Bacon Prices At All-Time High

Bacon-mania may be sweeping the food industry, but how much longer can that continue with the price of the popular pork product soaring? The Huffington Post reported the price of bacon is at an all-time high, statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate. In June, a pound of bacon rose 6 cents, upping the cost to $6.11 per pound in American cities.

While 6 cents won't break anyone's piggy bank, this recent price hike comes as the latest in a dramatic rise over the past two years. Bacon today costs 14 percent more than it did this time last year and 41 percent more than June 2012, when there was an impending “Baconpocalypse.”

In fact, the Huffington Post noted the price of bacon today is 21 percent higher than its peak price in 1982 after adjusting for inflation.

Credit to IBtimes.com

THE END GAME STARTS, AS CHINA DEVALUES THE YUAN

Panama’s government has declared a state of emergency as it faces a drought

Panama's government has declared a state of emergency as it faces a drought that has prompted water restrictions, depleted reservoirs and affected shipping through its bustling canal.

The government blamed the El Nino weather phenomenon for the major drought. The state of emergency declared Tuesday also sets up a government board tasked with rushing to deliver a water security plan in under four months.

"El Nino" refers to the abnormal warming of surface waters in the tropical sections of the Pacific Ocean every three to five years that can have wide-ranging impacts on regional climate.

Climatologists began observing the most recent El Nino several months ago, and some fear that because of global warming the phenomenon will hit many areas with increasing frequency and greater destructive potential in coming years.

The government must deliver "needed steps ... to develop water reserves to avoid shortages for people's consumption and for food security in the Central American nation" caused by the drought, it warned.

Credit to au.newsyahoo.com

Will The Large Hadron Collider Open Up A Portal To Another Dimension?

What in the world is going on over at CERN? Are scientists playing around with forces that they simply do not understand?  Some of the things that I am going to share with you in this article are deeply disturbing. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN) is purposely smashing particles into one another at astonishingly high speeds.  If you think that sounds incredibly dangerous, you are not alone.  Scientists all over the world have suggested that the bizarre experiments taking place at CERN could either open a black hole, destroy the entire world or open up a portal to another dimension.  But none of those concerns have been taken seriously.  Instead, scientists at CERN just continue to smash more and more particles into each other at higher and higher speeds.

Just recently, I was at a meeting during which Brad Scott suggested that the horrific earthquake in Nepal on April 25th coincided with some very unusual activity at the Large Hadron Collider.  I had never heard this before, and since I am skeptical by nature, I decided to not just take his word for it and look into it myself.  And the truth is that it is hard to come to any solid conclusions about this.  You can watch this video and decide for yourself.

But without a doubt, I believe that there are reasons to be deeply, deeply concerned about what CERN is doing.  If you are not familiar with  the Large Hadron Collider, the following is some pretty good basic information from Wikipedia…

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider, the largest, most complex experimental facility ever built, and the largest single machine in the world.^[1] It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.^[2] It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference, as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss bordernear Geneva, Switzerland. Its first research run took place from 30 March 2010 to 13 February 2013 at an initial energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam (7 TeV total), almost 4 times more than the previous world record for a collider,^[3] rising to 4 TeV per beam (8 TeV total) from 2012.^[4][5] On 13 February 2013 the LHC’s first run officially ended, and it was shut down for planned upgrades. ‘Test’ collisions restarted in the upgraded collider on 5 April 2015,^[6][7] reaching 6.5 TeV per beam on 20 May 2015 (13 TeV total, the current world record for particle collisions). Its second research run commenced on schedule, on 3 June 2015.

As this second run progresses, the number of particles that are being smashed together will continue to increase.

So is it really a good idea to be increasing the frequency of collisions so much?  The following is an excerpt from a recent press release that contained some of the specific technical details…

As for any machine exploring a new energy frontier, operators at the LHC face many challenges on a daily basis. Since the start of Run 2, they have been gradually increasing the intensity of the LHC’s two beams, which travel in opposite directions around the 27-kilometre ring at almost the speed of light. The LHC has run at the record high energy with each beam containing up to 476 bunches of 100 billion protons, delivering collisions every 50 nanoseconds. In the coming days, the intensity should increase further with a new rhythm of 25 nanoseconds. After a planned technical stop in early September, the teams will also be able to increase the number of bunches with the goal of reaching more than 2000 bunches per beam by the end of 2015.

