Money

44 Numbers From 2018 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Was 2018 everything that you expected it to be?  Every year contains surprises, but 2018 truly turned out to be a year that we will never forget.  Over the past 12 months we witnessed great political shaking, Wall Street experienced the worst downturn that we have seen since 2008, the crust of our planet was rattled by an increasing number of major seismic events, social decay spread like wildfire, and America continued to become even more divided as a nation.  In comparison, 2017 was rather bland and boring, and I truly believe that one day we will look back on 2018 as a major turning point.

It is amazing that 12 months has flown by already.  It seems like the years just keep getting faster, and perhaps that is because we are all getting older.

In any event, the following are 44 numbers from 2018 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 One study found that the average American spends 86 hours a month on a cellphone.

#2 A different study discovered that 37 percent of all Americans have eaten fast food within the last 24 hours.

#3 90 percent of the beer that Americans drink is produced by just 2 gigantic corporations.

#4 McDonalds feeds approximately 70 million people a day globally.  Pornhub gets more than 78 million visits a day.

#5 60 percent of all Americans actually believe that they have seen a ghost.

#6 The middle class continues to decline, and at this point half of all American workers make less than $30,533 a year.

#7 During the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats were able to pick up 40 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Those that were forecasting a “red tsunami” were completely and totally wrong.

#8 Kevin Spacey’s incredibly creepy YouTube video entitled “Let Me Be Frank” in which he promises that he will never be held accountable for his actions has already been viewed more than 8 million times.

#9 Since 2007, the total amount of student loan debt in America has nearly tripled.

#10 The suicide rate in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 1999.

#11 Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for Americans from age 15 to age 24.

#12 Netflix recently made a deal to renew streaming of “Friends” for another year for 100 million dollars.

#13 According to the United Nations Population Fund, 40 percent of all births in the U.S. now happen outside of marriage. But if you go back to 1970, that figure was sitting at just 10 percent.

#14 13 million households in the United States do not always have enough food to eat.  So if you have enough food to eat every day, you should consider yourself to be very blessed.

#15 According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, almost 1 out of every 4 children in rural areas is currently living in poverty.

#16 At this point, almost 52 percent of all children live in a home that receives monthly help from the federal government.

#17 Over half a million people are homeless in the United States right now.

#18 Today, a million Americans are living in their RVS, and that number is rising with each passing year.

#19 Social decay is clearly evident even in our most prosperous cities.  One recent investigation found 300 piles of human feces on the streets of downtown San Francisco.

#20 62 percent of all U.S. jobs do not pay enough to support a middle class lifestyle.

#21 In 1980, the average American worker’s debt was 1.96 times larger than his or her monthly salary. Today, that number has ballooned to 5.00.

#22 Over half the country now receives more in government transfer payments than they pay in taxes.

#23 According to one recent study, the “rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991”.

#24 More than 100 churches in the United States are dying every single week.

#25 If you go back to 1986, just 10 percent of all young adults were “religiously unaffiliated”, but now that number has jumped all the way to 39 percent.

#26 According to one recent survey, Americans from the age of 18 to the age of 29 favor Democrats over Republicans by a 66 percent to 32 percent margin.

#27 One study found that one-third of all American teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year.

#28 The number of married couples with children in the U.S. just reached a 56 year low.

#29 In the city of Baltimore, approximately one out of every four babies is born as an opioid addict.

#30 According to the New York Times, approximately 110 million Americans have a sexually-transmitted disease right now.

#31 It is being projected that the total amount of plastic in the oceans of the world will exceed the total weight of all fish by the year 2050.

#32 90 percent of all seabirds in the world now have plastic in their stomachs.  Back in 1960, that number was sitting at just 5 percent.

#33 In August, we learned that the number of global earthquakes over the last 30 days had risen to a level that was 50 percent above normal.

#34 In September, an all-time record high seven named storms were swirling across the globe simultaneously.

#35 In October, we witnessed the third largest single day point crash in stock market history on the exact same day that the third most powerful hurricane in U.S. history made landfall.

#36 In November, the Camp Fire destroyed 14,000 homes and businesses in northern California.  It was the most destructive wildfire in the history of the state.

