Technology

The Elite Are Creating An Authoritarian ‘Beast System’, And Those That Dissent Could Lose EVERYTHING

December 2, 2018 by Michael

They are transforming the Internet into the greatest tool of surveillance that humanity has ever seen, and if we stay on the road that we are currently on it is only a matter of time until our society becomes a hellish dystopian nightmare. I wish that this was an exaggeration, but it isn’t. Over the past couple of decades, the Internet has completely changed the way that we all communicate with one another. At one time, all forms of mass communication were tightly controlled by the elite, but the Internet suddenly allowed us to communicate with one another on a massive scale without having to go through their gatekeepers. This radically altered the landscape, and at first the elite were unsure of how to respond to this growing threat. There was no way that they could roll back time to an era before the Internet was invented, and so they have decided to use it for their own insidious purposes instead.

Today, the Internet has become the centerpiece of their “Big Brother surveillance grid”, and they are gathering information on all of us on a scale that has never been seen before in all of human history. But of course it was never going to stop there. Over the past couple of years we have started to watch the elite use all of this information to punish those that are doing or saying things that they do not like.

Perhaps the most extreme example of this phenomenon is what is going on in China. The following comes from BuzzFeed…

Chinese journalist Liu Hu always knew he’d have trouble with the authorities; he had been exposing corruption and wrongdoing for years. He was used to being hassled with regular fines and forced apologies imposed by his authoritarian government. He nevertheless persisted in truth-telling.

One day in 2017, Hu logged onto a travel site, but couldn’t book a flight because the site said he was “not qualified.” Soon he discovered he was blocked from buying property, using the high-speed train network, or getting a loan. And there was nothing he could do about it. His rights to essential goods and services were now circumscribed through an algorithm designed to discriminate against the 7.5 million people on China’s “Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement” list.

In China they call it a “social credit score”, but in reality it is nightmarish authoritarianism at its worst.

They are monitoring all that their citizens do and think – their political opinions, their shopping patterns, their travel history, their Internet behavior, etc. – and if they upset “the Beast system” then they could ultimately lose access to everything.

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

Just imagine a world in which you will no longer be able to buy, sell, open a bank account, get a loan, use public transportation or get a job.

Chinese authorities are even putting up surveillance cameras in the schools so that they can constantly monitor students…

Here, the surveillance cameras took the data on individual facial expressions and used that information to create a running “score” on each student and class. If a score reached a predetermined point, the system triggered an alert. Teachers were expected to take action: to talk to a student perceived to be disengaged, for example, or overly moody.

You would think that the Chinese would rebel against such a system, but most are already too fearful to say anything about it.

And some are actually embracing the new system…

In Beijing and throughout China, closed-circuit cameras and other surveillance devices are so ubiquitous that they’ve become part of the landscape. If facial recognition helps with public safety, some say, that’s a good thing.

“Perhaps people would behave themselves more,” said Xia Chuzi, a 19-year-old student interviewed in Beijing.

But we would never allow such a thing to happen here in the United States, right?

Wrong.

While not yet as advanced as what the Chinese have done, our own version of “the Beast system” is expanding with each passing day.

If you use the Internet, the technocratic elite know virtually everything about you. And as we have seen so frequently in recent months, they also have the power to “deplatform” those that they do not like…

Independent Media readers are well aware of the multitude of ways big tech and social media platforms have been censoring conservatives, from demonetizing video channels, to blocking, banning and shadow banning conservatives, to limiting the reach of promotions and by “tweaking” algorithms so that search results push Independent Media sites so far down that they can rarely be found.

And restricting buying and selling is starting to happen too. In fact, we have seen numerous online payment platforms ban individuals and organizations that hold “extreme views” recently.

Over time, the information that the elite have about all of us will continue to grow, as will their desire to punish those that think or act “offensively”. But in the process of creating a “utopia”, they will actually be creating an authoritarian nightmare. The following comes from Ethan Huff…

Social media is arguably the greatest accomplishment thus far of the “deep state” in establishing a new world order. For one, it allows the various ministries of propaganda around the world to project their official narratives without impediment using authoritarian censorship tactics. It also creates a virtual echo chamber of leftism that, once all the conservatives are finally removed from all the tech platforms, will create the online liberal “utopia” that the social engineers are striving to achieve.

We live at a time when political correctness has become institutionalized.

One wrong opinion, and you can lose a social media account that you spent years building up. And one wrong statement can cost you a career that you spent years training for.