“During the hardware-commissioning phase, we have learnt to manage carefully the huge energy stored in the magnets. Now with beam commissioning we have to learn progressively how to store and handle the beam energy,” said CERN Director of Accelerators and Technology Frédérick Bordry. “Our goal for 2015 is to reach the nominal performance of the LHC at 13 TeV so as to exploit its potential from 2016 to 2018.”

At full capacity, the Large Hadron Collider can smash protons together at a rate of a billion per second.

That is a number that is almost unimaginable.

So precisely what are they hoping to accomplish by this?

Most of the articles about the LHC in the mainstream media discuss mundane scientific research goals that don’t really seem to justify all of the time, effort and money that are being expended.

Could it be possible that the top officials at CERN actually have something else in mind?

The director of research at CERN, physicist Sergio Bertolucci, has stated that the LHC may create a “door” to “an extra dimension”.  According to him, something might come out of that door, or “we might send something through it”…

A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or “unknown unknowns” – for instance “an extra dimension“.

“Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it,” said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, briefing reporters including the Reg at CERN HQ earlier this week.

But why create a portal to another dimension if he doesn’t have any idea what we might encounter?

Or does he?

Other prominent scientific voices have expressed deep concern about what might happen at CERN.

For instance, Stephen Hawking has suggested that the LHC may be capable of creating a black hole that could swallow our world and destroy the entire universe…

Stephen Hawking says the ‘God Particle’ that scientists believe created the world could actually end it, too.

The particle – know as Higgs boson – “has the worrisome feature” that it could become unstable at extremely high energies and create a “black hole” that would collapse the universe, the legendary British physicist has warned in a new book titled Starmus, according to the Daily Express.

“This could happen at any time and we wouldn’t see it coming,” Hawking claimed in the book.

Others have raised questions that are more philosophical in nature.

Why, for example, does the logo for CERN contain “666”…

And why is there a statue of the Hindu god Shiva (“the destroyer”) standing right outside CERN headquarters?…

In the YouTube video posted below, Jim Staley points these things out, along with the fact that the LHC is built on the site of an ancient town that was dedicated to “Apollyon” in Roman times.  I very much encourage you to watch this 13 minute video…

So what are we to make of all this?

Are European scientists knowingly or unknowingly messing around with some very dark forces?

Let us hope that we don’t get a definitive answer to that question any time soon.

We might not like the answer.

And of course the scientific world doesn’t plan to stop here.  At this point there are plans to have an even larger particle collider operational by 2026…

Physicists hope to eventually build larger accelerators that would produce collisions with even more energy than the LHC, which might allow them to discover new particles and better understand dark matter. The proposed International Linear Collider, for instance, would be more than 20 miles long, with a pair of accelerators facing each other straight on, rather than the familiar ring design of the LHC and other accelerators. It’s still pending, but could be built in Japan, with scientists hoping to have it operational by 2026.

I don’t have all the answers, but hopefully I have raised some very important questions in this article.

So what do you think?  Please feel free to join the discussion by posting a comment below…

Credit to End of the American Dream

The Resilience Quotient: How to Survive All That Is Coming

Jade Helm forces are consuming America. The economy is verge of collapse with our 18+ trillion dollar deficit, our 240 trillion dollar unfunded and mandated liabilities (e.g. social security) and we have had the bankers debt passed on to us and it totals a whopping $1.5 quadrillion dollar debt. America is sinking into the extreme depths of moral depravity. Government corruption is the norm, instead of the exception. There is plenty of material that can cause anyone to give up hope and passively accept what is coming. But it does not have to be that way.

Now, more than ever before it is critical to develop a sense of resilience which will allow us to flourish through times of unimaginable horror.

How to Survive and Flourish Through the Stinky Side of Life

I have a large garden, plants and beautiful trees in my backyard at my country home. There always comes the time when we have the unpleasant task putting mulch on our growing areas. Mulch is poop, fertilizer if you will.

For a couple of days following spreading of the mulch, it really stinks up the backyard and it is hard to walk out back without experiencing an almost nauseating feeling. Yet, in a couple of weeks, we see plant growth that is a beautiful sight to behold and the smell has subsided. The moral of the story is that many times in life we have to go through the stinky poop in order to come out the other side tougher, more skillful, wiser, full of hope and much more resilient.

