Television

What You Think Is Controlled By What You Watch, And What You Watch Is Controlled By The Elite

October 24, 2019 by Michael

Why do you believe what you believe? Some people have a really solid answer to that question, but much of the population never thinks much about deeper questions such as this. In fact, for most Americans it is simply easier to let others do their thinking for them. Today, most of us spend multiple hours each day absorbing information through a screen, and most of the content that is fed to us through our televisions, phones, tablets and computers is controlled by the elite. And if you allow anyone to feed information into your mind for several hours every day, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you view the world.

When I was younger, one of my favorite movies was “The Matrix”, and I think that it is a really good metaphor for what is going on in our society today. In the film, nearly the entire human population was plugged into a system which continuously fed a computer-generated reality into their minds that wasn’t real at all. Later on, I eventually came to realize that we are willingly doing the same thing to ourselves. Our personal interactions with one another are extremely limited, but we willingly “plug in” to the enormous matrix of news, information and entertainment that the elite have constructed for many hours each day.

According to numbers that were released earlier this year, the average American spends more than three hours watching television and more than three hours on mobile devices every single day…

It’s official: This year marks the first time that Americans will spend more time staring down at their phones and tablets than they will watching television.

The average U.S. adult will spend three hours and 43 minutes on mobile devices this year, according to EMarketer Inc., which is eight minutes longer than the three hours and 35 minutes that will be spent in front of the TV.

If Americans from previous generations could visit our society right now, they would probably be horrified that we are all constantly staring at our screens like some sort of zombies.

And perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if we were feeding our minds healthy things, but instead most of what we are absorbing is garbage that has been produced by the elite.

Today, nearly all of the news, information and entertainment that Americans consume is produced by a small cluster of giant corporations. The following summary of the current state of affairs comes from Wikipedia…

In the United States, movie production has been dominated by major studios since the early 20th century; before that, there was a period in which Edison’s Trust monopolized the industry. The music and television industries recently witnessed cases of media consolidation, with Sony Music Entertainment‘s parent company merging their music division with Bertelsmann AG’s BMG to form Sony BMG and Tribune’s The WB and CBS Corp.’s UPN merging to form The CW. In the case of Sony BMG, there existed a “Big Five” (now “Big Four“) of major record companies, while The CW’s creation was an attempt to consolidate ratings and stand up to the “Big Four” of American network (terrestrial) television (this despite the fact that the CW was, in fact, partially owned by one of the Big Four in CBS). In television, the vast majority of broadcast and basic cable networks, over a hundred in all, are controlled by eight corporations: Fox Corporation, The Walt Disney Company (which includes the ABC, ESPN, FX and Disney brands), National Amusements (which includes CBS Corporation and Viacom), Comcast (which owns NBCUniversal), AT&T (which owns WarnerMedia), Discovery, Inc., E. W. Scripps Company, Cablevision (now known as Altice USA), or some combination thereof.^[92]

When you have an almost totally monopoly on news, information and entertainment, it is not too difficult to manipulate a society. At this point, most of the population is made up of extremely pliable “NPCs” that are more than happy to go along with whatever “societal norms” are set by the elite. The term “sheeple” has been used to describe those that allow the elite to do their thinking for them, and we need to do what we can to help those individuals wake up and to get them to start thinking for themselves.

Let me give you an example of the immense power of the media. One recent survey found that those that watch Fox News tend to think that the U.S. economy is in great shape, while those that watch MSNBC tend to be quite pessimistic about the economy…

American voters face the same set of economic facts, from low unemployment to the risks from a trade war, but the survey’s index of overall sentiment – at 108 just above the 100 line that separates positive from negative impressions of the economic outlook – masked the huge divide between those who approve of Trump, whose views measured a far rosier 136, and those who disapprove of the president, with a reading of 88.

The results, weighted by factors like age, race and sex, to be nationally representative, were similarly skewed based on media consumption. Viewers of conservative-leaning Fox News registered 139 for current sentiment about the economy; viewers of MSNBC, an outlet often critical of Trump, registered 89. Readers of the New York Times sat in the middle at 107, near those who get their news from Facebook (110) and Twitter (112).

But the truth is somewhere in between. We haven’t officially had a recession in recent years, but the U.S. economy has definitely not been “booming” either. In fact, we haven’t had a full year of 3 percent GDP growth since the middle of the Bush administration. That is the longest stretch of slow growth in American history by a very wide margin, and now it appears that the next recession is rapidly approaching.

And without a doubt, tens of millions of American families are deeply struggling right now. As I noted yesterday, 50 percent of all American workers make less than 33,000 dollars a year, and a survey that was just released found that 70 percent of Americans “have cried about money”…

Pass along the tissues, because Americans aren’t afraid of letting the tears roll when it comes to finances.

Seven in 10 Americans said they have cried about money in their lifetimes, according to a recent online survey of 1,004 Americans by Compare Cards.com. Many cited worries over their job or making ends meet.

And household debt, which peaked at $13.86 trillion in the second quarter, weighed the heaviest on Americans. Almost a third admitted to crying over this looming concern, according to the survey.

One of the reasons why my articles upset so many people is because I just don’t follow the herd.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves. Because if you don’t actively take control, the elite will be more than happy to do your thinking for you.

Question everything. Everyone that is feeding you news, information and entertainment has an agenda, and in most cases it is not a positive agenda.

We are in a battle for hearts and minds, and the elite have an overwhelming edge because of the colossal system that they have created.

But we have the truth on our side, and in the end the truth shall prevail.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I can only allow this to happen if this “About the Author” section is included with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 3: 90% Of What You Watch On Television Is Controlled By Just 6 Giant Corporations

October 17, 2017October 17, 2017 by Michael

How much is your view of the world shaped by what you see on television? On average, Americans spend more than 150 hours watching television every month, and it is called “programming” for a reason. If you allow anyone to pour ideas and information into your mind for five hours a day, it is going to change how you look at reality. Everyone has an agenda, and every single news program, television show and movie is trying to alter your views. Sadly, our society has become absolutely addicted to media, and the mainstream media is completely dominated by the elite. In fact, about 90 percent of the programming that comes through your television is controlled by just 6 gigantic media corporations. Most of us are willingly plugging ourselves into this “propaganda matrix” that is completely dominated by the elite for several hours each day, and that gives them an enormous amount of power over the rest of us.

