pull, observing how light from a distant star bends around a planet or capturing a direct image of the planet.

The power of the transit method comes from its simplicity: Astronomers measure the level of light from a star, and look for any dips in brightness that could be the result of a planet passing between the star and Earth. By seeing how much and how often the level of light is reduced during each “transit” of the planet in front of the star, astronomers can then estimate its size and orbit.

So it is entirely possible that scientists may be misinterpreting the data.

Someday we may find out that there are more planets in the system, or we may discover that there aren’t any planets there at all.

But assuming that those planets are actually there, what has astronomers buzzing more than anything else is the possibility that they may contain “life”…

“Looking for life elsewhere, this system is probably our best bet as of today,” study co-author Brice-Olivier Demory, a professor at the Center for Space and Habitability at the University of Bern in Switzerland, said in a statement.

The key is that these planets appear to have the right conditions for water to exist.  Without water, it is generally assumed that a planet would not be able to support life.  The following comes from an article posted on the website of The Independent entitled “Nasa’s ‘holy grail’: Entire new solar system that could support alien life discovered“…

No other star system has ever been found to contain so many Earth-sized and rocky planets, of the kind thought to be necessary to contain aliens.

The researchers might soon be able to find evidence of life on the planets, they have said. British astronomer Dr Chris Copperwheat, from Liverpool John Moores University, who was part of the international team, said: “The discovery of multiple rocky planets with surface temperatures which allow for liquid water make this amazing system an exciting future target in the search for life.”

And of course NASA is not just looking at these planets in their obsessive search for alien life.

In fact, NASA is sending a probe to one of Jupiter’s moons named Europa specifically to search for alien life…

NASA believes there’s a gigantic ocean locked beneath its frozen surface and is planning to send a robotic craft to see if aliens are swimming in it.

This week, the space agency has revealed its three goals for the upcoming search for life.

It wrote: “The primary goal is to search for evidence of life on Europa.

“The other goals are to assess the habitability of Europa by directly analyzing material from the surface, and to characterize the surface and subsurface to support future robotic exploration of Europa and its ocean.”

So why is NASA so sure that alien life must be out there somewhere?

Do they know things that they aren’t disclosing to the rest of us?

As a society, we are constantly being conditioned to the idea that “alien life” must exist.  This is one of the major themes in our movies, our television shows and our video games.

And now the scientific community has fully embraced this idea.

Could it be possible that the stage is being set for “the great deception” that authors such as L.A. Marzulli are constantly warning us about?

If someday a big announcement is made that “we are not alone” in the universe, humanity will already have been heavily conditioned to accept it as the truth.

Unfortunately, we live at a time when deception is running rampant, and that is why it is absolutely critical to not let someone else do your thinking for you.

The Russian Love Affair With Donald Trump Sours As The U.S. And Russia Move Toward War

NATO Seasparrow surface missile is launched from the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush - Publc DomainIn recent months Donald Trump has been severely criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for not being sufficiently “anti-Russia”, but the truth is that the Trump administration has not been working hard enough to repair a relationship that is now souring very rapidly.  When Donald Trump won the election in November, the Russians celebrated tremendously, because they greatly preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton.  But just because Trump was victorious does not mean that our relationship with Russia will automatically improve.  Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin both have huge egos, and it is quite easy to imagine a scenario in which things between them go very, very badly.

In fact, we may already be starting to see such a scenario play out.  As you will see below, under President Trump U.S. troops are being deployed to a very sensitive area of Poland, and they are also being sent to key areas of Bulgaria and Romania.  That is not sitting well with the Russian government, but they were much more upset when Trump insisted that Russia must give the Crimea back to Ukraine.  This is something that the Russians would never do, and they were quite stunned that Trump would even suggest such a thing.

On the flip side, the Pentagon was quite annoyed when Russian fighter jets buzzed a U.S. warship in the Black Sea just a few days ago, and when a Russian spy ship set up shop just off the coast of Connecticut recently, President Trump told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that “the greatest thing I could do is shoot that ship that’s 30 miles off shore right out of the water”.

