The Real 2012 Doomsday: U.S. Falls To Tyranny…

 by Sam Rolley

UPI

Police release tear gas while blocking the way to City Hall where the Occupy Oakland encampment was dismantled and protesters dispersed, in Oakland, Calif., on Oct. 25.

The past year has been a bad one for democracy, and the Republic that once was the United States seems to live in name only. Because of the extreme abuses of power the Federal government has exercised just in the past year, the people of the Nation have been broken, discouraged and must now only be controlled.

A recent report in the state-run Russia Today cites an instructional military book, Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book (leaked by PublicIntelligence.net) to outline the coming “high-tech crackdown” that may soon befall citizens of the United States deemed unruly.

If you have ever seen a farmer persuade his livestock to bend to his will with less-than-lethal methods such as cattle prods, whips and electric fences, you know how incredibly persuasive they can be to the animals. The U.S.
government also knows a thing or two about controlling groups; unfortunately, the target isn’t unruly livestock, but U.S. citizens.

The report references one device that has already made a military debut in Afghanistan and that will likely become commonplace for domestic crowd control as law enforcement agencies throughout the country become increasingly militarized. The Active Denial System, which is described as a “long range, directed energy, vehicle mounted system that projects an invisible electromagnetic millimeter-wave energy beam beyond small arms range,” can be used as a non-lethal way to create extreme discomfort and quell group dissent.

Other military implements that may soon see use within U.S. borders include Acoustic Hailing Devices that provide “scalable, directional warning tones” causing “auditory damage” and the Distributed Sound and Light Array which “uses a combined laser, non-coherent light, and acoustics to produce a synergistic engagement system.” Other systems can completely disable motor vehicles and emit acoustic waves that make it impossible for crowds to shout without discomfort and nausea.

While many Americans deny that the U.S. government will ever use such weapons on a widespread basis against dissenters, recent developments in the country appear to indicate otherwise. The crackdowns on OWS camps carried out by police in riot/military gear, armed with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, indicate that when large masses of people cry out, no matter what the political agenda, they will be quieted by local, State and/or Federal officials.

Before the crackdowns on the OWS camps, the Federal government demonstrated its willingness to bypass the judiciary system anytime an individual poses a threat to its agenda. In September, the Administration of Barack Obama executed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in the mountains of Yemen with a drone strike. Though he often spoke on behalf of al-Qaida, it could be reasonably assumed that al-Awlaki’s citizenship status gave him the right to trial before execution. The Administration disagrees: Pentagon lawyer Jeh Johnson said of the execution that only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

Johnson’s statement would be less alarming if the Administration — with the help of hawkish neoconservatives like Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) — had not recently passed a military spending bill with provisions that effectively designate American soil a battlefield and every American a possible enemy. The bill gives the President the ability to indefinitely detain terror suspects, but this comes at a time when the lines of what constitutes “terror” are becoming increasingly blurry. The Federal government is currently in active negotiations with members of the Taliban, and Obama has made it clear that anyone who rejects his agenda is considered a “right-wing domestic terrorist.”

How long will it take for Federal government to decide it necessary to carry out al-Awlaki style executions on those deemed “domestic terrorists” as they sit in their homes in the United States? With the increasing use of military drones in U.S. airspace, the idea is not so far-fetched. The same Federal agencies that carried out fatally-flawed operations like those in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in the 1990s now have aerial drones and a license to kill in the name of Homeland Security. Some people may think that the agencies have refined their methods since those days; others have been following news about Operation Fast and Furious, the most recent endeavor by the Department of Justice, and know better.

Those people who do not believe the Federal government is out to harm them by breaking their will, dehumanizing them and bending them to be the subservient masses that will keep it afloat should simply take a flight. If being prodded, poked and virtually stripped naked by poorly trained agents of the Transportation Security Administration is not bad enough, how about having very personal belongings fondled, food stolen and grandmothers groped by the TSA? All are tactics of dehumanization to create subservient masses, and all are things that happened to American travelers last year.

Aside from quashing unruly masses and making problems disappear, the Federal government wants to keep tabs on the information being put out by journalists and bloggers throughout the Nation with a new Homeland Security initiative. According to Russia Today, in a new report, the Department reserves the right to collect personal information from news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

And while Homeland Security is busy putting together a plan to rid the country of any bad press, Congress has been working to sanitize the Internet. Pending legislation like SOPA and the Protect IP Act will effectively give American citizens about as much online freedom as citizens of China.

Some Americans may think that if they are not in the public eye, don’t regularly protest and are not members of al-Qaida, they are not subject to government intrusion. But a recent decision by Magistrate Judge David Noce in United States v. Robinson says that as long as you park your vehicle in public parking lots or use public roadways, law enforcement has the ability to install a GPS tracking device with no warrant to log where you travel if they believe you “may be involved in criminal activities.”

When the First Congress enacted the original Crimes Act in 1790, with only 17 recognized Federal crimes, it may have been reasonable to assume that as long as a person was a law-abiding citizen, he was not at risk of intrusion. Today, though, there are more than 4,500 Federal crimes — and many are so obscure that they are nearly indecipherable. In addition to the 4,500 Federal crimes, there are tens of thousands of Federal regulations. Many people commit criminal acts daily without even knowing they are doing so.

Last year was a very busy one for all of those interested in ending American life as it is and has been known. The United States that was a Republic has already collapsed and has very quietly become a totalitarian regime, complete with a dictator named Obama and a Congress that bends to his will and continually legislates in such a way that would make any totalitarian regime proud. Together they have done everything in their power to undermine the Constitution and name themselves as the all-powerful ruling class. And with the undoing of the ideas of the Founders and the ruination of but a few more checks and balances, they will effectively claim their supremacy.

So what have Americans lost and why does the ruling class have to do away with the Constitution and the rights it gives to every American citizen? It is explained by James Madison, who contended that there was no way American lawmakers could declare themselves a ruling class under the provisions of the Constitution, in the 57^th volume of the Federalist Papers:

If it be asked, what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer: the genius of the whole system; the nature of just and constitutional laws; and above all, the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America — a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

Those who are working so hard to claim themselves a ruling class know that their goal cannot be achieved if there is such a thing as a population that holds dear its “vigilant and manly spirit.” And they know how to slowly break that spirit without alarm by dehumanizing populations — luring people into accepting tyrannical rule in the guise of laws claimed to exist for public safety, homeland security or the better good of humanity. Unlike Madison, they always leave out words like freedom and never discuss the great threats government poses to the people, but contrarily advise vigilance to combat the people’s threat to the government.

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has been warning the public of many of these frightening developments for more than 35 years. Now, as he vies for the Nation’s highest office, many of his predictions have come true. Maybe it is time Americans listened to the “kook,” because those things he said would happen — predictions Americans once considered to be crazy and far-fetched — are now reality. He may be the Nation’s last hope to a path back to some semblance of the Constitutional Republic created by the Founders.

Consequences of Collapse: Access to Critical Medicines Is Disappearing in Greece

By Mac Slavo

SHTFPlan.com

When a nation goes into economic crisis the paradigm to which its people have become accustomed begins to deteriorate. Access to critical supplies becomes difficult, sometimes immediately. In the case of Greece, which has been dealing with a loss of confidence in its debt instruments and economic policy, the collapse of life as Greeks know it has taken place over the last several years.

While we have been fortunate enough to avoid as severe a calamity here in the United States, many of the forecasts put forth by ourselves and others regarding the effects of an economic collapse are already taking place in Europe, namely Greece. In the midst of the Greek panic in 2010, for example, as Greece’s meltdown was in full swing and the people scrambled to get out of paper currencies, the price of gold, which was trading for around $1100 an ounce in the global commodity exchange marketplace, soared to over $1700 an ounce on the streets of Greece. In recent months, as Greece implements austerity measures and the unemployment rate sky rockets, its people have lost the ability to engage in traditional commerce because, simply put, they have no tangible income or money to do so. As a result, we’ve begun seeing a barter society emerge  all over the country, making it possible for some people to directly exchange labor for consumptive goods and service.