In Part I and Part II of this series, I discussed how the elite use money as a tool to dominate the planet. Today, we are going to talk about how they use information. If you control what people think, then you control a society. And through their vast media empires, the elite are able to shape how we all think to a frightening degree.

Just think about it. What do we talk about with our family, our friends and our co-workers? To a large extent, those conversations are about movies, television shows, something that we just saw on the news or a sporting event that just took place. The reason why we talk about certain things is because the mainstream media gives those things attention, and other things we ignore because the mainstream media does not make them seem to be important.

The mainstream media literally sets the agenda for our society, and it would be difficult to overstate the power that is in their hands. And as I mentioned above, the mainstream media is almost entirely controlled by just 6 colossal corporations. The following list of these 6 corporate giants comes from one of my previous articles, and this is just a sampling of the media properties that they each 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

If nobody tuned in to their “programming”, they would not have any power over us.

But according to a report put out by Nielsen, Americans are plugging into “the matrix” more than ever before. The following is how our daily use of media breaks down by device…

Live TV: 4 hours, 31 minutes
Time-Shifted TV: 33 minutes
Radio: 1 hour, 52 minutes
DVDs: 8 minutes
Video Game Consoles: 14 minutes
Multimedia Devices (Apple TV, Roku, etc.): 13 minutes
Internet on PC: 58 minutes
Smartphone: 1 hour, 39 minutes
Tablet: 31 minutes

When you total those numbers up, it comes to 10 hours and 39 minutes.

In essence, Americans are spending most of their waking hours plugged in to something.

And if you only add together “live television” and “time-shifted television”, Americans are spending an average of more than five hours each day just watching television.

Of course many of us spend countless hours on the Internet as well. It has been estimated that 54,907 Google searches are conducted, 7,252 tweets are posted, 125,406 YouTube videos are viewed, and 2,501,018 emails are sent out every single second.

You may have guessed this already, but most of the news and information that we consume on the Internet is also controlled by the elite…

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.

This is why the “alternative media” is so important. All over America and all over the world, people are waking up and realizing that they aren’t getting the truth from the mainstream media, and they are hungry for truly independent sources of information.

The only way that we are ever going to be able to throw off the insidious system of control that the elite have established is by winning the information war. We are literally in a constant battle for hearts and minds, and the good news is that we have made a lot of progress. Over the past decade we have “red pilled” millions upon millions of people, but we still have a long way to go.

Faith in the corporate media is dwindling, and the elite are deeply concerned about this. The Internet has allowed ordinary people like us to communicate on a mass scale, and this has never been the case before in human history. We have a window of opportunity to fight back against the elite, and we must not let this opportunity pass us by.

We are literally engaged in a battle for the future of this planet, and let us never waver in our pursuit of victory.

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.

It’s Official: Americans R Stupid

March 16, 2015March 16, 2015 by Michael

As Americans, we tend to be pretty full of ourselves, and this is especially true of our young people. But do we really have reason for such pride? According to a shocking new report from the Educational Testing Service, Americans between the ages of 20 and 34 are way behind young adults in other industrialized nations when it comes to literacy, mathematics and technological proficiency. Even though more Americans than ever are going to college, we continue to fall farther and farther behind intellectually. So what does this say about us? Sadly, the truth is that Americans are stupid. Our education system is an abysmal failure, and our young people spend most of their free time staring at the television, their computers or their mobile devices. And until we are honest with ourselves about this, our intellectual decline is going to get even worse.

According to this new report from the Educational Testing Service, at this point American Millennials that have a four year college degree are essentially on the same intellectual level as young adults in Japan, Finland and the Netherlands that only have a high school degree…

Americans born after 1980 are lagging their peers in countries ranging from Australia to Estonia, according to a new report from researchers at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). The study looked at scores for literacy and numeracy from a test called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which tested the abilities of people in 22 countries.

The results are sobering, with dire implications for America. It hints that students may be falling behind not only in their early educational years but at the college level. Even though more Americans between the ages of 20 to 34 are achieving higher levels of education, they’re still falling behind their cohorts in other countries. In Japan, Finland and the Netherlands, young adults with only a high school degree scored on par with American Millennials holding four-year college degrees, the report said.

How in the world is that possible?

I can tell you how that is possible – our colleges are a joke. But more on that in a moment.

Out of 22 countries, the report from the Educational Testing Service found that Americans were dead last in tech proficiency. We were also dead last in numeracy and only two countries performed worse than us when it came to literacy proficiency…

Half of American Millennials score below the minimum standard of literacy proficiency. Only two countries scored worse by that measure: Italy (60 percent) and Spain (59 percent). The results were even worse for numeracy, with almost two-thirds of American Millennials failing to meet the minimum standard for understanding and working with numbers. That placed U.S. Millennials dead last for numeracy among the study’s 22 developed countries.

It is in this type of environment that Coca-Cola can be marketed to Americans as “a healthy snack“.

As I mentioned above, our system of education is one of the biggest culprits. From the first grade all the way through post-graduate education, the quality of education that our young people are receiving is absolutely pathetic. In a previous article, I highlighted some statistics from USA Today about the declining state of college education in America…

-“After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.”

-“Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago”

-“35% of students report spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone.”

-“50% said they never took a class in a typical semester where they wrote more than 20 pages”

-“32% never took a course in a typical semester where they read more than 40 pages per week.”

I have sat in many of these kinds of college courses. It doesn’t take much brain power to pass the multiple choice tests that most college professors give these days. The truth is that if you fail out of college you really, really have to try hard.

In another previous article I shared some examples of real courses that have been taught at U.S. universities in recent years…

-“What If Harry Potter Is Real?”

-“Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame”

-“Philosophy And Star Trek”

-“Learning From YouTube”

-“How To Watch Television”

-“Oh, Look, a Chicken!”