When I first heard about that quote I thought it might be “fake news”, but it was actually reported by ABC News and a whole host of other prominent news outlets.

I know that Trump doesn’t have much of a filter, and that is a good thing when he is dealing with the mainstream media, but it can be a very, very bad thing for foreign policy.

Look, you may think that it is a good idea to blow a Russian spy ship out of the water, but you never, ever say such a thing out loud.

The Russians think like mobsters.  That means that they are quite paranoid, and it also means that they take whatever you say very, very seriously.

In a few days, most of us living in the United States will completely forget what Trump said about that Russian spy ship, but over in Russia they will remember this quote forever.

This is just how the Russians operate – they never forget, and they never, ever forgive.

When you are dealing with Russia, you have got to be very, very careful.  Unfortunately, being cautious is not one of Trump’s strengths, and the wild optimism about Trump in Russia is now being replaced by disappointment and anger…

The new U.S. president has been in his role for just under a month, taking office in a transition that has been marked by chaos and missteps. And already, from the right of the political spectrum to the marginalized Russian left, a mixture of disappointment with the new U.S. president — who came into office promising to remake relations between the two countries — and a sense of vindication that Trump couldn’t be trusted after all has crept into Russian political chatter.

“Is Trump already out of fashion?” the independent Russian journal Russkaya Fabula asked on Wednesday — the same day that the Trump administration was dealing with the fallout stemming from revelations about National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador. The site pointed to a small demonstration by hard-line nationalists this week, which picketed a major state-run news outlet and demanded the end of the “cult of Trump” in Russian media.

And in a sign of how far things have already deteriorated, Putin has ordered state media over in Russia to cut back on their coverage of Trump…

The Kremlin ordered state media to cut back on their fawning coverage of President Donald Trump, reflecting a growing concern among senior Russian officials that the new US administration will be less friendly than first thought, three people familiar with the matter said.

Just before Trump took office, Barack Obama aggressively moved U.S. troops toward the Russian border, and I highly criticized him for that.

So now that Trump is doing the exact same thing, I have to be critical of him as well.  Somebody needs to tell Trump that stationing 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Poland is not going to help our relationship with Putin…

The US Army’s Europe headquarters located in Wiesbaden, Germany announced late Saturday that 1,000 US troops and their vehicles would be sent to northeastern Poland at the end of March.

The unit – part of 4,000 US troops being deployed in rotation along NATO’s eastern flank  under its “Atlantic Resolve” mission – will be located at Orzysz.

That particular Polish city is less than 90 miles from the extremely sensitive Russian city of Kaliningrad.

If I was Trump, this is something that I would not have done.

At this point, the Russians are not quite sure what to make of Trump.  In fact, they have even gone so far as to prepare a “psychological dossier” on him to help Putin prepare for his first meeting with Trump…

A dossier on Donald Trump’s psychological makeup is being prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Among its preliminary conclusions is that the new American leader is a risk-taker who can be naïve, according to a senior Kremlin adviser.

Unfortunately, Trump tends to listen to those in his immediate vicinity, and in Washington he is surrounded by war hawks that absolutely hate Russia.  The following comes from Pat Buchanan…

The anti-Putin paranoia here is astonishing.

That he is a killer, a KGB thug, a murderer, is part of the daily rant of John McCain. At the Munich Security Conference this last weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham promised, “2017 is going to be a year of kicking Russia in the a– in Congress.”

Members of Congress such as John McCain and Lindsey Graham are playing a very dangerous game.

It is okay to be critical of Russia, but if you are constantly making inflammatory statements all the time that is just going to push us toward war.

And as I explained in my latest book, we do not want a war with Russia.

For years, the Russian military has been laser-focused on preparing for a war with the United States, while at the same time the U.S. military has been primarily focused on fighting wars in the Middle East.

