Putin Jabs NSA For Letting The Ransomware "Genies Out Of The Bottle"

Following the worldwide "Wanna Cry" cyber attack that was launched last Friday and quickly spread to thousands of computers, Vladimir Putin took a jab at the NSA for authoring tools that "may harm their own authors and creators" should the "genies be let out of the bottle."  Per The Hill:

"We are fully aware that the genies, in particular, those created by secret services, may harm their own authors and creators, should they be let out of the bottle."

“Microsoft’s management has made it clear that the virus originated from US intelligence services."

For those who haven't followed the story closely, the outbreak of the virus, dubbed WannaCry, began last Friday. According to cybersecurity experts, and subsequently confirmed by Microsoft, the WannaCry virus is based on an NSA-developed tool that was leaked to the public by a group called Shadow Brokers. The virus, which is ravaging computer networks worldwide, encrypts user files and demands a ransom in cryptocurrency Bitcoin to release them.

Microsoft, which has criticized the American spy agencies for their alleged role in creating the situation, released a patch for its no longer supported Windows XP operating system to prevent computers still running it from being infected. The tech company patched a vulnerability in its newer supported software last month after the leak was made public, but operating systems that were not updated are still vulnerable.

Meanwhile, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, blasted "the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments" which then get leaked into the public domain as equivalent to the "U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen."

“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith wrote in a blog post this afternoon. “This attack provides yet another example of why the stockpiling of vulnerabilities by governments is such a problem.”

"Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage" Smith wrote, adding that an "an equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen. And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action."

Credit to Zero Hedge

When Central Banks Lose Control Bubbles Will Pop

September 23, 2017? What's going to happen?

Revelation 12King James Version (KJV)

12 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.

4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

5 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

10 And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

13 And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.

14 And to the woman were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent.

15 And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.

16 And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth.

17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Here is the image of the constellations for September 23 2017





Jupiter/Satan:

Satan's demons have different names in different countries.

Zeus is the head demon of the Greek hierarchy.

In Britannia, the head demon is called Esus.

Zeus and Esus always demand bloody human sacrifices.

Amun-Ra in Egypt was the equivalent of Zeus in Greece. 
In India, Shiva is the equivalent of the Greek Zeus.  

The Romans borrowed their entire pagan pantheon from Greece. Zeus was called Jove, and as the father of the false gods, he was also called JUPITER.

For the Romans Jupiter is god and his son is Apollo...the one that has to come.

 

Sweden: 70 years old Woman Prosecuted For Complaining About Migrants Defecating In The Streets

A 70-year-old Swedish woman is facing up to four years in prison for complaining on Facebook about migrants defecating in the streets.

From Fria Tider (translated from Swedish with Google):

A 70 year old woman in Dalarna prosecuted for hate speech after writing on Facebook that immigrants are defecating in the streets, writes DT.se.

According to the prosecution, the woman via Facebook wrote disparagingly of people with a foreign background.

In a post from 2015, she has written that immigrants "set cars on fire and urinate and defecate in the streets."

This violates the law on incitement to racial hatred, according to the prosecutor.

The accused woman in police interrogation admitted that she wrote the post, but denied that she committed a criminal act.

The evidence against the 70-year-old woman is a screenshot from Facebook.

The penalty for incitement to racial hatred is imprisonment not exceeding two years or, for petty offenses, fines. If the offense is considered to be grave sentenced the defendants to prison terms of between six months and four years.

She's being dragged into court and threatened with jail for a two year old Facebook post which is factually correct.




Credit to informationliberation.com

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=56740

Did Isaiah Prophesy of World Leaders Contacting Aliens?

The Federal Reserve Must Go

If you want to permanently fix America’s economy, there really is no other choice.  Even before Ron Paul’s rallying cry of “End The Fed” shook America during the peak of the Tea Party movement, I was a huge advocate of shutting down the Federal Reserve.  Because no matter how hard we try to patch it up otherwise, the truth is that our debt-based financial system has been fundamentally flawed from the very beginning, and the Federal Reserve is the very heart of that system.  The following is a free preview of an upcoming book that I am working on about how to turn this country is a more positive direction…

