Money

10 Quotes From Big Names Across The Political Spectrum That Are Suspicious About The Cause Of Epstein’s Death

Was there a conspiracy to kill Jeffrey Epstein?  Over the past 24 hours, the mainstream media has been full of stories about the various “conspiracy theories” that have sprung up around Jeffrey Epstein’s death.  And of course the term “conspiracy theory” has essentially become a shorthand way for the mainstream media to dismiss any explanation that does not fit with the “official” interpretation of a particular news event.  So far, the mainstream media is pushing the narrative that Jeffrey Epstein’s death was a “suicide” even though we don’t actually have any evidence that this is true yet.  Perhaps when we finally get the autopsy results things will become clearer, but then again they might not.  In any event, it has been quite remarkable to see how big names from across the political spectrum have been responding to Epstein’s death.  Many of them are demanding an investigation into what happened, and quite a few of them already seem convinced that his death was definitely not a “suicide”.

If Epstein’s death was not a suicide, then there almost certainly had to have been more than one person involved.

And if more than one person was involved, that would fit the legal definition of a “conspiracy”.

According to Cornell Law School, a “conspiracy” exits when there is an “agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement’s goal.”

Wealthy and powerful people work together to commit illegal acts all the time.  If you don’t believe that, then you need to wake up and learn how the world really works.  Only time will tell if Jeffrey Epstein’s death was the result of a “conspiracy”, but right now a lot of prominent individuals are questioning the official narrative.  The following are 10 quotes from big names across the political spectrum that are suspicious about the cause of Epstein’s death…

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: “We need answers. Lots of them.”

U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz: “Chairman @RepJerryNadler should prioritize a Judiciary investigation into how Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody (in Nadler’s own neighborhood!) over the Kavanaugh confirmation (which already happened), and the Russia hoax (which never happened).”

Joe Scarborough: “A guy who had information that would have destroyed rich and powerful men’s lives ends up dead in his jail cell. How predictably…Russian.”

Lou Dobbs: “Dead Men Tell No Tales. Jeffrey Epstein found dead in Manhattan jail cell; multiple reports claim death by suicide #MAGA #AmericaFirst #Dobbs”

U.S. Representative Al Green: “The suicide of Mr. Epstein is an impossibilty. When an impossiblty occurs involving powerful people and possible criminality there must be an investigation to end speculation. Because the public has a right to know, I’m calling for a congressional investigation. #JefferyEpstein”

Rudy Giuliani: “What does the word watch mean in the phrase suicide Watch? Who was watching? What does camera show? It is inconceivable Epstein could have hung himself if there was a suicide Watch? Follow the motives.”

Harlan Z. Hill: “Dead men tell no tales. Just as Jeffrey Epstein starts to name names, he decides to kill himself? Mkay. Totally believable.”

Former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill: “Something stinks to high heaven. How does someone on suicide watch hang himself with no intervention? Impossible. Unless…..”

Paul Krugman: “If we were living in a paranoid fantasy universe, I would be very suspicious about the Epstein suicide, even about whether it was really suicide. And you know what? The Epstein case itself shows that we *are* kind of living in a paranoid fantasy universe.”

Attorney General William Barr: “I was appalled to learn that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead early this morning from an apparent suicide while in federal custody. Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered. In addition to the FBI’s investigation, I have consulted with the Inspector General who is opening an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death.”

President Trump also jumped into this debate when he retweeted something that a conservative comedian named Terrence K. Williams had posted.

But to me, there was one quote that stood out above all the quotes that I have shared with you so far.

The New York Post interviewed a former inmate of the Metropolitan Correction Center in lower Manhattan, and according to that inmate it would have literally been impossible for Epstein to kill himself…

There’s no way that man could have killed himself. I’ve done too much time in those units. It’s an impossibility.

Between the floor and the ceiling is like eight or nine feet. There’s no way for you to connect to anything.

You have sheets, but they’re paper level, not strong enough. He was 200 pounds — it would never happen.

You can read the rest of his account right here.  After reading that account, I was certainly persuaded that it was extremely unlikely that Epstein would have been able to kill himself.

Of course it is always possible that Epstein could have died from natural causes, but it is probably much more likely that he was killed to protect wealthy and powerful people that Epstein could have testified against.

I am sorry if this doesn’t fit with your view of the world, but the truth is that we live in a society that is saturated with evil.  That has been true since the very beginning, and human nature hasn’t changed.

Hopefully there will be an investigation into what happened, and hopefully the truth will come out.  But I am certainly not optimistic, and the mainstream media will undoubtedly do their best to cover up this entire sordid affair.