This is a national crisis. Parents should be screaming bloody murder about the quality of the education that their children are receiving. But because very few of them actually know what is going on, they just continue to write out huge tuition checks all the time believing that their kids are being prepared for the real world.

To show how “dumbed down” we have become, I want to share with you a copy of an eighth grade exam from 1912 that was donated to the Bullitt County History Museum in Kentucky.

Would eighth grade students be able to pass such an exam today?

Would college students?

As you look over this exam from 1912, ask yourself how you would do on it…

In addition, I find it very interesting that the reading level of the State of the Union addresses delivered by our presidents has steadily declined since the inception of this nation.

And it should be no surprise that Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses have been some of the dumbest of all.

But could it be possible that I am being too harsh?

After all, scientists are now discovering that our diminishing intellectual capabilities are actually the consequence of natural processes.

For example, a Stanford University biology professor named Gerald R. Crabtree has published two papers in which he detailed his conclusion that humans have been getting dumber for thousands of years…

Are humans becoming smarter or more stupid? Comparing our modern lives and technology with that of any preceding generation, one might think we are becoming increasingly smarter. But, in two papers published in Trends in Genetics, Gerald R. Crabtree of Stanford University claims that we are losing mental capacity and have been doing so for 2,000–6,000 years! The reason, Crabtree concludes, is due to genetic mutations—which are the backbone of neo-Darwinian evolution.

Why is this happening?

Professor Crabtree believes that this loss of intellectual capability is due to the accumulation of errors in our genes…

Based on data produced by the 1000 Genomes Project Consortium and two recent papers in Nature, Crabtree estimates in the first article that, in the past 3,000 years (approximately 120 generations), about 5,000 new mutations have occurred in the genes governing our intellectual ability. He claims most of these mutations will have no effect, while about 2–5 percent are deleterious and “a vanishingly small fraction will increase fitness.” Crabtree bases his conclusion that humankind is losing mental capacity on the ratio between the deleterious and the beneficial mutations.

Our DNA is mutating, and it has been for thousands of years. And no, those mutations are not helping us. Each one of us has tens of thousands of errors in our DNA that we have inherited, and we will add even more errors which we will pass on to future generations.

Given enough time, many scientists believe that humanity would eventually degenerate into a bunch of gibbering idiots incapable of rational thought.

Or could it be possible that a large segment of the population has already arrived at that state?

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

Is The Mainstream Media Dying?

May 18, 2014 by Michael

Ratings at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have all been plummeting in recent years, and newspaper ad revenues are about a third of what they were back in the year 2000. So is the mainstream media dying? Despite what you may have heard, the mainstream media is certainly not completely dead just yet. The average American watches approximately 153 hours of television a month, and as I pointed out in a previous article, about 90 percent of the “information” that is endlessly pumped into our heads through our televisions is controlled by just six gigantic media corporations. However, there are a whole host of signs that things are changing – especially when it comes to news. More Americans than ever are losing faith in the establishment-controlled media and are seeking out alternative sources of information. Is this a trend that the big media companies are going to be able to reverse at some point?

For years, the “news business” has been dominated by CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. But now all three channels are rapidly losing viewers. According to a recently released Pew Research study, the number of prime time viewers for all three networks combined fell by 11 percent last year…

In 2013, the cable news audience, by nearly all measures, declined. The combined median prime-time viewership of the three major news channels—CNN, Fox News and MSNBC—dropped 11% to about 3 million, the smallest it has been since 2007. The Nielsen Media Research data show that the biggest decline came at MSNBC, which lost nearly a quarter (24%) of its prime-time audience. CNN, under new management, ended its fourth year in third place, with a 13% decline in prime time. Fox, while down 6%, still drew more viewers (1.75 million) than its two competitors combined (619,500 at MSNBC and 543,000 at CNN).

And the decline is far more dramatic when you look at just the key 25 to 54-year-old demographic.

From November 2012 to November 2013, CNN’s ratings for that demographic dropped by a staggering 59 percent, and MSNBC’s ratings for that demographic dropped by a staggering 52 percent.

Is this a sign that Americans are finally getting fed up with the endless propaganda being spewed by those establishment mouthpieces?

A recent survey conducted by a liberal polling firm would indeed seem to indicate that this is the case. That survey found that only 6 percent of Americans consider MSNBC to be their most trusted source for news…

NBC News and sister cable network MSNBC rank at the bottom of media outlets Americans trust most for news, with Fox News leading the way, according to a new poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling.

In its fifth trust poll, 35 percent said they trusted Fox news more than any other outlet, followed by PBS at 14 percent, ABC at 11 percent, CNN at 10 percent, CBS at 9 percent, 6 percent for MSNBC and Comedy Central, and just 3 percent for NBC.

And of course it is not just the big mainstream news networks that are in decline.

A recently released Pew Research study discovered that the decline of America’s newspapers continued in 2013 as well…

The Newspaper Association of America has stopped compiling quarterly reports on advertising revenue. According to its annual numbers, which were released in April 2014, overall revenue for newspapers in 2013 was $37.6 billion, a decrease of 2.6% from 2012. Within that total, combined print and digital ad revenue decreased by 7%—to $20.7 billion.

Seven percent may not sound like much, but you have to realize that these declines have been happening year after year. When you look back over a longer time frame, it really puts the massive decline that we have witnessed in advertising revenues in perspective…

It took a half century for annual newspaper print ad revenue to gradually increase from $20 billion in 1950 (adjusted for inflation in 2013 dollars) to $65.8 billion in 2000, and then it took only 12 years to go from $65.8 billion in ad revenues back to less than $20 billion in 2012, before falling further to $17.3 billion last year.

Even when revenues from digital advertising and other categories described by the NAA as “niche publications, direct marketing and non-daily publication advertising” are added to print ad revenue (see red line in chart), the combined total revenues for print, digital and other advertising last year was still only $23.56 billion in 2013 dollars, which was the lowest amount of annual ad revenue since 1954, when $23.3 billion was spent on print advertising alone.