#37 According to the official Twitter account of Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, they had wind chills of between -70 and -75 degrees on Thanksgiving morning.

#38 In the aftermath of the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rattled Anchorage, the state of Alaska was shaken by more than 1,400 earthquakes.

#39 In early December, the largest earthquake in 45 years hit eastern Tennessee.

#40 During the last full week before Christmas, the Dow fell 1,655 points.  That was the worst week for the stock market since the financial crisis of 2008.

#41 The National Retail Federation was projecting that total Christmas spending would surpass $465,000,000,000 in 2018. Only 25 countries on the entire planet have a GDP that is greater than that number.

#42 In 2017, the Dow was either up or down by 1 percent or more just 8 times.  In 2018, it happened 64 times.  Volatility has returned to Wall Street in a major way, and that is a really bad sign.

#43 A recent survey of corporate financial officers discovered that 82 percent of them believe that a recession will have started by the end of 2020.

#44 During 2018, the U.S. national debt increased by nearly 1.4 trillion dollars.  We are now almost 22 trillion dollars in debt, and there is no end to our debt problems on the horizon.

Get Prepared NowAbout 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.

It’s Trump vs. Schumer for all the marbles, and someone is leaving this cage match completely neutered

The stage is set for a battle of political willpower that could potentially be unlike anything that we have ever seen before in American history.  Last Tuesday, there was a shouting match in the Oval Office that changed everything.  During a very heated exchange with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, President Trump boldly declared that the border wall will get built and that he would be “proud to shut down the government for border security”.  The Democrats are going to take control of the House of Representatives in January, and so Trump realizes that it is now or never for his top campaign promise.  If he doesn’t get funding for the wall now, he will never get it, and he will go into the 2020 election without anything to show the voters on his signature issue.

Trump has essentially painted himself into a corner, and maybe that is what he intended to do.  Perhaps he understands that this is the time to take a stand, and perhaps he is ready to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal.

But if he is not willing to do whatever it takes, then he should never have made such bold statements.  Because if he backs down now, he will lose all credibility with millions upon millions of American voters.

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has put himself in the exact same position.  In the aftermath of Tuesday’s shouting match, Schumer appeared on the Senate floor and unequivocally declared that there will be no money for a border wall…

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor on Thursday that there will be no funding for President Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border because the Democrats in Congress will never allow it.

“I want to be crystal clear. There will be no additional appropriations to pay for the border wall. It is done,” Schumer said.

There is no possibility of a compromise with Trump in that statement.

And he doubled down on his position during a subsequent interview with NBC News…

Schumer argued that there are not enough votes for the full $5 billion authorization in either the House or Senate, a point that Republicans have contested. Accusing the president of putting government funding at risk to “throw a bone to his base,” Schumer said that it’s up to Republicans to get Trump to the table.

“They just have to have the guts to tell President Trump he’s off on the deep end here and all he is going to get with his temper tantrum is a shutdown. He will not get a wall,” Schumer said.

Somebody is going to come out of this as a big loser.

Will it be Chuck Schumer or will it be Donald Trump?

Whoever loses this cage match will essentially be neutered politically.

In the end, this fight doesn’t have a thing to do with money.  The five billion dollars that Trump is asking for is a pittance when compared to the enormous sums of money that are poured into other programs.  If Trump was asking for five billion dollars for roads that would be no problem at all.

Ultimately, what this is about is a battle of the wills.  Donald Trump wants a border wall and the Democrats are absolutely determined not to give him one.

And so far the Democrats have succeeded.  As Ann Coulter has noted, some fencing has been put up, but no construction of any portions of the border wall has taken place…

Coulter, who also writes a syndicated column, linked to an article in the Washington Post that details what new construction has occurred along the U.S.-Mexico border. The article reveals that none of the wall Trump pledged to build in his 2016 presidential campaign has been built.

Some new fencing — not a wall — has been erected in Calexico, Calif. But this area to fence was identified by the Border Patrol in 2009 and the material is “bollard fencing,” which is hollow steel beams spaced several inches apart, reported The Post.

So this is it.

This is the moment when Trump will really show us how committed he is to a border wall, because if he doesn’t get funding now he will never, ever get it once the Democrats control the House.