*****

As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, there have been times when I have been criticized for focusing too much on our economic problems and not enough on the solutions.  But I believe that in order to be willing to accept the solutions that are necessary, people need to have a full understanding of the true severity of our problems.  It isn’t by accident that we ended up 20 trillion dollars in debt.  In 1913, a bill was rushed through Congress right before Christmas that was based on a plan that had been secretly developed by very powerful Wall Street bankers.  G. Edward Griffin did an amazing job of documenting the development of this plan in his groundbreaking book “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve”.  At that time, most Americans had no idea what a central bank does or what one would mean for the U.S. economy.  Sadly, even though more than a century has passed since that time, most Americans still do not understand the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve was designed to create debt, and of course the Wall Street bankers were very excited about such a system because it would make them even wealthier.  Since the Fed was created in 1913, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger and the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by about 98 percent.  So the Federal Reserve is doing what it was originally designed to do.  In fact, it has probably worked better than the original designers ever dreamed possible.

There is often a lot of confusion about the Federal Reserve, because a lot of people think that it is simply an agency of the federal government.  But of course that is not true at all.  In fact, as Ron Paul likes to say, the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.

The Fed is an independent central bank that has even argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government.  Yes, the president appoints the leadership of the Fed, but the Fed and other central banks around the world have always fiercely guarded their “independence”.  On the official Fed website, it is admitted that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations”, and they very much operate like private entities.  They even issue shares of stock to the private banks that own them.

In case you were wondering, the federal government has zero shares.

The American people are constantly being told that Fed decisions must be “above politics” because they are “too important” to be politicized.  So even though everything else in our society is up for political debate, somehow we have become convinced that the Federal Reserve should be off limits.

Today, the Federal Reserve has more power over the performance of the U.S. economy than anyone else does, and that includes the president.  The Fed has become known as “the fourth branch of government”, and a single statement from the chairman of the Fed can send global financial markets soaring or tumbling.

So even though presidents tend to get most of the credit or most of the blame for how the U.S. economy is doing, the truth is that the Fed is actually the one pulling most of the strings.  In conjunction with Congress, presidents can monkey around with regulations and tax rates, but at the end of the day their influence over the economy pales in comparison to what the Fed is able to do.

For those that have never encountered this material before, this can be difficult to grasp at first, so let’s start with something very simple.

Go to your wallet or purse and pull out a dollar bill.

At the very top, you will notice that it says “Federal Reserve Note” in big, bold letters.

If you ask 99 percent of the people in the United States where money comes from, they will not be able to tell you.  Our money is actually created and issued by the Federal Reserve, but that is not what our founders intended.  According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress was expressly given the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”.

So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?

Many Americans are still operating under the assumption that the federal government has a “printing press” and that if we ever get into too much debt trouble the government could simply create and spend lots more money into circulation.

But that is not the way that our system currently operates.

Instead, it is the Federal Reserve that creates all new money.  Once that new money is created, the federal government then borrows it and spends it into circulation.

Previously, I have written about how this works…

When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars.

Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.

(http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/why-donald-trump-must-shut-down-the-federal-reserve-and-start-issuing-debt-free-money)

This doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.

Why does the U.S. government have to borrow money that the Federal Reserve creates?  Why can’t they just create the money themselves?

This is the big secret that nobody is supposed to know about.

Theoretically, the federal government doesn’t have to borrow a penny.  Instead of borrowing money the Federal Reserve creates, it could just create money directly and spend it into circulation.

But then we wouldn’t be 20 trillion dollars in debt.

Once the Federal Reserve has received U.S. Treasury bonds in exchange for the “Federal Reserve Notes” that the federal government has requested, the Fed auctions off those bonds to the highest bidder.  But as I have noted so many times before, this process always creates more debt than it does money…

The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system.

But wait.

There is a problem.

Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created.

So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?

Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.

But that never actually happens, does it?

And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well. They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt. They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game.

(http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/why-donald-trump-must-shut-down-the-federal-reserve-and-start-issuing-debt-free-money)

Beginning in 1913, this process has created an endless debt spiral that has resulted in the U.S. being 20 trillion dollars in debt.  It is the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and it didn’t have to happen.

In fact, if we had been using debt-free money all this time we could theoretically be completely out of debt.

A lot of conservatives out there are still under the illusion that if we could just grow the economy fast enough that we could possibly pay back all of this debt someday, but as I have demonstrated in a previous article, this is mathematically impossible.  (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/it-is-mathematically-impossible-to-pay-off-all-of-our-debt)

All of this debt threatens to destroy the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  It is absolutely immoral to pass such a large debt on to future generations, but we are doing it anyway.

