The horrific outbreak of “eye bleeding fever” in East Africa has forced one doctor to admit the disturbing truth. The fatal outbreak of Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) is “an epidemic already.”

Amid news that this disease is the same on the wiped out much of the Aztec population, Dr. Mukuzi Muhereza, from the Uganda Medical Association (UMA) warns that immediate action should be taken to prevent the spread of this disease, which has a 40% fatality rate, and as a virus, has no cure.

Dr. Muhereza warned that the disease is “highly contagious” and said the people “must be protected” to prevent it spreading. Muhereza’s warning comes amid a growing war of words between the UMA and Uganda’s health ministry, who have said there is no CCHF in the country, despite confirming a case.

This horrific infection causes victims to suffer from a burning fever before beginning to bleed from orifices including their eyes, anuses, and mouths. World Health Organisation (WHO) officials label any outbreak of CCHF as a major threat to public health. “CCHF outbreaks constitute a threat to public health services because of its epidemic potential, its high case fatality ratio (10-40%), its potential for nosocomial outbreaks and the difficulties in treatment and prevention,” WHO’s description of the virus reads.

And new reports say that the Aztecs fell victim to a strikingly similar disease.

Joe Joseph of The Daily Sheeple says that history could be repeating itself with the reemergence of this deadly disease. “Interestingly enough, it’s [the disease that killed the Aztecs] showing striking similarities to the eye bleeding plague over in Africa,” says Joseph. “If we use history as a guide here, and I would say that it’s pretty serious if a disease like this could wipe out 80% of the Aztec population. And we often wonder why it was that the Aztecs just basically, in a very short span of time, just disappeared…we are starting to see similar chains of events unfold in Africa.”

Dr. Muhereza is in agreement with Joseph. This could be a huge problem for those in East Africa. “There are several cases that are suspected,” said Muhereza. “We, therefore, state that one confirmed case of CCHF is an epidemic already. The government should activate emergency levels, it should activate epidemic levels.”

Muhereza added that he was “disappointed” in how the outbreak had been handled by the health ministry, saying it was “very very unprofessional.”

The Japanese are warning the world that Pyongyang may be using the newest talks with South Korea to buy time to pursue its weapons program. United States Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also warned of complacency at a Tuesday summit in Vancouver, Canada.

South Korea pressed ahead with talks to include its northern neighbor in next month’s Winter Olympics Wednesday, but not without allies expressing concern that North Korea is continuing its nuclear weapons program. According to CNN, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono called on the international community to be clear-eyed about North Korea’s motivations for participating in the talks, which have been hailed by some as the most significant thaw in ties in years. “I believe that North Korea wants to buy some time to continue their nuclear and missile programs,” Kono said at the meeting. “It’s not the time to ease pressure towards North Korea,” he said.

China, a nation which was not invited to the talks in Vancouver, denounced the meeting, and the United Nations Command, under whose framework they are being held as demonstrating “Cold War mentality.” [Such thinking] “will only lead to split in the international community and harm the joint efforts that could properly solve the nuclear issue on Korea peninsula,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Wednesday.

Officials from both sides of the Korean Peninsula met Wednesday for the third round of talks to discuss North Korea’s participation in the Pyeongchang, South Korea Winter Games next month. The International Olympic Committee is expected to discuss the proposals on Friday.

Discussed in Vancouver, were topics such as the US Air Force’s deployment of six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Guam, and a Japanese national broadcaster who apologized for sending an alert that incorrectly stated North Korea had launched a ballistic missile, just days after Hawaii had a similar scare. North Korea test-fired two missiles last year that overflew northern Japan.

Also while in Vancouver, Tillerson declined an opportunity to clarify whether President Donald Trump has spoken with Kim Jong Un.

There’s been a growing hope that these face-to-face talks could signal the beginning of a broader de-escalation of the global nuclear crisis, but there now appears to be a concern among Seoul’s allies and partners that North Korea might be just playing them for the time needed to make advancements in their nuclear weaponry.

In photo blunder by the Hawaii Emergency Broadcast System, a password was revealed. In a photo released by the agency in July, a password can be seen stuck to a computer with a post-it note in the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters in Honolulu.

This government agency went so far as to brazenly display their password. Media outletHawaii News Now reports that the agency’s password protection measures are now in the spotlight after a photo from the agency’s Honolulu headquarters appeared in news reports. Sharp-eyed readers noticed that a password was on a Post-It note stuck on a computer. Agency spokesman Richard Rapoza says the password was for an “internal application” that is no longer in use, not a “major piece of software.”

