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National Health Crisis! U.S. Rates of Syphilis, Gonorrhea and Chlamydia Soar To The Highest Levels Ever

America is facing a health nightmare unlike anything that we have ever experienced before.  According to the CDC, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia have all skyrocketed to the highest levels on record, and top health professionals are urging coordinated national action to battle this unprecedented crisis.  Even before these latest numbers, the United States had “the highest STD rates in the industrialized world”, and it is becoming exceedingly clear that things are rapidly getting worse.  So exactly what does this say about us as a society?  Sexually-transmitted diseases are spreading like wildfire, and those on the front lines are not optimistic that we will be able to turn this health crisis around any time soon.

On Tuesday, the CDC held a press conference during which they released the latest depressing numbers…

Rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia have climbed for the fourth consecutive year in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday at the National STD Prevention Conference in Washington.

Last year, nearly 2.3 million US cases of these sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed, according to preliminary data.

That’s the highest number ever reported nationwide, breaking the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000 cases, according to the CDC.

If these diseases were just growing gradually, that would be bad enough, but according to the CDC we have truly seen “explosive” growth over the past four years…

Chlamydia, a bacterial infection, remained the most common sexually transmitted disease, with more than 1.7 million reported cases. But health officials are concerned that gonorrhea cases increased a startling 67 percent between 2013 and 2017, and syphilis climbed even faster — 76 percent over those four years.

What we have been doing to fight this epidemic is clearly not working.

And according to Dr. Jonathan Mermin, we are rapidly approaching a “breaking point”…

“We are sliding backward,” Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said in a statement. “It is evident the systems that identify, treat, and ultimately prevent STDs are strained to near-breaking point.“

During her remarks to the press, Dr. Gail Bolan sounded even more ominous…

“We have seen steep and sustained increases over the last five years,” said Dr. Gail Bolan, director of the Division of STD Prevention at the CDC. “Usually there are ebbs and flows, but this sustained increase is very concerning. We haven’t seen anything like this for two decades.”

Because syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are not fatal, sometimes people don’t take them seriously.

But the truth is that they can have absolutely devastating health effects…

Chlamydia and gonorrhea, if untreated, can leave a woman infertile. Syphilis can spread from mother to fetus, and cause the baby to have birth defects or to be stillborn.

Harvey noted that a thousand babies a year are diagnosed with congenital syphilis, despite mandatory syphilis testing when a woman is first found to be pregnant (the disease can spread to women during pregnancy).

And remember, syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are just three sexually-transmitted diseases.  There are many, many others, and when you add the statistics from all of them together the numbers are absolutely staggering.

In fact, according to the New York Times approximately 110 million Americans have a sexually-transmitted disease right now.

Let that sink in.

110 million Americans.

That is more than one out of every three Americans.  And when you narrow it down to young Americans in their sexual prime, that number is much closer to one out of two.

In the wake of the CDC announcement on Tuesday, the mainstream media is blaming the usual suspects…

Experts say many factors have contributed to the rapid rise, though the biggest one may be less frequent condom use. It’s less clear whether dating apps, like Tinder, have contributed in some way to the spread of STDs, though some researchers think they have.

And much is also being made of the fact that there have been cutbacks in funding for agencies that fight sexually-transmitted diseases…

Another factor driving the skyrocketing numbers of STD cases may be a decline in funding for state and local agencies working on prevention, said Michael Fraser, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

“We’ve seen a tremendous increase in many areas primarily due to the eroding public health infrastructure,” he said. “The lack of funding at the state and local level to really invest in prevention work is not just about medications, it’s about disease investigators who meet with the individual who is infected and talk about their behavior and do contact tracing to try to prevent the future spread.”

One of the biggest concerns that health professionals currently have is that some of these sexually-transmitted diseases are becoming highly resistant to antibiotics.

As these new strains continue to develop, we will have no way of fighting them, and that is why some health professionals are warning about the potential for a “mega-outbreak” that would spiral totally out of control.

One candidate for that “mega-outbreak” is a strain of gonorrhea that is already being dubbed “super-gonorrhea”…

Gonorrhea – or rather ‘super-gonorrhea’ – is a top contender to be that outbreak.

Some strains of the bacteria are already untreatable with the standard antibiotic, oral azithromycin.

In 2013, those resistant strains accounted for just one percent of samples tested by the CDC.

In 2017, more than four percent of tested gonorrhea samples were resistant.

It has become very clear that our society is being overwhelmed by the consequences of our own reckless behavior.

If we keep doing the same things, we will keep getting the same results, but unfortunately it is not likely that people will be changing their behavior any time soon.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  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.