Yes, you read those numbers correctly. As you can see from this chart, newspaper ad revenues are now about a third of what they were back in the year 2000.

That is not just a “shift” – that is a massive tsunami.

Needless to say, the big newspapers are quite distressed by all of this.

For example, “the Grey Lady” herself is essentially in a state of panic at this point. Just recently, a 96 page internal New York Times report was obtained by BuzzFeed that basically skewers the company’s current strategy when it comes to the Internet…

A 96-page internal New York Times report, sent to top executives last month by a committee led by the publisher’s son and obtained by BuzzFeed, paints a dark picture of a newsroom struggling more dramatically than is immediately visible to adjust to the digital world, a newsroom that is hampered primarily by its own storied culture.

But they still don’t understand the true cause of their decline.

It isn’t the fact that they haven’t adapted to the Internet very well that is the primary reason for their decline.

Rather, it is the fact that the American people are losing faith in the New York Times and other similar establishment mouthpieces.

News magazines are also experiencing a dramatic multi-year decline. Ad revenues are way down across the entire industry, and any publication that can keep their yearly losses to the single digits is applauded for it…

For a third year in a row, news magazines faced a difficult print advertising environment. Combined ad pages (considered a better measure than ad revenue) for the five magazines studied in this report were down 13% in 2013, following a decline of 12.5% in 2012, and about three times the rate of decline in 2011, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Again, hardest hit was The Week, which suffered a 20% drop in ad pages. The Atlantic fell 17%, The Economist 16%, and Time about 11%, while The New Yorker managed to keep its ad pages losses in single digits (7%).

Mainstream media executives appear to be optimistic that they can reverse these declines at some point, but they simply don’t realize that there has been a fundamental paradigm shift when it comes to the news media in the United States.

The general population has lost a tremendous amount of faith in the mainstream media. They are increasingly becoming aware that it is deeply controlled by the establishment.

At this point, the charade is so out in the open that even reporters are talking about it. For example, former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson says that the “influence on the media” by political and corporate interests is “unprecedented”…

“There is unprecedented, I believe, influence on the media, not just the news, but the images you see everywhere. By well-orchestrated and financed campaign of special interests, political interests and corporations. I think all of that comes into play.“

Wow.

Remember, this is not just some outsider that is saying these things. Attkisson worked in the industry for more than 30 years.

And the American people know that they are getting very little truth from the establishment media these days. A recent Gallup survey found that only 23 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the mainstream media at this point. Increasingly, Americans are turning to other sources for news and information.

This is fueling an unprecedented alternative news boom, and more Americans than ever are relying on the Internet as their main source of news. If you doubt this, just check out this chart.

30 years ago, you would have never been able to read this article. It never would have gotten past the gatekeepers that had almost total control over what Americans read, watched and listened to.

But now things have changed. The Internet has allowed ordinary Americans to communicate with each other on a scale that has never been possible before. As we share information with each other, we are increasingly becoming aware that we don’t need the mainstream media to define what reality is for us after all.

If the mainstream media really wants to keep from dying, they should at least try to start telling us the truth.

Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen. The political and corporate interests that control the big media corporations have way too much to lose.

So we will have to continue to learn to think for ourselves and to share news and information with each other over the Internet.

In the end, we will all be much better off being unplugged from “the matrix” anyway.

10 Disturbing Tales From The Side Streets And Dark Alleys Of America

June 18, 2013June 18, 2013 by Michael

Every night Americans prove that they are willing to do absolutely horrible things to their fellow human beings. Most of the time, we never even hear about the sick and twisted things that happen on the side streets and dark alleys of America. Once in a while a particularly twisted story will get picked up by the news, but usually most Americans are pretty much able to isolate themselves from the depravity that is happening all around them. Unfortunately, the social decay that is eating away at our society like cancer is spreading. It is getting harder and harder for average Americans to keep the darkness at bay. When it suddenly reaches out and touches your family, it can be absolutely shocking. America is not the kind, loving and gentle place that is portrayed in our movies and on our television shows. The sad truth is that America is becoming colder and meaner with each passing day. Yes, there are definitely some Americans that are kind and compassionate, but they are in the minority. As our economic decline becomes even more severe, the hearts of even more Americans are going to grow cold. And people with cold hearts can do some absolutely terrible things. The following are 10 disturbing tales from the side streets and dark alleys of America…

#1 Beaten, Robbed And Left Naked In A Cow Pasture In Florida

A Florida man says that a first dated ended with him being beaten, forced to strip at gun point, robbed and then left in a cow pasture.

A Flagler County Sheriff’s Office case report obtained by NBC News indicated that 34-year-old Shaun Paul Williams was found naked and bloodied on State Road 100 in Bunnell. Williams told deputies that he had met a woman named “Tree” about two weeks ago in Dayton and agreed to go out on June 14.

When the woman picked him up on Friday, he discovered that two other men we also inside the vehicle. The woman explained that one of the men was her brother. She said that she needed to drop the men off at the brother’s home.

But instead of going to a home, the brother instructed the woman to stop at an “empty cow pasture.” Williams said that he exited the vehicle to urinate and was struck in the head with a “hard metal object.”

“Give me all your money and your clothes,” one of the men told him.

#2 Wendy’s Customer Totally Loses It When They Put Cheese On His Hamburger

In recent months there have been a lot of videos posted on YouTube of crazed people yelling wildly at employees of various fast food chains. The most recent example of this phenomenon to go viral is a video of a middle-aged man totally losing it after he discovered that Wendy’s employees had put cheese on his hamburger. You can watch the video here, but please be aware that it contains quite a bit of profanity and it is not appropriate for children to watch. This is yet another example of how seemingly average people in America are becoming consumed with anger and frustration.

#3 Women Throwing Bleach Into The Eyes Of A Man On A City Bus In Boston

MBTA Police are searching for three young women who they say threw bleach in the eyes of a bus passenger after robbing him of his money.

The victim was returning home from work early Sunday morning, riding the #28 bus on Blue Hill Avenue through Roxbury, when it seems the trio sized him up.

Officials say one female slapped the man about the head, while one went to work to search him for money.