Resilience is one of the keys to living an abundant life. I have found that God uses the mulch in our lives to help us grow and to prepare for what he has in store for you. The to surviving the mulch, the stinky poop of life, is to develop a strong sense of resilience. Having a well-defined sense of resilience is one of the building blocks to a successful life.

Psalm 23:4 captures much of what it means to develop a sense of resilience as the Bible proclaims, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”…

This is the beginning of a series on how we can survive the all the excrement that the world brings to our doorstep.

Resilience in part, is about acquiring a learned set of skills which promote resilience and ultimately person success.

University of Pennsylvania Study

Having a non-resilient attitude based upon negativity and other counterproductive personality traits can actually shorten your life.

A longitudinal study has found that hopelessness and depression are each predictors of coronary heart disease (CHD). When adjusted for level of depression, hopelessness was an independent predictor of CHD. However, when adjusted for level of hopelessness, depression was not an independent predictor of CHD.

This study was the first of its kind to explore depression and hopelessness as individual predictors as long as 18 years out.

Hopelessness occurs often in severe depression, but it is not recognized as a symptom of depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Hopelessness, therefore, might be distinct from depression in its associations with CHD.

Researchers suggested future studies to investigate whether reducing hopelessness, compared with reducing depressive symptoms, would lead to fewer incidents of heart attack.

Coronary heart disease including heart attack is the leading cause of death worldwide. The World Health Organization predicts that by 2030, depression and CHD will rank globally as two of the three most disabling conditions, surpassed only by HIV/AIDS.

What the world needs is not another pill, the world needs to develop a sense of resilience. All you have to do is identify the traits of resilience and then systematically practice incorporating this trait into your daily routine and your overall outlook on life.

Connecting the Dots

My thesis was about the essential elements of resilience. What I discovered was that people that a spirit of resilience have a purpose in life with clearly defined goals and they develop a sense of hope which helps them attain these goals.

In short, you do not have to fall victim to life’s setbacks. Here are a couple of tips:

1. In part, people who have hope have faith in their ability to obtain their goals. One technique is to keep a journal in which they write down only the good things that are happening to them. It refocuses their mind away from any self-doubt and ongoing trauma which can serve to block their meaning and purpose in life. Yes, the bad things happen, but we march along towards our goal because we keep eye on the ball so to speak. When we come to understand and have faith in the belief that God does have a plan for our lives, we are less likely to let the mulch in our lives throw us off of our life’s path. When we know our purpose, the people that leave us, the governments that steal from us and abuse us and lovers that cheat on us become the “fertilizer” in our life.  And in time their stink subsides and we have moved onto greener pastures prepared for us by our God.

2. Develop and attitude of gratitude. Say “thank you”, often. Train yourself to recognize all the kind things that people do you for you that we currently take for granted. Take the time to acknowledge our blessings by thanking people and thanking the creator.

We live in a universe of abundance and we attract into our lives where we let our minds dwell. If we focus on our gifts, we attract more abundance in our lives because we are mentally prepared to accept it. If we only focus on what we do not have, we attract more of what we do not want in our lives.

Proverbs 23:7King James Version (KJV)

7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…

This Biblical phrase has many applications but it speaks to having the right mental attitude.

Conclusion

This is the first in a series on developing a sense of resilience on surviving whatever comes our way. Unlike Big Pharma, which wants to make money by medicating you to blunt the feelings of depression and hopelessness which serve as an impediment to the success that we are supposed to enjoy in our human journey, resilience is free. The only cost is that we must rehearse BEING the resilient traits that you will learn about in this column in the coming weeks where I will isolate a trait associated with resilience along with how we all can acquire that trait.

Credit to Common Sense

Food Stamp Beneficiaries Exceed 45 Million for 49 Straight Months

More Than 56,000 Individuals Added to Food Stamp Rolls in May

The number of beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps, has exceeded 45 million for 49 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In May 2015, the latest month for which data is available, there were 45,495,791 beneficiaries of the food stamp program. There were 56,589 more individuals enrolled in food stamps in May than there were in April.

The number of food stamp recipients first exceeded 45 million in May 2011. Since then, the number has consistently exceeded 45 million, hitting a record high of about 47,800,000 in December 2012.