The agency says the alert was sent was because “an employee pushed the wrong button,” not because of a hack, but the photo has still rightly sparked criticism about the agency’s level of security. The agency has said a worker clicked the wrong item in a drop-down menu; sent the warning, and that its system was not hacked.

“It was a mistake made during a standard procedure at the changeover of a shift, and an employee pushed the wrong button,” Governor David Ige said. But if that truly was the case, it should be closed, right? Yet there’s an “ongoing” investigation into the employee who sent the alert.

At the very least, government incompetence is more than evident when looking at this photo. But not only that, it helps prove to the regular, everyday American citizen that those who should be on the frontlines looking out for the public’s well-being don’t actually care much. Like the rest of us, they just want a paycheck.

The emergency warning officer who accidentally sent Hawaii an incoming missile alert has been receiving death threats and is “not doing well,” says the executive officer of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. Toby Clairmont told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the employee, a 10-year agency veteran, has received “dozens of death threats by fax, telephone, social media.” The worker, who has been reassigned to other duties, is “distraught that they’ve received death threats,” Clairmont says. “This is hard. What can be worse than this? Running over a child in a crosswalk and you realize you did it? It’s that kind of feeling,” he says. “This employee is not doing well. We need to help them, too.”

This accidental warning caused a massive panic in Hawaii, and people even put children in storm drains.

Despite repeated claims in the mainstream media by a plethora of leftist talking heads and so-called doctors that Trump is mentally unfit to hold office, a recent examination of the president has confirmed that he has absolutely no signs of early onset dementia or any other mental health related illness.

It should come as no surprise that the establishment media has once again been proven to be complete disinformation artists in their never-ending war against all things Donald Trump but it does paint yet another clear picture of a media so desperate to take out the president that they are willing to straight up lie about the mans own mental health to do so.

So far the likes of CNN and The New York Times have done everything they can to downplay the revelations about Trump’s health while refusing to acknowledge that they were completely and utterly wrong for MONTHS about the issue.

Interestingly, Trump was actually the one who ordered the “The Montreal Cognitive Assessment” on himself.

Axios reported:

The White House briefing began with a readout of President Trump’s vitals from Dr. Ronny Jackson, who conducted the routine physical examination. “The president’s overall health is excellent,” Jackson said.

The bottom line: After the examination, Trump’s doctor is confident that the president will complete his term in the Oval Office “with no serious medical issues.” How is Trump healthy despite his diet and lack of exercise? “He has incredibly good genes. It’s just the way God made him.”

Trump requested a cognitive exam during the session. Trump scored 30/30 on a test of his cognitive ability — “The Montreal Cognitive Assessment” which screened for Alzheimer’s and dementia, among other illnesses. “I have no concerns about his cognitive ability,” Jackson said.

So there you have it. Just like we thought, the entire mental illness narrative was a complete joke and simply yet another disinformation campaign by a mainstream media hellbent on destroying the president.

And this is the media that Jeff Flake is so eager to defend in his upcoming globalist backed speech?

San Diego is desperately trying to control a Hepatitis A outbreak brought on by the homeless problem plaguing the state of California. The city has now opened the first of three giant tents meant to contain the outbreak of the deadly virus.

The first of three industrial-sized tents to house the homeless as part of the city’s efforts to contain a hepatitis A outbreak. The outbreak itself stems from the deplorable conditions people were living in on the streets – mainly, the fecal matter that is left from those who live on the street. Of course, the government isn’t going to climb off the backs of their residents in California, instead, they will continue to raise taxes and create more homeless people while desperately and frantically trying to stop the problems that their overbearing government has caused.

About 20 people made their way to a bunk bed Friday in the tent that will house 350 single men and women. Two other giant tents will open later this month — one specifically for families and one for veterans. The tents will house a total of 700 people with an attempt to keep them from defecating on the street and spreading the Hepatitis A virus.

More than 3000 people are homeless in San Diego, and risk contracting the disease which has killed 20 people so far. The city had to divert $6.5 million budgeted for permanent housing to fund the operation of the tents for seven months. The tents will provide an array of services from mental health care to housing navigators. But the city still faces an acute housing shortage for the poor. Faulconer has earmarked more than $80 million in stolen (taxpayer) funds to address the problem. So the city wants to fix poverty by taking more from earners and creating more poverty. Bravo, California.