Ultimately, we are heading down the exact same path that China has gone. Their “social credit score” system is being hailed as the next great thing all over the world, and those that hate freedom of speech can’t wait to fully implement such a system in the western world.

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

Secret Code Is Recording Every Keystroke You Make On More Than 400 Of The Most Popular Websites On The Internet

November 21, 2017November 21, 2017 by Michael

If someone secretly installed software on your computer that recorded every single keystroke that you made, would you be alarmed? Of course you would be, and that is essentially what is taking place on more than 400 of the most popular websites on the entire Internet. For a long time we have known that nothing that we do on the Internet is private, but this new revelation is deeply, deeply disturbing. In my novel entitled “The Beginning Of The End”, I attempted to portray the “Big Brother” surveillance grid which is constantly evolving all around us, but even I didn’t know that things were quite this bad. According to an article that was just published by Ars Technica, when you visit the websites that have installed this secret surveillance code, it is like someday is literally “looking over your shoulder”…

If you have the uncomfortable sense someone is looking over your shoulder as you surf the Web, you’re not being paranoid. A new study finds hundreds of sites—including microsoft.com, adobe.com, and godaddy.com—employ scripts that record visitors’ keystrokes, mouse movements, and scrolling behavior in real time, even before the input is submitted or is later deleted.

Go back and read that again.

Do you understand what that means?

Even if you ultimately decide not to post something, these websites already know what you were typing, where you clicked and how you were moving your mouse.

Essentially, it is like someone is literally sitting behind you and watching every single thing that you do on that website. The following comes from the Daily Mail…

In a blog post revealing the findings, Steven Englehardt, a PhD candidate at Princeton, said: ‘Unlike typical analytics services that provide aggregate statistics, these scripts are intended for the recording and playback of individual browsing sessions, as if someone is looking over your shoulder.

This is fundamentally wrong, and if I am elected to Congress I am going to fight like mad for our privacy rights on the Internet. Nobody should be allowed to literally monitor our keystrokes, but according to a brand new study that has just been released, 482 of the largest websites in the entire world are doing this…

A study published last week reported that 482 of the 50,000 most trafficked websites employ such scripts, usually with no clear disclosure. It’s not always easy to detect sites that employ such scripts. The actual number is almost certainly much higher, particularly among sites outside the top 50,000 that were studied.

“Collection of page content by third-party replay scripts may cause sensitive information, such as medical conditions, credit card details, and other personal information displayed on a page, to leak to the third-party as part of the recording,” Steven Englehardt, a PhD candidate at Princeton University, wrote. “This may expose users to identity theft, online scams, and other unwanted behavior. The same is true for the collection of user inputs during checkout and registration processes.”

I am calling on every website that is using this sort of code to cease and desist immediately. This is a gross violation of our privacy, and Congress needs to pass legislation protecting the American people immediately.

And of course it isn’t just the Internet where are privacy rights are being greatly violated. The CIA has developed software that can remotely turn on the cameras and microphones on our phones whenever they want, and they can also use our phones as GPS locators to track us wherever we go…

CIA-created malware can penetrate and then control the operating systems for both Android and iPhone phones, allege the documents. This software would allow the agency to see the user’s location, copy and transmit audio and text from the phone and covertly turn on the phone’s camera and microphone and then send the resulting images or sound files to the agency.

So just like the Internet, nothing that you do on your phone is ever truly private.

And would you be shocked to learn that our televisions can be used to spy on us as well?

Incredibly, they can even be used to monitor us when they appear to be turned off…

A program dubbed “Weeping Angel” after an episode of the popular British TV science fiction series “Dr. Who,” can set a Samsung smart TV into a fake “off” mode to fool the consumer into thinking the TV isn’t recording room sounds when it still is. The conversations are then sent out via the user’s server. The program was developed in conjunction with MI5, the British FBI equivalent of a domestic counterintelligence and security agency, according to the WikiLeaks documents.

We are rapidly getting to the point where nothing will ever be truly private in our society ever again.

Virtually everything that we do is constantly being watched, tracked, monitored and recorded, and with each passing day our level of privacy is being eroded just a little bit more.

If you don’t want your children to grow up in a world where “Big Brother” is omnipresent, now is the time to stand up and fight. We can put limits on technology and start reclaiming our privacy, but that is only going to happen if we all work together.

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.