Of course the United States is far from alone in this regard.  Today, more than 99.9% of the population of the world lives in a country that has a central bank.

There is literally nothing else that the entire planet agrees upon almost unanimously, and yet somehow virtually the whole globe has chosen to adopt debt-based central banking.

Do you think that this is just a coincidence?

A handful of extremely small nations such as the Federated States of Micronesia still do not have a central bank, but the only large country not to have one is North Korea.

I don’t understand why more people are not talking about this.  If we really want to reform how things are done economically, it should start with central banking.

The truth is that we do not need a central bank.

Let me say that again.

We do not need a central bank.

The greatest period of economic growth in all of U.S. history was when there was no income tax and no central bank. (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/during-the-best-period-of-economic-growth-in-u-s-history-there-was-no-income-tax-and-no-federal-reserve)

Such a system would be unimaginable to many people today, but it is entirely possible.

Instead of a central bank creating debt-based currency for us, the federal government could create debt-free money directly.

And instead of socialist central planners setting our interest rates for us, we could allow the free market to set our interest rates.

We are supposed to be a free market nation with a free market economy, and so we don’t need Fed bureaucrats to run it for us.

The free market will always do a better job in the long run then bureaucrats will.  As I noted earlier, the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was right before the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, but since that time there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

Now we stand poised on the brink of another major downturn, and people still aren’t getting it.

As long as the Federal Reserve exists, there will be “booms” and “busts” like this.

It is time for a change.

During the good times, criticism of the Fed tends to subside.  And without a doubt, the bubble following the end of the last recession lasted much longer than a lot of people initially would have thought, but all Fed-created bubbles eventually end.

We desperately need to get free from this system, and a huge step in that direction would be a rejection of debt-based currency.

If you don’t think that this can happen, you should consider what happened in 1963.  President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue debt-free “United States Notes” which were directly created by the federal government.

Unfortunately, he was assassinated shortly after that executive order was signed.

You can still find debt-free “United States Notes” in circulation today, and they are often for sale on auction sites such as eBay because people like to collect them.

At any time, the White House could do something similar today.

All it takes is the willingness to do so.

The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the debt-based Federal Reserve system has turned all of us into debt slaves.

If we do not want future generations of Americans to be enslaved to debt, we need to shut down the Federal Reserve and start using debt-free currency.  Any essential functions that the Fed is currently performing can ultimately be taken over by the U.S. Treasury, and of course we can make the transition gradual so that we don’t completely panic global financial markets.

The global elite are using central banking and debt-based currencies to dominate the planet.  Today, the total amount of debt in the world has shot past 150 trillion dollars, and it will only continue to grow until humanity wakes up and realizes the insanity of using a debt-based financial system.

Here in the United States, we need people in government that understand these things and that are willing to do something about it.

The Federal Reserve must go, and I will never make any apologies for saying that.