Local residents are concerned that the homeless will simply bring their disease with them. Gemma Librado lives a block away from the tent that opened Friday. Last Sunday, a homeless man high on drugs and with a bleeding hand ran into her apartment when she opened the door and locked himself in her bathroom. She and her 6-year-old son ran out of the apartment and called the police. The man broke things in her bathroom, left bloodstains on her floor, and scared her and her child. “If this makes things more orderly than I support this,” she said. “But I’m worried. I don’t want this to bring in more homeless to the area and people using drugs. There are families with children around here.”

An earthquake struck North Korea less than two miles away from the reclusive nation’s nuclear test site. The regime’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons is heightening tensions globally that are set to snap at any moment.

The 2.5-magnitude earthquake which shook North Korea early Saturday morning near its nuclear test site was initially picked up by Seoul’s weather agency. According to Newsweek, around 7:45 a.m. local time, the quake struck Kilju, a county in the North Hamgyeong Province, the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) reported. Kilju is located about 1.7 miles away from the Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility, where the country has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006.

Although the KMA believes that this quake was natural, North Korea’s nuclear test in September could have played a role. “Kilju is a rocky area where natural earthquakes normally do not occur. However, the quake could have been caused by geological changes created from the recent nuclear explosion,” a KMA official who asked not to be named, told the United Press Association.

Following the September 3 underground atomic explosion, a 6.3 magnitude quake rocked the test site and even shook houses in China, according to The Washington Post. The group 38 North—who closely tracks the country’s nuclear activity—believes the seismic activity is potentially a sign of “Tired Mountain Syndrome,” which is when the rock is altered as a result of detonated nuclear bombs. “What we are seeing from North Korea looks like some kind of stress in the ground,” Paul G. Richards, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, toldThe Washington Post. “In that part of the world, there were stresses in the ground, but the explosions have shaken them up.”

The earthquakes near North Korea’s nuclear test site also present even more disturbing implications. Chinese scientists have stated that more nuclear tests underneath Mount Mantap could cause the mountain to collapse. If that happens, radiation could be sent across the region, Wang Naiyan, former chairman of the China Nuclear Society and a senior researcher on China’s nuclear weapons program,warned.

North Korea’s most recent nuclear test also led to the death of at least200 people. They’re believed to have died after a tunnel collapsed about a week after the hydrogen bomb test. Nuclear explosions can cause any number of horrific tragedies, but North Korea seems dedicated to the advancement of their weapons program, despite repeated calls for them to cease developments.

This report was originally published by Chris Martenson at PeakProsperity.com

I hate to break it to you, but chances are you’re just not prepared for what’s coming. Not even close.

Don’t take it personally. I’m simply playing the odds.

After spending more than a decade warning people all over the world about the futility of pursuing infinite exponential economic growth on a finite planet, I can tell you this: very few are even aware of the nature of our predicament.

An even smaller subset is either physically or financially ready for the sort of future barreling down on us. Even fewer are mentally prepared for it.

And make no mistake: it’s the mental and emotional preparation that matters the most. If you can’t cope with adversity and uncertainty, you’re going to be toast in the coming years.

Those of us intending to persevere need to start by looking unflinchingly at the data, and then allowing time to let it sink in. Change is coming – which isn’t a problem in and of itself. But it’s pace is likely to be. Rapid change is difficult for humans to process.

Those frightened by today’s over-inflated asset prices fear how quickly the current bubbles throughout our financial markets will deflate/implode. Who knows when they’ll pop? What will the eventual trigger(s) be? All we know for sure is that every bubble in history inevitably found its pin.

These bubbles – blown by central bankers serially addicted to creating them (and then riding to the rescue to fix them) – are the largest in all of history. That means they’re going to be the most destructive in history when they finally let go.

Millions of households will lose trillions of dollars in net worth. Jobs will evaporate, causing the tens of millions of families living paycheck to paycheck serious harm.

These are the kind of painful consequences central bank follies result in. They’re particularly regrettable because they could have been completely avoided if only we’d taken our medicine during the last crisis back in 2008. But we didn’t. We let the Federal Reserve –the instiution largely responsible for creating the Great Financial Crisis — conspire with its brethern central banks to ‘paper over’ our problems.

So now we are at the apex of the most incredible nest of financial bubbles in all of human history.

One of my favorite charts is below, which shows that even the smartest minds among us (Sir Isaac Newton, in this case) can succumb to the mania of a bubble:

It’s enormously difficult to resist the social pressure to become involved.

But all bubbles burst — painfully of course. That’s their very nature.

Mathematically, it’s impossible for half or more of a bubble’s participants to close out their positions for a gain. But in reality, it’s even worse. Being generous, maybe 10% manage to get out in time.

That means the remaining 90% don’t. For these bagholders, the losses will range from ‘painful’ to ‘financially fatal’.

