http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=Drought Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:40:21 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=Drought Thu, 13 Jun 2013 17:58:01 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d6a_1371160581 TheFireTiger 1. Somalia There's a reason Somalia has topped the Failed States Index for five years straight. Although the internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government gained control of the capital, Mogadishu, last August after the hard-won withdrawal of the terrorist group al-Shabab, it still lacks control of large swaths of the country, including Somaliland and Puntland in the north. The Somali police are "generally ineffective," while violence, piracy, and kidnappings are regular threats. Last year, one of the deadliest droughts in decades resulted in a famine that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands in the country, where 16 percent of the population was internally displaced in 2011 - the highest rate worldwide. African Union and Kenyan troops are working to help bring security to Somalia, and signs of growth in Mogadishu are offering a flicker of hope, while plans to pass a new constitution and elect a new president and prime minister later this summer offer a crucial test. Here, a Somali boy sits in the ruins of what used to be the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Mogadishu on Aug. 18, 2011. Hundreds of Somalis set up temporary shelters inside the cathedral's ruins after fleeing from their villages during the worst drought in the past 60 years. ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images 2. Democratic Republic of the Congo Nine years after the official end of the Second Congo War, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) held presidential elections in November 2011. But the chaotic voting, marred by violence, corruption, and instability, only underscored the fact that the country - where 1.7 million of the total 71 million residents are internally displaced persons - remains terrifyingly unstable. The winner of the polls, which were widely discounted by the international community, was Joseph Kabila, who has ruled the DRC since his father, the former president, was assassinated in 2001. Although Kabila may have clung to power, he by no means sits comfortably in the presidential palace. Former rebel leader Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, continues to conduct attacks against civilians and political opponents with impunity. His actions are only part of the epidemic of violence that plagues the country, particularly in the eastern region, which has been called the "rape capital of the world." Above, a bloodied supporter of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress is helped by a friend after clashes with police and army forces in Kinshasa, the capital, on Nov. 26, 2011. The supporters were waiting for the main opposition leader, Etienne Tshisekedi, who was not allowed to hold a rally in town. EPA/Yannick Tylle 3. Sudan The year 2011 saw the fragile state of Sudan literally break in two when South Sudan formally declared independence in July. The split between the two longtime rivals has not been a peaceful one, with numerous skirmishes over oil-producing regions along the border, a worsening internal refugee crisis as South Sudanese find themselves stranded in the north, and each side accusing the other of supporting internal rebel movements. Tensions came to a head in April of this year when the Khartoum regime launched airstrikes and sent ground troops over the border, and northern President Omar al-Bashir vowed to wipe out South Sudanese leaders, referring to them as "insects." Analysts are now warning that a wider war looms. Here, the shell of a vehicle that was hit by a bomb sits in front of the abandoned village of Trogi during fighting in the South Kordofan region along the border. ADRIANE OHANESIAN/AFP/GettyImages 4. Chad Chad's fortunes appeared to improve in 2010, when President Idriss D'eby and Bashir, his Sudanese counterpart, ended long-simmering hostilities between the two neighbors (the troubled Darfur region sits along their shared border). But 2011 - the 50th anniversary of Chad's independence from France - brought more tumult. D'eby secured a fourth term in a race that was boycotted by opposition parties, who accused the president's party of rigging previous parliamentary elections. More recently, the impoverished central African nation experienced a food emergency as part of a larger crisis in the Sahel region. Journalist Steve Coll has described Chad, which became an oil-producing nation in 2003, as "a poster child for the resource curse." Above, women in colorful, flowing fabrics gather around a shared human and animal watering hole near Lake Chad. Photo by Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images 5. Zimbabwe After more than three decades of strongman Robert Mugabe's misrule - punctuated by massacres, assassinations, and government-led campaigns against white farmers - Zimbabwe is in shambles. The country's economy has deteriorated for much of the past decade, and in 2008 hyperinflation peaked at an annual rate that one economist calculated as the second highest in world history. Since then, the economy has begun to expand again, growing by an