Credit to Economic Collapse

Gerald Celente on The Hagmann Report

If you want to permanently fix America’s economy, there really is no other choice. Even before Ron Paul’s rallying cry of “End The Fed” shook America during the peak of the Tea Party movement, I was a huge advocate of shutting down the Federal Reserve. Because no matter how hard we try to patch it up otherwise, the truth is that our debt-based financial system has been fundamentally flawed from the very beginning, and the Federal Reserve is the very heart of that system. The following is a free preview of an upcoming book that I am working on about how to turn this country is a more positive direction… ***** As the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, there have been times when I have been criticized for focusing too much on our economic problems and not enough on the solutions. But I believe that in order to be willing to accept the solutions that are necessary, people need to have a full understanding of the true severity of our problems. It isn’t by accident that we ended up 20 trillion dollars in debt. In 1913, a bill was rushed through Congress right before Christmas that was based on a plan that had been secretly developed by very powerful Wall Street bankers. G. Edward Griffin did an amazing job of documenting the development of this plan in his groundbreaking book “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve”. At that time, most Americans had no idea what a central bank does or what one would mean for the U.S. economy. Sadly, even though more than a century has passed since that time, most Americans still do not understand the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve was designed to create debt, and of course the Wall Street bankers were very excited about such a system because it would make them even wealthier. Since the Fed was created in 1913, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger and the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by about 98 percent. So the Federal Reserve is doing what it was originally designed to do. In fact, it has probably worked better than the original designers ever dreamed possible. There is often a lot of confusion about the Federal Reserve, because a lot of people think that it is simply an agency of the federal government. But of course that is not true at all. In fact, as Ron Paul likes to say, the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is. The Fed is an independent central bank that has even argued in court that it is not an agency of the federal government. Yes, the president appoints the leadership of the Fed, but the Fed and other central banks around the world have always fiercely guarded their “independence”. On the official Fed website, it is admitted that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations”, and they very much operate like private entities. They even issue shares of stock to the private banks that own them. In case you were wondering, the federal government has zero shares. The American people are constantly being told that Fed decisions must be “above politics” because they are “too important” to be politicized. So even though everything else in our society is up for political debate, somehow we have become convinced that the Federal Reserve should be off limits. Today, the Federal Reserve has more power over the performance of the U.S. economy than anyone else does, and that includes the president. The Fed has become known as “the fourth branch of government”, and a single statement from the chairman of the Fed can send global financial markets soaring or tumbling. So even though presidents tend to get most of the credit or most of the blame for how the U.S. economy is doing, the truth is that the Fed is actually the one pulling most of the strings. In conjunction with Congress, presidents can monkey around with regulations and tax rates, but at the end of the day their influence over the economy pales in comparison to what the Fed is able to do. For those that have never encountered this material before, this can be difficult to grasp at first, so let’s start with something very simple. Go to your wallet or purse and pull out a dollar bill. At the very top, you will notice that it says “Federal Reserve Note” in big, bold letters. If you ask 99 percent of the people in the United States where money comes from, they will not be able to tell you. Our money is actually created and issued by the Federal Reserve, but that is not what our founders intended. According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress was expressly given the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. So why is the Federal Reserve doing it? Many Americans are still operating under the assumption that the federal government has a “printing press” and that if we ever get into too much debt trouble the government could simply create and spend lots more money into circulation. But that is not the way that our system currently operates. Instead, it is the Federal Reserve that creates all new money. Once that new money is created, the federal government then borrows it and spends it into circulation. Previously, I have written about how this works… When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion dollars. Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds. (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/why-donald-trump-must-shut-down-the-federal-reserve-and-start-issuing-debt-free-money) This doesn’t seem to make any sense at all. Why does the U.S. government have to borrow money that the Federal Reserve creates? Why can’t they just create the money themselves? This is the big secret that nobody is supposed to know about. Theoretically, the federal government doesn’t have to borrow a penny. Instead of borrowing money the Federal Reserve creates, it could just create money directly and spend it into circulation. But then we wouldn’t be 20 trillion dollars in debt. Once the Federal Reserve has received U.S. Treasury bonds in exchange for the “Federal Reserve Notes” that the federal government has requested, the Fed auctions off those bonds to the highest bidder. But as I have noted so many times before, this process always creates more debt than it does money… The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through the Federal Reserve system. But wait. There is a problem. Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds, the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater than the amount of money that has been created. So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt? Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt. But that never actually happens, does it? And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well. They understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both run the government and service the national debt. They knew that the U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an attempt to keep up with the game. (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/why-donald-trump-must-shut-down-the-federal-reserve-and-start-issuing-debt-free-money) Beginning in 1913, this process has created an endless debt spiral that has resulted in the U.S. being 20 trillion dollars in debt. It is the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and it didn’t have to happen. In fact, if we had been using debt-free money all this time we could theoretically be completely out of debt. A lot of conservatives out there are still under the illusion that if we could just grow the economy fast enough that we could possibly pay back all of this debt someday, but as I have demonstrated in a previous article, this is mathematically impossible. (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/it-is-mathematically-impossible-to-pay-off-all-of-our-debt) All of this debt threatens to destroy the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have. It is absolutely immoral to pass such a large debt on to future generations, but we are doing it anyway. Of course the United States is far from alone in this regard. Today, more than 99.9% of the population of the world lives in a country that has a central bank. There is literally nothing else that the entire planet agrees upon almost unanimously, and yet somehow virtually the whole globe has chosen to adopt debt-based central banking. Do you think that this is just a coincidence? A handful of extremely small nations such as the Federated States of Micronesia still do not have a central bank, but the only large country not to have one is North Korea. I don’t understand why more people are not talking about this. If we really want to reform how things are done economically, it should start with central banking. The truth is that we do not need a central bank. Let me say that again. We do not need a central bank. The greatest period of economic growth in all of U.S. history was when there was no income tax and no central bank. (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/during-the-best-period-of-economic-growth-in-u-s-history-there-was-no-income-tax-and-no-federal-reserve) Such a system would be unimaginable to many people today, but it is entirely possible. Instead of a central bank creating debt-based currency for us, the federal government could create debt-free money directly. And instead of socialist central planners setting our interest rates for us, we could allow the free market to set our interest rates. We are supposed to be a free market nation with a free market economy, and so we don’t need Fed bureaucrats to run it for us. The free market will always do a better job in the long run then bureaucrats will. As I noted earlier, the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was right before the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, but since that time there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008. Now we stand poised on the brink of another major downturn, and people still aren’t getting it. As long as the Federal Reserve exists, there will be “booms” and “busts” like this. It is time for a change. During the good times, criticism of the Fed tends to subside. And without a doubt, the bubble following the end of the last recession lasted much longer than a lot of people initially would have thought, but all Fed-created bubbles eventually end. We desperately need to get free from this system, and a huge step in that direction would be a rejection of debt-based currency. If you don’t think that this can happen, you should consider what happened in 1963. President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue debt-free “United States Notes” which were directly created by the federal government. Unfortunately, he was assassinated shortly after that executive order was signed. You can still find debt-free “United States Notes” in circulation today, and they are often for sale on auction sites such as eBay because people like to collect them. At any time, the White House could do something similar today. All it takes is the willingness to do so. The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the debt-based Federal Reserve system has turned all of us into debt slaves. If we do not want future generations of Americans to be enslaved to debt, we need to shut down the Federal Reserve and start using debt-free currency. Any essential functions that the Fed is currently performing can ultimately be taken over by the U.S. Treasury, and of course we can make the transition gradual so that we don’t completely panic global financial markets. The global elite are using central banking and debt-based currencies to dominate the planet. Today, the total amount of debt in the world has shot past 150 trillion dollars, and it will only continue to grow until humanity wakes up and realizes the insanity of using a debt-based financial system. Here in the United States, we need people in government that understand these things and that are willing to do something about it. The Federal Reserve must go, and I will never make any apologies for saying that.