Which brings us to the conclusion that a similar proportion of people will be emotionally unprepared for the bursting of these bubbles. Again, playing the odds, I’m talking about you.

How Exponentials Work Against You

Bubbles are destructive in the same manner as ocean waves. Their force is not linear, but exponential.

That means that a wave’s energy increases as the square of its height. A 4-foot wave has 16 times the force of a 1-foot wave; something any surfer knows from experience. A 1-foot wave will nudge you. A 4-foot wave will smash you, filling your bathing suit and various body orifices with sand and shells. A 10-foot wave has 100 times more destructive power. It can kill you if it manages to pin you against something solid.

A small, localized bubble — such as one only affecting tulip investors in Holland, or a relatively small number of speculators caught up in buying swampland in Florida — will have a small impact. Consider those 1-foot waves.

A larger bubble inflating an entire nation’s real estate market will be far more destructive. Like the US in 2007. Or like Australia and Canada today. Those bubbles were (or will be when they burst) 4-foot waves.

The current nest of global bubbles in nearly every financial asset (stocks, bonds, real estate, fine art, collectibles, etc) is entirely without precedent. How big are these in wave terms? Are they a series of 8-foot waves? Or more like 12-footers?

At this magnitude level, it doesn’t really matter. They’re going to be very, very destructive when they break.

Our focus now needs to be figuring out how to avoid getting pinned to the coral reef below when they do.

Understanding ‘Real’ Wealth

In order to fully understand this story, we have to start right at the beginning and ask “What is wealth?”

Most would answer this by saying “money”, and then maybe add “stocks and bonds”. But those aren’t actually wealth.

All financial assets are just claims on real wealth, not actually wealth itself. A pile of money has use and utility because you can buy stuff with it. But real wealth is the “stuff” — food, clothes, land, oil, and so forth. If you couldn’t buy anything with your money/stocks/bonds, their worth would revert to the value of the paper they’re printed on (if you’re lucky enough to hold an actual certificate). It’s that simple.

Which means that keeping a tight relationship between ‘real wealth’ and the claims on it should be job #1 of any central bank. But not the Fed, apparently. It’s has increased the number of claims by a mind-boggling amount over the past several years. Same with the BoJ, the ECB, and the other major central banks around the world. They’ve embarked on a very different course, one that has disrupted the long-standing relationship between the markers of wealth and real wealth itself.

They are aided and abetted by both the media and our educational institutions, which reinforce the idea that the claims on wealth are the same as real wealth itself. It’s a handy system, of course, as long as everyone believes it. It has proved a great system for keeping the poor people poor and the rich people rich.

But trouble begins when the system gets seriously out of whack. People begin to question why their money has any value at all if the central banks can just print up as much as they want. Any time they want. And hand it out for free in unlimited quantities to the banks. Who have their own mechanism (i.e., fractional reserve banking) for creating even more money out of thin air.

Pretty slick, right? Convince everyone that something you literally make in unlimited quantities out of thin air has value. So much so that, if you lack it, you end up living under a bridge, starving.

Let’s express this visually.

“GDP” is a measure of the amount of goods and services available and financial asset prices represent the claims (it’s not a very accurate measure of real wealth, but it’s the best one we’ve got, so we’ll use it). Look at how divergent asset prices get from GDP as bubbles develop:

(Source)

What we see in the above chart is that the claims on the economy should, quite intuitively, track the economy itself. Bubbles occurred whenever the claims on the economy, the so-called financial assets (stocks, bonds and derivatives), get too far ahead of the economy itself.

This is a very important point. The claims on the economy are just that: claims. They are not the economy itself!

Yes the Dot-Com crash hurt. But that was the equivalent of a 1-foot wave. Yes, the housing bubble hurt, and that was a 2-foot wave. The current bubble is vastly larger than the prior two, and is the 4-foot wave in our analogy — if we’re lucky. It might turn out to be a 10-footer.

The mystery to me is how people have forgotten the lessons of prior bubbles so rapidly. How they cannot see the current bubbles even as the data is right there, and so easy to come by. I suppose the mania of a bubble, the ‘high’ of easy returns, just makes people blind to reality.

It used to take a generation or longer to forget the painful lessons of a bubble. The victims had to age and die off before a future generation could repeat the mistakes anew.

But now, we have the same generation repeating the same mistakes three times in less than 20 years. Go figure.

In this story, wishful thinking and self-delusion have harmful consequences. It’s no different than taking up a lifelong habit of chain-smoking as a young teen. Sure, you may be one of the few who lives a long full life in spite of the risks, but the odds are definitely not in your favor.