The United States Has Become A Nation Of Sheeple

August 1, 2017August 1, 2017 by Michael

You can either follow the herd of you can decide to find your own path. One of the things that greatly frustrates me is that so many Americans allow other people to do their thinking for them. We have become a nation of sheeple, and the vast majority of the shepherds that we are relying on for guidance are frauds and imposters. The blind are leading the blind, and we are slowly but surely committing national suicide. If a lot more of us don’t start to learn to think for ourselves, I fear that the vast majority of the population will never wake up until it is far too late.

Let me ask you a very simple question.

What is on your mind today?

If you are not preoccupied with work or with family matters, then you are probably thinking about something that you have been fed through the mainstream media. Just think about this for a few moments. When you are sitting around the dinner table or you are chatting with someone at work, what do you tend to talk about? If you are like most people, many of your conversations will be about something that you saw on the news, a new movie that you just watched, or a sporting event that has just happened.

Most of the time, we believe that certain things are important because someone else has told us that they are important.

And the most prominent voices of all are the six gigantic media corporations that control about 90 percent of the news, information and entertainment that we get through our televisions. I know that statistic is a bit hard to believe, so let me share a little excerpt from a fact checking website called truthorfiction.com…

Summary of eRumor:

Six corporations own 90% of news media companies in America.

The Truth:

This claim is true.

News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, CBS and Comcast own 90% of the TV stations, radio stations, movies, magazines and newspapers that 277 million Americans rely on for news and entertainment.

Of course those six corporate behemoths are owned by the elite of the world, and that is why “the news” never seems to change very much no matter where you get it.

It is imperative that we understand that everyone has an agenda. Every single movie, television show, documentary and news program is trying to shape how you think. Sadly, many people completely disengage their mental filters once they sit down in front of the television, and they just passively consume whatever “programming” that is offered to them without even thinking twice about where it is coming from.

Earlier today, I discovered that the following story was trending online: “This Calf Looks Suspiciously Like Gene Simmons And People Want Answers”.

Why is that story trending?

Well, the truth is that at some point a big media gatekeeper somewhere decided that this is something that we should all be focusing on.

But of course there are thousands of pressing issues that would be far more worthy of our attention. The key is to keep us all confused and distracted so that we can never focus on what is truly important.

One of the biggest reasons why we are so easily controlled as a society is because our system of public education does not teach critical thinking skills to our young people. Instead, most educational time is spent on trying to memorize facts and figures that can be regurgitated when it is time to take a test. And any time that is spent on the “why questions” is usually spent forcing “progressive values” down the throats of our students. No wonder our young people are rapidly falling behind the rest of the industrialized world.

Did you ever see the big Hollywood film that was entitled “Idiocracy“? Sometimes I feel like I am permanently trapped inside that movie. If you ask people why they do the things that they do on a daily basis, most of them cannot give you a coherent answer.

I am even discovering that this is true in the world of politics. I have been asking people who they are planning to vote for in different races here in Idaho and why they plan to vote that way. Sadly, most voters cannot give me any sort of a coherent answer. Most of the time people seem to be backing a certain candidate “because that is what everybody else seems to be doing”.

And something that greatly disturbs me is how we tend to put political leaders up on pedestals. If they are on our “team”, we tend to shower them with worship and pretend that they can’t do anything wrong. But if they are on the other team, we tend to throw as much mud as we possibly can.

Instead of being obsessed with personalities, we need to stand on our principles instead. If our leaders do things that are right, then we should praise those actions. But if they do what is wrong, then we should be willing to hold them accountable.

I have been having a number of conversations about “being red-pilled” lately, and if you ever watched “The Matrix” then you know exactly what I am talking about. Most people out there still don’t seem to realize that the world system is built on a pyramid of lies. From a very early age, we are told lie after lie, and once you start to “wake up” one of the first responses is often intense anger.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, I would encourage you to start questioning everything. Once you really start digging, you will quickly discover that many of the “truths” that society takes for granted are not actually so solid after all.

If you seek the truth with all of your heart, you will find it, and it will set you free.

But breaking free of the programming that the world system is constantly feeding us is the first step, and that is not always easy to do.