So the Russians have been working very hard to upgrade their strategic nuclear arsenal, and at this point their arsenal is far superior to ours.  The following comes from an article that I came across earlier today…

Russia is constantly improving its nuclear deterrence and is very close to deploying new technologically-advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles which can defeat any US missile defense systems, a Russian deputy prime minister said in an interview.

“These weapons will soon appear in our armed forces,” Dmitry Rogozin told Rossiya-1 TV on Sunday. While not naming the new ICBM, the deputy PM in charge of the defense industry said the missile will have the capacity to penetrate any American air defenses.

“These weapons are able to clear the United States’ missile defense both of today and of tomorrow – and even of the day after tomorrow,” Rogozin said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to rely on weapons systems that were developed in the 1960s and 1970s.

The Russians are a very dangerous foe, and it is in our national interest to try to have a positive relationship with them.

There are going to be times when we strongly disagree with what the Russians are doing, but our interactions with them should always be focused on trying to avoid a nuclear conflict.

So yes, we should let the Russians know when we are upset about something, but constantly making provocative and incendiary statements is a recipe for disaster.

Hopefully our leaders will start to realize this very soon, because right now our relationship with Russia is deteriorating very rapidly.

Why Melania Trump Leading The Public In The Lord’s Prayer At A Rally In Florida Was A Historic Event

Melania Trump Prayer At Florida Rally - YouTube ScreenshotWe just witnessed Melania Trump’s finest moment as First Lady so far.  After a week in which her husband declared war on the mainstream media, Melania absolutely electrified a huge crowd at a rally in Melbourne, Florida by reciting the Lord’s Prayer.  What Donald Trump had to share afterwards was remarkable as well, but that night will always be remembered for what Melania did.  After beginning with the phrase “let us pray”, Melania stunned the entire world by slowly but carefully leading the crowd in the Lord’s Prayer, and it is being reported that the assembled throng responded to her prayer with “thunderous applause“.

She did not pronounce all of the words perfectly, but that didn’t matter.

What matters is that her courage enabled her to create the most powerful moment that we have seen from a First Lady in decades.  The following is from a transcript of her remarks…

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed is your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us.

‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

If you have not seen footage of this incredible moment yet, you can watch it right here…

One of the primary reasons why this moment evoked so much emotion is because the Lord’s Prayer is undeniably a Christian prayer.

Over the decades, our politicians have become very adept at speaking of “god” in a very generic sense.  Even when they pray, most of our politicians are careful to use universal language that could apply to almost any religion.

That is why what Melania Trump did was so radical.  By reciting the Lord’s Prayer, she was clearly identifying herself as a Christian, and there was absolutely no question about who she was addressing.

It was such a simple prayer, but needless to say it sent liberals into a social media frenzy.  They started calling her every name in the book and used some of the most foul language imaginable.

Some of the more moderate liberals objected to the prayer on the basis of separation of church and state, but nowhere in the Constitution does it say that our elected officials cannot be Christian.  And nowhere in the Constitution does it say that they cannot speak on matters of faith.

In fact, if we are to have any hope of turning this nation around we desperately need the favor of God, and that is why what Melania Trump did was so important.

In her prayer, she asked for God’s will to be done on Earth just as it is done in heaven.

If we truly were to follow that course, there would be no limits to what we could achieve as a people.

But in order for that to happen, we must completely change direction as a nation, and Melania’s prayer was also a prayer of repentance.

The phrase “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespasses against us” was not a perfect quotation of the Lord’s Prayer, but it was immensely powerful.

By asking for forgiveness, that implies that we have done things that we need to be forgiven for.  And without a doubt, that list is very long.  We have killed tens of millions of babies since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, we produce more pornography than the rest of the world combined, sexual immorality of every kind you can imagine is running rampant in our society, our entertainment is mostly pure filth, and we have pushed God and His ways out of almost every corner of public life.

If we want to get on the right track as a country, one of the very first things that should be done is to defund Planned Parenthood.  The Republicans finally have control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and so there are no more excuses.