The inevitable destruction caused by the current froth of bubbles is going to hurt a lot of people, institutions, pensions, industries and countries. Nobody will be spared when these burst. The only question left to be answered is: Who’s going to eat the losses?

This is not a future question for a future time; it’s one that’s being answered daily already. Pensioners are already taking cuts. Puerto Rico will not be fully rebuilt. Shale wells drilled when oil was $100/barrel, but being drained empty at $50/barrel, represent capital already hopelessly betrayed. Young graduates with $100,000 of student debt face lost decades of capital building. The losers are already emerging.

And there’s many more to follow. This story is much closer to the beginning than the end.

The bubbles have yet to burst. We’re just seeing the water at the shore’s edge beginning to retreat, wondering how large the wave will be when it arrives. Hoping that it’s not a monster tsunami.

The End Is Nigh

History’s largest bubbles have had the exact same root cause: an expansion of credit that causes leverage to go up faster than the income available to service it.

Simply put: bubbles exist when asset price inflation rises beyond what incomes can sustain. They are everywhere and always a credit-fueled phenomenon.

(Source @hussmanjp)

Look at the ridiculous trajectory of the S&P 500, especially since Trump got elected. I don’t know about you, but pretty much everything that has happened in the US over the past year has been either a diplomatic clown show or a financial cruelty to the average citizen. And yet prices have risen at their highest pace in two decades?

My view is that the Trump election was a totally unexpected black swan shock for the global central banking cartel, and it freaked out. With the Dow down -1,000 points in the late night hours following Trump’s surprise win, the central banks dumped gobs and oodles of money into the equity markets to prevent carnage.

All that money calmed investors and sent prices roaring higher over the following months. The resulting 80-degree rocket launch will hurt a lot when it comes back to earth. Good going central banks!

This is all happening when we’re as close as ever to a military (if not nuclear) confrontation with North Korea, Russia is busy beefing up its war machine, Saudi Arabia has pivoted away from the US towards China and Russia, and most of our European allies are inching away from us.

Meanwhile, the FCC is about to rule against the vast majority of the public and allow US corporations to turn the internet into a pay-for-play toll road — completely undermining the core principle of the most transformative and useful invention of the millennium. By eliminating net neutrality the FCC has ruled ‘against’ you, and ‘for’ the continued usurious profits of the cable companies.

Worse, heath care premiums continue to increase by double-digits each year. They’re going up by a horrifying 45% in Florida and 57% in Georgia, to name just two unfortunate states out of many.

And to really rub salt in the wounds of the nation, the DC swamp is busy passing a tax change that will further drive an enormous gap between the 0.1% and everybody else by lowering taxes on corporate profits (already the lowest in the world if you measure both tax on profits and value-added taxes).

How to pay for the massive cost of this deficit-exploding bill? Easy, just eliminate deductions for average people (such as the state and local tax deductions) and begin taxing the waived tuition of graduate students. That’s right, the government helped to massively bloat tuition fees via massive lending to students and then wants to squeeze the poorest and hardest-working among them.

I wish I were kidding here. But like a cruel joke re-told at the wrong moment, the GOP is busy destroying the meager and precarious financial situation of our citizens just so it can toss a few more dollars into the already-bloated wallets of the richest people in the country.

The long rise of the ultra-wealthy is not some mystery. It arose as a predictable consequence of the financialization of, well…everything that began in the 1980’s:

The above chart speaks to a deeply unfair system that punishes hard working people in order to give more to those who merely shuffle financial instruments around or own financial assets.

This is the system that the Fed is working so hard to preserve. This is the system that Washington DC is working so hard to sustain.

It’s flat out unfair and punitive. It both punishes and rewards the wrong folks, respectively. Debtors are provided relief while savers are punished. The young are saddled with debts and face impossible costs of living mainly to preserve the illusion of wealth for a little longer for the generation in front of them.

For so many reasons, folks, none of this is sustainable. If the system doesn’t crash first under the weight of its excessive debts or the puncturing of its many asset price bubbles, the brewing class and generational wars will boil over if the status quo trajectory continues for much longer.

In Part 2: When The Bubbles Burst… we detail what to expect as the unraveling starts. When these bubbles burst, as they inevitably must, the aftermath is going to be especially ugly.

Understand the likely path the carnage is going to take and position yourself wisely ahead of the crisis — so that you and those you care about can weather the turmoil as safely as possible.

Remember: the role of bubble markets is to injure as many people as badly as possible when they burst. Don’t be one of the victims.