Here Come The Robots – And They Are Going To Take Almost All Of Our Jobs

February 6, 2017 by Michael

What is going to happen to society when robots are able to do just about everything better, faster and cheaper than human workers can? We live at a time when technology is increasing at an exponential pace. Incredible advancements in robotics, computer science and artificial intelligence are certainly making our lives more comfortable, but they are also bringing fundamental changes to the workplace. For employers, there are a lot of advantages to replacing human workers with robots. Robots don’t surf around on Facebook when they are supposed to be working. Robots don’t need Obamacare, lunch breaks or vacation days. Robots never steal from the company and they never complain. Up until fairly recently, human workers could generally perform many tasks more cheaply than robots could, but now that is rapidly changing.

For example, a coffee shop has just opened up in San Francisco that is manned by a robot instead of a human…

Tired of your barista misspelling your name on your morning cup of joe? Perhaps a robot could do better. On Monday, Cafe X opened its very first robotic cafe in San Francisco’s Metreon shopping center. Promising “precision crafted specialty coffee in seconds, the way the roaster intended,” Cafe X thinks that anything a human can do, its machines can do better.

Specifically, one very special machine. Nicknamed Gordon, after a Cafe X employee, this robot mans, or robots, two standard professional coffee machines in order to serve up espressos and lattes. In the San Francisco location, customers can grab a cup of coffee with beans from AKA Coffee, Verve Coffee Roasters, or Peet’s. While the coffee itself may not make Cafe X stand out from the competition, the startup hopes that the robot’s efficiency will.

If that coffee shop demonstrates that it can be much more profitable than a coffee shop with human employees, it is just a matter of time before human baristas start to be phased out all over the nation.

A similar thing is happening in many supermarkets. Personally, I hate the “self-checkout lines”, but you are starting to see them everywhere these days.

And according to the Sun, Amazon is playing around with a concept that would employ hardly any human workers at all…

In the case of Amazon’s automated retail prototype, a half-dozen workers could staff an average location. A manager’s duties would include signing up customers for the “Amazon Fresh” grocery service. Another worker would restock shelves, and still another two would be stationed at “drive-thru” windows for customers picking up their groceries, fast-food style.

The last pair would work upstairs, helping the robots bag groceries to be sent down to customers on “dumbwaiter”-like conveyors, a source said.

With the bare-bones payroll, the boost to profits could be huge. Indeed, the prototype being discussed calls for operating profit margins north of 20 percent. That compares with an industry average of just 1.7 percent, according to the Food Marketing Institute.

During the recent presidential campaign, much was made of the fact that we have shipped millions of good paying jobs overseas over the past several decades.

We can certainly try to make some laws that would keep American workers from losing jobs to foreign workers, but pretty soon workers all over the world are going to be losing millions of jobs to technology, and it is going to be just about impossible to make laws to prevent that from happening.

Just check out what is happening in China. Many big firms had moved manufacturing to China because labor was much cheaper over there, but now a lot of those cheap Chinese workers are being replaced by robots…

Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn, in fact, has already begun automating certain work that was previously done by hand. A Chinese government official told a Hong Kong newspaper in May that Foxconn had replaced 60,000 workers with robots at one factory there. And the company is receiving incentives north of Shanghai in the eastern-central Jiangsu Province to accelerate investments in robotics to replace human labor, according to Chinese state media organization Xinhua.

Sadly, this is just the beginning. According to one study, 49 percent of all activities currently performed by human workers could already “be turned over to some sort of machine or robot”…

About 49% of worker activities can be turned over to some sort of machine or robot, increasingly helped along by artificial-intelligence software, according to consultancy McKinsey.

About 58% of CEOs plan to cut jobs over the next five years because of robotics, while 16% say they plan to hire more people because of robotics, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey.

And Carl Frey of Oxford University has determined that some professions have more than a 90 percent chance of becoming automated in the coming years…

The revelations that dependable office jobs such as insurance workers and real estate agents have a more than 97% chance of becoming computerised could now spark fears among the middle class workforce.

‘While low-skilled jobs are most exposed to automation over the forthcoming decades, a substantial number of middle-income jobs are equally at risk.’ Frey told The Times.

Other jobs that feature high on the ‘risk list’ are credit analysts who have a 97% chance of losing their jobs to robots, postal service workers at 95% and lab technicians who have an 89% chance of seeing their role become automated.

So what in the world are we going to do with billions of human workers around the globe that are no longer needed when technology takes virtually all of our jobs?

Some have suggested that the idea of “work” will become a thing of the past, and that society will evolve into a socialist utopia where everything we need is provided for by the government. In fact, the concept of a “universal basic income” is already being promoted in Europe and elsewhere.