If Donald Trump and the Republicans truly are “pro-life”, Planned Parenthood will be defunded in 2017.

But if it doesn’t happen, then they will share in the accountability for the Great American Holocaust, and the blood of every baby that is murdered from now on will be on their hands.

That is why this is one of the most important moments in American history.  If we don’t turn around now, I don’t think that we ever will, and choosing to go down the same path that we are currently on will only lead us to judgment.

So that is why I was so thrilled with Melania’s prayer.  By boldly identifying themselves as Christians, the Trumps are giving those of us that also consider ourselves to be Christians hope that a new day is ahead.

But it can’t just be words.  That is why what happens over the next few months is so incredibly important.

And of course the radical left is going to fight Donald Trump and his team every step of the way.  About a week ago, I wrote about the army of more than 30,000 activists that Barack Obama is commanding from his new home less than two miles away from the White House.  Well, now we have learned that Organizing for Action is going to be working with a network of other radical groups to disrupt town hall meetings all over the nation…

Progressive activists continue to take a cue from the Tea Party movement with plans to funnel into town hall meetings this week while members of Congress are at home and make a ruckus.

Groups, including President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, are turning to a newer organization, Indivisible Guide, to coordinate tactics.

Launched in December by former Congressional staffers, Indivisible is providing activists with training manuals, such as one that explains how to have a ‘successful’ town hall.

The progressives hate Trump and they want to keep this nation going down the exact same road that we were heading under Barack Obama.

We are literally in a battle for the future of America, and the outcome is still to be determined.

But what Melania Trump did when she stepped behind that podium was a major step in the right direction, and hopefully we will be seeing much more of that from her and Donald in the future.

It Is About Time That We Had A President That Was Willing To Go To War With The Mainstream Media

Donald Trump Waving - Public DomainThursday afternoon’s press conference was perhaps the most memorable moment of Donald Trump’s presidency so far.  Trump’s blistering attack on the media was quite a spectacle, but the truth is that it was desperately needed.  For decades, the mainstream media has dominated political discourse in this country no matter who has been in control of the White House or Congress.  They have become masters of guiding and shaping public opinion, and in recent years they have completely discarded any pretense of being “unbiased” or “objective”.  These monolithic media organizations relentlessly push the progressive agenda of their owners (the global elite), and that is why the “news” always seems to be just about the same no matter which network it is coming from.  Their monopoly is slowly being broken by the rise of the alternative media, but the truth is that most Americans still rely on just a handful of ultra-powerful media organizations for their news.

So when Trump brutally attacked the mainstream media at his press conference on Thursday, millions upon millions of Americans greatly rejoiced, because they finally got what was coming to them.  And then on Friday, Trump posted a message to Twitter calling the New York Times, NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN “the enemy of the American people”…

After Donald Trump’s surprise election victory in November, many in the mainstream media started referring to the pro-Trump alternative media as “fake news”, but now Trump has totally turned that insult against them. 

For weeks Trump has been referring to CNN as “fake news”, but on Friday he said that he was now going to refer to them as “very fake news”.  The following exchange between Trump and CNN’s Jim Acosta comes from the official White House website…

Q    Just because of the attack of fake news and attacking our network, I just want to ask you, sir — 

THE PRESIDENT:  I’m changing it from fake news, though.

Q    Doesn’t that undermine — 

THE PRESIDENT:  Very fake news now.  (Laughter.) 

We have never seen an exchange quite like that between a president of the United States and a prominent member of the mainstream media, but it was well overdue…

For eight years, the mainstream media gushed and fawned over Barack Obama because he supported the progressive agenda of the global elite, but now that Trump is in the White House virtually every story from the mainstream media is negative.