In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.

Similar expropriation measures have been proposed in Berlin, the German capital, but abandoned because they were deemed unconstitutional.

Some Germans are asking what is next: Will authorities now limit the maximum amount of living space per person, and force those with large apartments to share them with strangers?

Hamburg, Germany. (Image source: Morris MacMatzen/Getty Images)

Authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years.

City officials have been seizing commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late 2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating residential property units owned by private citizens.

Credit to gatestoneinstitute.org
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org

Chris Martenson Warns "Humans Are Heading Towards Disaster"

Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,

It’s time to be blunt: Humans are headed towards disaster.  

Most of us already know this.  Some consciously, others unconsciously.

Those aware to the many predicaments we face may understand them intellectually, such as through the data provided in The Crash Course. Or they may sense them intuitively as a feeling in their gut that “something is wrong." Many experience a combination of both.

Those operating at the unconscious level may only experience a pervasive sense of dread encroaching into their lives.  Many of these people are confused because they are aware of the context and are increasingly either checking out via numbing behaviors such as drinking and opioid addiction, or they're acting out via violence and protest.

No matter if it's consciously or unconsciously, everybody who ‘knows’ that something is terribly wrong is correct.

A Very Different Future

The data is obvious and the logic is clear. We cannot continue as we have been. The system is simply unsustainable.

Unfortunately, "continuation" is the one and only plan of the state. Let's get back on track doing what we always have been (and use increasingly blunt techniques to saturate the populace with this message).  That’s the whole plan.  It boils down to: More of the same.

But ‘the same’ is killing the planet.

Species are disappearing at horrifying rates that have few comparisons over the past 500 million years. Soil washes to the sea creating dead zones, while humans and the animals they eat are now 95% of the terrestrial animal biomass.

Oceans are acidifying, causing phytoplankton to disappear. Glaciers are melting and sliding away, with those in Greenland and Antarctica contributing to sea level rise, a phenomenon that is not somewhere out in the future, but right here, right now.

Via Bloomberg:

The impact [of sea level rise] is already being felt in South Florida. Tidal flooding now predictably drenches inland streets, even when the sun is out, thanks to the region’s porous limestone bedrock.