But others see a dystopian future where the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” grows greater than ever before. Humanity has always been plagued by poverty and greed, and everyone agrees that the gap between the very wealthy and the rest of us has been growing very rapidly in recent years.

Where there is nearly universal agreement is on the fact that big changes are coming. Workers are going to be displaced by technology at an accelerating rate in the years ahead, and this will present a tremendous challenge for us all.

6 Giant Corporations Control The Media, And Americans Consume 10 Hours Of ‘Programming’ A Day

May 26, 2016May 26, 2016 by Michael

If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world. In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market. In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world. So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”?

Just think about your own behavior. Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on. Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media. In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.

It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out. It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.

These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on. For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about? If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.

Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.

I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe. They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report“, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes 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 all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours.

And keep in mind that going to movie theaters, playing video games and reading books are behaviors that are not even on this list.

What in the world are we doing to ourselves?

The combination of watching live television and watching time-shifted television alone comes to a total of more than five hours.

If you feed five hours of something into your mind day after day, it is going to change you. There is no way around that. You may think that you are strong enough to resist the programming, but the truth is that it affects all of us in very subtle ways that we do not even understand.

And as I mentioned above, there are just six giant corporations that account for almost all of the programming that we receive through our televisions. Below is a list of these six corporations along with a sampling of the various media properties that they own…

Comcast

NBC
Telemundo
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
USA Network
Bravo
CNBC
The Weather Channel
MSNBC
Syfy
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Esquire Network
E!
Cloo
Chiller
Universal HD
Comcast SportsNet
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Studio Home Video

The Walt Disney Company

ABC Television Network
ESPN
The Disney Channel
A&E
Lifetime
Marvel Entertainment
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney Mobile
Disney Consumer Products
Interactive Media
Disney Theme Parks
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures

News Corporation

Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
FX
FXX
FX Movie Channel
Fox Sports Networks
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron’s
SmartMoney
HarperCollins
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Blue Sky Studios
Beliefnet
Zondervan

Time Warner

CNN
The CW
HBO
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
HLN
NBA TV
TBS
TNT
TruTV
Turner Classic Movies
Warner Bros.
Castle Rock
DC Comics
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
New Line Cinema
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine

Viacom

MTV
Nickelodeon
VH1
BET
Comedy Central
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Country Music Television (CMT)
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land

CBS Corporation

CBS Television Network
The CW (along with Time Warner)
CBS Sports Network
Showtime
TVGN
CBS Radio, Inc.
CBS Television Studios
Simon & Schuster
Infinity Broadcasting
Westwood One Radio Network

Fortunately, those enormous media conglomerates do not have quite the same monopoly over the Internet, but we are starting to see a tremendous amount of consolidation in the online world as well. Just check out these numbers…

Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.

The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.

The battle for the future of this nation is a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals.

And it is hard to see how things will be turned in a dramatically different direction as long as most of us are willingly feeding our hearts and minds with hours of “programming” that is controlled by the elite each day.

The good news is that there are signs of an awakening. More Americans than ever are becoming disenchanted with the mainstream media, and this is showing up in recent survey numbers. Here is one example…

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media.

Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.

As Americans (and people all over the world) have lost confidence in the mainstream media, they have been seeking out other sources of news and entertainment. This has greatly fueled the rise of the alternative media, and the dozens of websites all over the Internet where this article will ultimately be published are examples of this explosion.

You can only enslave people for so long. Ultimately, they will want to break free of the chains that are holding them back and they will want to find the truth.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves. If you find that you are still addicted to the “programming” that the giant media corporations are feeding you, I would encourage you to start unplugging from the matrix more frequently.

In the end, you will be glad that you did.

A Shocking NBC News Report Says That Someday We Will Be Microchipping All Of Our Children

May 24, 2016May 24, 2016 by Michael

Would you allow microchips to be surgically implanted in your children if that would keep them safer? This is already being done to pets on a widespread basis, and a shocking local NBC News report is promoting the idea that if it is good for our pets, then we should be doing it to our children as well. As you will see below, the report even puts a guilt trip on parents by asking them this question: “How far would you go to keep your children secure?” Of course most parents very much want to keep their children safe, and a microchip would enable authorities to track them down if they were lost or stolen. But is this really a good idea? And where is all of this technology eventually leading? If you have not seen this very disturbing local NBC News report yet, you can view it right here…

In the video, the reporter says that our children could be implanted with microchips “the size of a grain of rice” and that there would be “little to no health risks” involved.