In May 2015, households on food stamps received an average benefit of $256.47, and total benefits for the month cost taxpayers $5.7 billion.

The USDA has been tracking data on SNAP participation since fiscal year 1969, at which time average participation stood at about 2,800,000. Average participation in fiscal year 2014 hit about 46,500,000, meaning that since 1969 participation in the program has increased 16-fold.

The ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment Rate for July 2015 is 23.0%.

Credit to Freebeacon.com

http://freebeacon.com/issues/food-stamp-beneficiaries-exceed-45-million-for-49-straight-months/

Obama vs. Netanyahu Feud Revealed in Bible Codes

“For if you hearken to his voice and do all that I say, I will hate your enemies and oppress your adversaries.” (Exodus 23:22)

image: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Obama-Abandons-Israel.jpg

(Photo: GPO)

The personal and political conflicts between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are reflected in the hidden messages in the Torah, commonly known as Bible Codes.

Sample headlines from a variety of news outlets, including Breaking Israel News, illustrate the longstanding difficulties in the relationship between the two:

– October 29, 2014: Obama and Netanyahu: A fractured alliance becomes open conflict
– March 2, 2015: Obama, Israel’s Netanyahu clash over Iran diplomacy
– March 25, 2015: Obama Seeking “Revenge” on Netanyahu
– August 6, 2015: Our World: This Isn’t About Bibi and Obama
– August 10, 2015: Obama Vows: “I Don’t Intend to Lose” Iran Fight against Netanyahu, Congress

The clash over the proper approach to Iran’s nuclear aspirations has exacerbated the pre-existing conflict between the two world leaders and is the source of their deepest division. In a recent CNN interview with Obama, journalist Fareed Zakaria asked about Netanyahu’s vocal opposition to the the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran. Zakaria questioned the president on whether he has ever witnessed “a foreign head of government inject[ing] himself into an American debate.” The president replied that “I don’t recall a similar example.”

In a video that was published on February 25, 2015, Bible Codes expert Rabbi Mattiyahu Glazerson reveals a table in which all the elements of the conflict are present. In this table, Glazerson points out that where the name Barack Obama is found, it intersects with the word Islam. Just above Islam is the word Yishmaelim, which refers to the Islamic descendants of Ishmael. Below these words, Glazerson points out Artzot Habrit, which is how the United States is referred to in Hebrew.

The words Netanyahu, Israel and nasi (Hebrew for president) are also found in this table. In between the names Barack Obama and Netanyahu is the Hebrew word ma’avak, which means struggle.

However, what is even more startling, is that right in the center of this table are the letters that spell out Iran, suggesting that Iran is the core of the conflict between the two personalities. Thus, according to this table of Bible Codes, the conflict between Obama and Netanyahu is very deep and is reflected in the wisdom of the Torah.

WATCH: Netanyahu, Obama Feud Spelled Out in Bible

“It is not a simple conflict that can be solved by politics, but much deeper,” commented Glazerson, who emphasized that the “Torah is the blueprint of creation and can give us a much deeper meaning of things.”

Bible Codes are only found in the original Hebrew text of the Five Books of Moses which traditional Judaism believes was written by God. Reflecting a divine intelligence, the Biblical text reveals embedded messages about events that took place (or have yet to take place) millennia after the Bible was written.

Much of the current work being done on Bible Codes by scholars and mathematicians is focused on the coming year, 5776 in the Hebrew counting, as being significant for the arrival of the Messiah.

Credit to Breaking Israel News
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/46684/obama-vs-netanyahu-feud-revealed-bible-codes-jewish-world/#D3s2xjbUcbEJ1VWR.99

ALERT! THE GLOBAL COLLAPSE IS ACCELERATING, CHINA REACTS.

Japan National Debt Rises To New Record ¥1,057,224,000,000,000

The first half of 2015 saw Japan's national debt rise at its fastest pace in four years, hitting a new record high at ¥1.057 Quadrillion!! Have we reached Keynesian nirvana yet? Or is just a little more "what difference does it make" debt-fueled fallacy going to fix it all?

Source: Japan Times

John Kerry Warns "Dollar Will Cease To Be Reserve Currency Of The World" If Iran Deal Rejected... WHAT!!!!

As Jared Bernstein previously explained...