When things get bad – and they will – the most essential items necessary for survival will disappear first. As currencies collapse, financial market destabilize and economies come to a standstill, critical supplies like food and medicine will become difficult to acquire at any price. This is exactly what is now taking place in Greece, where access to life-saving drugs and even common over-the-counter medicines like aspirin is becoming a tragedy where the losses will be measured not in Dollars or Euros, but lives.

For patients and pharmacists in financially stricken Greece, even finding aspirin has turned into a headache.

Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.

“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines.

…

“It would be unrealistic to deny that there are many difficulties regarding all public services due to the financial crisis,” Nicolaos Polyzos, secretary general of the Ministry of Health, wrote in a response to McKee’s article posted on the ministry’s website.

The reasons for the shortages are complex. One major cause is the Greek government, which sets prices for medicines. As part of an effort to cut its own costs, Greece has mandated lower drug prices in the past year. That has fed a secondary market, drug manufacturers contend, as wholesalers sell their shipments outside the country at higher prices than they can get within Greece.

Strained government finances only make matters worse. Wholesalers and pharmacists say the system suffers from a lack of liquidity, as public insurers delay payments to pharmacies, which in turn can’t pay suppliers on time.

Source: Bloomberg

This is what happens when a country’s economy falls apart.  In a report from 2010, economist John Williams warned that a hyperinflationary environment in the US would not only cause food disruptions, but also disrupt the regular flow of commerce. And, while Greece may not specifically be experiencing a hyperinflationary environment (yet), an economic collapse resulting from a debt crisis has similar consequences as evidenced above.

But such a thing couldn’t happen in the United States, right? As we approach yet another debt ceiling this month, requiring some $1 trillion dollars just to keep the system from seizing up like an engine that has run out of oil, our elected officials and leading economic decision makers will ensure we avoid such an outcome.

Or will they?

How willing are you to trust the health of your family to the very individuals and corporations who are responsible for causing the crisis in the first place?

Like Greece, we will see a continued deterioration of basic services here at home. We may be able to print trillions upon trillions of dollars, but eventually those dollars will become worthless and no one will accept them as a trusted currency. This means that all of the food we import from other countries, the drugs we buy from pharmaceutical companies, and the oil we buy from the middle east, will become difficult, if not impossible, to acquire.

Now is the time to get prepared. Food, of course, is one of the first essential preparedness items to stockpile. But how many have given thought to life saving medications? If you have someone with a medical condition in your family, how will you gain access to that medicine when it’s no longer available at your local pharmacy. We recommend taking steps immediately to secure at least a 3 – 6 month supply of the drugs you or your family members need to survive (and to consider proper off-grid storage methods for those requiring refrigeration). Additionally, we strongly encourage you to consider adding Antibiotics for SHTF Planning to your stockpiles, because if things get so bad that you are unable to find medicines like penicillin or cipro at a local pharmacy, you can be assured that no one on the street will be willing to sell them – at any price.

Doomsday Clock ticks closer to midnight!

Washington Post

By Jason Ukman

The mushroom cloud of the first test of a hydrogen bomb, “Ivy Mike,” as photographed on Enewetak, an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, in 1952. (U.S. Air Force via Reuters) By at least one measure, the world just got that much closer to apocalypse.

The Doomsday Clock, a figurative timepiece used as a barometer of humankind’s fate, was moved one minute closer to midnight on Tuesday, the first time it has been nudged forward since 2007. It is now 11:55, five minutes before the appointed hour.

The re-setting of the clock has become something of a gimmick in recent years, carried out by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a group established to raise awareness about the perils of nuclear weaponry, and aimed at warning the public about various catastrophic dangers.

But the process involved in deciding the time is a deeply serious one, overseen by a venerable board of scientists, Nobel laureates and others and concluded with a symposium in Washington. The setting of the clock is no longer based only on the proliferation of nuclear arms, but also on threats such as climate change and biological weaponry.

In moving the clock ahead on Tuesday, the BAS cited the failure of world leaders to achieve significant progress on the reduction of nuclear weapons and in developing a comprehensive response to climate change. Just two years ago, following global talks on climate change in Copenhagen and international pledges to reduce nuclear stockpiles, the BAS moved the clock backward by a minute.

“Faced with clear and present dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, world leads are failing to change business as usual,” said Lawrence Krauss, co-chairman of the group’s board of sponsors.

“As we see it,” Krauss said, “the major challenge at the heart of humanity’s survival in the 21st century is how to meet energy needs for economic growth in developing and industrial countries without further damaging the climate … and without risking further spread of nuclear weapons — and in fact setting the stage for global reductions.”

Since being unveiled in 1947, the clock has been reset 20 times. It came closest to doomsday in 1953, when the start of the nuclear arms race pushed its hand to two minutes to midnight, and moved the farthest away in 1991, when the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) by the United States and the Soviet Union gave the world 17 minutes until midnight.

Despite the passage of various nonproliferation treaties, including the New START treaty under the Obama administration, the United States and Russia remain the chief reasons for concern when it comes to nuclear weaponry, according to Kennette Benedict, the BAS’s executive director. The United States and other major powers have not yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. There has also been little progress on a treaty that would prohibit further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons.

“Overall, there’s just really no new thinking,” Benedict said.

BAS said not all news was bad over the past year. The group’s members say they were heartened by the Arab Spring, the Occupy movements and political protest in Russia.

Those developments, said Benedict, “indicated that people are waking up, and want to have a say in their future.”

George Orwell’s 1984 – Bohemian Rhapsody.

American Military and Police, Where is Your Line?

Powerfull Information About American Financial System

Evacuation plan for Brits in Spain amid warning Euro Collapse could leave them stranded…

by James Lyons, Daily Mirror

Marbella, Andalusia, Spain (pic: Getty)

EMERGENCY evacuation plans for Brits living in Spain and Portugal are being drawn up amid fears of the euro collapsing.

The drastic proposals emerged as a former Security Minister warned expats could be left stranded and destitute by the break-up of the single currency.

Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans, worried ministers are warning.

The Foreign Office is preparing to bring them back from Spain and Portugal if the two countries are forced out of the euro, triggering a banking collapse.

A million Brits live in Spain and 50,000 in neighbouring Portugal – plus a million in the other eurozone countries.

And Baroness Neville-Jones, who only stepped down as a minister in May, called the situation “very, very worrying”.

The Tory peer – who once chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee for MI5, MI6 and other security agencies – said: “Spain is clearly a vulnerable area. If that happens, one of the things that will happen in a crash of that kind, is that the banks would close their doors. You would find that there are people there, including our own citizens, a lot of them, who couldn’t get money out to live on. So you would have a destitution problem.”

British planes, ships and coaches could be sent to pluck our citizens from debt-ridden Spain and Portugal

Commenting on the evacuation plans, she added: “I think they are right to be doing that. I think this is a real contingency that they need to plan against – very, very worrying.”

Officials are braced for a nightmare scenario where thousands end up penniless and sleeping at airports with no means of getting home. Planes, ships and coaches could be sent, with some expats being brought out through Gibraltar.

The Foreign Office could offer small loans while piling pressure on the banks to give Brits access to their funds.

Spanish and Portuguese banks guarantee the first 100,000 euros deposited by savers but many put limits on withdrawals in a crisis.

A powerful credit rating agency downgraded 10 Spanish banks last week, while another warned over the weekend the debt crisis was threatening to spiral out of control.

Boris Johnson

Top Tory Boris Johnson yesterday became the first senior politician to predict the eurozone will break up.