And near the end of the report, she insists that “we could see those microchips in everyone” eventually.

Wow.

I am speechless.

The report also quoted an electronics expert who claimed that testing of these microchips “is being done right now”…

The piece flips back to pushing the idea when it quotes electronics expert Stuart Lipoff, who asserts that microchipping children is safe and inevitable.

“People should be aware that testing is being done right now. The military is not only testing this out, but already utilizes its properties. It’s not a matter of if it will happen, but when,” states Lipoff.

Of course if widespread microchipping of the population does start happening, at first it will likely be purely voluntary. But once enough of the population starts adopting the idea, it will be really easy for the government to make it mandatory.

Just imagine a world where physical cash was a thing of the past and you could not buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without your government-issued microchip identification.

Will you allow yourself and your family to be chipped when that day arrives?

If not, how will you eat?

How will you survive?

What will you do when your children come crying to you for food?

I am certainly not saying that you should allow yourself to be chipped. I know that nobody is ever chipping me. But what I am saying is that people are going to be faced with some absolutely heart-breaking choices.

Just recently, I wrote about a new form of digital currency that is intended to replace the physical dollars that we use now and also replace alternative currencies such as Bitcoin. It was unveiled in front of about 100 top Wall Street executives recently during a secret meeting in New York City. To give you an idea of just how rapidly the concept of a cashless society is advancing, I want to share with you a brief excerpt from an article that I recently wrote about this new technology…

—–

Last month, a “secret meeting” that involved more than 100 executives from some of the biggest financial institutions in the United States was held in New York City. During this “secret meeting“, a company known as “Chain” unveiled a technology that transforms U.S. dollars into “pure digital assets”. Reportedly, there were representatives from Nasdaq, Citigroup, Visa, Fidelity, Fiserv and Pfizer in the room, and Chain also claims to be partnering with Capital One, State Street, and First Data. This “revolutionary” technology is intended to completely change the way that we use money, and it would represent a major step toward a cashless society. But if this new digital cash system is going to be so good for society, why was it unveiled during a secret meeting for Wall Street bankers? Is there something more going on here than we are being told?

None of us probably would have ever heard about this secret meeting if it was not for a report in Bloomberg. The following comes from their article entitled “Inside the Secret Meeting Where Wall Street Tested Digital Cash“…

On a recent Monday in April, more than 100 executives from some of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered for a private meeting at the Times Square office of Nasdaq Inc. They weren’t there to just talk about blockchain, the new technology some predict will transform finance, but to build and experiment with the software.

By the end of the day, they had seen something revolutionary: U.S. dollars transformed into pure digital assets, able to be used to execute and settle a trade instantly. That’s the promise of a blockchain, where the cumbersome and error-prone system that takes days to move money across town or around the world is replaced with almost instant certainty.

So it is not just Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog that is referring to this gathering as a “secret meeting”. This is actually how it was described by Bloomberg. And I think that there is a very good reason why this meeting was held in secret, because many in the general public would definitely be alarmed by this giant step toward a cashless society.

—–

Right now, more than 400 billion cashless transactions are conducted around the world each year, and that number is growing very quickly.

And when our system becomes entirely cashless, there will be no more stuffing your mattress with cash and we will all be forced to deal with the banks.

What that day arrives, all of a sudden the government will be able to serve as the gatekeeper for who is allowed to access the system and who is not.

It would be very easy to impose a tax, require some sort of loyalty oath, or mandate some form of microchip identification as a condition for participating in the cashless system.

When we get to that point, what will you do?

In the end, that is something that we all need to be considering very carefully…

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

Widespread Terrorism Is Just Part Of The Perfect Storm That Is Now Descending On The Western World

November 15, 2015November 15, 2015 by Michael

Words cannot adequately describe the utter horror that was unleashed on the streets of Paris, France on Friday. CNN is calling it “the worst violence witnessed in France since World War II“, and even though it happened a couple of days ago now, many of us are still having a really tough time processing what took place. Somehow, a small group of less than 10 radical Islamists was able to unleash a coordinated wave of attacks that killed at least 129 people and injured at least 350. All of this comes less than a year after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, and many in the western world are now starting to understand that something has fundamentally changed. Even though France has a highly advanced anti-terrorism infrastructure, and even though it also has some of the strictest anti-gun laws in Europe, none of that did anything to prevent these attacks. Despite all of our advanced technology, the openness of our society makes us highly vulnerable to Islamic terror. And as more waves of refugees from the Middle East are absorbed by both Europe and the United States, it is inevitable that there will be more attacks like this.