There are few truisms about the world economy, but for decades, one has been the role of the United States dollar as the world’s reserve currency. It’s a core principle of American economic policy. After all, who wouldn’t want their currency to be the one that foreign banks and governments want to hold in reserve?

But new research reveals that what was once a privilege is now a burden, undermining job growth, pumping up budget and trade deficits and inflating financial bubbles. To get the American economy on track, the government needs to drop its commitment to maintaining the dollar’s reserve-currency status.

The reasons are best articulated by Kenneth Austin, a Treasury Department economist, in the latest issue of The Journal of Post Keynesian Economics (needless to say, it’s his opinion, not necessarily the department’s). On the assumption that you don’t have the journal on your coffee table, allow me to summarize.

It is widely recognized that various countries, including China, Singapore and South Korea, suppress the value of their currency relative to the dollar to boost their exports to the United States and reduce its exports to them. They buy lots of dollars, which increases the dollar’s value relative to their own currencies, thus making their exports to us cheaper and our exports to them more expensive.

In 2013, America’s trade deficit was about $475 billion. Its deficit with China alone was $318 billion.

Though Mr. Austin doesn’t say it explicitly, his work shows that, far from being a victim of managed trade, the United States is a willing participant through its efforts to keep the dollar as the world’s most prominent reserve currency.

When a country wants to boost its exports by making them cheaper using the aforementioned process, its central bank accumulates currency from countries that issue reserves. To support this process, these countries suppress their consumption and boost their national savings. Since global accounts must balance, when “currency accumulators” save more and consume less than they produce, other countries — “currency issuers,” like the United States — must save less and consume more than they produce (i.e., run trade deficits).

This means that Americans alone do not determine their rates of savings and consumption. Think of an open, global economy as having one huge, aggregated amount of income that must all be consumed, saved or invested. That means individual countries must adjust to one another. If trade-surplus countries suppress their own consumption and use their excess savings to accumulate dollars, trade-deficit countries must absorb those excess savings to finance their excess consumption or investment.

Note that as long as the dollar is the reserve currency, America’s trade deficit can worsen even when we’re not directly in on the trade. Suppose South Korea runs a surplus with Brazil. By storing its surplus export revenues in Treasury bonds, South Korea nudges up the relative value of the dollar against our competitors’ currencies, and our trade deficit increases, even though the original transaction had nothing to do with the United States.

This isn’t just a matter of one academic writing one article. Mr. Austin’s analysis builds off work by the economist Michael Pettis and, notably, by the former Federal Reserve chairman Ben S. Bernanke.

A result of this dance, as seen throughout the tepid recovery from the Great Recession, is insufficient domestic demand in America’s own labor market. Mr. Austin argues convincingly that the correct metric for estimating the cost in jobs is the dollar value of reserve sales to foreign buyers. By his estimation, that amounted to six million jobs in 2008, and these would tend to be the sort of high-wage manufacturing jobs that are most vulnerable to changes in exports.

Dethroning “king dollar” would be easier than people think. America could, for example, enforce rules to prevent other countries from accumulating too much of our currency. In fact, others do just that precisely to avoid exporting jobs. The most recent example is Japan’s intervention to hold down the value of the yen when central banks in Asia and Latin America started buying Japanese debt.

Of course, if fewer people demanded dollars, interest rates - i.e., what America would pay people to hold its debt - might rise, especially if stronger domestic manufacturers demanded more investment. But there’s no clear empirical, negative relationship between interest rates and trade deficits, and in the long run, as Mr. Pettis observes, “Countries with balanced trade or trade surpluses tend to enjoy lower interest rates on average than countries with large current account deficits, which are handicapped by slower growth and higher debt.”

Others worry that higher import prices would increase inflation. But consider the results when we “pay” to keep price growth so low through artificially cheap exports and large trade deficits: weakened manufacturing, wage stagnation (even with low inflation) and deficits and bubbles to offset the imbalanced trade.

But while more balanced trade might raise prices, there’s no reason it should persistently increase the inflation rate. We might settle into a norm of 2 to 3 percent inflation, versus the current 1 to 2 percent. But that’s a price worth paying for more and higher-quality jobs, more stable recoveries and a revitalized manufacturing sector. The privilege of having the world’s reserve currency is one America can no longer afford.

Credit to Zero Hedge