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)

Scientists are sounding the alarm about a volcano eruption in Antartica that could cause global health problems. The ash from this eruption could encircle the globe, affecting millions of people.

Deception Island, off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, is a hotbed of volcanic activity with at least 50 craters spread across the region. A recent study done in the area by scientists has found evidence that an eruption on the island could disrupt air traffic on continents in the Southern Hemisphere, including South America and Africa. It could also cause some major health concerns for the whole globe.

The findings of the research show that Antarctica’s volcanoes can have an effect across the world, says Charles Connor, a geoscientist at the University of South Florida in Tampa not involved in the research. “We have to reassess the potential hazards for global transportation networks posed by even these remote volcanoes.”

“Ash emitted during explosive volcanic eruptions may disperse over vast areas of the globe posing a threat to human health and infrastructures and causing significant disruption to air traffic,” scientists warned in their report. “Volcanic ash emitted from Antarctic volcanoes could potentially encircle the globe, leading to significant consequences for global aviation safety.”

The study revealed the “significant consequences to global aviation” after reviewing computer models of ash flows from different types of eruption during different seasons. The research is the first of its kind investigating the horrifying impact of ash from an Antarctic volcano on the rest of the word. “No attention has been paid to the potential socio-economic and environmental consequences of an ash-forming eruption occurring at high southern latitudes,” the study declared.

Adelina Geyer, a geologist at the Institute of Earth Sciences Jaume Almera in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues focused on Deception Island because of its history of eruptions—30 or so in the past 10,000 years, and one as recently as 1970. It is also a popular destination: Both Argentina and Spain manage scientific research bases on the island, and tourists come to admire the world’s largest colony of chinstrap penguins and the rusted boilers and tanks that are relics of the early 20th century whaling industry there.

Geyer’s team modeled an eruption on Deception Island by simulating different column heights for volcanic ash: 5, 10, and 15 kilometers. (Indonesia’s Mount Agung, when it erupted last month, sent ash billowing up 9 kilometers.) The height of the plume determines which wind patterns it encounters, which, in turn, affects its dispersal. The researchers used an atmospheric transport model to track the way ash would disperse on regional and global scales and assess its possible effect on air travel. –Science Mag

But the health effects of an eruption on Deception Island could be even more horrific than the economic impact. Volcanic ash distributed globally could cause health issue worldwide.

The whole situation is a “Catch 22” scenario: damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. The problem: we’re American citizens and this is our country. The concurrent problem? It is our country that caused this predicament to occur with North Korea…in a pattern of American imperialism that has been going on actively for about a hundred years. The problem is twofold:

1. North Korea can strike the U.S. with an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) attack and/or nuclear missiles, yet:

2. The United States government, through the current and prior two administrations has set the stage for this…as either:

• A purposefully-created “threat” to give America a “bogeyman”/Emmanuel Goldstein to focus on in a “Two-Minutes Hate” drill…keep the “threat level” alive, or
• A threat of insignificance grown and nurtured for the express purpose of taking down the country…while reaping profits and power for the oligarchy all along.

There is an American oligarchy. The oligarchy is not only made up of business and industrial magnates, but of politicos and religious leaders. The business magnates need the lawmakers and politicos to give them “carte blanche” with tax breaks and incentives such as government contracts. The system needs the general populace (or the “proletariat”) to pay taxes and “grunt” out spending on consumer goods and services that keeps the whole thing intact. As in the movie “THX-1138,” there must be periods to pay the utilities, pay for the food, pay taxes on gasoline, taxes on property, taxes on consumer goods, yearly tax increases, and insurances…health, automobile, homeowner…required insurances…

…that ensure the consumer is strapped and shackled to the endless treadmill…where there is no getting ahead…. a new holiday every month to get rid of more of that disposable income for in gifts, travel, and heartfelt largesse…a maelstrom of “emoticons” that condition every purchase….

This is the system we’re in. The problem is, as Americans, what do we do? Roll over and allow ourselves to be taken? To be destroyed as a nation or a people for the fact that our government is not what it was originally intended to be?

I ask for you, the readers to understand my point and stance. I know the government is corrupt and harmful to the citizenry, and has been cancerous to the international community for decades. Yet, this is where we live. Do you remember the original “Red Dawn” movie, where the Soviet was taken prisoner, and Swayze was about to kill him? Swayze was asked what was the difference between them (the Soviets) and us. Swayze responded with, “Because we live here,” and then executed the Russian.

We the people are at fault for not putting a stop to this decades ago. We do not have representatives: we have self-serving politicos in bed with the oligarchs who are trying to do a few things together.