And in order to get that funding, Donald Trump is going to have to force a government shutdown, and at this point it looks like that is precisely what is going to happen.  The following comes from the Hill…

It’s a perilous moment for the Grand Old Party. Either Trump folds and backs off his demand for the wall — the signature promise of his 2016 campaign — or the government will shut down over the holidays.

“The odds are 65/35 we’re shutting down. I’m not optimistic we’re going to see some kind of compromise on appropriations on Homeland Security,” said Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.), the freshman representative to the GOP leadership team. “I don’t see that they’re going to get done bickering.”

Like previous government shutdowns, not that much will actually change for the first few days.

But the longer a government shutdown lasts, the more painful it will become.

Things will really start getting hairy once some people eventually stop receiving government checks, and it will take a tremendous amount of resolve to keep going at that point.

This could be a defining point in Donald Trump’s presidency.  If he is a man of his word, he will force a government shutdown and fight for what he believes.

But if he caves and gives the Democrats everything that they want once again, the entire nation will know that he is just another typical Republican.

Get Prepared NowAbout 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.

Democrats Are Drooling With Glee Over 2 New Legal Developments That They Believe Could End The Trump Presidency

There never was any “collusion with Russia”, but the Mueller investigation opened the door for investigators to keep turning over rocks, and it was inevitable that they were eventually going to find something.  In America today, we are governed by literally millions of laws, rules and regulations, and nobody has more laws that they must follow than the president of the United States.  So if the Deep State really wants to get the resident of the White House, there are lots of ways that they can do it.  Over the past several days, there have been a couple of new legal developments that potentially represent great threats to the Trump presidency, and Democrats are drooling with delight.

The first development involves a potential violation of campaign finance laws.  In August, lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to arranging payments to two women “at the direction” of Donald Trump.  A $130,000 payment was made through a shell company to Stormy Daniels, and it was arranged that a $150,000 payment would be made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal through American Media Inc., which is the parent company of the National Enquirer.  It was ruled that these payments were made “for the principal purpose of influencing” the election, and it is one of the reasons why Michael Cohen is going to prison for three years.

Personally, I am quite skeptical that these hush money payments constitute “campaign expenses” which must be reported, but this is the interpretation that is being pushed by the Deep State, and it is being widely accepted by the mainstream media and by members of both political parties.

In August 2015, there was a meeting between Michael Cohen, American Media Inc. CEO David Pecker and “at least one other member of the campaign” during which a plan to “catch and kill” negative stories about Trump was discussed.  According to NBC News, it has been confirmed that the “other member” in the room was Trump himself…

As part of a nonprosecution agreement disclosed Wednesday by federal prosecutors, American Media Inc., the Enquirer’s parent company, admitted that “Pecker offered to help deal with negative stories about that presidential candidate’s relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

The “statement of admitted facts” says that AMI admitted making a $150,000 payment “in concert with the campaign,” and says that Pecker, Cohen and “at least one other member of the campaign” were in the meeting. According to a person familiar with the matter, the “other member” was Trump.

With Cohen and Pecker now both cooperating with federal investigators, Trump could potentially be in a huge amount of trouble, and the left is loving it.

As a former assistant U.S. attorney explained to NBC News, it would essentially be a slam dunk to prove “a conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud”…

Daniel Goldman, an NBC News analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney said the agreement doesn’t detail what Trump said and did in the meeting. “But if Trump is now in the room, as early as August of 2015 and in combination with the recording where Trump clearly knows what Cohen is talking about with regarding to David Pecker, you now squarely place Trump in the middle of a conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud.”

But once again, that is only true if the hush money payments actually constituted “campaign expenses”, and it is my opinion that they do not.

Meanwhile, federal authorities have also opened up a new investigation into potential corruption by President Trump’s inauguration committee.  The following comes from USA Today…

The investigation is being led by federal prosecutors in Manhattan and is examining whether donors gave money in return for access to Donald Trump and his administration, the Wall Street Journal and CNN reported.

The Journal, citing unnamed officials, reports the probe is in its early stages but aims to determine whether some of the donors to Trump’s $107 million inauguration fund attempted to gain influence within the administration on policy decisions, something that could violate federal corruption laws.