Boy Punished For Calling Teacher “Ma’am” And A Mother Was Investigated For Letting Her 8-Year-Old Walk The Dog

Is America going completely and utterly insane?  Every day we get even more evidence that this country is going downhill really fast.  I am about to share with you some stories that deeply upset me, but it isn’t because anyone died.  Rather, these stories demonstrate that the America that so many of us once loved is dying.  Liberty and freedom are being eroded with each passing day, and we are rapidly becoming a European-style socialist state in which control freaks micromanage even the smallest details of our lives.  Even our speech is being heavily micromanaged, and anyone that gets out of line is likely to be cracked down upon really hard.  At this point, things have already gotten so bad that it is getting really difficult to determine what is safe to say and what isn’t safe to say.  For example, a 10-year-old boy in North Carolina just made national news because he was punished for calling his teacher “ma’am”…

A 10-year-old boy in North Carolina was punished last week for referring to his female teacher as “ma’am.” The incident left his parents both concerned and confused, they told WTVD-TV.

Teretha Wilson noticed her son, Tamarion, seemed upset after leaving the bus Aug. 21 from his school in the town of Tarboro, she told the station. “I asked him what happened. He said he got in trouble for saying ‘yes ma’am’,” Wilson told WTVD’s Michael Perchick.

Are you kidding me?

If you can get kids to use “sir” and “ma’am” in this day and age it is actually a great accomplishment.  But apparently “ma’am” was not this particular teacher’s “preferred title”, and she insisted that little Tamarion quit using it.

And to make her point, she forced Tamarion to write out the world “ma’am” dozens of times on a piece of paper…

Tamarion showed her a piece of paper with the word “ma’am” written dozens of times by hand, four times on every line, Wilson said. The boy said his teacher made him write it because he continued to call her “ma’am” after she asked him not to, the mother told WTVD.

This is just another indication of how pathetic our public schools have become.  In recent years we have witnessed a homeschooling boom all over the nation as parents have pulled their kids out of the public school system in record numbers…

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education estimated that 1.69 million kids between the ages of 5 and 17 were homeschooled, based on spring 2016 numbers. And that data comes just from the 15 states that track homeschooling, as well as Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix).

As strange as that first story was, this next one is even stranger.

USA Today is reporting that a mother in Illinois was “investigated” for allowing her 8-year-old daughter to walk the dog around the block…

A mother faced a visit from police and an Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigation after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter to walk the family’s dog around the block alone on Aug. 2.

Stop the presses and call Robert Mueller!

An 8-year-old girl was allowed to walk the family dog around the block?

What is next?  Are we going to allow kids to bicycle down the street and run outside unsupervised when the ice cream truck comes?

Of course I am being sarcastic.  The truth is that the authorities in Illinois should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.  Literally dozens of people are being shot in the city of Chicago each week, and yet somehow they have time and resources to spend on something like this?

And it probably won’t surprise anyone that this all started with a phone call from a nosy neighbor…

The incident happened as Widen’s daughter walked the family dog, Marshmallow, around the block. A stranger saw the girl walking the dog alone and called police, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Widen told the publication that she can see most of the block from her home’s windows. Walking the Maltese dog is the only time her daughter is unsupervised, she said.

I’m not that old, but when I was 8 years old my mother allowed me and my younger brother to freely wander around pretty much anywhere we wanted.

And we even lived in a foreign country at the time.

Yes, I know that times have changed, and this is something that I wrote about yesterday.  But is it really going to be necessary for us to lock our kids up at home all day?

I really detest what is happening to this country, and it is even infecting many of our kids.

For example, just the other day a little girl accused a man of urinating on her and calling her a racial slur.  That man’s life would have been ruined, but fortunately the little girl ultimately admitted that she had made it all up…

An outrageous set of accusations claimed a man committed a disgusting act against a child while uttering a racial slur.

But after two days, we find out that the children involved were making it all up.

It started Wednesday when a woman living on Grand Rapids’ Northwest side said that a 5-year-old girl soaked with urine came running to her house. The story that allegedly came from the girl and her friends was that a man urinated on her in an alley in the 1000 block of Leonard Street NW and then used a racial slur against her.

Why can’t people just behave normally?

Sadly, we don’t even know what “normal” is anymore.  We live in “Bizarro America” where up is down, right is wrong and everyone just pretty much does whatever is correct in their own eyes.

We like to think that we are a “light” and an “example” for the rest of the world, but we aren’t.

Instead, the rest of the world is laughing at us, and we desperately need to get our act together.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  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.

Society Is Unraveling: A Young Boy Will Have No Father For The Rest Of His Life Because A Psycho Started Shooting At A Madden Tournament

The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is disappearing at a staggering pace.  On Sunday, the young men that gathered to participate in the Madden Championship Series tournament in Jacksonville probably never imagined that they would be in any sort of danger, but then gunfire erupted around 1 PM.  Approximately 20 rounds were fired before the shooter killed himself, and it is being reported that 11 gamers were injured and 2 were killed.  One of the victims that was killed was Taylor ‘SpotMePlzzz’ Robertson.  He was a good man with a wife and a very small son, and now his son won’t have a father for the rest of his life.  There have been many other mass shootings in recent years, but this one was just so senseless.  Personally, I have just been really shaken up all day.  Why would anyone ever want to kill somebody over a video game?