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

Years That End In “9” Tend To Be Times Of Great Upheaval

Will 2019 continue the trend?  The other day I was talking with a close friend, and he pointed out to me that all throughout history years that end in 9 have tended to be times of great change and upheaval.  I was intrigued by what he shared with me, and so I went out and did some research, and I discovered that he was right on target.  In particular, over the last 100 years we have seen an unusual number of key historical events take place during years that end in 9, and that seems quite strange.  Could it be possible that the ending of one decade and the imminent start of a new one somehow triggers something inside of us psychologically?  I don’t know, but there does seem to be a pattern.  In this article I will summarize some of the things that I have discovered, and I will let you come to your own conclusions.

Let’s start with 1929.  As I repeatedly remind my readers, most large stock market crashes tend to happen during the fall, and on October 29th, 1929 there was a devastating stock market crash unlike anything that the United States had ever seen before.  That date is generally considered to be the start of the Great Depression, which to this day is the worst economic downturn the western world has ever experienced.  The Great Depression lasted for ten years, and that brings us to the next “9” on our list…

1939 was the year when World War II started.  It was the most catastrophic war that the world has ever seen, and it didn’t end until 1945.  It is estimated that somewhere between 70 million and 85 million people were killed, and the war shocked the planet so much that we haven’t seen a war like it since.

1949 was a year of great change, and it was really when the battle lines of the Cold War between the east and the west definitely solidified.  During this year, the Communist Party of China was able to take full control of mainland China, and the People’s Republic of China was formally established.  In addition, in 1949 the Soviet Union tested their first atomic bomb, it was the year of the Berlin blockade, and NATO was formed on April 4th, 1949.

1959 was the year when Fidel Castro came to power.  Thanks to the success of the Cuban revolution, Cuba became the first communist power in the western hemisphere, and this ultimately led to the Cuban missile crisis of 1963.

1969 was so tumultuous that a number of documentaries have been made about that single year, and author Rob Kirkpatrick wrote an entire book about it entitled “The Year Everything Changed”.  It was the year of the Moon landing, Woodstock and the Manson murders.  During this year Richard Nixon was sworn in as the president of the United States, 250,000 Americans marched on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, and the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded.

1979 was the year of the Iranian Revolution.  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in February, and the Iranian hostage crisis began in November.  If there had been no Iranian hostage crisis, it is possible that Ronald Reagan may have been defeated by Jimmy Carter in 1980.  1979 was also the year when Margaret Thatcher first became prime minister of the UK, and she served all the way until 1990.

1989 was another year of revolution.  In June of that year the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing were brutally crushed by the Chinese government.   On the other side of the world, 1989 was the beginning of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia which ultimately resulted in a peaceful division of that nation into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  George H.W. Bush was sworn in as the president of the United States during this year, and huge protests on both sides of the Berlin Wall ultimately resulted in the collapse of the East German government.

1999 was the year when Bill Clinton came very close to being removed from office.  On February 12th, the United States Senate narrowly acquitted Clinton of perjury and obstruction of justice.  1999 was also the year when the euro become the official currency of the European Union, and at the end of the year the Y2K scare was making headlines all over the globe.

2009 was definitely a year of “change”.  On January 20th, Barack Obama became the first African-American to become the president of the United States.  Meanwhile, the nation was greatly suffering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  It is estimated that 8.8 million jobs were lost during the “Great Recession”, and millions of Americans also lost their homes as a result of the subprime mortgage meltdown.  As 2009 was ending, the Economic Collapse Blog was launched.

So now here we are in another year that ends in 9.  So far in 2019, we have seen mass shootings, crop failures, dramatic escalations in our trade war with China, and a potential war with Iran is looming on the horizon.  Americans are angrier, more frustrated and more divided today than ever before in modern American history, and the mainstream media continues to stir the pot on a daily basis.

The stage is definitely set for things to explode during the second half of this year, and a lot of people that I have been talking to feel like things could really start breaking loose at any moment.

To a large degree, 2019 has already been a year of tremendous upheaval, but many believe that the worst is still yet to come.  So buckle up and hold on, because I think that things are about to get very bumpy.

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

President Trump Is Preparing An Executive Order That Will Crack Down Hard On Social Media Censorship Of Conservatives

It appears that President Trump is getting ready to bring down the hammer on the big social media companies.  According to Politico, the Trump administration is in the process of drafting an executive order that will “tackle Silicon Valley’s alleged anti-conservative bias”.  And it is very much in President Trump’s own self-interest to do this.  Social media played a key role in helping him win in 2016, but since that time we have seen an unprecedented wave of censorship on the major social media platforms, and most of that censorship has been directed at conservative voices.  If President Trump doesn’t do something, it is hard to see how he will win in 2020, and of course that is precisely what the leftist executives at the big social media companies want.

Ultimately, it would take an act of Congress to do everything that needs to be done, but President Trump should be applauded for trying to do what he can on his own.  Apparently Politico was able to speak to three separate sources that are familiar with the drafting of this new executive order, and after speaking to all of them Politico came to the conclusion that the Trump administration is very serious about “wielding the federal government’s power against Silicon Valley”…

The White House is circulating drafts of a proposed executive order that would address allegations of anti-conservative bias by social media companies, according to a White House official and two other people familiar with the matter — a month after President Donald Trump pledged to explore “all regulatory and legislative solutions” on the issue.