This new investigation never would have occurred if federal authorities had not already been investigating Michael Cohen.

Reportedly, they came across some potentially incriminating information when they raided his home, office and hotel room in April…

During the April raids on Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room, federal investigators discovered a taped conversation between Cohen and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, who worked with the inaugural committee, the WSJ reported.

The contents of the recording are unclear but Wolkoff, according to the Journal, voiced concerns over how some of the inaugural funds were being spent.

During the Nixon administration, the Department of Justice ruled that a sitting president could not be indicted, but now there are quite a few Democrats that are calling for that ruling to be “reevaluated”.  One of those Democrats is Representative Adam Schiff…

‘I think the Justice Department needs to re-examine that OLC opinion, the Office of Legal Counsel opinion, that you cannot indict a sitting president under circumstances in which the failure to do so may mean that person escapes justice,’ Schiff told CNN on Wednesday, hours after Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to breaking campaign finance laws and other matters.

In the short-term, it is probably unlikely that Trump will be indicted, and so if Democrats want to get rid of him they will need to go down the road of impeachment.

Now that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have taken control of the House, they could probably pull off a vote to impeach Trump.  But the tricky part would be the Senate, because the Republicans still have a majority there.

But it is a very small majority, and it would only take a handful of Republican votes to remove Trump from office.

Let us hope that the Democrats do not decide to pursue impeachment, because that would only create even more division in a country that is already greatly divided.

We live in very troubled times, and unfortunately things are likely to become even more troubled in 2019.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Put yourself in their shoes for a moment.

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

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

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

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

And some are actually embracing the new system…

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

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

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

Wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unstable Planet: Anchorage, Alaska Is Devastated By A Giant 7.0 Earthquake – Is The West Coast Next?

We just got more evidence that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  On Friday a magnitude 7.0 earthquake destroyed homes, ripped apart roads and destroyed infrastructure all throughout Anchorage, Alaska.  According to the USGS, the earthquake hit at 8:29 AM and the epicenter was approximately 7 miles north of Anchorage.  That quake was followed by a highly destructive magnitude 5.7 aftershock just a little while later.  Alaska Governor Bill Walker has declared a state of emergency, and the entire region is in a state of chaos.  Unfortunately, as global seismic activity continues to increase, more quakes like this are inevitable.  Like Alaska, the entire west coast of the United States sits directly along the “Ring of Fire”, and many have warned that “the Big One” is coming sooner rather than later.

Tonight, large numbers of Anchorage residents are suddenly homeless, and that includes Alaska’s most famous politician…

Light fixtures fell, glass shattered, roadways and supermarket aisles were awash from food spilled from broken jars. Video images showed some roadways had collapsed.  One man tweeted a photo of his toppled chimney and a local television station showed its studio filled with debris.

Former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tweeted, saying her family is intact but her “house is not.”

At this point it is extremely difficult to get around Anchorage.  Numerous roads were shredded by the quake and that includes the only road to Wasilla…

The quake was so strong it broke windows, cracked buildings and knocked local news station KTUU off air. Several highway and local roads crumbled in the temblor, stranding cars in the asphalt mess. The shake also broke up the only road connecting Anchorage and the nearby towns of Wasilla and Palmer.

It is going to take an extended period of time for authorities to assess the economic damage and to figure out how many human casualties there were.

Many took cover under desks and in closets as the shaking happened, but those caught out in the open didn’t have anywhere to go.

One local resident named Melissa Lohr said that it “felt like the ground was gonna open up” underneath her…

“It felt like my car was uncontrollably sliding left and right and I just didn’t understand because it was going perfectly fine up until then. It felt like the ground was gonna open up underneath you,” Lohr said.

In the aftermath of this Anchorage earthquake, many are wondering how long it will be before the west coast is struck by a major quake.

And the truth is that we have already been seeing quite a bit of shaking.  In fact, a rather sizable earthquake did hit southern California very early on Thursday morning…

A 4.1 earthquake has rattled California and parts of Mexico, with San Diego among the cities hit.

The earthquake struck California at 5.48am, waking up many residents in the south of the state and north-west Mexico. One resident said on earthquake tracking website EMSC-CSEM: “The roof creaked and the ground rumbled.” Another reported: “It woke me up.”