estimated 6 percent in 2011, but Zimbabwe remains politically fragile: Mugabe's power-sharing arrangement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains more theory than reality. The country's future, and how much worse it will sink on this list, depends largely on who will rule when the 88-year-old Mugabe dies. Here, a poster of Mugabe hangs torn on a street-side wall in Bulawayo. John Moore/Getty Images 6. Afghanistan From corruption and intrigue surrounding President Hamid Karzai's rule to an unyielding reliance on the opium trade to being the world's most hostile country for women, Afghanistan unquestionably checks just about every box for state failure. And that's aside from the decade-long war that shows no signs of an immediate resolution, despite U.S. plans to withdraw troops as early as 2013. The chances of success for NATO's upcoming security handover to the Afghans depend precariously on cooperation from Pakistan, as well as whether the Taliban - lately resurgent in the country's north - can be contained. Afghanistan's trajectory on the Failed States Index - where it has inched up from No. 11 in 2005 to No. 6 this year - unfortunately does not bode well. In the above prize-winning photo, a girl screams while surrounded by the bodies of a suicide attack in Kabul on Dec. 6, 2011. More than 70 people lost their lives in the bombing. MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images 7. Haiti It's been more than two years since a massive earthquake reduced much of this island nation to rubble, but the road to recovery remains a long one for Haiti. In May, musician-cum-president Michel Martelly, who was elected on a platform of sweeping reform and infrastructure development, marked one year in office. But his time in power has been marred by corruption scandals and plagued by political infighting and suggestions from critics that Martelly, better known as "Sweet Micky," plans on setting himself up as a dictator. There could be some hope for future development: As foreign aid continues to dwindle, the country is attempting to rebrand itself as a tourist destination. Still, social, economic, and political unrest, paired with the the country's enduring image as a disaster zone, have so far stymied the return of vacationers. Here, a Haitian boy walks by the destroyed presidential palace on March 8, 2012, in Port-au-Prince. Tens of thousands of Haitians are still living in tent camps in and around the capital. Spencer Platt/Getty Images 8. Yemen The 22-year rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh finally came to an end in November, when he agreed to step down amid widespread protests and escalating violence in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. But democracy hasn't exactly flowered in Yemen, where only one candidate, former Vice President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, was on the ballot in an election in February. Meanwhile, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has taken advantage of the political chaos to seize several towns in the country's south. The military has launched an all-out offensive to recapture the lost territory, and the United States has stepped up its strikes on al Qaeda targets. Above, Yemeni soldiers ride on top of a pick-up truck near the town of Jaar, a jihadist stronghold north of the Abyan provincial capital Zinjibar, on May 30, 2012, as Yemeni forces continued their offensive against al Qaeda loyalists in the south. AFP/GettyImages 9. Iraq Although overall levels of violence in Iraq have declined substantially from the peak of sectarian strife in 2006-2007, deadly bombings and shootings have repeatedly undermined security. The country's brittle power-sharing arrangement was tested only days after the United States completed its troop withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Shiite-led government issued an arrest warrant for Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges that he ran death squads. But Maliki, who recently sidestepped a no-confidence vote, has presided over some successes as well. Oil production is at its highest levels in decades, and Iraq's GDP more than doubled between 2010 and 2011. Above, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki speaks during a news conference as a security guard stands by in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Maliki denounced a U.S. raid against a Shia militia that was carried out in Sadr City. 10. Central African Republic When the Associated Press calls a nation "desperately poor" despite rich mineral deposits, adding that "armed bandits and insurgents roam the anarchic countryside"; when the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office recommends visitors avoid "non-essential" travel to most parts of the country's territory, and the Lonely Planet calls it the "real" Africa because it's so "underdeveloped, fragmented and poverty-stricken"; and when a Danish journalist can buy himself an ambassadorship to the country and uses it to satirize the absurd corruption that rends it - well, it sadly wasn't a good year for progress in the Central African Republic. Above, a woman walks in the rebel-held town of Kaga Bandoro in the country's north. Spencer Platt/Getty Images 11. Ivory Coast Last year was one of political upheaval and deadly violence for the Ivory Coast. Denying his defeat in the November 2010 presidential election, incumbent Laurent Gbagbo held fast to his seat for months, ordering security forces to kill some 3,000 people opposing him. Gbagbo finally ceded power the following April, when he was taken into custody by troops loyal to his opponent, Alassane Ouattara, before the International Criminal Court charged him with crimes against humanity. Ouattara assumed the presidency, but the months of turbulence have left the country in economic distress; millions are unemployed due to sanctions against Gbagbo and a decline in foreign investment. Above, a home in Grand Lahou, about 100 miles west of the capital Abidjan, on May 14, 2012. The house was once part of the city but is now being swallowed by the sea. ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/GettyImages 12. Guinea Less than two years ago, Guinea elected its first democratically chosen president - Alpha Cond'e, formerly an opposition leader who ran on a platform of reform - and just one year ago, Cond'e survived an assassination attempt by members of the armed services. Despite the rocky start for democracy in Guinea, the West African nation has continued to push forward with ambitious plans for development. Rich in mineral deposits (it has the world's largest supply of bauxite, used to make aluminum), the Guinean government is attempting to increase its mining capabilities by opening the country's first iron mine. It began production in June 2012, but Guinea's expansion has already attracted attention for possible corruption. Britain's Sunday Times reported that backroom deals threatened to divert millions of dollars in assets from companies investing in Guinea, even as the government tries to reform a mining industry that has been in chaos during the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Here, supporters of a Guinean opposition party clash with police as they protest against president Alpha Alpha Cond'e on May 10, 2012, in the capital city of Conkry. CELLOU BINALI/AFP/GettyImages 13. Pakistan The May 2, 2011, killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, along with the ongoing drone war on the Afghanistan border, kept Pakistan in international headlines last year. But the country also faced grave challenges on a number of other fronts, including assassinations, political intrigue, and natural disasters. Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, an outspoken opponent of a controversial blasphemy law, was killed in January 2011. And targeted killings between rival political factions left hundreds dead in Karachi throughout the summer. The civilian government was further marginalized by the military following the bin Laden raid, culminating in the dramatic firing of the country's ambassador to Washington after he reportedly warned of a possible "coup.". And separatist violence continued to flare in the restive Balochistan province. Pakistan is currently locked in tense negotiations with NATO over supply routes into Afghanistan, which have been closed since 24 Pakistani troops were killed in a NATO airstrike in November. Above, a Pakistani vendor talks on his phone as he walks down the middle of a railway track in Lahore on Jan. 5, 2012. ASIF HASSAN/AFP/GettyImages 14. Nigeria In April 2011, Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian from Nigeria's southern, oil-producing Niger Delta, resoundingly won what was arguably the country's fairest presidential election ever. But he was immediately confronted with violent protests in the Muslim north that highlighted the deep ethnic, regional, and religious divisions in Africa's most populous country. Now, Jonathan is grappling with violence from another source: the Islamist group Boko Haram, which has killed more than 1,000 people since mid-2009. The militants' brazen attacks on everything from churches to the U.N.'s headquarters in Abuja coincided with mass protests across the country over the removal of fuel subsidies - an action the government later walked back. Here, female students stand in a burnt classroom at Maiduguri Experimental School, a private school burnt by the Islamist group Boko Haram to discourage children from seeking education in Maiduguri, northeastern Nigeria, on May 12, 2012. PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/GettyImages 15. Guinea-Bissau Guinea-Bissau's prime minister, Carlos Gomes Junior, said in September that he would welcome deposed Libyan President Muammar al-Qaddafi "with open arms." He never had a chance; Qaddafi was killed in October, and Gomes himself was arrested while running for president this past April, after Guinea-Bissau suffered an all-too familiar coup. Coups have repeatedly racked the country over the past half-century: Since independence in 1974, not a single leader has finished his full term in office. In 2010, a drug kingpin who went by the name Rear Adm. Jos'e Am'erico Bubo Na Tchuto even helped staged a coup from the capital's United Nations building. Above, soldiers disperse a group of demonstrators in Bissau on April 14, 2012. Two days earlier, a group of Guinean soldiers attacked Junior's residence and held various strategic points in the capital. EPA/ANDRE KOSTERS 16. Kenya One of Africa's most developed countries, Kenya sat at No. 34 on the Failed States Index back in 2006, but by 2010 it had climbed its way up to 