So when Chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon refers to them as “the opposition party” he is right on target…

In a rare interview with The New York Times last month, Chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon, the former chair of the far-right Breitbart News, called reporters the “opposition party” and said “the media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

“They don’t understand this country,” Bannon said. “They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

At this point, the mainstream media is so desperate to portray Trump as a bad guy that they have resorted to a modern day version of McCarthyism.  For decades, liberals always pointed to McCarthyism as one of the greatest examples of paranoia and intolerance in modern American history, but now they are doing the exact same thing to Trump…

A bizarre feature of the present confrontation is that the Democrats and liberals have relaunched McCarthyism, something they would have decried as a toxic episode in American political history until a few months ago. Just as Senator Joe McCarthy claimed in 1950 to have a list of communist infiltrators in the State Department, so any contact between a Trump supporter or official and a Russian is now being reported as suspicious and potentially treacherous. It is difficult to see where Trump is wrong when he tweeted that “the Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly, so they made up a story – RUSSIA. Fake news!”

The reason why many of us constantly refer to the mainstream media as a single entity is because it really is very tightly controlled.  You see, the truth is that more than 90 percent of the news, information and entertainment that Americans get through their televisions comes from just 6 giant media corporations.  And of course those 6 enormous corporations are owned and controlled by the elite of the world.

The war for our society is a war for hearts and minds, and the reason why the elite have made so much progress is because most Americans allow thousands upon thousands of hours of “programming” to be constantly pumped into their heads.

The following numbers come directly from Nielsen, and they show how much news, information and entertainment average Americans consume through various methods each day…

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using  a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add the top two categories together, the average American consumes more than five hours of television every single day.

And when you add all of those categories together, the average American is plugged into “the matrix” in some way for more than 10 hours a day.

We are literally subjecting ourselves to a form of very powerful mind control, and the extraordinary power of the media is something that I addressed in my novel.  There are some people that actually cannot stand complete silence because they have become so accustomed to having something “on” all the time.  As a society, we are absolutely addicted to entertainment, but there is always an agenda behind that entertainment.  This is something that I talked about in a previous article…

Virtually every television show, movie, song, book, news broadcast and talk show is trying to shape how you view reality.  Whether you realize it or not, you are constantly being bombarded with messages about what is true and what is not, about what is right and what is wrong, and about what really matters and what is unimportant.  Even leaving something out or ignoring something completely can send an extremely powerful message.

When Donald Trump said that the mainstream media is “the enemy of the American People”, he was 100 percent correct.

If our country is going to have a positive future, the immense power that these media corporations have over the general population must be broken.

It is about time that we had a president that was willing to go to war with the mainstream media, and I greatly applaud President Trump for the stand that he is taking.

11 Deeply Alarming Facts About America’s Crumbling Infrastructure

Traffic Jam Los Angeles - Photo by PrayitnoNo matter what your particular political perspective is, if there is one thing that virtually everyone in the United States can agree upon it is the fact that America’s infrastructure is crumbling.  Previous generations of Americans conquered an entire continent and erected the greatest system of infrastructure that the world had ever seen, but now thousands upon thousands of those extremely impressive infrastructure projects are decades old and in desperate need of repair or upgrading.  The near catastrophic failure of the Oroville Dam is a perfect example of what I am talking about.  We should be constructing the next generation of infrastructure projects for our children and our grandchildren, but instead we are in such sorry shape that we can’t even keep up with the maintenance and upkeep on the great infrastructure projects that have been handed down to us.

Once upon a time nobody on the entire planet could even come close to matching our infrastructure, but now our crumbling infrastructure has become a joke to much of the rest of the industrialized world.  Sadly, this is just another symptom of our long-term economic collapse.  We simply are not able to put as much of our money toward infrastructure as previous generations of Americans did, and as a result we have a giant mess on our hands.  The following are 11 deeply alarming facts about America’s crumbling infrastructure…

#1 According to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, nearly 56,000 bridges in the United States are currently “structurally deficient”.  What makes that number even more chilling is the fact that vehicles cross those bridges a total of 185 million times a day.

#2 More than one out of every four bridges in the United States is more than 50 years old and “have never had major reconstruction work”.

#3 America does not have a single airport that is considered to be in the top 25 in the world.