The bungling London Mayor even joked about Greece being forced out, which would threaten a credit crunch.

“Ouzo will be substantially cheaper,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

He claimed letting the single currency collapse might be the best thing for Europe – but Deputy PM Nick Clegg warned it would end up hurting Britain.

Nick Clegg

The Lib Dem leader said: “I hear a lot of people sort of breezily predicting almost with a sense of glee that the eurozone is going to fall apart. I don’t think witnessing the break-up of the currency block in our European backyard would do us any good at all.”

Expat Doreen Peplow keeps most of her money in a British bank account

Doreen Peplow, 68, who lives between Marbella and Fuengirola, says: “I am worldly wise enough to have made sure I have kept most of my money in my British bank account.

“Until now I have been getting my pension paid directly into a Spanish account. I might change that now.

“I cannot imagine there will be an evacuation; people retired to Spain and Portugal before Britain entered the Common Market and they managed.

“I have lived here 15 years. I don’t want to go back to Britain as the weather is dismal and it is overcrowded.

“But if it comes to it I am prepared to sell up and buy myself a retirement property near my son in Dorset.

Stocking Up For Doomsday: It’s Not Just For “Crazies” Anymore

By: Mac Slavo

SHTFPlan.com

Before the economic crisis of 2008 there were few who considered the possibility of The End of The World As We Know It (TEOTWAWKI). We were aware of the threats posed by natural disasters – Tsunamis in Asia, earthquakes along the western Americas, and hurricanes in the Gulf. But the notion that the very system in which we live is susceptible to a man-made shock so powerful that it could wipe out the very infrastructure that keeps us alive was an outlier so far removed from our daily reality that it was reserved for Hollywood scripts and obscure conspiracy web sites.

But the possibility of a system collapse so severe that it could cripple our and monetary systems, food distribution networks, and emergency response services is now becoming a real concern for people all over the world.

The warning by economists that Britain is just ‘nine meals from anarchy’ is brutally borne out. Unlike last summer, the rioters on the streets aren’t looking for trainers and flat-screen TVs — just food.

An absurd fantasy? Perhaps so, but in an increasingly uncertain world, such a scenario can no longer be dismissed out of hand. And strange as it may seem, it’s one that many believe is worth preparing for.

Across the country, steps are being taken to cope with such a situation. But not by central or local government. Their contingency planning for such an emergency is focused on the most important and most vulnerable in society.

Instead it is ordinary people who are taking action: stockpiling their larders with non-perishable food, buying water-purifying pumps and camping stoves.

While five years ago such behaviour might have been dismissed as  the activities of ‘end-of-the-world’ eccentrics, those doing so today are professionals from every walk of life.

Source: Daily Mail

In many cases it’s the people working directly within the large financial and governmental institutions that are most attune to what’s happening now – and what could happen in the very near future – and they aren’t taking any chances:

‘It is not “crazies” buying this,’  says James Blake, whose company Emergency Food Storage specialises in freeze-dried foods. ‘We get a lot of high-powered business people as customers. Most people buy insurance for their health, their house or their life — this is food insurance.

‘Of course, we hope it never happens, but if there is a major catastrophe, then money is not going to be worth much after a couple of days. It will be food that becomes the most needed thing.’

Dave Hannah and his company B-Prep sell similar products. He says a number of his customers are bankers. Their average spend is £3,000.

‘It makes you think: “What do they know?” ’ says Hannah. ‘When we’ve talked on the phone, they’ve told me: “This whole thing is going to go down.”

As the world fell deeper into crisis and more information, namely from alternative media, began to emerge about the fragility of the existing financial, economic, monetary and social paradigms, more Americans and citizens of other nations came to the realization that perhaps not everything was as under control as it has been made out to be. When the financial system collapsed in late 2008 it wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth and turned once successful middle class laborers into poverty stricken recipients of emergency services. Governments around the world, led by the monetary policy of the United States, responded by attempting to infuse trillions of dollars of new debt into an already debt-laden and over-leveraged system, with Congressional members reportedly being threatened with the real possibility of martial law in the streets of America unless they took action.

The unprecedented government intervention on a massive global scale was not enough. As it stands now, the banks of Europe are set to fall, just as they did in the 1930′s. The United States, far removed from the creditor status it held during the Great Depression, is the largest debtor in human history. It’s creditor, China, is an up and coming economic giant who has made known, on numerous occasions, that it would like nothing more than to see an end to US dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency and America’s military and economic might weakened. Tensions amid nuclear allegations in the middle east are heating up with Iran, while influential countries in the region like Egypt and Syria are progressively being destabilized on a daily basis.

The world, for those paying attention, is on the brink of a major paradigm shift. And many have come to the conclusion that government really has no way of mitigating the fundamental problems we face. Many believe that the problems we face today are worse than the crisis that took hold in 2008. If there was a possibility that tanks would be needed in the streets then, how bad could it get now? Would our governments be able to deal with mass riots in multiple major cities, or a hyperinflationary collapse of the US dollar, or the downing of our electrical infrastructure resulting from a cyber attack or electric magnetic pulse weapon?

If Hurricane Katrina was any guide, then the answer is no. Katrina left tens of thousands without food, potable water, medical care or law enforcement response for a week – and that was a disaster isolated to a single metropolitan area. The issue is one of scale and resources, and as we wrote in 2009 in The Rise of the Preppers, local, state and federal government emergency responders would simply be overwhelmed if an emergency happened on a multi-state or national level:

Don’t get us wrong, emergency responders like police, fire and medical teams do their very best in the situations described above, but when you’re dealing with millions of unprepared people whose only thought at the time is to survive and “get out,” the situation can detiorate quite rapidly. Preppers understand this, and have not just reserve food, water and fuel, but secondary and tertiary evacuation routes, multiple “bug-out” destinations where they can go if something happens, and are mentally, physically and psychologicaly prepared to handle the stress.

It is, as was mentioned above, simply a form of insurance to prepare supplies like food, water, cooking materials, flashlights and the means to defend yourself when the rule of law breaks down:

‘We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I’m not totally pessimistic and I do have faith in the Government, but I have more faith in my store cupboard. I know we’ll have food in times of trouble.’

A wise precaution or an over- reaction? Either way, in recent years, a series of events have served to highlight the fragility of the infrastructure of developed First World countries in the 21st century.

Source: Daily Mail

Crazy or not, it’s clear that the prepper phenomenon is not limited to the fringe corners of the internet or backwoods survivalist. People from all walks are storing long-term emergency foods, barterable supplies to use in lieu of money and learning skills that will be useful in a post-collapse world.

At all boils down to this: Are you willing to entrust your life and the lives of your loved ones to government officials who will have their own families to worry about?

Financial Panic Sweeps Europe As The Head Of The IMF Warns Of A “1930s Depression”… GLOBAL DEPRESSION!!!

http://endoftheamericandream.com

Are we on the verge of another Great Depression?  Christian Lagarde, the head of the IMF, said this week that if dramatic action is not taken immediately we could actually see conditions “reminiscent of the 1930s depression” and that no country on earth “will be immune to the crisis”.  Right now, financial panic is sweeping across Europe, but most Americans are not too concerned about it because they simply don’t understand how important the EU is.  The truth is that the EU has a much larger population than the United States does.  The EU has an economy that is nearly as large as the economies of the United States and China combined.  The EU has more Fortune 500 companies that the United States does, and the banking system of Europe is substantially larger than the banking system of the United States.  Anyone out there that believes that a massive financial collapse in Europe would not dramatically affect the rest of the globe is being delusional.  The European debt crisis is one of the biggest stories that we have seen in a long, long time and the coming financial meltdown is going to permanently change the global economy.

So far, politicians in Europe have held 19 high-level emergency meetings in an attempt to solve this crisis.