13, following a contested 2007 presidential election that led to widespread ethnic and tribal violence. For the past two years, the country has stayed put at No. 16, coinciding with the approval of a new constitution in 2010 and the International Criminal Court pressing charges against the alleged organizers of the post-election violence. Still, Kenya's entanglement in Somalia, where it sent thousands of troops last fall, has resulted in several attacks and kidnappings along the Kenya-Somali border, introducing new pressures in a country still struggling to recover from a half-decade of turbulence. Kenya also hosts the world's largest refugee camp, teeming with Somali drought victims. Above, a shoe lays next to a blood stain on the ground at a scene of the second explosion at a bus station in downtown Nairobi on Oct. 24, 2011. The attacks came a week after Kenya launched a military operation in Somalia to track down the militant group al-Shabab, which the country blamed for a series of kidnappings of foreigners. EPA/DAI KUROKAWA 17. Ethiopia If Ethiopians are looking for someone to blame for their three-spot leap on this year's list, they might justifiably look to their neighbor to the east, Somalia. Continued instability in that country has had spillover effects in Ethiopia, which in 2011 sent troops across the Somali border in an effort to stem the rising influence of the al-Shabab movement. During the most intense period of a devastating combination of drought, famine, and instability in Somalia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that some 23,000 refugees were arriving each month in Ethiopia, straining resources. The drought also took its toll on the Ethiopian economy, which has experienced runaway growth in recent years but slowed slightly in 2011. While the Ethiopian government has moved to institute some reform in the agriculture sector - which employs 85 percent of workers and accounts for 41 percent of total output - those changes have been incremental at best and hardly sufficient to stand up to 2011's record-breaking dry spell. Here, a malnourished boy sits in front of a feeding center on June 10, 2008, in southern Ethiopia. Late rains in 2012 have put the country at risk for famine once again. JOSE CENDON/AFP/Getty Images 18. Burundi Considered a post-conflict success story following the end of civil war in 2000, Burundi has more recently been lurching dangerously back toward instability since a disputed election in 2010, which led several disgruntled political opposition groups to take up arms. The ruling party, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy, and a reconstituted rebel group, the National Liberation Forces, have attacked each other in a series of targeted killings. The country suffered its worst massacre in years this past September when 40 people were killed in an attack at a bar near the Congolese border. Journalists and civil society leaders have also faced persecution. Here, the bodies of victims of armed raiders are lined up for identification on Sept. 19, 2011, in the capital city of Bujumbura. Raiders killed at least 36 people when they stormed a Burundi bar and opened fire on patrons in one of the country's worst attacks in months. Esdras Ndikumana/AFP/Getty Images 19. Niger Mahamadou Issoufou's victory in Niger's March 2011 presidential elections marked the country's return to civilian rule after a military coup a year earlier that ousted Mamadou Tandja, (who was released from prison after Issoufou, an opposition leader during Tandja's 10-year rule, came to power). But the impoverished West African nation, a major uranium exporter, hasn't been able to shake its long history of military intrigue since achieving independence from France in 1960. Last July, five soldiers were arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Issoufou. Meanwhile, Niger is battling a food crisis, swarms of locusts, and the security threat posed by the rebel takeover in neighboring Mali. Above, a Nigerien woman digs a trench to collect rainwater near the village of Tibiri in the southern Zinder region on May 28, 2012. ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/GettyImages 20. Uganda The world has taken note of late of Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord and leader of the apocalyptic, cult-like Lord's Resistance Army. In October, U.S. President Barack Obama sent 100 U.S. troops to Uganda to bolster its fight against the LRA, and in March the activist group Invisible Children began a viral social media effort to raise awareness of his thousands of victims. The only problem? Although Kony certainly spread chaos throughout the Uganda in past years, he has since left and is thought to be hiding in the Central African Republic. Instead of warlords, the real threat to Uganda may be the spread of Nodding Disease, an incurable neurological affliction that affects thousands of children in the region. In the political arena, however, things are looking better. Since 2011, when Uganda's long-serving president, Yoweri Museveni - who has held power since 1986 - crushed opposition to his latest election and quashed political protest, he has begun to give signals that he may eventually relinquish control. Above, Ugandans watch a screening of Kony 2012 - Invisible Children's film on the war criminal - in the Lira district of Uganda on March 13, 2012. The video, which garnered 78 million hits on YouTube in a matter of weeks, outraged some Ugandans, resulting in walkouts and stone throwing. 