According to authorities, it has been confirmed that the shooter was 24-year-old David Katz…

The shooting took place at a video game tournament for Madden NFL 19 at The Jacksonville Landing, a popular entertainment complex in the Florida city. The event was being held inside the complex at the GLHF Game Bar in Chicago Pizza. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department confirmed that suspect identified as David Katz was dead at the scene, and they initially searched whether there were any other shooters before reporting that the suspect had acted alone. He reportedly took his own life.

Katz had traveled from Baltimore to Jacksonville to participate in the tournament, and he obviously planned this far ahead of time because he had his gun with him.  And once he lost on Sunday, Katz apparently snapped and decided that it was time to start shooting.

A witness named Ryen Aleman that was using the bathroom when the shooting began said that he heard at least 20 shots…

“As I was going in the restroom, I stayed in there, and I just heard — there was just so many gunshots, at least 20 of them at the most”

Another witness caught a glimpse of the shooter and said that Katz was in “rampage mode”…

Braheem Johnson of Jacksonville was working at the pizzeria at the time of the shooting. He caught a glimpse of the shooter, whom he described as a young male of average build, firing into the crowd with a large-caliber handgun sporting a laser sight attachment.

“I just heard shots and I looked at the window and I see him,” Johnson said. “Dude came in there, basically like, to kill, basically. He was just in his rampage mode.”

Katz appears to have had a troubled background.  He was a loner, and according to the Daily Mail his parents are divorced…

As a child, Katz had ‘significant health problems’, according to court records in his parents’ divorce.

At the time of the 2014 court filing, the shooter’s father worked for NASA, and his mother, who has a PhD in toxicology, worked for the US Food and Drug Administration.

It is not clear why Katz stopped shooting when he did.  Perhaps he was almost out of ammunition.  It could have been much worse, but without a doubt this is a tragedy that the gaming world will be dealing with for a very long time.  Obviously the future of all esports events is now up in the air, and the Madden community has lost two of it’s brightest lights…

According to friends and family, the two men that Katz killed in the tournament were Taylor ‘SpotMePlzzz’ Robertson, 27, of Ballard, West Virginia and Eli ‘Trueboy’ Clayton, 22, of Woodland Hills, California.

Robertson was married and father to a young son, and had won 72 percent of his 18 prior matches in Madden NFL tournaments, according to EA Sports. Clayton was a rising star in the Madden community.

Taylor Robertson played Madden professionally because he wanted to make a better life for his wife and young son.  He lived in an economically depressed area of the country, and so gaming was a way for him to rise above his circumstances.  And he was really, really good.  But now he is gone, and his wife and child are going to need our support and our prayers…

Robertson was born on November 26, 1990 and is from Ballard, West Virginia, according to his profile. His Twitter profile mentions that he is married and is a father. He often proudly posted pictures of his son on Twitter.

People who know Robertson said that he competed in the games because he wanted to support his family.

Now friends and fans are asking for people to keep Robertson’s family in their prayers.

There had been previous complaints about a lack of security at gaming tournaments, and it turns out that a day earlier there had been an unrelated argument at the Madden event which almost became violent…

Prior to Sunday’s mass shooting in Jacksonville, a number of professional gamers had complained about a lack of security at events, which were often crowded and chaotic. Just one day before the mass shooting, video showed an argument at the Madden event that nearly turned violent, with loud shouts and arguing.

In the future, there will need to be a much greater level of security at all tournaments of this nature.  But of course the same thing could be said about our schools, churches, shopping malls and major sporting events.  Our world has changed, and society is becoming more unstable with each passing day.

For now, we will mourn.  Eric “Problem” Wright is generally considered to be the greatest Madden player of all time, and he beautifully expressed what so many of us are feeling right now…

“Crying and in so much pain. … ” wrote Eric “Problem” Wright, a popular Madden player and Twitch streamer, on Twitter referencing two of the players who were killed. “All over a videogame. Two of our brothers are gone man and its so disturbing. One of the most tragic days ive experienced. This community is like family. Broken.”

We have seen that mass shootings can happen literally anywhere.  We have raised a valueless generation that has no moral foundation, and we have pumped them full of all sorts of pharmaceutical drugs that are messing with their heads.  From now on we are going to need suffocating levels of security at all public events, and many people will decide to just stay home and not participate in public gatherings at all.

Our society is literally coming apart at the seams, and today is truly a very, very sad day for America.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  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.