All of their efforts have failed.

Right now, this is the situation in Europe….

-Most EU governments are drowning in toxic levels of debt

-Bond yields have risen dramatically this year and this has caused borrowing costs for most EU members to soar

-In an attempt to get debt under control, governments all over Europe are implementing brutal austerity measures and this is causing European economies to slow down substantially

-There is a tremendous lack of confidence in the European financial system at this point and this is causing a massive credit crunch

-The credit crunch is causing the money supply to drop significantly in almost every nation in the EU

-Major banks all over Europe are massively overleveraged and are on the verge of failing

This is all so similar to what we saw back during the early 1930s.

In fact, things have gotten so bad that prominent world leaders are now using apocalyptic language when describing the situation in Europe.

Just check out what the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, recently said about Europe.  Speaking at a State Department conference in Washington D.C. this week, Lagarde made the following very shocking statements….

*“The world economic outlook at the moment is not particularly rosy. It is quite gloomy”

*“There is no economy in the world, whether low-income countries, emerging markets, middle-income countries or super-advanced economies that will be immune to the crisis that we see not only unfolding but escalating”

*“It is not a crisis that will be resolved by one group of countries taking action. It is going to be hopefully resolved by all countries, all regions, all categories of countries actually taking action.”

*“No country or region is immune. All must take action to boost growth. Work must start in the eurozone countries and must continue relentlessly. The risks of inaction include protectionism, isolation and other elements reminiscent of the 1930s depression.”

*“This is exactly the description of what happened in the 1930s, and what followed is not something we are looking forward to.”

But didn’t the politicians in Europe recently reach a deal which was supposed to fix all this?

Well, unfortunately the deal basically did nothing to fix the underlying financial problems that Europe is facing.

In fact, global financial markets seem entirely unimpressed by this recent deal.  A recent article by Professor Peter Morici detailed some of the problems with the deal….

Investors are rejecting the euro deal, because the agreement does not effectively meet the funding needs of Italy and other Mediterranean governments, address the weak balance sheets of European commercial banks, or fix the underlying structural flaws in the euro architecture.

The €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility is providing short-term funding—guaranteed by 17 Eurozone member states as a whole—to tide over the more troubled governments.

However, those bailouts impose huge cuts in spending and tax increases. Coupled with austerity plans also adopted by France and other healthier European states, those packages are pushing Europe into a recession that could last several years.

What is even worse is that there are signs that this recent deal is already unraveling.  Some EU nations have decided that they are not sure that they want to go along with the program.

The following comes from a recent article in the Telegraph….

Amid fresh warnings that Europe is triggering a 1930s-style global depression, the German chancellor faced open rebellion against the key plank of her Brussels accord. The leaders of Hungary and the Czech Republic told a joint conference in Budapest they were ready to reject the planned treaty changes and implied move towards a centralised tax system. Czech prime minister Petr Necas said he was “convinced that tax harmonisation would not mean anything good for us”.

In Poland, we are actually seeing people march in the streets to protest against this new agreement….

Poles marched under banners that read: “We want sovereignty, not the euro.” They were protesting against the Brussels deal that could see EU countries, including those outside the eurozone, face penalties for breaking tough centralised spending laws.

So not only does this new deal not address the fundamental problems that Europe is facing, there is also a tremendous amount of doubt about whether or not it will eventually be approved.

Meanwhile, the brutal austerity measures that are being implemented all over Europe are pushing many EU nations into recession.

The EU (led by Germany and France) and the IMF have been pushing financially troubled nations all over Europe to make incredibly deep budget cuts.  But these very deep budget cuts have had a devastating economic impact.

In a recent article, I discussed how brutal austerity measures have already pushed the economy of Greece into a full-blown depression….

Just look at what happened to Greece.  Greece was forced to raise taxes and implement brutal austerity measures.  That caused the economy to slow down and tax revenues to decline and so government debt figures did not improve as much as anticipated.  So Greece was forced to implement even more brutal austerity measures.  Well, that caused the economy to slow down even more and tax revenues declined again.  In Greece this cycle has been repeated several times and now Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression.  100,000 businesses have closed and a third of the population is living in poverty.  But now Germany and France intend to impose the “Greek solution” on the rest of Europe.

Right now, the flow of government money is drying up all over Europe and so is the flow of money from the banks.  European banks are shrinking their balance sheets and have dramatically cut back on lending in order to meet new capital requirements that are being imposed upon them.

All of this has created an environment where there is not much credit flowing in Europe at all.  When there is a credit crunch of this magnitude, it causes the money supply to start to shrink.  This is already happening all over Europe as a recent article in the Telegraph noted….

All key measures of the money supply in the eurozone contracted in October with drastic falls across parts of southern Europe, raising the risk of severe recession over coming months.

Right now, we are seeing the money supply in each of the “PIIGS” nations fall at a staggering rate.  The following comes from the same Telegraph article referenced above….

Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors said “narrow” M1 money – which includes cash and overnight deposits, and signals short-term spending plans – shows an alarming split between North and South.

While real M1 deposits are still holding up in the German bloc, the rate of fall over the last six months (annualised) has been 20.7pc in Greece, 16.3pc in Portugal, 11.8pc in Ireland, and 8.1pc in Spain, and 6.7pc in Italy. The pace of decline in Italy has been accelerating, partly due to capital flight. “This rate of contraction is greater than in early 2008 and implies an even deeper recession, both for Italy and the whole periphery,” said Mr Ward.

Those numbers scream “Recession, Recession, Recession“.

There may be one glimmer of hope on the horizon.  The Federal Reserve has been lending huge amounts of money to the European Central Bank and the European Central Bank has been lending that money out to European banks.  In turn, the European banks have been using much of that money to buy up European government bonds.  It is a massive Ponzi scheme, but it has stabilized bond yields in Europe for now.  This scheme was described in a recent article by Simone Foxman….

That’s because the European Central Bank may have already introduced roundabout measures that will solve some of Europe’s big problems—it’s making investing in peripheral sovereign debt a huge profit opportunity for banks.

Theoretically, financial institutions will be able coin money by borrowing ultra-cheap from the ECB and buying higher yielding sovereign debt.

Essentially, it appears the ECB might allow European banks to pledge everything but the kitchen sink in return for funds. First, the new policy allows European banks to hold far fewer assets as collateral in exchange for funding from the ECB—freeing up liquidity to the tune of €103 billion ($134 billion). More importantly, relaxing collateral restrictions could also allow European banks to use even somewhat risky sovereign assets as collateral for bond purchases.

But this Ponzi scheme cannot go on indefinitely.  A lot of European banks are already starting to run out of collateral for these loans as one Australian news source recently explained….

“If anyone thinks things are getting better, they simply don’t understand how severe the problems are,” a London executive at a global bank said. “A major bank could fail within weeks.”

Others said many continental banks, including French, Italian and Spanish lenders, were close to running out of the acceptable forms of collateral, such as US Treasury bonds, that could be used to finance short-term loans.

Some have been forced to lend out their gold reserves to maintain access to US dollar funding.

So will the European Central Bank keep lending them money once they are out of collateral?

If they do, the ECB itself could potentially be in a great deal of danger.

The truth is that the ECB is already playing with fire.  So far, the European Central Bank has spent over 274 billion dollars buying up European government bonds in an attempt to keep bond yields down.

How many toxic assets can the ECB buy up before they get into real trouble?

That is a very interesting question.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is becoming increasingly concerned about the financial panic that is sweeping Europe.

For example, Australian banks have been given one week to perform a stress test that evaluates their ability to survive in the event of a European financial collapse.

Why all the urgency?

Do they know something that we don’t?

Just like back in 2008, we are seeing massive problems at some of the largest banks in the world.