None of the three would describe the contents of the order, which one person cautioned has already taken many different forms and remains in flux. But its existence, and the deliberations surrounding it, are evidence that the administration is taking a serious look at wielding the federal government’s power against Silicon Valley.

It is not clear if such an executive order would hold up in court, and undoubtedly there will be legal challenges right away.  Of course those legal challenges will take a long time to play out, because we all know how quickly our legal system moves.

But for the short-term, what really matters is what effect this will have on the behavior of the big social media companies.  The goal should be to scare them into doing the right thing, and hopefully the wording of this executive order will be as forceful as possible.

Since some of these big tech companies have contracts with the federal government, in his executive order Trump could try to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against customers based on their political views.  A similar approach has been attempted a couple of times before…

One potential approach could involve using the government’s leverage over federal contractors, a tactic the Obama administration used to advance LGBT rights. A 2014 executive order prohibited federal contractors from discriminating against workers on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Trump earlier this year signed an executive order meant to promote free speech on college campuses by requiring schools to agree to promote free inquiry in order to receive federal research funding — something the schools were already supposed to do.

We’ll see what happens, but hopefully Trump can get this executive order issued quickly, because the 2020 election season has already begun.

Of course liberals are upset about this potential executive order, and many of them continue to insist that conservatives are not being specifically targeted by the social media companies.  For example, just check out this excerpt from a Vox article…

As Recode and other outlets have reported, there has been no evidence to prove that companies such as Google and Twitter have anti-conservative bias baked into their products. Regardless, the president and Republican lawmakers have continued to make such claims, emboldened in part by a recent claim by a former Google engineer that he was fired for his conservative political views. (Google says the employee was fired for misusing company equipment; other reports indicate that he shared emails internally in which he defended white supremacist groups.)

Seriously?

Because of what I do, I have connections throughout the conservative media, and just about everyone I know has been censored, banned, shadowbanned or deplatformed in some way, shape or form.  Over the past two and a half years we have witnessed the greatest purge in the history of the Internet, and it has been absolutely brutal.

Some conservative voices are still able to use social media, but the heavy hand of censorship is always present.  For example, every time Dr. Michael Brown posts a video on YouTube, it is immediately “flagged as unsuitable for most advertisers”…

To this moment, the instant one of my YouTube videos is posted—and I mean the very instant—it gets flagged as unsuitable for most advertisers, which we then have to contest by calling for a manual review. At that point, you genuinely have no idea what the reviewer will decide.

Of course other conservative voices have been targeted for elimination from social media altogether.  Mike Adams of Natural News is an incredibly genuine guy and one of the most articulate conservative voices on the entire Internet, and he has been deplatformed by just about every social media platform that exists…

In response to a coordinated, heavily-funded smear campaign against Natural News and myself, the Health Ranger, Facebook has now permanently banned Natural News from posting content. The channel name that has been banned is Facebook.com/healthranger, which was our primary channel reaching over 2.5 million people.

This is on top of the permanent bans of Natural News content from Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google News, Apple and other techno-fascists that now represent the greatest threat to human freedom the world has ever seen.

There is no reason why Mike Adams should have ever been banned by anyone.  I have had the opportunity to sit down with him in person, and he is someone that cares deeply for America and for those around him.  What the big social media companies have done to him is absolutely disgusting.

But of course he is far from alone.  One study found that since the 2016 presidential election, social media traffic to a group of some of the most conservative websites on the Internet was down by 93 percent.  You can find the full study right here, and it is definitely worth reading.

In the end, it is very simple.  The leftists that run the big social media companies hate what we believe, and they don’t want us to get the truth out.  The don’t believe in a free marketplace of ideas, because their ideas always lose.

So the only way that they can win is by shutting us up, and that is precisely what they have been attempting to do.

The social media giants built multi-billion dollar empires by giving everyone a voice, but now that they have such a dominant position on the Internet they have decided that many prominent conservative voices should be completely silenced.

They want to control what ideas people are exposed to, thus shaping the overall direction of the country as a whole.

If they are allowed to get away with it, they will greatly alter the political future of America far beyond the 2020 election.

Something needs to be done immediately, and so let us hope that President Trump gives this executive order some really strong teeth.