“One of the women puts her knee on top of his legs so he can’t get up and takes the money from his pockets,” MBTA Superintendent-in Chief Joseph O’Connor told WBZ-TV.

#4 The Wild Dogs Of St. Louis

Dangerous dogs are becoming more of a problem in parts of north St. Louis County.

It’s so bad, some people say they’re afraid to go out for a morning jog.

Resident Carolyn Immer says she was attacked and now has a hole in her leg.

“I felt like I was out in the middle of nowhere and there was nobody around to help,” Immer says. “I was screaming for a long time – it seemed like a long time lets put it that way.”

#5 Homeless In Dallas

So as of today I am officially homeless.

I won’t bore you all with long sob stories.

About a year ago lost my job of twelve years, couldn’t find new work, made some bad financial choices, and today I sit in the public library on my old laptop typing away as all my posessions lay in three small suitcases very close to where I am sitting.

I think this might possibly be the worst place to be homless, given the horrible heat.

So I have seventy-five cents to my name, am not sure where I’ll be putting my head down to sleep tonight, and was wondering if anyone else out there has been in a similar prediciment.

#6 Detroit – Dumping Ground For The Dead

From the street, the two decomposing bodies were nearly invisible, concealed in an overgrown lot alongside worn-out car tires and a mouldy sofa. The teenagers had been shot, stripped to their underwear and left on a deserted block.

They were just the latest victims of foul play whose remains went undiscovered for days after being hidden deep inside Detroit’s vast urban wilderness — a crumbling wasteland rarely visited by outsiders and infrequently patrolled by police.

Abandoned and neglected parts of the city are quickly becoming dumping grounds for the dead — at least a dozen bodies in the space of 12 months. And authorities acknowledge there is little they can do.

#7 Impaled On A Wrought Iron Fence In Chicago

A man was murdered Sunday night by someone who struck him in the head, causing him to become impaled on a wrought iron fence in the South Side Burnside neighborhood.

The 48-year-old victim was involved in a dispute with unknown individuals near his home in the 9100 block of South Greenwood Avenue about 8 p.m. Sunday when a male struck him in the head, police said.

The victim’s head was then impaled by a wrought iron fence near the eye, police said. He then fell to the ground and struck his head again.

#8 Robbery Victims Locked In The Trunks Of Their Own Vehicles In North Miami

CBS4 has learned of a horrible crime that has happened four times in the past two months in the city of North Miami. Gunmen have been forcing robbery victims in to the trunks of their cars while trying to get cash.

North Miami Police Major Neal Cuevas says he is worried about “copycat criminals” who may one day take a life.

One victim is speaking out exclusively to CBS4’s Peter D’Oench after being driven around in the trunk of his Mercedes Benz for two hours on Wednesday night. He was abducted at 8 p.m. while leaving his job and was finally rescued by police at 10 p.m. after discovering he had a cell phone in his trunk and after calling 911.

#9 Female Teacher Has Sex With Three Students In Oregon

A Sherwood High School teacher has been arrested and faces sexual abuse charges, stemming from accusations of sexual contact with at least three students.

A grand jury indicted Denise Keesee, 38, Monday on six counts of second-degree sexual abuse, according to the Washington County Sheriff’s office. Keesee turned herself in this evening, said Sgt. David Thompson, a sheriff’s office spokesman.

#10 A Police Officer That Shot Five Kittens While Children Were Watching

The Ohio Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wants Humane Officer Barry Accorti fired for allegedly shooting five kittens in a home’s back yard on Monday.

—–

Accorti responded to a home Monday afternoon where a feral mother cat and her five kittens were living in a woodpile.

He allegedly told the homeowner that shelters were full and that the cats would be going to kitty heaven. He then pulled out his gun and shot the five, 8- to 10-week-old kittens.

Accorti allegedly told the homeowner that he isn’t supposed to do this, but it was justifiable. The woman ran into the house to shield her children, who were screaming and crying.

So what do you think about these stories?

Do you have any tales like this to share?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

7 Things About The Mainstream Media That They Do Not Want You To Know

May 22, 2013May 20, 2013 by Michael

Have you ever wondered who controls the mainstream media? In America today, we are more “connected” than ever. The average American watches 153 hours of television a month, and we also spend countless hours watching movies, playing video games, listening to music, reading books and surfing the Internet. If someone could control the production of all of that media, that would make them immensely powerful. They would literally be in a position to tell people what to think. Well, what if I told you that there are just six enormous media conglomerates that combine to produce about 90 percent of all the media that Americans consume. Would that alarm you? It should alarm you. The truth is that our attitudes, opinions and beliefs are greatly shaped by what we allow into our minds. After all, they don’t call it “programming” for no reason. Even those of us that realize that we are connected to “the matrix” probably greatly underestimate the tremendous influence that the media has over us. We live at a time when it is absolutely imperative to think for ourselves, but most Americans are being absolutely overwhelmed with information and seem more than content to let others do their thinking for them. Sadly, this is greatly contributing to the downfall of our society.

And of course the mainstream media desperately does not want you to look at “the man behind the curtain”. They just want you to stay plugged into the “programming” that they are feeding you without asking any questions.

Fortunately, a growing minority of Americans are waking up and are starting to reject the mainstream media. An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that the mainstream media is the mouthpiece of the establishment and that it is promoting the agenda of the establishment.

So why is the mainstream media so bad? The following are 7 things about the mainstream media that they do not want you to know…

#1 The Mainstream Media Has Very Deep Ties To The Establishment

Did you know that the president of CBS and the president of ABC both have brothers that are top officials in the Obama administration?

The big news networks have developed an almost incestuous relationship with the federal government in recent years. But of course the same could be said of the relationship that the media has with the big corporations that own stock in their parent companies and that advertise on their networks.

This is one of the reasons why we very rarely ever see any hard hitting stories on the big networks anymore. The flow of information through the corporate-dominated media is very tightly controlled, and there are a lot of gatekeepers that make sure that the “wrong stories” don’t get put out to the public. As a result, many of the “big stories” that have come out in recent years were originally broken by the alternative media.