On Thursday, Fitch Ratings downgraded a whole bunch of the world’s most prominent banks….

The banks included Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, as well as Europe’s Barclays, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas.

Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Switerzland’s Credit Suisse were also downgraded.

The global banking system is a giant house of cards.  There is simply way too much debt, way too much leverage and way too much risk.

On average, major banks across Europe are leveraged 26 to 1.

If the value of the assets held by those banks declines by just 4 percent, they will be wiped out.

Yes, that is how serious things are.

And already we are starting to see major banks fail in Europe.

This week it was revealed that Germany’s second largest bank is going to need a bailout.  The following comes from a Sky News report….

Germany’s second largest bank, Commerzbank, is reportedly in discussions with the German government about a bailout after regulators said it needed to raise more money to cope with a potential default on its loans to governments.

“Intense talks” have been going on for several days, according to sources who spoke to the news agency Reuters.

So if Germany’s second largest bank is failing, are any banks in Europe safe?

Just like we saw back during the 1930s, we are starting to see a run on banks all over Europe.

In fact, according to a recent Der Spiegel article, a run on Greek banks has been going on for a while now and is rapidly accelerating….

He means that the outflow of funds from Greek bank accounts has been accelerating rapidly. At the start of 2010, savings and time deposits held by private households in Greece totalled €237.7 billion — by the end of 2011, they had fallen by €49 billion. Since then, the decline has been gaining momentum. Savings fell by a further €5.4 billion in September and by an estimated €8.5 billion in October — the biggest monthly outflow of funds since the start of the debt crisis in late 2009.

If you can believe it, approximately 20 percent of all bank deposits in Greece have been withdrawn since the start of 2011.

Europe is in a massive amount of trouble.  The euro is dropping like a rock and the European financial system is paralyzed by panic and fear.

It is going to take a miracle to prevent a massive financial collapse from happening in Europe in 2012.

Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any miracles for Europe on the horizon.

Breaking News! BANK RUN!!!! – Latvia’s Biggest Bank Fights Off Deposit Run…Rumours of “Imminent Collapse”

Latvia’s largest bank is scrambling to contain a run among depositors gripped by fears of the bank’s imminent collapse.

The panic among Swedish-owned Swedbank‘s depositors began Sunday after rumors spread that the financial institution was facing legal and liquidity problems in Estonia and Sweden.

Swedbank’s Latvian chief Maris Mancinskis on Monday called the rumors “absurd.” He said the bank is functioning normally and all depositors will have access to their funds via bank machines.

Mancinskis said some 10,000 Latvians withdrew over 10 million lats ($20 million) on Sunday.

Latvia’s 10th largest bank, Latvijas Krajbanka, is currently being liquidated after regulators uncovered fraud on a massive scale. Depositors were left without access to their money for days.

The Tim Tebow Comeback Story Continues… But There Will Be No Miracle Comebacks For The U.S. Economy…

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Never in the history of the NFL has there ever been anything like this.  Today, Tim Tebow engineered yet another miraculous 4th quarter comeback.  Almost everyone has been expecting this unprecedented string of comebacks to come to an end, yet Tebow just keeps pulling off miracle after miracle.  It seems like nearly every week now we are talking about another unbelievable Tim Tebow comeback.  It is truly a great story, and what is wonderful about Tebow is that he is not out to glorify himself.  He is very humble, he always recognizes his teammates and he is a terrific role model for a generation of American youth that is in desperate need of one.  Unfortunately, there is not going to be a similar comeback story for the U.S. economy.  It is late in the 4th quarter, we have accumulated over 50 trillion dollars of total debt as a nation, and our economic guts are being ripped out at a rate that is almost impossible to believe.  The game is essentially over and we are headed for an incredible amount of economic pain as a nation.

We desperately need a “political Tim Tebow” to come along to dismantle our current debt-based economic system.  But instead, the corrupt politicians in Washington D.C. just keep patching up our current system and hope that somehow it will recover.

Unfortunately, this is about as good as things are going to get for the U.S. economy.  The federal government and the Federal Reserve are already pushing things to the “red line”, and all of that effort has not accomplished much.

We have been experiencing “economic stagnation” for much of the past year, and there is not much more that they can do to improve things under our current system.

Right now, the Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates as low as they can go.  They can’t go any lower.

Right now, the federal government is borrowing and spending unprecedented amounts of money.  Federal spending cannot go much higher.

Right now, we have already seen tax cut after tax cut and virtually none of them have been paid for.  Any additional tax cuts will just send our budget deficits even higher.

Right now, we have already seen unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve.  They have done just about everything short of dropping huge bags of money over the countryside from helicopters.

The federal government and the Federal Reserve have done just about everything that they can possibly do to “stimulate” the economy, and yet things just keep getting worse.

So what is going to happen when the federal government and the Federal Reserve quit stimulating the economy?

As I wrote about the other day, when evaluating the future of the U.S. economy, it is vitally important to look at the balance sheet numbers and the long-term trends.

When you do that, you suddenly do not feel so good about the upward “blips” that we have seen in the economy lately.

Yes, the “official” unemployment rate recently went down slightly.  But as Mac Slavo recently pointed out, even with the recent “improvement” the truth is that the “real” level of unemployment in the United States is still well over 20 percent.

And all of the long-term trends indicate that we heading for a massive amount of trouble.

The number of good jobs continues to decline.  Even though our population is rapidly increasing, there are 10 percent fewer middle income jobs in the U.S. today than there were a decade ago.

In recent years, the employment to population ratio has been steadily declining.  At the start of the recession it was at 62.7%.  Today, it is at 58.5%.

Household incomes continue to go down as well.  Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

So why is this happening?  Well, as I wrote about recently, the United States has the worst balance of trade in the entire world by far.

Wealth, jobs and economic infrastructure are pouring out of this country and very few politicians are trying to stop it.

An average of 23 manufacturing facilities were shut down every single day in the United States last year.

That represents a huge amount of lost jobs.

So do you hear any political candidates talking about how they are going to stop this from happening or about how they are going to get all of those lost jobs back?

Overall, the U.S. has lost a total of more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

So how can an economy be great when it is constantly bleeding huge amounts of economic infrastructure?

We have become way too dependent on other nations for the things that we need.

How much trouble would we be in if Saudi Arabia suddenly decided to quit shipping us oil or if China suddenly decided to quit shipping us cheap plastic products to sell in our stores?

Right now, businesses are absolutely racing to get out of the United States.  Big corporations are shipping as many jobs as they possibly can out of the country.  Our insane economic policies have turned American workers into tremendous liabilities.

One economist from Princeton University is warning that 40 million more U.S. jobs could be sent offshore over the next two decades if nothing is done to stop this.

So why aren’t more politicians screaming and yelling about this?

Without good jobs, Americans are falling out of the middle class in staggering numbers.

Since 2007, the number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent.

So is that a sign that things are getting better or that things are getting worse?

A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty than has ever been measured before.  Not only that, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty last year.  That was also a new all-time record.

So are those signs that things are getting better or that things are getting worse?

The American people generally do not understand why these things are happening, but they are clearly getting frustrated.

A recent Gallup poll found that an all-time record 76 percent of all Americans believe that most members of Congress do not deserve to be reelected.

But when election time rolls around, they will probably send most of them back to Washington D.C. anyway.

Our politicians keep kicking the can down the road, but time for doing that is running out.  The unprecedented “stimulus” efforts by the federal government will be coming to an end sooner or later.

In a recent article, author Bruce Krasting listed a whole bunch of reasons why the economic can is not going to be able to be kicked down the road much farther.  The following are some of the things that he says are scheduled to end by the beginning of 2013….

A) The Bush tax cuts on those making more than $200k will expire.

B) The Bush tax cuts on those making less than $200k will also expire.