Medicare For All? Shock Poll Discovers That 70 Percent Of Americans Want Single-Payer Healthcare To Happen

Should the U.S. government provide medical care for everybody?  A shocking new poll that was just released found that 70 percent of all Americans actually want this to happen.  Of course if they also asked people if they wanted their taxes to double in order to pay for such a system, the percentage of favorable responses would have probably been a lot lower.  But still, this poll result shows that Americans are willing to embrace socialism to a degree that would have been absolutely unthinkable a decade or two ago.  Of course “Medicare for all” is not going to happen as long as Donald Trump resides in the White House, but if future polls keep returning similar results it is only a matter of time before a Democratic administration will implement such a policy.  And as we have seen with Obamacare, once a new social program is in place it can be nearly impossible to get rid of it.

We all knew that a high percentage of Democrats were in favor of “Medicare for all”, but what really shocked me was that this poll found that 52 percent of Republicans are now in favor of it….

A vast majority — 70 percent — of Americans in a new poll supports “Medicare for all,” also known as a single-payer health-care system.

The Reuters–Ipsos survey found 85 percent of Democrats said they support the policy along with 52 percent of Republicans.

Wow.

At one time I was pretty certain what a “Republican” was, but things have changed so dramatically that I am not really sure anymore.

Of course nobody likes paying the sky high health insurance premiums that have been forced on us thanks to Obamacare, and so I definitely understand the hunger for change.

But fully socialized medicine would greatly accelerate our trip down the road toward national bankruptcy.  According to one recent study, a “Medicare for all” system would result in a rise in federal spending of more than 30 trillion dollars over a 10 year period…

Medicare for all has been in the headlines after a study by the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University found it would lead to a $32.6 trillion increase in federal spending over a 10-year period.

The study’s author, Charles Blahous, wrote in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that even doubling taxes would not cover the bill for a single-payer health-care system.

I don’t know about you, but I sure do not want my taxes doubled so that the left can implement a government-controlled healthcare system.

But what we have today is certainly not working.  That is why many of us are deeply, deeply frustrated with the Republicans in Congress.  They had a golden opportunity to repeal Obamacare during this two-year period that they have been in control, and they have completely fumbled the ball.  It is a political failure of the highest order, and millions upon millions of American families are deeply suffering as a result.

Just recently, Bloomberg profiled one of those families…

When their son Sky was born four years ago, Lindsie and Chris Bergevin were hit with a big surprise: $7,000 in bills for the birth that their health plan didn’t cover. Sky was two when the couple jettisoned their medical insurance, which helped them eventually pay off the debt.

Now that they’re ready to have a second child, they’re not going back to their old coverage, with its premiums of more than $350 a month. Instead, they’ve patched together an alternative through a religious group and a primary-care doctor whom they can visit anytime for a monthly fee.

The health insurance system that we have today is a complete and utter failure.  Families are paying ridiculously high premiums for deeply flawed policies with extremely high deductibles, and a lot of people are saying enough is enough.

For example, it is being estimated that more than one million Americans have now joined “health sharing ministries”…

The number of people joining so-called health-care sharing ministries—religion-based cost-sharing plans—rose 74 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service data. An alliance for the groups said that more than 1 million people now participate in such programs. Similarly, primary-care clinics like the one Julie Gunther started in 2014 have grown to almost 900 from just a handful in the early 2000s, according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition, a trade group for the clinics.

There are free market solutions out there that actually work.  In addition to health sharing ministries, direct primary care and association buying groups are other free market models that have shown that they have tremendous potential.

Unfortunately, that is not where society is trending.

Even though Republicans are in control of Washington for the moment, the federal government just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  Earlier today, I was astounded to learn that 52 percent of all U.S. children live in a household that receives benefits from the U.S. government each month…

In 2016, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau, there were approximately 73,586,000 people under 18 in the United States, and 38,365,000 of them — or 52.1 percent — resided in households in which one or more persons received benefits from a means-tested government program.

These included the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), Medicaid, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the National School Lunch Program.

All throughout American history, social programs have steadily expanded, and until things completely collapse they will probably continue to expand.

In addition to wanting free government healthcare, it turns out that most Americans also want free college education…

The new Reuters poll also showed that a majority of Americans supports free college tuition. Forty-one percent of Republicans said they supported the policy, pollsters found, compared with 79 percent of Democrats.

“Free stuff” always sounds great until you figure out that someone has to pay for it.

And in our case, we have already stolen more than 21 trillion dollars from future generations to pay the bills.  How in the world are we going to be able to afford everything else that the socialists want to do?

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog.  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.