Namely, to amass and secure wealth, assets, materials, and chosen manpower, and then rid themselves of 90% of the populace…and move into a global governance where they rule over slaves whose lifespans are dependent upon their obedience and productive (utilitarian) function.

There is a book entitled “Rogue State” by William Blum that is worth reading if you want the “up and skinny” on American Imperialism. Here is an excerpt that was applicable both yesterday (it was written in 2005) and today:

“American foreign-policy makers are exquisitely attuned to the rise of a government, or a movement on the verge of taking power, that will not lie down and happily become an American client state, that will not look upon the free market or the privatization of the world known as “globalization” as the summum bonum, that will not change its laws to favor foreign investment, that will not be unconcerned about the effects of foreign investment upon the welfare of its own people, that will not produce primarily for export, that will not allow asbestos, banned pesticides, and other products restricted in the developed world to be dumped onto their people, that will not easily tolerate the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, or the World Trade Organization inflicting a scorched-earth policy upon the country’s social services and standard of living, that will not allow an American or NATO military installation upon its soil…” (ppg. 23-24)

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations are currently working to encourage the world to abandon the petrodollar, and Russia and China are little by little advancing the return to the gold standard. China is going to back the Yuan with gold and run an exchange for oil. All of this “sticks in the craw” of the United States and the Western Financial, Political, and Military Hegemony. Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea are not members of this hegemony. American imperialism is clear, and it is enabled by the complacent, stultified public that has been conditioned to believe in American exceptionalism while keyed into a patriotic fervor when a prompted event occurs where such a fervor is in the interests of national objectives.

All that is happening currently falls in line with this. Two excerpts for your learned perusals. The first quotes none other than H.R. McMaster, the former three-star and globalist who slipped into the position of President Trump’s National Security Advisor after railroading K.T. McFarland. This is from the Daily Mail article entitled “Kim is getting closer and there’s not much time left,” from 12/2/17 by Matthew Wright:

“President Trump’s national security adviser HR McMaster said on Saturday that each missile launch from North Korea increases the possibility of war. ‘There are ways to address this problem short of armed conflict, but it is a race because he’s getting closer and closer and there’s not much time left.’ And Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions are the gravest national security threat that America faces, according to McMaster. ‘The greatest immediate threat to the United States and to the world is the threat posed by the rogue regime in North Korea and his continued efforts to develop a long range nuclear capability,’ he added.”

So, McMaster termed North Korea as “the greatest immediate threat to the United States and the world.” If that is the case, then why this? Read this next excerpt from Reuters entitled “Exclusive: Pentagon evaluating U.S. West Coast missile defense sites – officials,” by Mike Stone from 12/2/17:

“On Wednesday, North Korea tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can fly over 13,000 km (8,080 miles), placing Washington within target range, South Korea said on Friday. Congressman Mike Rogers, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee and chairs the Strategic Forces Subcommittee which oversees missile defense, said the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was aiming to install extra defenses at West Coast sites. The funding for the system does not appear in the 2018 defense budget plan indicating potential deployment is further off.

“It’s just a matter of the location, and the MDA making a recommendation as to which site meets their criteria for location, but also the environmental impact,” the Alabama Congressman and Republican told Reuters during an interview on the sidelines of the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in southern California. When asked about the plan, MDA Deputy Director Rear Admiral Jon Hill‎ said in a statement: “The Missile Defense Agency has received no tasking to site the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense System on the West Coast.” The MDA is a unit of the U.S. Defense Department. Congressman Rogers did not reveal the exact locations the agency is considering but said several sites are “competing” for the missile defense installations.

Rogers and Congressman Adam Smith, a Democrat representing the 9th District of Washington, said the government was considering installing the THAAD anti-missile system made by aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp, at west coast sites. The Congressmen said the number of sites that may ultimately be deployed had yet to be determined. THAAD is a ground-based regional missile defense system designed to shoot down short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and takes only a matter of weeks to install. In addition to the two THAAD systems deployed in South Korea and Guam in the Pacific, the U.S. has seven other THAAD systems. While some of the existing missiles are based in Fort Bliss, Texas, the system is highly mobile and current locations are not disclosed. A Lockheed Martin representative declined to comment on specific THAAD deployments, but added that the company “is ready to support the Missile Defense Agency and the United States government in their ballistic missile defense efforts.” He added that testing and deployment of assets is a government decision.”