C) The Patch on AMT will expire.

D) The 2% payroll tax holiday will expire for all workers on 12/31/12 (I’m sure the current holiday will be rolled for another year)

E) The 99-week extended unemployment benefits die on 12/31. (The emergency benefits will also be extended for 2012)

F) There will have to be a budget that is approved. Alternatively, a series of continuing resolutions is required to avert a government shutdown. We have not had an approved budget in over 900 days.

G) 2013 is the first year that there will be mandatory caps on discretionary spending. These limits will result in a YoY decline in government spending.

H) The Federal Reserve has promised to keep interest rates at zero into 2013. While it is possible that the Fed could continue the madness for even longer, the reality is that interest rates have nowhere to go but up.

I) By January 2013 it will be painfully evident that the country’s key social programs, Social Security and Medicare will be running in the red at a pace that is far higher than anyone considered possible. The need for dramatic changes in these programs will have to come onto the table. The implications of this will be significant.

J) In 2013 the issues of Fannie, Freddie, FHA and the Federal Home Loan Banks must be addressed. The problems at the housing agencies has festered too long.

K) The country will face another debt ceiling extension. The last time cost us our AAA.

Sadly, we will probably not have to wait until 2013 to feel a whole lot of economic pain.

The reality is that a 15 trillion dollar debt and trillion dollar yearly budget deficits are not sustainable.  We have created a situation where a horrible crash is inevitable, and there is no way that our current debt-based system can be fixed to keep a nightmarish collapse from happening.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.  That is a recipe for national financial suicide.

Meanwhile, despite what you may have heard, the European debt crisis has not been fixed.

Not at all.

The truth is that none of the fundamental problems were fixed by this recent “agreement” as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard recently noted in one of his columns….

There is no shared debt issuance, no fiscal transfers, no move to an EU Treasury, no banking licence for the ESM rescue fund, and no change in the mandate of the European Central Bank.

In short, there is no breakthrough of any kind that will convince Asian investors that this monetary union has viable governance or even a future.

Germany has kept the focus exclusively on fiscal deficits even though everybody must understand by now that this crisis was not caused by fiscal deficits (except in the case of Greece). Spain and Ireland were in surplus, and Italy had a primary surplus.

For many more reasons why Europe is headed for big trouble, please read this article: “22 Reasons Why We Could See An Economic Collapse In Europe In 2012“.

When Europe goes down, it is going to have a devastating impact on the United States.

Meanwhile, the economies of China and Japan are also steamrolling toward recession.

There is simply way too much debt in the world, and a great day of reckoning is coming.

Combined, the industrialized nations of the world borrowed more than 10 trillion dollars this year, and that number is expected to soar even higher next year.

Jim Cramer of CNBC stated recently that the global economy is at “DEFCON 3, two stages from a financial collapse so huge it’s hard to get your mind around.”

Most Americans don’t understand this yet.  But hopefully we can get more of them educated while there is still time.

The global financial system is a big shell game.  It is a gigantic mountain of debt, leverage and risk.

You would have thought that we would have learned some key lessons from the financial crisis of 2008, but we didn’t.

Back in 2002, the top 10 U.S. banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets.  Right now, the top 10 U.S. banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets.

Today, the “too big to fail” banks are larger than ever.  The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

So instead of doing something about the “too big to fail” banks, they are now more “too big to fail” than ever.

As big banks and big corporations have come to dominate our economy more than ever before, wealth and power have also become much more concentrated….

*The wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.

*The poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

*The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

*Overall, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

It would be wonderful if we could send a “Tim Tebow of politics” to Washington D.C., but instead the Democrats and the Republicans look like they just plan to give us more of the same.

Are the Republicans really going to nominate someone who co-sponsored 418 bills with Nancy Pelosi?  The truth is that the latest “anti-Romney candidate” is almost a clone of Mitt Romney.

Newt Gingrich is essentially an older, ruder version of Barack Obama.  If you are counting on him to “save America” then you are going to be incredibly disappointed.

Sadly, we just do not have nearly enough men like Tim Tebow in America today.  The following comes from a recent profile of Tebow that recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal….

While at Florida, Mr. Tebow became well known for spending his summers helping the poor and needy in the Philippines. He also spoke in prisons and appeared to accept every opportunity to volunteer. He encouraged his teammates and classmates to follow his lead.

You can see video of Tim Tebow speaking to a group of prisoners at the Lake City Correctional Facility while he was still attending the University of Florida right here.

Unfortunately, there is no “Tim Tebow comeback” on the horizon for the U.S. economy at this point.

But when the U.S. economy does get worse, we can take a cue from Tim Tebow and be very generous with those in need.  There are going to be a lot of people that will be really hurting, and those of us that have been blessed should do what we can to help them out.

A lot of people say that my site is all about “doom and gloom”, but telling the truth to the American people is never a bad thing.

We do not do ourselves any favors by sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay.

There is going to be no miracle comeback for the U.S. economy.

A horrific economic collapse is coming.

You better get ready.

Five things you can do right now to help stop the economic plundering of our world…

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) The economic plundering of our world is well under way, with the Goldman Sachs “white shoe boyz” taking over entire national economies as they confiscate the wealth of the working class. They aren’t the only evildoers wreaking havoc across the world, of course: A cabal of powerful and criminally-insane corporations are destroying the future of food, plotting to keep citizens suffering from disease, and even perpetuating war so they can earn obscene profits from selling more bullets, bombs and missiles.

You can help resist this economic imperialism by taking simple actions that protect your wealth and pull it out of the hands of the globalists who are actively destroying our world. Here are five of the most powerful action steps to take that can turn the tables and restore economic sovereignty at every level — household, community, state, nation and the entire globe.

#1) Shop at local farmers’ markets, food co-ops and local grocers

Stop buying Tyson chicken. Stop buying Monsanto-engineered GMO foods at the grocery store. Stop giving your money to food industry globalists such as ADM, Cargill and PepsiCo. Every time you buy a can of brand-name soda, a carton of genetically modified soy milk, or a bag of popular snack chips, you are financially supporting a system of global agricultural poverty and food domination that destroys life and liberty.

If you shop based solely on price and not ethics, you are take part in the economic destruction of our world. Shop local, buy organic and avoid all the corporate food giants and their deceptive, dishonest packaged foods.

Remember: If the food you eat comes in a box, your family and friends will eventually find YOU in a box, too.

#2) Pull your money out of the big banks and put it in local credit unions

When you deposit $1,000 in a globalist bank, they can turn around and, through a series of fractional reserve banking transactions, turn that into $9,000 in loans that earn them interest. Inversely, by pulling $1,000 out of a globalist bank (JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, etc.), you deny them the ability to make $9,000 in loans, thus shrinking their profits by a significant factor.

One of the most powerful and honest strategies you can use to protect your own savings and stop financially supporting the global financial crooks who are running the largest banks is to move your money to a local credit union.

Most credit unions, by law, cannot bet on derivatives. So they don’t have the $68+ TRILLION in financial exposure that Bank of America has right now, for example. (http://seekingalpha.com/article/301…)

Of course, your local credit unions are normally not insured by the FDIC, but that’s actually a bonus because the FDIC will itself be insolvent in the first 24 hours of a true banking debt collapse (its own funds are a pittance compared to the scale of the global derivatives debt possessed by the banks it claims to insure). (http://seekingalpha.com/article/215…) You’re far smarter holding your money in a local credit union covered by an independent insurance agency that has nothing to do with the large global banks and their coming derivatives disasters.

#3) Stop working for The Man as a wage slave

If you punch a clock working for The Man, then you’re part of the problem. Every hour of your effort goes to keep propping up the very system that’s bringing you down.