Those that have been living in California have been hearing about “the Big One” for decades, but it hasn’t happened yet.

So many of them have been lulled into a false sense of security, but that is a huge mistake.

According to Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, when “the Big One” finally does hit, large portions of the coastline could be plunged into the ocean “relatively instantaneously”…

Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, who worked with the Leeper on the study, said the sinking would occur quickly and likely result in part of California being covered by the sea.

“It’s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,” Prof Kirby said. “Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.”

Further north, the Cascadia Subduction Zone is a major concern.

Scientists assure us that someday a massive earthquake will strike along the Cascadia Subduction Zone which will destroy pretty much everything west of Interstate 5.  The following comes from one of my previous articles…

One day it will happen.  With little or no warning, the Cascadia Subduction Zone will produce a catastrophic earthquake and accompanying tsunami that will essentially destroy everything west of Interstate 5 in the Pacific Northwest.  It will be the worst natural disaster up to that point in American history, and as you will see below, the experts are saying that we are completely and utterly unprepared for it.  Of course the San Andreas Fault gets more publicity, but the truth is that the Cascadia Subduction Zone is capable of producing a quake “almost 30 times more energetic” than anything the San Andreas Fault can produce.  The Cascadia Subduction Zone stretches from northern Vancouver Island all the way down to northern California, and one expert recently told CBN News that all of the major cities in the region are essentially “built on a time bomb”…

For years I have been warning about the instability of the west coast, and this earthquake in Alaska should be a major wake up call.

The west coast is home to the core of our tech industry and some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world, but the clock is ticking for that entire region.

Without warning, someday “the Big One” will literally shred the entire coastline, and it will be a disaster unlike anything that we have ever seen before in American history.

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.

Russia And Ukraine Are On The Brink Of War – And Why That Could Lead To World War 3

A respected foreign journalist living in Ukraine is warning that a war that most Americans cannot even imagine “teeters on the razor thin edge of becoming real”.  When Russia opened fire on Ukrainian Navy vessels and captured three of their ships, it made headlines all over the globe.  An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was hastily arranged for Monday at 11 AM, and hopefully there will be a positive outcome from that meeting.  Because right now Moscow and Kiev are on the brink of war, and once a Russian invasion happens there will be no turning back.  At that point the U.S. would have a major decision to make, and if we chose to defend Ukraine that could mean that we would suddenly find ourselves fighting World War 3.

Most people don’t realize that this crisis has been simmering for over a week.  The following is from a U.S. News & World Report article that was posted on November 19th…

A dispute over shipping lanes is threatening to reignite the 4-year-old simmering war between Ukraine and Russia following confrontations sparked by both sides in recent days.

Russian border guards on Monday detained Ukrainian fishing vessels in the Sea of Azov, a strategically important body of water contained to the north by Ukraine, to the west by the Crimean Peninsula and to the east and south by Russia. Monday’s incident came days after Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed Kiev for detaining Russian commercial ships also in the Azov in what he described as “a totally illegal move” and which Kremlin officials have warned may prompt retaliation.

When you realize what has already taken place, it puts the most recent events in an entirely different context.

The Russians blocked the Kerch Strait in retaliation for having had their own commercial vessels detained by the Ukrainian government.

And when the Ukrainians decided to test the Russians by sailing Ukrainian Navy vessels into the Kerch Strait, the Russians decided not to back down.  The following comes from Sky News…

Russia has opened fire on Ukrainian ships and captured three vessels in a major escalation of tensions off the coast of Crimea.

Three sailors have been wounded after the Ukrainian navy said two artillery boats were hit by the strikes in the Black Sea.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko called an emergency session of his war cabinet and said he will propose that parliament declare martial law.

So the truth is that neither side is exactly “innocent” in this situation.

The Kerch Strait is absolutely critical, because it is the only way into and out of the Azov Sea…

The strait connects the Azov Sea with the Black Sea and runs between the Crimean Peninsula and Russia. It’s a shallow, narrow stretch of water just two to three miles (3.2 to 4.8 kilometers) wide at one point near the Chuska landspit.