There you have the inconsistency that lends itself to understanding of the complete…and true…picture. McMaster parrots the lines of the immediate threat of North Korea to the United States…chiming in, and “to the world,” to bring in thought common among the primates…the whole “troupe” of baboons is at risk. There’s the basis for justification for a U.S. first strike…protecting the community of nations, partners, “comrades,” etc.

But the true “Art of the Deal” is to follow the money generated by the public apprehension worked up through the government and media reports. The money? Where are the missile defense systems going to be located? And who will pay for them? And when will the government decide?

So, Congressman Mike Rogers of Alabama is working on identifying the role of the MDA and government-selected locations, as well as Adam Smith, 9^th District Democrat congressman out of Washington. Rogers said several sites were “competing” for the missile defense installations. Also, “friendly” Lockheed Martin said they are “ready to support the MDA and the United States government in their ballistic missile defense efforts.”

Isn’t that wonderful, and wondrous? The article mentions the decision wouldn’t be made until sometime in 2018. What a sense of urgency for an imminent attack that is!

What it all really means is they still need to figure out a method for leasing property and racking up expenses ten times the actual cost…so that Rogers, Smith, and all the other politicos can line their pockets and steal the excess, as well as grease the palms of a small army of municipal commissars and apparatchiks. Then…here comes the benevolent Lockheed Martin, a “mom-and-pop” store that is just awaiting governmental approval and decisions to help everyone out…all funded by the stupid American taxpayer. The corporation and the government, hand in hand to protect the little taxpayer serfs!

And if the nuclear missile bypasses THAAD and Aegis (that we already know will not perform), oh well! Responsibility and accountability are two different things. Besides, everyone will be mad enough that nobody will notice those last-minute wire transfers of funds and stocks into hard gold and silver overseas, nor the scrambling of the politicos and executives to ensure they are out of the country or safe in funded bunkers when it commences.

No, the problem is we as citizens are on the outside looking in. North Korea has the capability to hit us and kill millions of people. The truth is that we will prod them into doing it, for one scenario or another as outlined in the beginning of this article. Trust them: you can trust in the politicians in all their narcissistic hubris armed with aggression and impunity and shielded in self-righteousness. You can trust in them to initiate a nuclear war, but don’t worry. They will be safe, sound, and underground in a secure location that you paid for, while you’re barbequing up above.

The next world war will be initiated by an EMP attack against the U.S., followed by a nuclear exchange and then conventional warfare. Whether another country initiates it, or we do is another matter that will probably never be ascertained after it happens.

Jeremiah Johnson is the Nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces (Airborne). Mr. Johnson is also a Gunsmith, a Certified Master Herbalist, a Montana Master Food Preserver, and a graduate of the U.S. Army’s SERE school (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape). He lives in a cabin in the mountains of Western Montana with his wife and three cats. You can follow Jeremiah’s regular writings at SHTFplan.com or contact him here.

This article may be republished or excerpted with proper attribution to the author and a link to www.SHTFplan.com.

As health officials warn that this year’s flu season could be one of the worst we’ve seen in recent history, they also have stated the vaccine is less than 10% effective.

In just a matter of days after contracting the flu, a young mother died from the disease. Alani Murrieta became sick and was diagnosed with the flu only one week ago. The 20-year-old mother of two was given some medicine and sent home to recover. One day later, she was diagnosed with pneumonia and tragically, just hours later she died. Her family says the young mother was perfectly healthy and hardly ever got sick while the CDC is reporting three states (Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina) with high levels of flu activity, and numbers of new flu cases continue rising every week.

The vaccine that the health officials are pushing on people is only 10% effective against this year’s probable troublsome flu strain too. According to the World Health Organization, the United States typically sees 140,000 to 710,000 influenza-related hospitalizations and 12,000 to 56,000 deaths each year. The very young, very old, and people with existing medical conditions are most at risk.

According to Quartz, the annual flu vaccine development process begins several months before each flu season. When developing a new vaccine, researchers meet at the World Health Organization to identify the strains of the influenza virus they think will infect people in the northern hemisphere. Their findings are based on what made people sick in the southern hemisphere’s most recent flu season. This approach usually still provides mediocre protection (40% to 60%) from the flu.

But it’s a compounding problem because so many are getting vaccinated without understanding what’s in the vaccine, or that their risks of contracting the flu in later years are higher than those who have never been vaccinated. It is, however, very easy to follow the money trail:

With all the evidence pointing toward not getting the shot this year, government agencies and most doctors still suggest that everyone get the flu shot – even though it’s effectiveness isn’t even worth mentioning and the toxic ingredients do more harm to the body than good.

Make sure to be well-informed when making decesions for yourself or your family when it comes to the flu and this year’s vaccine.