Watch Out California! 53 Major Earthquakes (Including A Magnitude 8.2) Just Hit The Ring Of Fire In A 24 Hour Period

Is something unusual starting to happen to the crust of our planet?  The USGS defines any earthquake of at least magnitude 4.5 as “significant”, and there were 53 earthquakes that met that criteria along the Ring of Fire on Sunday alone.  If you would like to verify that information for yourself, you can so do right here.  Not too long ago, I wrote about how “Earth changes” seem to be accelerating all over the world, but even I was stunned by the ferocity of the seismic activity that we witnessed over the weekend.  Because none of the earthquakes happened in the United States, the mainstream media almost entirely ignored this story, but that is a huge mistake.  The entire west coast of the U.S. falls along the “Ring of Fire”, and experts assure us that it is only a matter of time before the seismic tension that is building up along the tectonic plates in that area is released.

Much of the seismic activity on Sunday was near the small island nation of Fiji, and it is true that Fiji often experiences earthquakes because it sits directly inside the Ring of Fire…

Fiji falls in the Pacific Ring Of Fire – a massive horseshoe-shaped area in the Pacific basin.

The ring is formed of a string of 452 volcanoes and sites of seismic activity (earthquakes), which encircle the Pacific Ocean.

Roughly 90 percent of all earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, and 75 percent of the world’s active volcanoes are dotted along the expansive ring.

It certainly is not unusual to see earthquakes happen along the Ring of Fire, but what was unusual about the activity on Sunday was the size of the earthquakes.

The largest quake on Sunday was a massive magnitude 8.2 earthquake that could have done an enormous amount of damage if it had been closer to the surface…

A massive quake of magnitude 8.2 struck in the Pacific Ocean close to Fiji and Tonga on Sunday but it was so deep that it did not cause any damage, authorities in Fiji said.

The U.S. Tsunami Warning Center also said the quake was too deep to cause a tsunami.

Earthquakes that are that deep are usually not so large.  This “deep focus” earthquake on Sunday was actually the second largest “deep focus” earthquake that has ever been recorded…

The USGS calls these “deep focus” earthquakes, and while some of the biggest earthquakes to strike the earth are deep focus, their depth usually minimises damage.

The biggest deep focus earthquake ever recorded was in 2013 when an M8.3 struck near Russia and was felt all over Asia, giving us a sense of how massive this Fiji quake was.

In addition to this massive earthquake in Fiji, other areas of the south Pacific were also hammered on Sunday as well.

You may remember that the Indonesian island of Lombok was shaken by a tremendous quake back on August 5th which killed hundreds of people, and on Sunday they were hit once again.  The following comes from CNN…

A trio of intense earthquakes shook several islands in the South Pacific and Indonesia on Sunday, including two on the already battered island of Lombok.

The most recent major quake was a 6.9 magnitude tremor centered just 4 kilometers south of Belanting, on the Indonesian island of Lombok.

That island is still trying to recover from the devastating effects of an August 5 earthquake that killed more than 430 people.

But until big earthquakes start happening here, many Americans simply will not pay any attention to all of this.  What they need to understand is that this is truly a global phenomenon that we are witnessing, and shaking in one part of the globe can have tremendous implications for people literally living on the other side of the planet.  In particular, those living along the west coast should be deeply alarmed that seismic activity along other areas of the Ring of Fire appears to be intensifying.

And I am definitely not the only one saying this.  According to one British news source, scientists are warning that “increased seismic activity” along the Ring of Fire “may mean the so-called ‘Big One’ killer earthquake is on the way”…

Scientists warn increased seismic activity in the area may mean the so-called “Big One” killer earthquake is on the way.

If California was hit, experts warn tens of thousands could be killed.

Sadly, the truth is that we would be extremely fortunate to only have “tens of thousands” killed in the event of a historic earthquake on the west coast.

The 1906 and 1989 earthquakes were actually not that big compared to some of the monster quakes that we have seen elsewhere along the Ring of Fire, but they still did tremendous amounts of damage…

Two major earthquakes have hit the Bay Area in modern history. In 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit San Francisco and 80 percent of the city’s buildings fell or burnt to the ground, leaving 300,000 people homeless and killing nearly 3,000. In 1989, a 6.9 magnitude quake caused the ground to liquefy in parts of the city and collapsed highways, killing more than 60 people.

A new report from the U.S. Geological Survey says that there is more than a 70 percent chance that a 6.7 magnitude or higher earthquake will hit the area in the next 30 years.

We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  In recent weeks we have witnessed earthquake swarms off of the Oregon coast, record-setting heatwaves, hail the size of softballs, and wildfires of unprecedented size and scope.

There are some experts out there that would like to assure all of us that what we are witnessing is completely normal.

But I think that not a lot of people are buying that explanation.

Because there has not been a major seismic event on the west coast for decades, many people have grown complacent.  They simply assume that because nothing has happened in such a long time that nothing will happen for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, the experts assure us that the “Big One” is definitely coming to the west coast at some point, and all of this seismic activity may be an indication that it is coming sooner rather than later.

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.