According to Google, the definition of a “soft target” is “a person or thing that is relatively unprotected or vulnerable, especially to military or terrorist attack.” And as we just saw in France, the western world is literally teeming with soft targets. I am talking about sporting events, concert halls, schools, churches, shopping malls, power stations, water treatment facilities, mass transit, etc.

For those that wish to create terror, the opportunities are endless.

In the western world, we generally rely on certain deterrents in order to maintain order. Most sane people do not want to be shot, and most sane people do not want to go to prison.

But what do you do when there are large numbers of crazy people that are actually looking forward to being martyrs?

We don’t really have a defense for the kind of attack that we just witnessed in France. What can you really do when you are dealing with large numbers of homicidal maniacs that are not afraid to die and that can strike anywhere at any time? Unless you can identify the terrorists or their plans ahead of time, it becomes a guessing game.

And the level of evil demonstrated by these terrorists is truly astounding. At the Bataclan Theater, two of the terrorists fired their AK-47s indiscriminately into the crowd for a full 10 minutes…

At the Bataclan Theater, at least 75 people attending a concert by a U.S. rock band were killed and many more injured, according to authorities. Eyewitnesses spoke of two young men armed with AK47 assault rifles firing repetitively and dispassionately into the crowded venue, targeting helpless victims cowering on the floor.

Julien Pearce, a radio reporter who was inside the concert hall, told CNN he saw two terrorists at the back of the venue, “firing randomly to the crowd. People yelled, screamed, everybody lying on the floor. And it lasted for ten minutes, ten minutes, ten horrific minutes, where everybody was on the floor covering their heads.”

But these latest attacks are just part of a wider trend of chaos and terror that has descended upon western Europe. For much, much more on this, please check out this video.

Sadly, what Europe is currently experiencing is coming here too.

When I first start dealing with someone new, I watch to see if that individual will actually follow through on what he or she has promised. Sometimes this happens, but sometimes it does not.

In the case of ISIS, I would have to say that they are indeed following through on what they said they would do. Tonight, much of Europe is completely gripped by fear and terror, and the head of ISIS has promised a “direct confrontation” with the United States as well…

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), issued a rare audio message back on January 21 in which he flatly stated his group’s intention to march on Baghdad and move into “direct confrontation” with the United States.

“Our last message is to the Americans. Soon we will be in direct confrontation, and the sons of Islam have prepared for such a day,” Baghdadi said. “So watch, for we are with you, watching.”

As WND has pointed out, there have been dozens of Islamic terror attacks on U.S. soil since 2001, but most of them have been relatively small.

Unfortunately, I believe that we are moving into a new era. Instead of just being satisfied with killing dozens or hundreds of people, these terrorists will start getting a hold of weapons that can kill thousands. Eventually we will see terror attacks inside this country that will make 9/11 look like a Sunday picnic. And Barack Obama is certainly not helping things by “resettling” thousands upon thousands of Syrian refugees in communities all over America.

Of course increasing terror is just a part of the overall picture. Many have described what is coming to the United States and Europe as a “perfect storm”, and I would agree with that assessment.

Even without Islamic terror, we live at a time of rising civil unrest. The deep divisions in our country have been demonstrated by what happened in Ferguson, in Baltimore and more recently at the University of Missouri. Americans are angrier and more frustrated than ever before, and the mainstream media is constantly playing up the divisions between various groups. And thanks to Barack Obama’s refusal to protect our borders, there are now 1.4 million members of criminal gangs living in our cities. Violent crime is already on the rise in our urban areas, and it is going to get even worse as we plunge into recession. For instance, the city of Baltimore recently recorded its 300th homicide of the year after only seeing 211 for all of 2014. Our major cities have never been more primed for civil unrest, and I believe that we are going to see widespread rioting, looting and chaos in the years ahead as the economy totally falls to pieces.

In addition to increased Islamic terror and civil unrest, I also believe we are moving into a time of great governmental shaking, increased tensions between global superpowers, unprecedented natural disasters, and the greatest financial unraveling the world has ever seen.