#4 The average age of America’s dams is now 52 years.

#5 Not too long ago, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the condition of America’s dams a “D” grade.

#6 Overall, the American Society of Civil Engineers said that the condition of America’s infrastructure as a whole only gets a “D+” grade.

#7 Congestion on our highways costs Americans approximately 101 billion dollars a year in wasted fuel and time.

#8 According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, over two-thirds of our roads are “in dire need of repair or upgrades”.

#9 In order to completely fix all of our roads and bridges, it would take approximately 808 billion dollars.

#10 Federal spending on infrastructure has decreased by 9 percent over the past decade.

#11 According to Bloomberg, it is being projected “that by 2025, shortfalls in infrastructure investment will subtract as much as $3.9 trillion from U.S. gross domestic product.”

The quality of our infrastructure affects all of our lives every single day.  For instance, we all simply take it for granted that safe, clean drinking water is going to come out of our taps, but recent events have shown that is not necessarily always going to be the case.

Just ask the residents of Flint, Michigan.

Water pipes, sewer systems and water treatment facilities all over the nation are aging and are in desperate need of repair.  Of course the exact same thing could be said about our power grid.  It was never intended to handle so many people, and on the hottest days of the summer the strain on the grid is very evident.

And of course the power grid is exceedingly vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse event, and this is something that I covered in my book on getting prepared.  It has been projected that it would only cost a couple billion dollars to harden the grid against an EMP event, but our politicians refuse to spend the money.

Meanwhile, President Trump is completely correct when he says that our airports look like something that you would see in a third world country.  Most of our airports are at least several decades old, and they are definitely showing their age.

But things are even worse when you look at other systems of mass transit around the country.  While other nations such as Japan and China are investing huge amounts of money into high speed rail, we are doing next to nothing even though what we currently have is absolutely pathetic.

I could go on and talk about our ports, schools, waterways, parks, etc. but I think that you get the point.

President Trump’s instincts are right on the money when he says that he wants to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure.  Without a doubt, we desperately need it.

The problem is that we are flat broke.

We are 20 trillion dollars in debt, and we are adding more than a trillion dollars to that total every year.

So where are we going to get the money?

It is easy for liberals to say that we should raise taxes, but how much more are you going to squeeze out of U.S. consumers?  Two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, and we just learned that U.S. household debt has risen to a grand total of 12.58 trillion dollars.

Once upon a time, America was the wealthiest nation on the entire planet and we could afford to construct bold, new infrastructure projects from sea to shining sea.

But today we have the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we can’t even afford to repair what we already have.

When I speak of our long-term economic collapse, this is precisely the sort of thing that I am talking about.  We have clearly been in decline for a very long time, and anyone that would suggest otherwise is simply not being honest with you.

The United States Is On The Precipice Of Widespread Civil Unrest

SFO Muslim Ban Protest - Photo by Quinn NortonIt doesn’t take much of a trigger to push extremely large crowds of very angry protesters into committing acts of rioting and violence.  And rioting and violence can ultimately lead to widespread civil unrest and calls for “revolution”.  The election of Donald Trump was perhaps the single most galvanizing moment for the radical left in modern American history, and we have already seen that a single move by Trump can literally cause protests to erupt from coast to coast within 48 hours.  On Friday, Trump signed an executive order that banned refugees from Syria indefinitely and that placed a 90 day ban on travel to the United States for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.  Within hours, protesters began to storm major airports, and by Sunday very large crowds were taking to the streets all over the country…

From Seattle to Newark, Houston to Boston, hundreds jammed airport terminals — lawyers, immigration advocates, ordinary citizens compelled to the front lines, many refusing to leave until those who had been detained by U.S. Customs had been freed or had obtained legal counsel.

On Sunday, the movement caught fire and demonstrations and rallies erupted in communities across the U.S. from city halls to airports to parks. In the nation’s capital, the site of the march that drew a crushing 500,000 people Jan. 21, Pennsylvania Avenue was shut down Sunday as thousands trekked from the White House to the U.S. Capitol. An energized crowd stopped outside Trump’s showcase hotel along the avenue to shake fists and chant “shame.”