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

America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer

Whenever a tragic act of violence makes national headlines, the calls to give up more of our freedoms and liberties in exchange for the promise of increased security become deafening.  But if we take another step toward becoming an authoritarian society every time something horrible happens, eventually we won’t have any of the basic liberties and freedoms that previous generations of Americans fought so hard to secure for us.  Unfortunately, voices like mine are becoming increasingly rare, and the American people seem to want a society that will shelter them from anything that could possibly go wrong.  Of course there has never been such a society in all of human history, and we won’t be able to create one either.  No governmental system can eliminate the problem of evil, and bad things sometimes happen to good people.  And without a doubt, the mass shootings that we witnessed over the weekend were absolutely horrific.  In less than 24 hours, 29 American lives were lost between these two mass shootings, and this has greatly shaken the entire nation…

On Sunday, Americans woke up to news of a shooting rampage in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, where a man wearing body armor shot and killed nine people, including his own sister. Hours earlier, a 21-year-old with a rifle entered a Walmart in El Paso and killed 20 people.

In a country that has become nearly numb to men with guns opening fire in schools, at concerts and in churches, the back-to-back bursts of gun violence in less than 24 hours were enough to leave the public stunned and shaken.

Sadly, these are not isolated incidents.  As our society has become less moral, we have seen an escalation of violence all over the country.

According to USA Today, so far in 2019 there have been more mass shootings than days in the year…

As gunfire ripped through America in an unprecedented 24 hours, a bleak milestone in a nation pocked by gun violence was marked: There have been 251 mass shootings in 2019, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

A shooting spree early Sunday at an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio – which left at least nine dead and more than two dozen injured – notched an even darker statistic: It occurred on the 216th day of the year, meaning there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year.

As I have been warning for years, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is steadily disappearing.

At one time, you could walk down the streets in most communities in America without worrying that someone would suddenly gun you down, but that is no longer a safe assumption.

And in some areas, things are getting really, really bad.  Just check out what happened in Chicago over the weekend…

In Chicago at least three people have been killed and 37 more injured since Friday evening in shootings within city limits, including 22 people shot Sunday in less than four hours, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

In particular, a mass shooting that took place near a children’s playground was particularly tragic…

As The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reports, at least seven people were shot and wounded on Aug. 4 as they gathered near a children’s playground on Chicago’s West Side. The people gathered at 1:20 a.m. as they stood in the park on the 2900 West Roosevelt Road when a person opened fire from a black Chevy Camaro, said Chicago Police.

So why didn’t this mass shooting get the same kind of coverage that the other mass shootings received?

Could it be that it is because it didn’t neatly fit the agenda that the mainstream media is trying to promote?

The city of Baltimore is another major American city where violence is completely and utterly out of control.  In fact, there is only one nation on the entire planet that has a higher homicide rate than Baltimore…

Only one country in the world has a higher per capita homicide rate than the city of Baltimore.

According to WorldAtlas, the murder capital of the globe is Honduras — where there are 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people.

Baltimore, with 56 homicides per 100,000 people, edges out the number two spot ahead of Venezuela, where there are 53.7 homicides per 100,000 people.

As the violence across our country continues to escalate, the calls to restrict our 2nd Amendment rights are going to become overwhelming.

But taking away our 2nd Amendment rights is not going to solve the problem.  Instead, it will just take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.

The truth is that the El Paso shooter picked a gun-free zone for a reason.  When they know that their targets will be sitting ducks, that just makes things even easier for the mass shooters.

And the bad guys will always find ways to get guns.  Just look at the city of Chicago – they have some of the harshest gun laws in the entire nation, but they also lead the country in gun deaths.

Unfortunately, logic doesn’t tend to work with those that love authoritarianism.  Whenever something happens, they want the government to do “something”, and that “something” almost always involves eroding our most basic rights.

I wish that it wasn’t true, but this is where our country is heading.  Americans have been trained to believe that the government should take care of them from the cradle to the grave and should do all that it can to shield them from everything bad that can possibly happen in life.

Sadly, every time such a totalitarian “utopia” has been attempted throughout human history, it has always ended very badly, and that will be the case here as well.

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

America Has Gone Crazy: A 79-Year-Old Woman Was Just Sentenced To Prison For Feeding Stray Cats

In order for any society to function smoothly, the vast majority of the people need to behave at least somewhat rationally.  Of course there are always going to be exceptions, and we understand that, but most of us operate under the assumption that most of the people that we are going to encounter in our daily lives are not going to act like nutjobs.  Unfortunately, that may not be a safe assumption any longer.  As our society literally degenerates right in front of our eyes, it seems like someone has opened up the barn doors and let out all the crazies.  And the truth is that “our leaders” are some of the best examples of this phenomenon.  Just look at some of the winners that we have running for president.  Quite a few of them are far more qualified for the insane asylum than they are for the highest office in the land.  Of course it doesn’t end with our politicians.  All across this country, it seems like people in positions of power can’t think straight any longer.