Now That Facebook, YouTube And Apple Have Come For Alex Jones, Guess Who They Are Coming For Next?

August 6th was one of darkest days in the history of the Internet.  When I learned that Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Pinterest and others had colluded to take down content from Alex Jones all on the same day, I knew exactly what was happening.  They timed their attack so that it would hit the press at the beginning of the weekly news cycle on Monday so that their purge would have maximum societal impact.  And the fact that there was such overt collusion was obviously meant to send a message.  We were supposed to understand that if they can do this to Alex Jones, they can do it to any of us, and so we better shut up and fall in line.  I can’t even begin to tell you how sick I feel right now.  The big tech giants have made it abundantly clear how they feel about all of us, and there is no future for alternative points of view on any of their platforms.

The current purge of conservative voices has been going on for months, but this is the biggest bombshell by far.  The following excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article is a typical example of how the mainstream media covered this story…

Major technology companies including Apple, Facebook and YouTube deleted years of content from conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars platforms over allegations of hate speech, a sudden clampdown that is fueling the growing debate over how big technology companies choose to censor.

The move was unusual for its sweep and speed, suggesting a new assertiveness by technology companies that in the past have worked to avoid alienating conservatives, who often assert that left-leaning Silicon Valley is biased against them. The removals appeared to be prompted by more users flagging Infowars content for policy violations.

In addition to the “big three”, Spotify and Pinterest pulled down content from Infowars as well, and there is no way that this could have been done simultaneously unless it was planned well in advance.  Lawyers have to be consulted, CEOs have to give their approval, etc.  This was a cold-blooded move that was carefully calculated down to the finest details.

So is there anything that conservatives can do?

Well, Mike Adams has suggested that these tech companies could be prosecuted for conspiracy…

This coordinated, illegal censorship is clear proof of an organized criminal racket being conducted by the tech giants. The RICO Act allows for federal prosecution of such criminal conspiracy.

The internet Dark Ages has now descended upon us, where radical left-wing tech giants run by deranged, mentally ill communists will decide whether your content qualifies as “hate speech.” What is hate speech? It’s anything uttered by a conservative.

I think that he is theoretically correct, but I doubt that it will ever actually happen.

Right now, the global elite do not have control of the White House, but they have discovered a powerful new weapon in the tech companies.  They are trying to use this new weapon to smash Alex Jones and other top conservative voices, and they are doing it with a tyrannical flair that is absolutely frightening.  I think that it was quite appropriate that the official WikiLeaks Twitter account made a parallel between this purge and an old Star Wars movie…

The empire strikes back: Apple, Spotify, Facebook and Google/Youtube all purge Infowars/Alex Jones. Yes, Infowars has frequent nonsense, but also a state power critique. Which publisher in the world with millions of subscribers is next to be wiped out for cultural transgression?

And it is quite noteworthy that this comes almost exactly three months before the mid-term elections.

Do you think that is just a coincidence?

After all of the uproar about “election interference”, now the big tech companies are overtly doing it very publicly and in a way that nobody can misunderstand.

The biggest reason why they are lashing out at Alex Jones, Mike Adams and a whole host of other top conservative voices is because Donald Trump never would have gotten elected without them.  I guess they figure that if they can start silencing some of those voices that they can turn future elections in their favor.

If it was just a few conservative voices that were being censored, that would be one thing.  But the truth is that hundreds and hundreds of conservatives have had Facebook pages taken down, YouTube accounts terminated and Twitter accounts shadowbanned.  I won’t repeat all of the information that I have previously published on this topic in this article.  Instead, if you would like to learn more I would recommend checking out some of my previous articles…

-“This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet”

-“Governments And Social Media Companies Are Collaborating To Censor Anyone That Would Dare To Question Mainstream Media Narratives”

-“The Big Social Media Companies Are Being Used As A Weapon To Advance The Agenda Of The New World Order”

-“The Censorship Is Real – EndOfTheAmericanDream.com Is Being Completely Blocked By Library Internet Filters”

In the end, this is not about Alex Jones.

This is about a once free society that is becoming more Orwellian with each passing day.

Now that they have come for Alex Jones, they aren’t going to stop.

It might not be tomorrow, but eventually they are going to come for you.

I would like to end this article with a few words from Dr. Michael Brown’s excellent article about all of this censorship…

Let me repeat what I said in my earlier article about Infowars: Whether you’re an Infowars fan or you find their work distasteful, their potential removal from YouTube should concern you.

Otherwise, soon enough, we’ll have our own version of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, which will now sound something like this:

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out­—because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

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.

Earth Changes Accelerate: What Is Causing These Record Heatwaves, Massive “Firenadoes”, Giant Dust Storms And Large Earthquakes?