It’s difficult, of course, to find work these days, and it’s absolutely true that The Man pays double or even triple the wages of anyone else. Heck, even TSA jobs come with great pay, government health benefits, and the “administrative right” to sexually molest innocent people, which is a real bonus to some of the disturbed psychopaths who take those jobs in the first place. (http://www.naturalnews.com/034323_N…)

If you want to stop working for The Man, you are going to have to downsize your material wealth and instead be content to possess spiritual wealth (and ethical currency, so to speak). Yes, you might live in a smaller house and drive a smaller car, but you won’t have to sell out your soul to an evil system of tyranny and oppression.

So if you’re currently punching a clock for some evil corporation, some tyrannical government entity, or some poison-pushing pharmaceutical company, find a new line of work and stop supporting the very system that’s destroying us all.

#4) Trade soon-to-be-useless paper currency for real goods

Are you still sitting on a bunch of paper currency and hoping it will somehow be worth the same amount in five years? Stop kidding yourself… the value of all the top global currencies is eroding by the hour. At times, it seems like it’s not happening because they’re all eroding together, so the relative valuation between currencies appears to be deceptively stable. But underneath it all, global currency devaluation has viciously accelerated — and both the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are committed to printing even more counterfeit currency to further speed the process.

By the time all the European banks are bailed out, and the U.S. banks are bailed out, and the Canadian and Australian banks are bailed out, if you’re still left holding hyper-inflated currencies like the U.S. dollar, you’re going to be lucky to still own ten cents on the dollar in terms of today’s purchasing power. That’s why smart people are exchanging their soon-to-be-worthless currencies for real things that hold real value: Dirt (farmland), gold, silver, quality firearms, stored food, hand tools, tractors and much more.

We recently ran an article promoting Himalayan Salt Lamps which are an easy way to store 3-4 pounds of valuable full-spectrum salt while also using it as a lamp in the short term. All 1,000 of the lamps we had sold out within 6 hours, which just goes to show you that NaturalNews readers are getting it (http://www.naturalnews.com/NNStore-…). They understand the value of having things of real worth rather than sitting on mere dollars (or the electronic equivalent thereof).

#5) Stop voting for politicians funded by Wall Street bankers

This is perhaps the most important — and yet most difficult — principle of all: Stop voting for politicians and bureaucrats who are propped up by banker money.

It’s almost impossible to do, of course, since nearly all the politicians — across the political spectrum — take big money from the big banking cartels. Obama himself is deeply in bed with Wall Street interests, but so was Bush and others.

Herman McCain, who thankfully dropped out of the Republican race just a couple of days ago, was a Federal Reserve insider. You couldn’t pick a more compromised candidate to try to fix the economy when he’s part of the very system of theft that’s destroying it!

The only real candidate who would challenge the economic plunder of our world is, of course, Ron Paul (www.RonPaul2012.com). He’s the guy who has stood firm on the principle of auditing the Fed and even ending the Fed so that the money supply of America can be put back into the hands of the Congress (i.e. the People) and not a private bankster cartel run by globalist crooks.

Do these five things now if you want to help save your nation from total economic destruction

Right now, whether you are Republican, Democrat or Libertarian, one of the most patriotic things you can do to save your nation is follow these five steps and start redirecting your financial resources away from the globalists and toward your local community.

Support small, local businesses. Support local financial institutions. Don’t buy the stock of evil corporations, even if they pay financial dividends. Vote for candidates who operate with consistent ethics, not the ones who give the slickest speeches and promise the most handouts.

Put your time, money and effort into restoring your nation or you will lose your nation. Every dollar that you spend, save or invest in a profit-driven bank or evil corporate giant is a dollar that will one day be used to wage economic warfare against you and your own children.

Has the War with Iran Already Begun?

By Michael Hirsh

UPI/Maryam Rahmanian

Iranian soldiers march during the annual military parade on September 22, 2011 in front of the mausoleum of the Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran,Iran. The parade marks the beginning of the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq. UPI/Maryam Rahmanian

Two incidents that occurred on Sunday—Iran’s claim of a shoot-down of a U.S. drone, and an explosion outside the British embassy in Bahrain—may have been unrelated. But they appear to add to growing evidence that an escalating covert war by the West is under way against Iran, and that Tehran is retaliating with greater intensity than ever.

Asked whether the United States, in cooperation with Israel, was now engaged in a covert war against Iran’s nuclear program that may include the Stuxnet virus, the blowing-up of facilities and the assassination or kidnapping of scientists, one recently retired U.S. official privy to up-to-date intelligence would not deny it.

(RELATED: Reports—Unmanned U.S. Aircraft Shot Down in Iran)

“It’s safe to say the Israelis are very active,” the official said, adding about U.S. efforts:  “Everything that [GOP presidential candidate] Mitt Romney said we should be doing—tough sanctions, covert action and pressuring the international community  — are all of the things we are actually doing.” Though the activities are classified, a senior Obama administration official also would not deny that such a program was under way. He indicated that the U.S. was not involved in every action, referring to recent alleged explosions at Isfahan and elsewhere. But, he added: “I wouldn’t assume that everything we do is coordinated.”

Former undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who oversaw America’s Iran engagement during the Bush administration, asked Sunday about reports that the U.S. program began under George W. Bush, said he could not comment on intelligence matters.

In September, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, accused Great Britain, Israel and the U.S. of conducting attacks on him and other Iranian scientists.”Six years ago the intelligence service of the UK began collecting information and data regarding my past, my family, the number of children,” Abbasi-Davani told a news conference at the annual conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. Abbasi-Davani, who was said to have been wounded in 2010 car bomb explosion, said the attacks were carried out by Israel with the “support of the intelligence services of the United States and England.”

Last week, Iranian protesters stormed the British embassy in Tehran. Dominick Chilcott, Britain’s ambassador to Iran, later said the attack occurred  “with the acquiescence and the support of the state.” Then, on Sunday, Bahrain’s interior ministry announced that an explosion occurred inside a minibus parked near the British Embassy. There were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.

U.S. officials alleged in October that agents acting for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has increasingly exerted control over the Tehran regime, were involved in a plot to kill that Saudi ambassador to Washington in a restaurant. Iran denied the allegations. Then, on Sunday, in what have been another escalation, Iran’s news agency reported that Iranian armed forces shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that illegally crossed the country’s eastern border.

Responding to the Iranian report, NATO command in Afghanistan released a terse statement Sunday: “The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a US unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status.”

The White House declined to comment but officials did not seem unduly alarmed, suggesting that the drone’s capture would not provide Iran with significant information about U.S. surveillance technology and techniques.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington, said the tit-for-tat incidents “add up to a very worrisome picture,” in part because “the Iranians are absorbing all of these assassinations without seeing the pace of their nuclear program slow down to the extent it would be acceptable to the West.” But if Iranian retaliations grow serious enough, he said, they could provide “the pretext for a much larger war” in which the Israelis, and possibly the Americans, launch a full attack on Iran.

Mark Hibbs, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment in Germany, says the intensity of the covert war indicates that this is where the U.S. and Israel are putting their energy for now.  “If the U.S. or Israel were determined to take Iran’s nuclear installations out they wouldn’t be wasting time pinpointing individual scientists like this,” he says. Still, he points out, that Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor was also preceded by assassination attempts on Iraqi scientists.

By accident or not, it’s entirely possible the covert war could escalate into a real one, experts say.  “I am less enthusiastic about how effective all this going to be than some people in the administration,” says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear investigator at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Bunn says he has occasionally discussed the program with the Obama administration officials, and “some have broadly suggested they think this is major element of slowing down Iranian progress.”