The strait is an important economic lifeline for Ukraine, as it allows ships leaving the port city of Mariupol to access the Black Sea.

It’s also the the closest point of access for Russia to Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed in 2014. The international community has largely not recognized Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but that did not stop Russia from building a bridge over the Kerch Strait connecting Crimea to mainland Russia. The Kerch Strait bridge was opened in May.

In addition to asking for a declaration of martial law, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has also been gathering with his top military leaders.  Poroshenko is pledging that Ukraine will not take any “offensive” military actions, but he also says that they are ready to defend against any attacks from Russia.

The Russians are accusing Poroshenko of manipulating this crisis in order to pump up his flagging approval ratings for the upcoming presidential elections.  There is a very real possibility that Poroshenko could lose, and he is desperate to stay in office.

Of course the Ukrainians are blaming Russia for everything, and Poroshenko says that what happened on Sunday “was an act of war”…

Finally, Ukraine has called for an urgent UN Security Council meeting over ‘Russian aggression’ while Ukraine’s secretary for national security, Oleksander Turchynov, accused Russia of engaging in an act of war: “We heard reports on incident and have concluded that it was an act of war by Russian Federation against Ukraine”.

At this point, it is unclear what the Russians will do next.

Hopefully they will see that a full-blown invasion of Ukraine would not be wise.

But if they decide that such a war is inevitable, they will move with lightning speed as we have seen in other conflicts.  For example, Russia had already annexed Crimea before the rest of the world even started talking about it.  And we all remember what happened in Georgia.

If and when Russia finally pulls the trigger, their forces will be halfway to Kiev before the mainstream media in the western world even realizes what is happening.

And if Russia does invade, the Trump administration will be under tremendous pressure from Republicans, Democrats and other NATO members to intervene.  Already, there has been some very tough talk from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo…

It’s yet unclear how far the U.S. is willing to go in support for Ukraine. In a joint statement after Klimkin’s meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, both sides “condemned Russia’s aggressive actions against international shipping transiting the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait to Ukrainian ports” and agreed that “Russia’s aggressive activities in the Sea of Azov have brought new security, economic, social, and environmental threats to the entire Azov-Black Sea region.”

But if we directly intervene in a military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, that could very easily trigger World War 3.

Most Americans are not concerned that a conflict between Russia and Ukraine could potentially affect the United States, but the threat is very real.  In fact, according to foreign correspondent Nolan Peterson such a war “teeters on the razor thin edge of becoming real”…

This is the most dangerous moment I’ve seen in Ukraine in years. Tonight, a war that many people in America can only imagine thanks to Hollywood movies, teeters on the razor thin edge of becoming real. Tonight in Ukraine we go to sleep not knowing what tomorrow will bring.

Let us hope for peace, because right now the world is becoming a more chaotic place with each passing day…

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.

November Snow In Texas? Experts Warn Decreased Solar Activity Will Shatter All Global Climate Models

Our sun has been behaving very strangely, and this unusual behavior is really starting to affect our weather patterns.  There have been virtually no sunspots in 2018 as solar activity has dropped to alarmingly low levels.  As a result, our atmosphere has been cooling and shrinking, and experts are warning that we are heading for a bitterly, bitterly cold winter.  And even though the official start of winter is well over a month away, winter weather is already sweeping the nation.  As you will see below, a giant winter storm is about to slam into the east coast, but what is happening in Texas is even more unnerving.  On Wednesday morning, the temperature in San Antonio plummeted to just 23 degrees, and that absolutely shattered the old record…

“This shatters the old record low of 28 degrees set back in 1916,” the National Weather Service tweeted of Wednesday’s weather. Tuesday night just before midnight, the city hit 28 degrees, breaking the previous record of 29 set in 1907, records show.

Typically, November temperatures are significantly warmer. The average high for the month is about 71 degrees and the normal low is 51 degrees. San Antonio’s average low this year has been comparable to other years, but its average high, a cool 66.6 degrees, has been lower than normal.

Over in Houston, things were even stranger.  When Houston residents woke up on Wednesday morning, they were stunned to see snow on the ground…

An incredible sight danced over the cities glistening skyscrapers of Houston this morning and likely caused many to rub their eyes and shake their heads. No, it wasn’t your lying eyes but rather the earliest snowfall ever observed in the city of Houston and surrounding areas.