#2 The Mainstream Media Gets Things Wrong Very Frequently

Even prominent members of the mainstream media admit that this is the case. For example, during a recent speech at Quinnipiac University CBS anchor Scott Pelley confessed that journalists in the mainstream media “are getting big stories wrong, over and over again”…

“Let me take the first arrow: During our coverage of Newtown, I sat on my set and I reported that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. And that her son had attacked her classroom. It’s a hell of a story, but it was dead wrong. Now, I was the managing editor, I made the decision to go ahead with that and I did, and that’s what I said, and I was absolutely wrong. So let me just take the first arrow here.”

#3 The American Public Does Not Consider The Media To Be Very Trustworthy

Trust in the mainstream media has definitely been slipping. In fact, a Gallup poll taken last year found that distrust of the media had reached an all-time high. According to that poll, 60 percent of Americans “have little or no trust” that the media is reporting the news accurately.

A separate Rasmussen Reports survey found that only 6 percent of all Americans consider the news media to be “very trustworthy”.

Hopefully this trend will accelerate and a lot more people will stop trusting the media blindly.

#4 The Mainstream Media And The Politicians That They Worship Hate The Fact That They Cannot Control Internet News Sites

In the old days, the mainstream media had a virtual monopoly on the news. But these days, anyone with an Internet connection can put up a news site, and this is driving the establishment absolutely bonkers.

For example, Barack Obama is known to have a great dislike for the alternative media. The following is from a recent WND article…

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd says President Obama was making it “clear” at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner over the weekend how he feels about the rise of Internet news sites like Politico, Buzzfeed and … well, WND.

“He hates it.”

Appearing on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning following Saturday night’s media, politics and celebrity soiree, Todd explained the president’s disdain for independent online news sources was showing during his speech.

“It did seem … I thought his pot shots, joke-wise, and then the serious stuff about the Internet, the rise of the Internet media and social media and all that stuff – he hates it, OK? He hates this part of the media,” Todd said. “He really thinks that the, sort of, the buzzification – this isn’t just about Buzzfeed or Politico and all this stuff – he thinks that sort of coverage of political media has hurt political discourse. He hates it. And I think he was just trying to make that clear last night.”

#5 The Mainstream Media Is Extremely Liberal

When it comes to politics, the mainstream media is far more liberal than the general population is.

For example, one survey found that 41 percent of American voters believe that the average reporter is more liberal than they are, while only 18 percent believe that the average reporter is more conservative than they are.

A very disturbing UCLA study on media bias discovered that the vast majority of media outlets are “left of center”…

Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ “Evening News,” The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

And even MSNBC has confirmed the liberal bias of the media. According to MSNBC, mainstream journalists are far more likely to donate their own money to Democrats than they are to Republicans…

MSNBC.com identified 143 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 16 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

#6 Six Mammoth Media Corporations Produce About 90 Percent Of The Media That Americans Consume

As I mentioned at the top of this article, there are six giant media behemoths that control almost all of the media that we consume. These corporate giants own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, video game makers, music labels and even many of our favorite websites.

The media ownership chart posted below originally comes from a previous article that I authored entitled “Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read“, but it has been updated to reflect some of the latest information. The power that these companies have is so vast that it is hard to put into words…

Time Warner

CNN
Home Box Office (HBO)
Time Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
CW Network (partial ownership)
TMZ
New Line Cinema
Time Warner Cable
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
TBS
TNT
America Online
MapQuest
Moviefone
Castle Rock
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
DC Comics
People Magazine

Walt Disney

ABC Television Network
Disney Publishing
ESPN Inc.
Disney Channel
The History Channel
SOAPnet
A&E
Lifetime
Buena Vista Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Theatrical Productions
Buena Vista Records
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
277 Radio Stations
Buena Vista Games
Hyperion Books

Viacom

Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Black Entertainment Television (BET)
Comedy Central
Country Music Television (CMT)
Logo
MTV
MTV Canada
MTV2
Nick Magazine
Nick at Nite
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Noggin
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land
VH1

News Corporation

Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Fox Television Stations
The New York Post
TV Guide
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Beliefnet
Fox Business Network
Fox Kids Europe
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Net
Fox Television Network
FX
My Network TV
MySpace
News Limited News
Phoenix InfoNews Channel
Phoenix Movies Channel
Sky PerfecTV
Speed Channel
STAR TV India
STAR TV Taiwan
STAR World
Times Higher Education Supplement Magazine
Times Literary Supplement Magazine
Times of London
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment
20th Century Fox International
20th Century Fox Studios
20th Century Fox Television
BSkyB
The Wall Street Journal
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Interactive Media
FOXTEL
HarperCollins Publishers
The National Geographic Channel
National Rugby League
News Interactive
News Outdoor
Radio Veronica
ReganBooks
Sky Italia
Sky Radio Denmark
Sky Radio Germany
Sky Radio Netherlands
STAR
Zondervan

CBS Corporation

CBS News
CBS Sports
CBS Television Network
CNET
Showtime
TV.com
CBS Radio Inc. (130 stations)
CBS Consumer Products
CBS Outdoor
CW Network (50% ownership)
Infinity Broadcasting
Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books, Scribner)
Westwood One Radio Network

Comcast

NBC
Bravo
CNBC
NBC News
MSNBC
NBC Sports
NBC Television Network
Oxygen
SciFi Magazine
Syfy (Sci Fi Channel)
Telemundo
USA Network
Weather Channel
Focus Features
NBC Universal Television Distribution
NBC Universal Television Studio
Paxson Communications (partial ownership)
Hulu
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Pictures
Universal Studio Home Video

#7 The American People Are Absolutely Addicted To The Mainstream Media

In a previous article about the media, I noted that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month.

When you allow that much information to be downloaded into your brain, it is going to have a dramatic impact on how you think.

Americans are more “connected” than they ever have been before. This is especially true of our kids. They are constantly on one sort of electronic device or another. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article by Daniel Taylor…

According to a 2010 LA Times report, young people spend on average 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games, and sitting at the computer.