Major changes are happening to our planet, and the experts are groping for answers.  In recent days some have suggested that what we are witnessing is the natural progression of “man-made climate change”, but that explanation has generally been received with a lot of skepticism.  Something truly dramatic appears to be happening to the globe, and it isn’t just because the amount of carbon dioxide in the air suddenly reached some sort of magical “tipping point”.  But without a doubt, temperatures are getting warmer.  In July, Death Valley experienced “the hottest month ever recorded on the planet”.  Over in Europe, Saturday was being billed as Europe’s “hottest day ever”, and temperatures in Lisbon, Portugal were expected to top 107 degrees both Saturday and Sunday.  On the other side of the planet, the crippling drought in Australia is devastating farms “like a cancer”, and things are so hot in North Korea that the government has declared “an unprecedented natural disaster”…

This week, the North Korean government called record-high temperatures in the country “an unprecedented natural disaster” and said that country was working together to fight the problem.

An editorial published Thursday in Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling party, highlighted the difficulties that the long stretch of high temperatures would cause for North Korea’s agricultural sector, specifically crops such as rice and maize. The newspaper called for North Koreans to act as one and “display their patriotic zeal in the ongoing campaign for preventing damage by high temperature.”

In California, extreme heat and bone dry conditions continue to fuel some of the worst wildfires in the history of the state…

Crews battling deadly Northern California wildfires prepare for another day of hot and dry conditions that could drive the flames into new areas and threaten more homes.

According to Cal Fire, more than 15,000 personnel are on the lines of 18 large blazes across California on Saturday. So far, the fires since June have killed 8, burned more than 559,000 acres and damaged or destroyed over 1,800 structures. Roughly 17,000 homes continue to be threatened by these fires, and about 45,000 residents are under evacuation.

Ultimately, this may turn out to be the worst year for wildfires that California has ever seen.

Of course there have been bad years for wildfires before.  But what we haven’t seen before are “firenadoes” that pack 143 mph winds…

On Thursday, NWS researcher combed through the wreckage left behind and determined a fire whirl — commonly known as a fire tornado — roared through the area between 7:30 p.m and 8 p.m. on July 26th.

It was packing 143 mph winds, turning heavy-duty high tension power line towers into twisted pieces of metal, uprooting trees and ripping the bark off other trees.

When I first heard about this fire tornado, I was absolutely stunned.

I had never heard of a fire tornado anywhere near that size in the United States, and apparently the experts hadn’t either…

“This is historic in the U.S.,” Craig Clements, director of San Jose State University’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory, told BuzzFeed News. “This might be the strongest fire-induced tornado-like circulation ever recorded.”

Known as a pyrocumulus cloud, the ominous red weather formations usually occur over volcanic eruptions or forest fires when intensely heated air triggers an upward motion that pushes smoke and water vapor to rapidly rise. They can develop their own weather patters, including thunderstorms with severe winds which then further fan the flames.

Elsewhere in the Southwest, drought continues to intensify, and this is starting to produce absolutely enormous dust storms.

For example, check out what just happened to the city of Phoenix…

A huge wall of dust enveloped the Phoenix metro area on Thursday in the second monsoon storm in a four-day span.

Officials at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport said flights were delayed or held until visibility improved.

National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists said blowing dust in the Phoenix area brought near-zero visibility for drivers Thursday evening.

Certainly a dust storm is less destructive than a “fire tornado” in the short-term, but as we saw in the 1930s, a consistent pattern of giant dust storms can absolutely cripple a nation.

And let us not forget all of the shaking that has been happening to the crust of our planet.

On Sunday, Indonesia was shaken by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake…

The death toll rose to 82 after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake rocked the Indonesian island of Lombok and on nearby Bali on Sunday, damaging buildings, sending terrified residents and tourists running into the streets and triggering a brief tsunami warning.

Social media posts from the scene showed debris piled on streets and sidewalks. Hospital patients, many still in their beds, were rolled out onto streets as a safeguard against structural damage to the hospital buildings.

So why is all of this happening?

Yes, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is increasing, and it has been increasing for a very long time.  Ultimately, the amount that humans contribute to the overall level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is marginal, and even if we took the most extreme measures possible there is very little that we could do to significantly affect the balance.

And scientists assure us that our planet once had much, much higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the air then we do today, and our planet appeared to have thrived under those conditions.

But the narrative won’t change.  The mainstream media will continue to tell us that the Earth changes that we are witnessing are due to global warming and that if we reverse course that we can go back to how things were before.

No, we can’t go back, because the changes that are happening are way outside of our control.

Fundamental changes are happening to our planet, and this is just the beginning.  For now these Earth changes are a minor nuisance to a lot of people, but pretty soon nobody will be able to ignore them.

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.