It’s official, according to the National Weather Service, that Houston has recorded it’s earliest snowfall ever observed — and not just by a day or two but by 10 days! The previous earliest trace snow was November 23rd, 1979.

It isn’t supposed to snow in mid-November in Texas.

Louisiana got snow too.  On Twitter, one resident of West Monroe posted a photo of snow blanketing his vehicle on Wednesday morning, and it quickly went viral.

Something very usual is happening, but the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about it because it doesn’t fit the narratives that they are pushing.

And all over the eastern half of the country, approximately 80 million people are about to be slammed by a perfect example of our new climate reality…

A winter storm that’s already responsible for 2 deaths will bring a messy mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain to portions of the central and eastern U.S. over the next two days. Power outages, travel headaches and school closings are all likely as the storm strengthens.

Over 80 million people live where some level of a winter storm alert is in effect, all the way from Arkansas to Maine over a distance of about 1,500 miles.

Yes, everyone knew that we were headed toward a solar minimum eventually, but solar activity was not supposed to drop off this much so soon.

This extremely unusual decline in solar activity is causing our atmosphere to rapidly cool down and shrink, and this is greatly alarming climate scientists such as Dr. Tony Philipps…

Scientists say Earth’s atmosphere is about to get hit by some record cold – but it’s not because of anything caused by humans. It’s because of a lack of sunspots which means a major decrease in ultraviolet waves coming in our direction.

Dr. Tony Philipps of SpaceWeatherArchive.com says there have been practically no sunspots in 2018, and that’s causing earth’s upper atmosphere to cool down and even shrink.

Another scientist that is sounding the alarm is Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center.  According to him, NASA’s Thermosphere Climate Index is now showing a reading that is “10 times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle”…

To help track the latest developments, Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center and his colleagues recently introduced the “Thermosphere Climate Index.”

The Thermosphere Climate Index (TCI) tells how much heat nitric oxide (NO) molecules are dumping into space. During Solar Maximum, TCI is high (meaning “Hot”); during Solar Minimum, it is low (meaning “Cold”).

“Right now, it is very low indeed … 10 times smaller than we see during more active phases of the solar cycle,” says Mlynczak.

10 times smaller?

That doesn’t sound good.

And according to Mlynczak, this decrease in solar activity could result in “a Space Age record for cold”…

“We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

So I hope that you are ready for a very chilly winter.

Across the Atlantic, another expert that is sounding the alarm is Piers Corbyn.  He believes that the lack of solar activity that we are witnessing could rapidly produce another “mini ice age”…

Solar activity and jet stream forecasts suggest a pattern of cold similar to the historic Mini Ice Age which occurred during the mid-17th century.

The period otherwise known as the Little Ice Age gripped Europe and North America and saw Britons hold frost fairs on the frozen River Thames.

“What we are looking at is a pattern of circulation similar to that which was observed during the mini ice-age,” Mr Corbyn said.

What he is referring to is a period of substantial global cooling that occurred during “the Maunder Minimum”.  If you are not familiar with “the Maunder Minimum”, the following is what Wikipedia has to say about it…

The Maunder Minimum, also known as the “prolonged sunspot minimum”, is the name used for the period around 1645 to 1715 during which sunspots became exceedingly rare, as was then noted by solar observers.

During that time, farming became much more difficult and horrific famines erupted all over the globe.

If our planet is now entering a similar period, we are going to be in very deep trouble very rapidly.  Today, we barely produce enough food to feed the entire globe, and so a major worldwide climate shift could potentially produce unprecedented chaos on a global scale.

So let us hope that solar activity returns to normal soon, because if it doesn’t, the unthinkable is going to begin to happen.

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.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically.  The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

We Are Witnessing The Most Destructive Fire In The History Of California, And “Devil Winds” Threaten To Make Things Even Worse

California has been absolutely devastated by horrific wildfires in recent years, but the state has never seen anything quite like this.  At this moment, three major wildfires are raging, and the Camp Fire in Butte County is already officially the most destructive wildfire in California history.  Thousands of firefighters are desperately trying to contain this fire, but they haven’t had much success.  More than 6,700 structures have already been destroyed, and that shatters the all-time record that was set just last year.  In fact, five of the ten most destructive wildfires in California history have happened within the last two years.  The Camp Fire and the two mammoth fires in southern California have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate from their homes, and authorities are warning that “devil winds” of up to 40 miles per hour could accelerate this crisis in the early morning hours of Monday.