Saltwater is creeping into the drinking water supply. The area’s drainage canals rely on gravity; as oceans rise, the water utility has had to install giant pumps to push water out to the ocean.

That’s not a future scenario, that’s right now.  When utilities are installing giant pumps, they are not doing that because of what might happen, but because of that which is already happening.

Pro tip:  If you own coastal property worth a bundle that’s at risk, sell now and avoid the rush.  That’s the conclusion of the Bloomberg article above, and something that insurers and underwriters might render moot by pulling your insurance coverage. How much is an uninsurable property on the coast of a rising sea worth?  The answer is: Less than its current price.

A (very) little bit of study reveals that exponential growth on a finite planet is a bad idea, which means that perpetual exponential growth is an even worse idea, insanity defined practically.  Unfortunately, and quite obviously, perpetual exponential growth lies at the very heart of every so-called ‘modern’ economic model.  It’s what we seek as a culture, and is lauded and rewarded in every possible way.

But it turns out that debt-based money coupled to the insatiable human desire for ever more is a very toxic combo. Both to ourselves, individually, as well as the planet as a whole -- as the historically-brief past 150 years of rampant human feasting on fossil fuels has been devastating to our ecosystems.

While you’ve probably read a dozen articles talking about the death knell of fossil fuels and demand destruction due to substitution and technology, the reality is that (outside of severe economic downturns) each year humans quite reliably consume more oil than the year before:

(Source)

This is just the what the data tells us.  More oil consumed this year than last.  While demand destruction from new technology and different choices may show up in the future, that dynamic is nowhere to be seen in the actual data yet.

Even more worryingly, there are at least 10 and possibly as many as 20 fossil fuel calories embedded in each single food calorie we eat. Our diet is made possible only by today's surfeit of fossil fuel energy. Yet there seems to be no replacement plan and no concern for this fact outside of a few ‘fringe’ blogs and academic arenas.

But on our current course, 8 or 9 billion people will soon be trying to produce more food from degraded soils even as fossil fuels begin to wane, in both aggregate and especially in terms of net energy.

And that’s not some super far off date in the future. That’s in as few as 15 years, which really isn’t a lot of time given the seriousness of the predicament.

My point here is that The future has arrived. There’s no more waiting required for those who dare to look.  Or to feel what’s in their hearts, or gut, or wherever your intuition registers.

Our Giant Canoe

Think of our situation as if humanity were all together in a giant canoe and nearly everybody is paddling as hard as they can.  After all, we’re trying to get somewhere: to improve ourselves, to grow our economy and increase our prosperity. There are goals to be met!

Along the way we’ve convinced ourselves that this canoe is the best one ever built and it cannot fail us. It is the very pinnacle of achievement.  It looks great, and there are creature comforts and pleasant distractions galore.   Food has never been more abundant or easier to obtain, new gadgets keep showing up, and (in theory, at least) you can determine for yourself where you want to sit in the canoe.

The people in the front love being there, as they feel powerful and in control. Ironically, though, it's the few people in the stern who are actually secretly and rather effortlessly steering, but nobody in the rest of the canoe seems to notice or care.

There's only one thing wrong with this canoe. It’s headed for a gigantic waterfall, and if it tips over the lip, very few will survive. It will be like going over Niagara Falls without a barrel.

A few in the canoe have woken up and noticed this. But their protests are limited to either pulling their paddles out of the water and refusing to propel the canoe any faster, or even trying to futilely paddle backwards against the rest of humanity’s combined efforts.

Neither approach is a solution, mind you. But at least for these 'awake' souls, it feels better than paddling mindlessly towards the roaring falls. 

As it stand today, humanity’s canoe is destined to speed right over the edge. Unless we consciously do something about it. Which we could, if we really wanted to.

As there’s nothing preventing us from steering the canoe safely to land, I find this one of the most interesting and fascinating times to be alive. We are currently playing the role of our own destroyer, but the savior role is still there for the choosing.

But what stops us?  What keeps us paddling furiously ahead even as the sound of the roaring falls gets louder and louder?  The answer is at once both very simple and devilishly hard. 

It’s our egos.

To save ourselves from ourselves, we have to begin doing things very, very differently.  Truthfully, the only way we can save ourselves is to shift our consciousness.  

Credit to Zero Hedge