If you doubt this, just consider what just happened to a 79-year-old woman in Ohio named Nancy Segula.  When her neighbor moved away, he left a couple cats behind, and they became very hungry.  So Segula would feed them and care for them, because she didn’t want them to suffer.  Well, eventually one of her neighbors found out about this, and the animal warden was called…

“It began in 2017 with me feeding stray kitties. I used to have a neighbor that had a couple cats and he moved away so he left them,” Segula said. “I would always feed them and care for them because I was worried about them and I’m a cat lover. Once my neighbors got upset about it, they called the animal warden.”

She got her first citation in 2017.

Segula wasn’t about to abandon the suffering cats, and so she just kept on feeding them, and the neighbors kept calling the animal warden.

Over time, she received a total of four citations.

Unfortunately, the most recent citation required her to appear in court, and when she did a judge sentenced her to 10 days in jail…

Her latest citation required her to appear before Magistrate Jeffrey Short last week. He sentenced her to 10 days in the Cuyahoga County Jail.

“I couldn’t believe what my mother was telling me. She gets 10 days in the county jail, I couldn’t believe it,” said Dave Pawlowski, her son son. “I’m sure people hear about the things that happen downtown in that jail. And they are going to let my 79-year-old mother go there?”

Seriously?

Is this what our society has become?

Putting a 79-year-old woman in prison for feeding stray cats is stone cold crazy, but this judge in Ohio is actually doing it.

Are we going to start putting all senior citizens that feed cats in prison?  If so, then my parents are in all sorts of trouble, because they have been feeding stray cats for many, many years.

Having compassion for those in need should never be against the law.  In previous articles, I have written about how many major cities in America are now passing laws against feeding the homeless.

Well I am sorry – if I see someone in need and I want to give that person some food, no law is going to stop me from doing so.

Let me switch gears for a moment and share another example of the craziness that is sweeping across America.

Within the last few days, police in Pennsylvania arrested a woman that was caught urinating on the potatoes in her local Wal-Mart.  The following comes directly from the West Mifflin Borough Police Department…

On July 25, 2019 at 08:41 hours a West Mifflin Police Officer responded to Walmart in West Mifflin for a criminal mischief report. The Officer was met by a Walmart Loss Prevention officer who reported the following incident.

The LPO was informed by an employee that on the day before he noticed urine on the floor near the potatoes in the produce area. The LPO then pulled video that depicted a female at approximately 22:10 hours on July 24, 2019 urinating in the potato bins. The LPO then reported the incident to the West Mifflin Police.

The Detectives of the West Mifflin Police Department investigated the incident and were able to identify the actor as Grace Brown and made contact with her. Ms. Brown along with her attorney came to the station where she identified herself as the person urinating on the potatoes.

Who in the world would do such a thing?

Perhaps she really had to go, and perhaps she didn’t realize that Wal-Mart has restrooms.

But it is probably much more likely that this woman was following an extremely disturbing new trend that has emerged on social media.  According to CNN, it originally started with ice cream…

It’s just flat-out gross.

People go into grocery stores, open a container of ice cream at random, lick the top, put it back in the freezer and then just walk away. Oh, and then they put a video of the entire grotesque display on social media for all to see.

The #IceCreamChallenge, as it’s now called, is just one of many social media trends over the past couple of years that has had people (mostly young people) doing questionable things and documenting them online.

But since that time this “challenge” has spread to all sorts of other consumer food products.  The more disgusting someone can be as they defile food, the more views and likes they will get on their social media profiles, and that is apparently the goal.

Of course this is yet another sign that America is degenerating into an “idiocracy”, because you would have to be an idiot to think that defiling food in a grocery store is a good idea, and you would have to be an idiot to be entertained by watching someone else do so.

Needless to say, I am not very optimistic about the future of this country, and I would love to hear someone make a convincing case that we will be able to turn things around any time soon.

Because right now our nation literally appears to be going completely crazy, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

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

More Than 80,000 Earthquakes Have Hit California Since July 4th, And The Aftershocks Are Headed “Toward The Garlock Fault”

The recent seismic activity in the state of California has taken a strange turn.  According to the Los Angeles Times, there have been more than 80,000 earthquakes in the state since July 4th, and most of those quakes were aftershocks of the two very large events that hit the Ridgecrest area early in the month.  Over the past couple of weeks, however, a very unusual pattern has begun to emerge.  We have started to see aftershocks creep toward two of the largest fault lines in southern California, and this is making seismologists very nervous.  The fact that we are seeing aftershocks “approaching the Owens Valley fault” is definitely alarming, but of far more concern is the fact that the Ridgecrest aftershocks are also headed “toward the Garlock fault”.  The following comes from a local California news source…

According to a Los Angeles Times article , aftershocks of the magnitude 7.1 earthquake near Ridgecrest have been creeping into areas close to two major earthquake faults which is concerning for some seismologists on whether it could trigger another huge temblor.