The death toll from these fires continues to rise, and the numbers are being continuously updated.  At this point, the latest official number of deaths is up to 31…

Firefighters battled heavy winds and parched conditions throughout the day in their herculean struggle against the Camp Fire and two blazes in Southern California that have killed at least 31 people, destroyed thousands of homes and forced 250,000 to flee.

But that number is expected to increase, because there are at least 228 people that are unaccounted for right now.

Many of the headlines have been about homes of celebrities that have been destroyed, but that is only a very small part of the story.

The Camp Fire was so wildly out of control that it actually destroyed an entire town.  Once the fire got to the town of Paradise, California it was burning so hot that it peeled the paint off of firetrucks…

The fire has laid waste to the town of Paradise, a community of 30,000 people 90 miles north of Sacramento. The fire burned so hot it peeled the paint off firetrucks, melted tires and blew out windows.

“It’s surreal,” said Deputy Brian Evans, 42, whose house burned down. “The fire was moving very, very, very, very, very rapidly.”

Many residents of Paradise were completely taken by surprise by the fire, and quite a few of them literally had to leave town through a “tunnel of fire”…

“We were surrounded by fire, we were driving through fire on each side of the road,” said police officer Mark Bass, who lives in Paradise and works in neighboring Chico.

Bass evacuated his family and then returned to the fire to help rescue several disabled residents, including a man trying to carry his bedridden wife to safety. “It was just a wall of fire on each side of us, and we could hardly see the road in front of us.”

Sadly, some people didn’t make it.  Most of the dead are from the town of Paradise, and it will be some time before we know the full number of casualties.

Meanwhile in southern California, the Woolsey Fire and the Hill Fire have been causing a tremendous amount of destruction as well…

In Southern California, the Woolsey fire has spread to 83,275 acres and was 10% contained, up from 5% the night before. The smaller Hill Fire covered 4,531 acres and was 75% contained. Together, responsible for the destruction of 179 structures, but another 57,000 are threatened, according to fire officials.

One of the homes that has been destroyed in southern California belongs to my friend L.A. Marzulli.  This is what he had to say about his devastating loss…

It’s me, LA Marzulli, and I’m no longer able to come to you from our undisclosed location, deep in the heart of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Our home, the guest house, the studio, the garden, all our belongings except those things that we put in the fireproof root cellar have been taken by the Woolsey Fire.

Saturday evening, while we were at the Operation Classified Conference in Dallas Texas, Los Angles officials informed us that our home was amongst the many lost in this record breaking fire.

Words can’t describe how we feel. We are of course very very thankful as the things we value most in life (the lives of our daughters, pets and our own lives) were not taken by the fire. Never the less we are in shock at the loss of our home of many many years.

He interviewed me from that studio, and I can’t believe that it is now gone.

Please keep him and everyone affected by these fires in your prayers.

Unfortunately, this crisis is far from over.

Conditions are still extremely dry and the winds are still howling.  Our brave firefighters are doing the best that they can, but these kinds of conditions are perfect for wildfires.

According to Cal Fire spokesman Bill Murphy, the high winds could create “explosive fire behavior” on Monday…

Firefighters battling the blaze with shovels and bulldozers, flame retardants and hoses expected wind gusts up to 40 mph (64 kph) overnight Sunday. Officials said they expect the wind to die down by midday Monday, but there was still no rain in sight.

Cal Fire spokesman Bill Murphy warned that gusty winds predicted into Monday morning could spark “explosive fire behavior.”

This was already one of the worst years for wildfires in all of U.S. history, and these latest fires are the most destructive that we have seen all year.

Our planet is changing, and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense.

Despite all of our advanced technology, we are still very much at the mercy of these natural disasters, and this is yet another reminder of how precious life really is.

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.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots.  It is a premium members-only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically.  The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

+ More