He’s not so sure. “Take Stuxnet. It’s possible that a thousand centrifuges went down” because of sabotage by the mystery computer virus _ a super sophisticated program said to have caused substantial parts of Iran’s uranium enrichment program to self-destruct several years ago. “But Iran has a thousand more than they would require to enrich to highly enriched uranium” needed for a bomb. Bunn also notes that Iran is increasingly keeping its key scientists such as Mohsen Fakrizadeh, said to be the “Oppenheimer” of the Iranian program, hidden away from sight and burying its facilities deeper underground.

Beyond that, says Hibbs, “Some of the concern in the expert community is that in going this route we’re unleashing forces we cannot control.”

Obama’s food stamp epidemic – get your Jumbo Crab Legs, with your Food Stamps!!

Posted By Matt

 

I was strolling around the waterfront fish market in DC on Saturday, admiring the whole octopi, the squid, lobsters, jumbo crab legs and Maryland blue crabs for sale.

Imagine my surprise when I spotted this sign above a pile of crabs.

The food stamp epidemic in our country is getting worse thanks to President Obama.

WSJ: Food Stamp Use Rose in 2010

Food stamp use continued to rise in the U.S last year, with almost 12% of all households receiving some form of the assistance, the Census Bureau said. More recent data show that 15% of the population gets food-stamp assistance. In 2010, 13.6 million households reported receiving food stamps, a 16% increase over the previous year. The state with the highest percentage was Oregon at 17.9%.

WSJ: Some 15% of U.S. Uses Food Stamps

Nearly 15% of the U.S. population relied on food stamps in August, as the number of recipients hit 45.8 million.Food stamp rolls have risen 8.1% in the past year, the Department of Agriculture reported, though the pace of growth has slowed from the depths of the recession.

The number of recipients in the food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), may continue to rise in coming months as families continue to struggle with high unemployment and September’s data will likely include disaster assistance tied to the destruction and flooding caused by Hurricane Irene.

Mississippi reported the largest share of its population relying on food stamps, more than 21%. One in five residents in New Mexico, Tennessee, Oregon and Louisiana also were food stamp recipients.

Food stamp rolls exploded during the downturn, which began in late 2007. Even after the recession came to its official end in June 2009, families continued to tap into food assistance as unemployment remained high and those lucky enough to find jobs were often met with lower wages.

States also made changes to make it easier for residents to tap into the program, such as waiving requirements that limited the value of assets food stamp recipients could own.

But this is all good news, according to this administration. Remember, food stamps stimulate the economy!

Lenore Zimmerman outraged as TSA denies it strip-searched the 85-year-old Long Island grandmother

Gary I. Rothstein for New York Daily News

Lenore Zimmerman, 85, is furious that the Transportation Security Administration flatly denied it strip-searched the L.I. grandma on Tuesday at Kennedy Airport. She is vowing to sue the agency.

The feds on Saturday flatly denied that a 85-year-old Long Island woman was strip-searched at Kennedy Airport, sparking a fresh round of outrage from the already steaming mad granny.

Lenore Zimmerman told the Daily News Friday that security screeners whisked her into a private room and took off all her clothes after she requested a pat down.

A Transportation Security Administration spokesman said “proper procedures were followed” during the Tuesday encounter.

But on Saturday, the TSA went further, saying that a strip search “was not conducted in this case.”

That prompted a furious response from Zimmerman, who has a defibrillator and uses a walker to get around.

“They’re lying to protect their a– because they’re afraid of being sued — and they will be sued,” Zimmerman fumed from her winter home in Coconut Creek, Fla.

“Why would I make up this story?” Zimmerman added. “In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t think of such a thing happening.”

Zimmerman was on her way to a Fort Lauderdale-bound flight when she asked if she could forgo the advance image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.

“They took me into a private screening room and pulled my pants down and then pulled down my underwear,” the 4-feet-11 Zimmerman said. “If that’s not strip-searching, I don’t know what else you’d call it.”

Gun Sales Surge on Black Friday: Over 129,000 Background Checks Flooded the FBI

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com

Either gun manufacturers did a fantastic job on Black Friday promotions, or the American people are quickly waking up to the reality that all is not as peachy as it may seem.

Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests for prospective buyers last Friday, smashing the single-day, all-time high by 32%, according to bureau records.

Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to 129,166 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008.

The actual number of firearms sold last Friday is likely higher because multiple firearms can be included in a transaction by a single buyer. And the FBI does not track actual gun sales.

…

Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he was “skeptical” of the Black Friday gun surge.

“I think there may be no real signifcance at all,”

Source: USA Today via Zero Hedge

“Gun Sales Surge on Black Friday” Video report:

Perhaps Mr. Henigan of the Brady Center is right and the fact that this was the single largest sales day for private gun sales in American history holds no significance.

Or, maybe there is something more to the recent surge in gun sales. Perhaps over a hundred thousand Americans came to the conclusion that rising crime, sustained unemployment, suggestions of apocalyptic meltdown in Europe, and  fear of a potentially catastrophic hyperinflationary depression in the United States are reason enough to have a firearm – just in case.

The preppers were out in droves last week, and they weren’t interested in the latest tablet PC, 3D television or video game system. Instead, they were stocking up on gear and preparing  for the “possible collapse” of society.

Nuke Update: “China Will Not Hesitate To Protect Iran With A Third World War”

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan

Amid the tensions in Iran and the destruction of a second nuclear facility (which is detailed in the original story below), we find it necessary to present our readers with an update made available via The Daily Crux and Zero Hedge, in which Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor from the Chinese National Defense University, said China “will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third World War.”

Trillions of dollars in debt and regional energy resources are at play here. Perhaps this is the reason Iran is publicly downplaying the threat and the U.S. is overtly ignoring the latest bombing/explosion at a second Iranian nuclear facility. Not a single news report of the incident is present on the homepages of major media outlets like CNN, NBC, ABC or Fox.  For their part, Iran completely denies the explosion took place and national media agencies have reportedly pulled all references to the story, even though satellite images (detailed below) confirm it happened.

Don’t miss this Chinese news report. Like the U.S., China has its own propaganda machine and this is what their populace is being fed:

(In Chinese with English subtitles):

ORIGINAL REPORT: Covert Op Suspected as Second Iranian Nuke Site Goes Up In Flames

Either Iran’s nuclear and military  programs are headed by imbeciles or their country is under attack.

Though Iran completely denied the incident yesterday, The Australian reports that satellite images confirm another Iranian military site has exploded:

Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran.

The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was “no doubt” that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was “no accident”.

The explosion at Iran’s third-largest city came as satellite images emerged of the damage caused by one at a military base outside Tehran two weeks ago that killed about 30 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including General Hassan Moghaddam, the head of the Iranian missile defence program.

Iran claimed that the Tehran explosion occurred during testing on a new weapons system designed to strike at Israel. But several Israeli officials have confirmed that the blast was intentional and part of an effort to target Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

On Monday, Isfahan residents reported a blast that shook tower blocks in the city at about 2.40pm and seeing a cloud of smoke rising over the nuclear facility on the edge of the city.

“This caused damage to the facilities in Isfahan, particularly to the elements we believe were involved in storage of raw materials,” said one military intelligence source.

He would not confirm or deny Israel’s involvement in the blast, instead saying that there were “many different parties looking to sabotage, stop or coerce Iran into stopping its nuclear weapons program”.

Iran went into frantic denial yesterday as news of the explosion at Isfahan emerged. Alireza Zaker-Isfahani, the city’s governor, claimed that the blast had been caused by a military exercise in the area but state-owned agencies in Tehran soon removed this story and issued a government denial that any explosion had taken place at all.

A government cover up? Say it ain’t so.

There’s a war on. This was no accident.

The real question is, how, if at all, will Iran respond? Are they biding their time because they are finalizing a nuclear weapon that they intend to deploy against Israel or Western targets, or has all the machisimo displayed by Iranian President Ahmadinejad in recent years been nothing but talk?

We may soon find out.

Hat tip VRF