Facebook users spend about 15 hours a month on the social networking site.

People are walking – and driving – blindly while texting, sometimes walking into fountains and even falling off cliffs.

If that Los Angeles Times report is true, that means that our young people are spending more than 200 hours a month connected to the media.

But we are only awake for about 480 hours a month.

When it comes to influencing the American people, nobody has more power than the big media companies do.

And until we can break this sick addiction to the mainstream media and get people to start thinking for themselves, we will never see widespread changes in our society. As long as people are being “programmed” by the mainstream media, they will continue to express the opinions, attitudes and beliefs that have been downloaded into their minds.

Please share this article with as many people as you can. It is crucial that we wake as many people up as possible while we still can.

Who Tells Us What To Think? Does The Mainstream Media = The Matrix?

February 14, 2013 by Michael

Do you believe that you really think for yourself? Did you come up with your attitudes, opinions and beliefs on your own, or are they continually being shaped and molded by someone else? Could it be possible that you and everyone around you is actually hooked into a real life version of “the matrix” that is constantly defining your reality for you? Sadly, the truth is that almost all of us have willingly hooked ourselves into a colossal media system that literally tells us what to think. In the United States today, the average American watches 153 hours of television a month. We also spend huge amounts of time watching movies, surfing the Internet, reading books and magazines, playing video games and listening to music. Many Americans are so addicted to being “connected” that they will actually become physically uncomfortable if they are at home and there is total silence. Unfortunately, as I pointed out in a previous article, somewhere around 90 percent of the “information” that we are allowing to be endlessly pumped into our heads is owned by just 6 gigantic media corporations. So could it be possible that the thousands of hours of “news and entertainment” that you are allowing these gigantic corporations to fill your head with each year is having an effect on you? Does the mainstream media have more control over you than you ever dreamed possible? If you want to continue on in blissful ignorance, stop reading now, but if you want to take “the red pill”, keep on reading because the further down the rabbit hole you go, the stranger that things get.

When you go to work or to school in the morning, what is everyone talking about?

Usually, people are talking about something that they saw on television or that they heard about in the news.

In our society today, the limited interactions that we do have with other people are usually defined by our mutual connection to the media.

The mainstream media literally defines for us what is important and what is not. If the mainstream media does not talk about something, then it simply does not matter.

I don’t know how many times over the years I have heard someone tell me some version of the following statement: “If that was true we would have heard about it on the news.”

Has anyone ever said something similar to you?

The funny thing is that most of the time I won’t even mention something important that I may have heard in one of my articles unless I can back it up with a “mainstream source”, and I don’t even trust the mainstream media.

I know that the mainstream media often distorts the facts and often tells outright lies, but I regularly link to them because that gives my articles more “credibility” in the eyes of those that are still fully hooked into the matrix.

In a world where the big media corporations have so much power, is there any hope for us?

As long as the big corporations that control the media are dominating and controlling the conversation, is there any chance that there will ever be a mass awakening among the American people?

Our young people seem particularly addicted to being constantly “connected” to the media matrix that is being constructed all around us. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article by Daniel Taylor…

According to a 2010 LA Times report, young people spend on average 53 hours a week watching TV, playing video games, and sitting at the computer.

Facebook users spend about 15 hours a month on the social networking site.

People are walking – and driving – blindly while texting, sometimes walking into fountains and even falling off cliffs.

Wow – our young people spend more than 200 hours a month connected to the mainstream media?

But we only have about 480 waking hours a month to work with.

If they are being exposed to that amount of continuous propaganda, what hope do our young people have?

In the old days, kids actually played with each other in the streets and adults actually left their homes to interact with one another.

But these days we spend nearly all of our time sitting passively in our homes staring at flickering screens.

Is that a sign of a healthy society?

We were created to be social creatures. We were designed to love and to be loved. But these days people “love” their favorite sports teams or they “love” their favorite television shows but we have an increasingly difficult time having real relationships with each other.

Meanwhile, the global elite rely on the mainstream media to keep us distracted and to control the boundaries of public discourse. Most of the time, the mainstream media focuses on the latest celebrity scandal or the latest dogfights between the Republicans and the Democrats and they systematically ignore many of the more important things that are taking place out there.

Let me just give you one example of how the mainstream media shapes the news. For decades, there was almost a complete and total media blackout on the Bilderberg Group meetings that happen every year. Top newspaper executives from the United States would actually attend these meetings, but then their newspapers would not say a single word about them.

If anyone out there did bring up “the Bilderberg Group”, they were dismissed as wacky “conspiracy theorists” and were told that it simply does not exist.

Of course now we all know that it does exist, although the mainstream media in the U.S. still mostly ignores it. In fact, this has been by design. The following is what David Rockefeller is alleged to have said during a Bilderberg Group meeting back in 1991…

We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. … It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.

Even today, many prominent “journalists” in the U.S. mock people when they bring up the Bilderberg Group. For example, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC says that he is “way too lazy” to look into the Bilderberg Group and that he “doesn’t know about it, so it must not exist”.

For much more on the connection between the mainstream media and the global elite, please see this article: “Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings“.

Instead of telling us what is really going on in the world, the mainstream media keeps us endlessly distracted. The following are just a few of the headlines that can be found on the front pages of major mainstream news sites right now…

–College student creates condom delivery service

–Michael Douglas is feeling ‘good’

–Golf tournament delayed by kangaroos

–Rock ‘n’ roll hamburger experience

–Lady Gaga cancels tour, set for surgery

Wow – those are some examples of some really hard-hitting journalism right there.

So why do most Americans continue to fall for this nonsense?

Sadly, part of the reason is because we have become so “dumbed down” as a society.

Recently, the Guardian conducted an evaluation of the reading level of every State of the Union address in U.S. history. What they found is that Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses have had the second lowest reading level average in history, and that in general the reading levels of the speeches have been significantly declining over time.

But it is not just our presidents that appear to be getting stupider. The truth is that our public education system is a total joke at this point. Many of our high school students are as dumb as a rock, and if you can believe it, 23 percent of all Americans cannot even read beyond a fourth-grade level.