You can see some really good pictures of the protests going on around the nation right here.

As I was going through articles about these protests today, I remember one woman holding up a sign that said “Remove Trump By Any Means Necessary”.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what she was suggesting.

Visions of violence are dancing in the heads of these very frustrated people, and they are being egged on by top members of Congress such as Chuck Schumer…

‘These orders go against what America has always been about,’ Schumer told the crowd in Battery Park according to the New York Daily News. ‘The orders make us less humanitarian, less safe, less American and when it comes to making us less safe people forget this, that’s why so many of our military, intelligence, security, and law enforcement leaders are opposed to this order and all those like it.’

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Trump’s presidential rival, Hillary, tweeted a picture from the rally. It was captioned: ‘Yes. We will keep standing up for a country that matches our values and ideals for all. #NewYork #NoBanNoWall.’

On Sunday, President Trump attempted to clarify what his executive order was really about and make it clear that it was not a ban on all Muslims.  The following comes from CNN…

President Donald Trump insisted Sunday his travel ban on certain Muslim-majority nations would protect the United States from terrorists, after a weekend of outrage and confusion over the move.

In an afternoon statement, Trump wrote the country would continue showing “compassion to those fleeing oppression.”

Unfortunately, polls show that somewhere around a third of the country greatly dislikes Trump, and those people are more than ready to believe that Trump is a racist bigot that hates all Muslims.

But the truth is that Trump does not hate any group of people.  His target is simply Islamic terror, and he is actually pro-immigration as long as it is legal immigration.

Let us not forget that his wife is a legal immigrant.

I know that Trump is quite eager to get things done, but putting out this executive order at this particular moment was definitely a case of poor timing.

We are a nation that is deeply, deeply divided, and now this latest controversy threatens to divide us even further.

When I was out earlier today, I saw a pro-Trump billboard that some business owner had put up that was urging liberals to quit their whining.

On the surface that may sound funny, but it definitely doesn’t do anything to bring us together.

If you give anger enough fuel, eventually it leads to violence.  I am certainly not suggesting that we should ever compromise on what we believe, but what I am suggesting is that there is a wise way to handle things and an unwise way to handle things.

Someday, widespread civil unrest is going to sweep across the United States and major American cities will burn.

My hope is that we can put this off for as long as possible.

In fact, I sincerely hope that this will not happen at all during the Trump/Pence era.

But you would have to be blind not to see the hate, anger and frustration that are all growing like cancer in the hearts of our young people.

This is a time for the peacemakers.  If there are any left in Washington, we need them to rise up now and try to bring healing before it is too late.

Like Clinton’s Campaign, Will The Much-Hyped Inauguration Protests End Up Being A Giant Failure For The Left?

Inauguration Day Dawn - Photo by BgwwlmOver the past couple of months, the radical left has been endlessly hyping the protests against Donald Trump on January 20th and January 21st.  We have been told that half the population absolutely hates Donald Trump and that Washington D.C. will be filled with angry protesters that are ready to take their country back.  So where are they?  The radical left tends to talk a good game, but when it comes time for action they often come up way short.  At this point, it appears that the much-hyped “war in the streets” that they were promising is going to be a giant dud.

Reports from those on the scene in D.C. indicate that there are very few protesters running around.  Yes, a few hundred LGBT activists danced in front of Mike Pence’s home on Wednesday night.  And yes, police fired pepper spray at protesters at one point on Thursday night…

Police and anti-Donald Trump protesters are clashing in a rally that began outside the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C.

The protest started at the hotel, and then marched through D.C. to the National Press Club several blocks away. Once there … pepper spray was fired into the crowd, and protesters started trying to break through police lines.

One protester got a little bloody during the pepper spray incident, but so far that has been it.

So where are the “Ferguson-style protests” that we were promised?