“Some aftershocks have rumbled northwest of the Searles Valley earthquake, approaching the Owens Valley fault. That fault triggered an earthquake of perhaps magnitude 7.8 or 7.9 in 1872, one of the largest in California’s modern record,” the article explains. “The Ridgecrest aftershocks have also headed southeast toward the Garlock fault, a lesser-known fault capable of producing an earthquake of magnitude 8 or more. The fault along the northern edge of the Mojave Desert can send shaking south and west into Bakersfield and Ventura and Los Angeles counties.”

In the end, this could turn out to be nothing, but there are a couple of reasons why we want to keep a very close eye on the Garlock fault.

First of all, the Garlock fault is the second largest fault line in the entire state of California, and it is a major threat to southern California.

Secondly, the Garlock fault runs directly into the San Andreas fault, and many believe that a major quake along one could potentially trigger a major quake along the other.

If you are not familiar with the Garlock fault, the following is some basic information from Wikipedia…

The Garlock Fault marks the northern boundary of the area known as the Mojave Block, as well as the southern ends of the Sierra Nevada and the valleys of the westernmost Basin and Range province. Stretching for 250 kilometers (160 mi), it is the second-longest fault in California and one of the most prominent geological features in the southern part of the state.

The Garlock Fault runs from a junction with the San Andreas Fault in the Antelope Valley, eastward to a junction with the Death Valley Fault Zone in the eastern Mojave Desert. It is named after the historic mining town of Garlock, founded in 1894 by Eugene Garlock and now a ghost town.

So exactly what would a major quake along the Garlock fault look like?

Here is how the Los Angeles Times described what a “worst-case scenario” would look like…

A worst-case scenario would be a magnitude 7.7 earthquake that begins on the eastern end of the Garlock fault in eastern San Bernardino County and unlocks the fault to the southwest, bringing severe shaking to towns such as California City and Tehachapi; Edwards Air Force Base and Lancaster would see very strong shaking. Even Santa Clarita and the San Fernando Valley would see strong shaking, with much of the L.A. Basin and the San Gabriel Valley seeing moderate shaking — worse than what L.A. encountered last week.

No, that is definitely not a “worst-case scenario” for the Garlock fault, but without a doubt a major quake along the fault would be far more destructive than the earthquakes that we just witnessed on July 4th and 5th.

We were told that those earthquakes “did not cause much damage”, but now we are learning that those quakes actually “caused an estimated $200 million in damage”…

The powerful earthquake that rocked California earlier this month caused an estimated $200 million in damage.

The cost of damage from the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit southeastern California on July 5 and foreshocks that came a day earlier was estimated by catastrophe modeling business Karen Clark & Company.

So if relatively minor earthquakes can cause that much economic damage, what would an earthquake 1,000 times more powerful do?

Because someday “the Big One” is going to hit the San Andreas fault, and it is going to release so much energy that the quakes that we witnessed this month won’t even be worth comparing to it.  In fact, if a magnitude 9.1 earthquake were to hit southern California, it would be exactly 1000 times more powerful than the magnitude 7.1 quake that happened back on July 5th.

And even though it isn’t likely, scientists did admit that the large earthquakes that happened earlier this month could trigger a quake on the San Andreas fault…

Scientists knew almost immediately that two large quakes that hit near Ridgecrest earlier this month did not come from the San Andreas. But ever since, they’ve been studying whether the quakes could cause more seismic activity from other faults — including the San Andreas nearly 100 miles away. A new calculation conducted in recent weeks at the U.S. Geological Survey showed that there’s an extremely remote chance the San Andreas could be triggered from the Ridgecrest quakes.

Hopefully it will not happen any time soon, but seismologists assure us that it is only a matter of time before “the Big One” strikes California.  They have repeatedly warned us that the San Andreas fault is “locked and loaded” and that it has the potential to “unzip all at once”.  And when that day finally arrives, scientists have determined that the ground level could drop by up to 3 feet, and that would result in vast portions of southern California suddenly being covered by the Pacific Ocean.

We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and we are witnessing major earthquakes and enormous volcanic eruptions all over the globe on a daily basis now.

For a long time the United States had been spared, but on July 4th and 5th that suddenly changed.

Since that time, there have been more than 80,000 earthquakes in the state of California, and this is just the beginning of the shaking that is coming.

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

What America Really Needs Is A Lot More Love

This is a very difficult article for me to write.  I cannot remember a time when there was so much hatred in America.  We are a deeply, deeply divided nation, and those divisions are constantly being deepened by all the strife and discord that the mainstream media, our entertainment industry and our politicians are stirring up.  Because of what I do, I spend countless hours on the Internet, and everywhere I go I see hatred.  There is something about this digital world that we have created that makes people feel comfortable saying things that they would never say during normal social interactions, and it is truly frightening to see what is really in people’s hearts.  If we allow all of this hatred to continue to grow, it will ultimately destroy us.

A house divided will surely fall.  The greatest politician that America has ever seen could come along with the greatest political plan in the history of the world, but if we can’t get along and work together, no plan is going to work.  So if we insist on having a society where we all hate one another, we might as well forget about talking about solutions, because they will be useless.