Portland Braces For “Blood In The Streets” As Antifa Pledges “Militant Antifascist Resistance Against Patriot Prayer” On Saturday

If Portland authorities do not intervene in a major way, we could potentially see one of the largest street brawls in modern American history on Saturday.  On June 30th, an extremely violent confrontation in Portland between Antifa thugs and conservative groups made headlines all over the world, and now both sides have been hyping this August 4th sequel as an even bigger event.  Two conservative groups, Patriot Prayer and The Proud Boys, are claiming that they will have thousands of members in the heart of Portland for their scheduled rally, and they are very much encouraging people to bring guns.  On the other side, Eugene Antifa, Rose City Antifa, RASH NW and the Pacific Northwest Anti-Fascist Workers Collective are hoping to bring thousands of their own members, and one organizer publicly stated that they “better bring our own guns too”.  All it is going to take is for one person to get shot and killed for all hell to break loose.

At the center of this controversy is a conservative Senate candidate named Joey Gibson…

For the past week, Vancouver activist, provocateur and senate candidate Joey Gibson has been talking about guns — guns that his friends and supporters with the groups Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys will likely bring to a self-described “Freedom Rally” in Portland on Saturday.

“Everyone should be carrying around guns at all times, especially in our situation,” Gibson explained in a video, posted to Facebook June 30 to promote the event.

There is certainly nothing wrong with a candidate holding a rally and encouraging his supporters to bring guns.  It happens in other major cities all the time.

And because of the violence that happened last time, conservatives are flying in from all over the country for this event.

“We’ll have people locally showing up from Vancouver, Portland, Hillsboro, California. We have people flying in from Texas and the East Coast,” he said.

If the left simply did not interfere with this rally, it wouldn’t even make national headlines.

But they aren’t going to do that.  In fact, they have been working very hard to promote their “counter-protest”, and they are openly telling us that they “make no apologies for the use of force”…

For its part, Rose City Antifa released a “hype video,” encouraging people to counter-protest Gibson’s rally. They also promised violence.

“History has shown that militant resistance is a necessary and important tool in the fight against fascism,” the video’s narrator intones. “We make no apologies for the use of force in keeping our communities safe from the scourge of right-wing violence.”

In fact, the various Antifa factions are definitely planning a “direct confrontation” with Patriot Prayer and The Proud Boys…

Ahead of Saturday’s conservative rally, Antifa is back at it again – planning a “direct confrontation” with participants, according to a call to action on the leftist website “It’s Going Down.”

“Rose City Antifa has continued their great work of doxxing the Portland area Proud Boys involved in this violence, and is also calling for militant antifascist resistance against Patriot Prayer,” reads the posting.

Portland authorities could prevent this by showing up with overwhelming numbers of police and by completely keeping the two groups separated.

But will they?

For Antifa, the goal of the “counter-protest” is to “chase Gibson and his supporters out of town”…

Organizers of a counterprotest are hoping hundreds if not thousands of people turn up to chase Gibson and his supporters out of town.

“One of the things folks keep saying is ‘If you just ignored them, they’d probably go away,’” Effie Baum, a spokesperson for Popular Mobilization, a coalition of activists formed to mobilize a counterprotest on Saturday, told HuffPost. “There are many examples across history that explicitly tell us this is not true. The community at large in Portland has tried ignoring them… Despite that, Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer have not gone away.”

I have been warning that civil unrest is coming to America over and over again.  I warned that it is coming in my first book, and I have warned that it is coming on radio and television all across America.  And about a month ago, Portland got a little taste of what is ahead…

On June 30, as a faceoff between opposite ends of the political spectrum exploded into a street fight, enforcement in Portland, Oregon, jumped into action. The march, organized by Patriot Prayer, a far-right outfit with a history of sparking conflict, was met by anti-fascist – antifa – and other-counter protesters. As the clash escalated, the event was declared a riot. Officers in body armor tried to unknot the scuffles. Four people left the scene in ambulances, the Portland Police later said in a statement. Four others left in handcuffs.

Other watchmen are sounding the alarm as well.  For instance, the following comes from an alert that Steve Quayle recently posted on his website…

Ladies and Gentlemen we are in the midst of a war for the fundamental right to be an American. The constitution is under attack from the far left and its democratic leaders. This is only going to get worse from here. America has fundamentally changed; just as Barack Obama wanted. If you ask me, we are only a few more riot/protests away from the left and right clashing to the point of firearms being used. Once that is done, you will force the police to drastically change our approach. I don’t know how that will go but I was there in Ferguson, MO during the BLM riots and in Baltimore for the BLM riots. The police and National Guard will eventually be forced to put down the riots by force and that is not what we want nor need to happen.

Let us pray for peace, because nobody should want to see more violence.

And as I mentioned earlier, the authorities in Portland could stop the violence from happening.  The police need to show up very early in massive numbers, and they need to do everything that they can to keep the two groups apart.

Because if the two sides come face to face, there will be violence.

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.

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