Of course the truth is that these radical leftists never stood much of a chance in the first place.  Law enforcement authorities have been watching them like a hawk, and the heart of Washington D.C. has been turned into a “fortress” for the inaugural festivities.

According to Reuters, permits have been granted for at least 30 anti-Trump rallies in D.C., but so far it appears that the “army of protesters” that many were dreaming of has failed to materialize.

And the authorities in D.C. appear quite ready to handle whatever is thrown their way.  Numerous media reports today used the term “fortress” to describe the level of security immediately surrounding the U.S. Capitol…

About 28,000 security personnel, miles of fencing, roadblocks, street barricades and dump trucks laden with sand are part of the security cordon around 3 square miles (almost 8 square km) of central Washington.

But even at this late hour, the mainstream media continues to hype the possibility of chaos and violence.  For example, the National Press Photographers Association is warning of Ferguson-style rioting on Friday…

The National Press Photographers Association has issued guidelines to journalists that virtually mirror those sent out during the Ferguson riots in 2014.

Reporters are advised to “maintain situational awareness” and have “an exit plan in case the situation becomes hostile”.

The group also emphasizes that journalists should “move toward the nearest police officer under the assumption that they could protect you from hostile or violent protesters.”

Other mainstream media outlets have been openly discussing the possibility of some sort of catastrophic terror attack during the Inauguration.  If you can believe it, the Today Show actually spent time talking about the possibility that a drone bombing could happen while Trump is being inaugurated…

The media is raising concerns about a drone bombing at the 58th Presidential Inauguration on Friday.

On Thursday’s “Today” show, a report indicated that U.S. Secret Service has put in place several anti-drone efforts out of concern that an I-inspired “flying IED” will smash into the crowd, or worse.

The report quoted an official from DroneShield, a drone countermeasure firm, saying that the Inauguration “is not something I would feel safe at.”

Did you ever hear these sorts of reports just prior to Obama’s inaugurations?

Of course not.

It is almost as if some in the mainstream media are actually trying to incite violence.  For instance, CNN is being loudly criticized for running a Wolf Blitzer report that suggested that someone from the Obama administration could become president if Donald Trump and Mike Pence were both “wiped out” at the Inauguration.  The following comes from Breitbart…

Blitzer introduced the segment, saying, “What if an incoming president and his immediate successors were wiped out on day one?” and from there, CNN contributor Brian Todd took over to outline the line of succession if an attack blew up the inaugural dais, killing both Trump and Pence.

The upshot was that in the case of both heads of state being killed, the Secretary of State would take over. Currently that man is Secretary of State John Kerry, But in case some objected because his office would also end as of noon on Inauguration Day, then it would be the Speaker of the House — Republican Paul Ryan — or even Obama’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs Tom Shannon.

Why talk about such a thing?

By airing this on national television just before the Inauguration, CNN is potentially giving sick and twisted people ideas that they would not have otherwise considered.  If you have not seen this deeply disturbing report yet, you can view it on YouTube right here…

And the international media is openly talking about the possibility of something happening to Trump as well.  The following example comes from Egypt…

“The really scary confrontation will come after Trump launches a campaign to purge the U.S. government ministries, including the Department of Defense, [i.e.,] the Pentagon, [and to eliminate] the gangs that hide within the intelligence and security agencies that are the hub of global conspiracies, in order to remove Democrats and replace them with Republicans he trusts,” writes Hani ‘Asl, a columnist for the Egyptian government daily Al-Ahram.

“In these [circles] there may be someone who will try to eliminate the problem [called Trump] with a single bullet in order to protect their interests and gladden Obama and Hillary, [perhaps] even under the slogan of defending democracy and the U.S.”

Without a doubt, there are many among the elite that absolutely hate Trump.  So let us pray for his safety and for the safety of everyone that will be attending the Inauguration.

January 20th is the start of a new day for America, and it should be a time of great celebration for the entire country.  Unfortunately, there are some people out there that would very much like to rain on our parade, and let us hope that all of their efforts are completely foiled.

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