That doesn’t mean that we all have to agree with one another.  Today, many Americans believe that in order to “love” someone you must agree with them, but that is absolutely absurd.  None of us are ever going to agree 100 percent on everything, but we can still care about one another and work with one another to make our country a better place.

Yes, I understand that there are fundamental differences on the most important issues facing our nation today, and I write about those issues all the time.  And it is exceedingly important to be engaged in the battle for the direction of our nation, because if we stay on the path that we are currently on there will be no future for America.  So I am definitely not saying that you shouldn’t fight for the future of our children and our grandchildren.  In fact, I wish that there were millions more concerned Americans that were passionate about changing things.

And let me be very clear about the evil that permeates our society today.  Right now, there are lots of people that are truly evil in positions of power, and that is a major problem.  In fact, I believe that future generations will look back on this time in history with horror.

But just because there are very evil people that want to take our nation in the completely wrong direction, does that mean that we should hate them?

Of course the answer to that question should be obvious to everyone.  Hatred is not the solution for hatred.  The only thing that conquers hate is love, and we need to learn how to love those that disagree with us, that persecute us and that try to mistreat us.

But that is not what I see in America today, and the world of politics is a perfect example of what I am talking about.  We are encouraged to pick one side or the other (even though both sides may be wrong much of the time), and then once we have picked a side we are trained to absolutely loathe those on the other side.

Just think about it.  How many on the left do you think actually love Donald Trump, his family and his supporters?

Alternatively, how many on the right do you think truly love Hillary Clinton, her family and her supporters?

Once again, it is completely acceptable to criticize the ideas, policies and actions of our politicians.  I do it all the time, and we need to hold all of our politicians to the same standards no matter if they are on “our team” or not.

But there is a world of difference between being critical of someone’s ideas and hating that individual.

I understand that it can be very difficult to love someone when they are contributing to the destruction of our nation, our way of life and everything that previous generations worked so hard to build.  But if we ever want to have any hope of turning things around, that is what we must learn to do.

Hatred never rescued anyone from the darkness, but love changes hearts on a daily basis.

Sadly, political hatred is just one of the forms of hatred that is rapidly growing in our society today.  We are being divided in just about every way that you can possibly imagine, and those fueling these divisions seem to take great joy in doing so.

In particular, one form of hatred that greatly disgusts me is racism, but I see it constantly on the Internet.  Millions upon millions of Americans have decided that it is okay to hate someone because of the color of their skin, and I will never understand that.  Countless others spew incredibly vile things about particular nations or nationalities, and that even includes some of the most prominent “religious leaders” in the United States today.

There is no place in America for any of this.  I wrote an entire chapter condemning racism in my most recent book, and I will continue to fight against racism wherever I find it.  No matter where they live or what they look like, every single person on this planet is of immense value.  We were all created for a reason, we all have something to contribute, and none of us is beyond redemption no matter how badly we have gotten off course.

For a moment I want you to imagine something.  In your mind, try to picture what this world would look like if we all greatly loved God and greatly loved one another.  I understand that it may be extremely difficult to imagine, because such a society would be so radically different from what we have today.

But that is what America ultimately needs.  We can sit around all day debating various potential solutions to the great problems that our nation is facing, but all of those potential solutions will turn out to be worthless if hatred continues to grow in our society.

I don’t recall ever ending an article with song lyrics, but today I am going to make an exception.  “Love Is The Answer” was originally written by Todd Rundgren, but it became a huge hit when it was later released in 1979 by England Dan and John Ford Coley.  Here are the lyrics, and I hope that they inspire you as much as they have inspired me…

Name your price
A ticket to paradise
I can’t stay here any more
And I’ve looked high and low
I’ve been from shore to shore to shore
If there’s a short cut I’d have found it
But there’s no easy way around it

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer

Who knows why
Someday we all must die
We’re all homeless boys and girls
And we are never heard
It’s such a lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely world
People turn their heads and walk on by
Tell me, is it worth just another try?

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer (let it shine)
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer (you know the answer is love)

Tell me, are we alive, or just a dying planet?
What are the chances?
Ask the man in your heart for the answers

And when you feel afraid, love one another
When you’ve lost your way, love one another
When you’re all alone, love one another
When you’re far from home, love one another
When you’re down and out, love one another
All your hope’s run out, love one another
When you need a friend, love one another
When you’re near the end, love
We got to love, we got to love one another

Light of the world, you got to shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all (know that love can save the day)
Set us free
Love is the answer
(Just give it, just one more chance)

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer (love, love, love)
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer

Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer

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

“California Is Being Overrun By Rodents” – And In This Case We Aren’t Talking About The Politicians

California is being hit by a “plague of rats”, and some commentators are suggesting that this is exactly what they deserve.  In fact, some have even gone so far as to suggest that the name of Los Angeles should be formally changed to “Los Ratas” because the rat problem is so severe there.  From Crescent City in the north all the way down to Chula Vista in the south, the rats are seemingly everywhere.  There are millions of them, and the more poison that people put out the more they seem to multiply.  The state of California has never seen anything like this before, and it is getting worse with each passing month.