All of these trends will feed into one another to create the “perfect storm” that I mentioned earlier. What this is going to mean is a dramatic change in our standard of living, our liberties and freedoms will continue to be stripped away, and our world is going to be transformed at a pace that very few of us ever imagined was possible.

If you have the feeling that everything has changed after what just happened in France, you are right.

But this is just the beginning.

What is coming in the weeks and months ahead is going to be even worse, and it is going to shock the entire planet.

How Much Time Do Americans Spend Plugged Into The Matrix Every Day?

March 22, 2015March 22, 2015 by Michael

The average American spends more than 10 hours a day using an electronic device. And most of that activity is not even interactive. The vast majority of the time we are just passively absorbing content that someone else has created. This very much reminds me of the movie “the Matrix”, but with a twist. Instead of humans being forcefully connected to “the Matrix”, we are all willingly connecting ourselves to it. There is a giant system that defines our reality for us, and the length of time that the average American spends connected to it just continues to keep growing. In fact, there are millions upon millions of us that simply do not “feel right” unless there is at least something on in the background. Just think about it. How much time do you spend each day with all electronic devices completely turned off? Thanks to technology, we live at a time when more news, information and entertainment is at our fingertips than ever before, and we are consuming more of it than ever before. But this also gives a tremendous amount of power to those that create all of this news, information and entertainment. As I have written about previously, more than 90 percent of the “programming” that we absorb is created by just 6 enormously powerful media corporations. Our conversations, attitudes, opinions and belief systems are constantly being shaped by those entities. Unfortunately, most of us are content to just sit back and let it happen.

The following numbers regarding the media consumption habits of average Americans come directly from Nielsen’s most recent “Total Audience Report“. The amount of time per day that Americans spend using these devices is absolutely staggering…

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 it all up, the average American spends more than 10 hours a day plugged into the Matrix.

You have heard the old saying “you are what you eat”, right?

Well, the same applies to what we put into our brains.

When you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out.

In my recent article entitled “It’s Official: Americans R Stupid“, I discussed how the U.S. population is being systematically “dumbed down” and how we are now one of the least intelligent industrialized nations on the entire planet.

A big contributor to our intellectual and social demise is the Matrix that has been constructed all around us.

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.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves. But instead, most people seem more than content to let the Matrix do their thinking for them. If you listen carefully, you will notice that most of our conversations with one another are based on programming from the Matrix. We all love to talk about the movie that we just saw, or what happened on the latest reality show, or what some famous celebrity is doing, or what we saw on the news that morning. The things that matter to us in life are the things that the Matrix tells us should matter.

And if someone comes along with information that contradicts the Matrix, that can cause anger and confusion.

I can’t tell you how many times someone has said something like the following to me…

“If that was true I would have seen it on the news.”

To many people, the Matrix is the ultimate arbiter of truth in our society, and so anything that contradicts the Matrix cannot possibly be accurate.

Fortunately, more people than ever are waking up enough to realize that they have a choice.

It is kind of like that moment in the Matrix when Neo is being offered the red pill and the blue pill.

Admittedly, a lot of people that do begin to wake up choose to take the blue pill and go back to sleep.

But there are so many others that are grabbing the red pill. That is why we have seen such an explosion in the popularity of the alternative media in recent years. Millions of people all over the planet now understand that they are not getting the truth from the Matrix and they are hungry for real information.

Yes, the Internet is being used for unspeakable evil, but it can also be used for great good. The Internet has allowed ordinary people like you and I to communicate on a mass scale like never before in history. The Internet has allowed us to reclaim at least some of the power that we have lost to the Matrix. I don’t know how long this period of history will last, so we should make full use out of this great tool while we still have it.

On my own website, I have felt called to mainly focus on economics in recent years. And I will continue to chronicle economic conditions as we descend into the greatest economic crisis in U.S. history. What is coming is going to be worse than 2008, it is going to be worse than the Great Depression, and it is ultimately going to be worse than most Americans would ever dare to imagine.

But I also want to take my readers on a journey down the rabbit hole.

Our world is about to get really, really strange, and I would like to be a light in the chaos.

Yes, I believe that great darkness is coming. But I also believe that a great awakening is coming.

Personally, I believe that it is a great privilege to be alive at this time in human history.

It is a time of great evil, but it is also a time of great opportunity.

It is a time when everything that can be shaken will be shaken, but it will also be a time when those that stand for what is right will shine like the stars.

So what do you think about all of this? Please feel free to add your two cents by posting a comment below…

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