Of course the elite are quite pleased with this, because a stupid public is a public that is easier to dominate.

When a large segment of the population can barely read and is accustomed to letting others do their thinking for them, it becomes easier to lie.

For example, on Thursday Paul Krugman of the New York Times made the following statement…

“Growing dependence on government is mostly a myth”

Of course most of you that are reading this know that is a flat-out lie. The charts in this article clearly show that the number of Americans on food stamps is at an all-time high and the percentage of the population that is on food stamps is at an all-time high.

Back in 1983, less than a third of all Americans lived in a household that got money from the federal government each month, Now, an all-time high 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives money from the government each month.

For many more stats and charts that demonstrate the stunning growth of government dependence, please see this article and this article.

Sadly, the truth doesn’t seem to matter too much to the media these days. The mainstream media tends to be incredibly arrogant, and most of the time they don’t even pretend to be “objective” or “neutral” anymore.

Fortunately, more Americans than ever are becoming dissatisfied with the mainstream media and are starting to seek out alternative sources of information. According to a recent Gallup poll, the level of trust that the American public has in the mainstream media is now at an all-time low.

So perhaps there is hope after all.

What do you think?

Are Black Friday Riots A Preview Of The Civil Unrest That Is Coming When Society Breaks Down?

November 23, 2012November 23, 2012 by Michael

If Americans will trample one another just to save a few dollars on a television, what will they do when society breaks down and the survival of their families is at stake? Once in a while an event comes along that gives us a peek into what life could be like when the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is stripped away. For example, when Hurricane Sandy hit New York and New Jersey there was rampant looting and within days people were digging around in supermarket dumpsters looking for food. Sadly, “Black Friday” also gives us a look at how crazed the American people can be when given the opportunity. This year was no exception. Once again we saw large crowds of frenzied shoppers push, shove, scratch, claw, bite and trample one another just to save a few bucks on cheap foreign-made goods. And of course most retailers seem to be encouraging this type of behavior. Most of them actually want people frothing at the mouth and willing to fight one another to buy their goods. But is this kind of “me first” mentality really something that we want to foster as a society? If people are willing to riot to save money on a cell phone, what would they be willing to do to feed their families? Are the Black Friday riots a very small preview of the civil unrest that is coming when society eventually breaks down?

Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was not really a commercial holiday. It was a time to get together with family and friends, eat turkey and express thanks for the blessings that we have been given.

But in recent years Black Friday has started to become even a bigger event than Thanksgiving itself.

Millions of Americans have become convinced that it is fun to wait in long lines outside retail stores in freezing cold weather in the middle of the night to spend money that they do not have on things that they do not need.

And of course very, very few “Black Friday deals” are actually made in America. So these frenzied shoppers are actually killing American jobs and destroying the U.S. economy as well.

The absurdity of Black Friday was summed up very well recently in a statement that has already been retweeted on Twitter more than 1,000 times…

“Black Friday: because only in America people trample each other for sales exactly one day after being thankful for what they already have.”

It has gotten to the point where it is now expected that there will be mini-riots all over the country early on Black Friday morning each year. The following are a few examples of the craziness that we saw this year…

-“Fights break out when stores open on Black Friday”

-“Black Friday madness at Georgia Wal-Mart”

-“Black Friday Frenzy: 2 Run Down in Washington, Man Pulls Gun in Texas”

-“Black Friday 2012: Rush at Victoria’s Secret Pink at Oak Park Mall in Overland Park, Kan.”

-“Black Friday shoppers smash door at Urban Outfitters”

-“Black Friday Shopping Hysteria From Around The Country [PHOTOS]”

-“Disturbance leads to scare at Westroads Mall”

-“Teens In Custody After Woodland Mall Fight”

-“Boy Robbed During Black Friday Shopping At Arundel Mills”

-“Shoppers Were So Obsessed With Black Friday Deals They Left Their Infants Unattended”

Fortunately, many Americans are starting to get fed up with Black Friday. In fact, one activist named Mark Dice actually went out and heckled Black Friday shoppers this year. I found the following You Tube video to be very funny, and I think most of you will too…

In the end, it is not that big of a deal that people want to fight with one another to save 50 dollars on a cell phone.

But this kind of extreme selfishness and desperation could become a massive problem someday if society breaks down and suddenly millions of extremely selfish and desperate people are scrambling for survival.

With each passing day our economy is getting even weaker, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching. What are people going to do when the next spike in unemployment hits us and nobody can find work?

To get an idea of where things are headed, just look at Europe. In both Greece and Spain the unemployment rate is over 25 percent and civil unrest has become almost a constant problem in both of those countries.

So what kind of riots will we see in the United States when the economy gets much worse than it is now?

Already there are signs of social decay all around us, and most Americans are completely unprepared for what will happen if a major disaster or emergency does strike.

Sadly, the reality is that most Americans live on a month to month basis. Most families do not have any emergency savings to speak of, and one recent poll found that 55 percent of all Americans only have enough food in their homes to survive for three days or less.

To me, that is an absolutely insane number.

We just came through a summer of extreme drought and global food supplies have dropped to a 40 year low. Our world is becoming increasingly unstable, and the global financial system could fall apart at any time. Most of us just assume that there will always be huge amounts of very cheap food available to us, but unfortunately that simply is not a safe assumption. The following is from a recent article in the Guardian…

Evan Fraser, author of Empires of Food and a geography lecturer at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, says: “For six of the last 11 years the world has consumed more food than it has grown. We do not have any buffer and are running down reserves. Our stocks are very low and if we have a dry winter and a poor rice harvest we could see a major food crisis across the board.”

“Even if things do not boil over this year, by next summer we’ll have used up this buffer and consumers in the poorer parts of the world will once again be exposed to the effects of anything that hurts production.”

When I watch my fellow Americans trample one another to get a deal on a television or a video game, it makes me wonder what they would be willing to do if they went to the store someday and all the food was gone.

Desperate people do desperate things, and someday if there was a major economic breakdown in the United States I think the level of desperation in this country would be extremely frightening.

So what do you think? Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…

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