At this point, things are already so bad that many are calling for Governor Newsom “to declare a public health emergency”…

Pest control and public health experts are calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a public health emergency over what they say is a sharp rise in the state’s rodent population.

“California is being overrun by rodents – and without immediate emergency action by state and local government, we face significant economic costs and risk a public health crisis,” said Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California, at a news conference Tuesday at City Hall in downtown Los Angeles.

It would be difficult to overstate the severity of this crisis.  According to a recent survey of California pest control companies, rat service requests are up “as much as 60% in the last 12 months”.

If you have ever lived some place where you can literally hear rodents crawling in the walls and in the ceiling, then you know how deeply unsettling it can be.

And in some instances, rodents are literally starting to fall out of the ceilings in California.  Just consider this example…

Maggots and mice have fallen onto inmates’ dining tables at a California state prison where holes in the roof also allow rain and bird droppings to seep through and streak the walls, according to an inmate lawsuit that charges the state isn’t moving fast enough to repair deteriorating prisons.

California has committed $260 million over four years to repair leaking roofs and clear dangerous mold at more than two dozen deteriorating prisons where the cost of overdue maintenance is pegged at more than $1 billion.

A similar incident occurred at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Los Angeles last month while a customer was trying to order her dinner…

Customers at a Los Angeles, Calif., Buffalo Wild Wings were in for a stomach-churning incident when a rat reportedly fell from the ceiling and landed on a table.

Alisha Norman, who was visiting Los Angeles from Texas, was getting ready to order at the chain restaurant when she heard something crawling above her, she told FOX35. Soon after, a rat fell and landed on a menu on the table.

This isn’t some third world country that we are talking about.  The state of California is the wealthiest state in the entire country, and they are being absolutely overrun by rats.

Of course it certainly doesn’t help that many California cities have a major trash collection problem.  The following was published by NBC Los Angeles earlier this year…

Rat-infested piles of rotting garbage left uncollected by the city of Los Angeles, even after promises to clean it up, are fueling concerns about a new epidemic after last year’s record number of flea-borne typhus cases.

Even the city’s most notorious trash pile, located between downtown LA’s busy Fashion and Produce districts, continues to be a magnet for rats after it was cleaned up months ago. The rodents can carry typhus-infected fleas, which can spread the disease to humans through bacteria rubbed into the eyes or cuts and scrapes on the skin, resulting in severe flu-like symptoms.

As a result of all the trash and filth, even Los Angeles City Hall has become overrun by rats…

Officials at Los Angeles’ City Hall are considering ripping all of the building’s carpets up, as rats and fleas are said to be running riot in its halls.

A motion was filed by Council President Herb Wesson on Wednesday to enact the much needed makeover amid a typhus outbreak in the downtown area.

Wesson said a city employee had contracted the deadly bacterial disease at work, and now he’s urging officials to investigate the ‘scope’ of the long-running pest problem at the council building.

When there is a huge problem like this that gets national attention, it is inevitable that California legislators will throw a lot more money at the problem, but that hasn’t worked so well in other cases.

For instance, two years ago New York Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a 32 million dollar program to fight the rat problem in his city, but that didn’t help.  In fact, the number of rat complaints actually increased by 38 percent last year…

New York, like other metropolitan cities including Philadelphia and Chicago, faces a major rat problem.

According to the New York Times, rat complaints have risen from 12,617 in 2014 to 17,353 last year. That’s a 38% jump citywide — and comes even after Mayor Bill de Blasio allocated $32 million in 2017 to reduce the number of the rodents.

And things are particularly bad on the Upper West Side.  They may have mountains of money over there, but they just can’t seem to keep the rats away…

OpenTheBooks.com analyzed the number of calls for rats to 311 and found that, according to the Post, “the rats are running wild in this fancy area.”

A local publication called West Side Rag agreed that the Upper West Side has an extreme rat problem. “We’re like the Tom Brady of rats. All we do is win,” an article reads.

Despite all of our advanced technology, we cannot even handle the rats.

Somehow it seems fitting that the rat epidemic is most severe in the areas that are on the cutting edge of America’s social decline.  In life, you can try to run from the consequences of your actions, but they will catch up with you eventually.

As I have discussed previously, under ideal conditions rats can multiply very, very rapidly.  In fact, it has been estimated that two healthy rats could potentially become 482 million rats in just three years.

Perhaps Californians should just give up and let the rats take over.  After all, they couldn’t possibly do any worse than the politicians in the state are currently doing.

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

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