21. Myanmar Although it has been under military rule since the 1960s, Myanmar is a rarity on the Failed States Index: a country showing strong, measurable signs of progress. Since his election in March 2011, President Thein Sein has freed hundreds of political prisoners, taken steps to open up the economy and lift restrictions on the press, and allowed a somewhat democratic vote in March that saw the election of longtime opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to parliament. The pace of change under Thein has been rapid, leading the United States to ease economic restrictions against Myanmar and even paving the way late last year for Hillary Clinton to be the first U.S. secretary of state to visit the country in more than half a century. Widespread poverty and a recent rash of sectarian violence, meanwhile, are reminders of serious obstacles that remain. Here, Suu Kyi receives flowers from supporters on her way to a political rally at a stadium in Pathein on Feb. 7, 2012. 22. North Korea For all its horrors, North Korea refuses to collapse. It survived the disintegration of its patron, the Soviet Union, in 1991; the death of its founder and dictator for 46 years, Kim Il Sung, in 1994; and the world's worst famine in decades, which led to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of people. The year 2011 saw both the ascension of Kim Jong Un, after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, in late December, as well as renewed questions about life inside the Hermit Kingdom. In the world's most opaque country, information is scarce, but it appears that the North, desperately poor and inhumanly repressive, still has enough inertia to keep muddling through. Above, mourners react as a car carrying Kim Jong Il's body passes by during the funeral procession in Pyongyang on Dec. 28, 2011. Millions of apparently grief-stricken North Koreans turned out to mourn the late Dear Leader. 23. Eritrea In December, the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Eritrea, accusing the small East African country of supporting rebel groups in Somalia, including the al Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab. The government has also been criticized for using its compulsory "national service" system to force thousands of young Eritreans into labor. Journalists, labor unions, and political activists are frequently subject to arbitrary detention and torture. And an estimated 2,000 Eritrean refugees arrive in Sudan each month, hoping to claim asylum. Not for nothing is Eritrean often labeled "Africa's North Korea." Here, Eritrean farmers herd a team of donkeys into the capital city of Asmara for the main weekly Saturday market on Nov. 3, 2007. The red and blue logo of U.S.-government food aid is a common sight in Eritrea. Donated grain sacks are re-stitched as popular shopping bags. 23. Syria Syria is in the throes of a debilitating uprising that began as peaceful anti-government protests in March 2011 and now features a (semi-)organized opposition, an armed rebellion, and signs that terrorist groups are exploiting the chaos. The United Nations estimates that more than 10,000 people have died during the government's relentless crackdown on the opposition despite a U.N.-brokered peace plan, and sectarian civil war appears to be just around the corner. The international community has reached a standstill about how to respond to the conflict, but sanctions imposed by Arab and Western countries have still managed to take an economic toll. In March, Syria's oil minister claimed that the measures had blasted a $4 billion hole in the country's economy. Look for Syria to leap up in the rankings next year. Here, the Syrian flag flies next to a destroyed building in the Bab Amro neighborhood of Homs on May 2, 2012. JOSEPH EID/AFP/GettyImages 25. Liberia Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf - a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Africa's first elected female head of state - is often celebrated by the international community. But her campaign for reelection this past fall, which she ultimately won in October, highlighted the criticism she has faced within her country; some accuse Johnson-Sirleaf of failing to crack down on corruption and foster economic growth, which continues to be hindered by high unemployment, illiteracy, poor health, and limited infrastructure. Although the Liberian economy has managed to rebuild modestly over the past decade, it is still recovering from the country's 14-year civil war, which ended in 2003; the U.S. State Department estimates that about 68 percent of the total population lives below the poverty line today. In April of this year, Liberians watched as former president Charles Taylor, a key player behind the country's deadly civil war, was sentenced in The Hague to 50 years of jail time for atrocities committed in neighboring Sierra Leone during his rule. Liberian incumbent President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, above, waves at supporters during a campaign meeting in Monrovia on Nov. 6, 2011, two days before the second round of the presidential election. ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images 26. Cameroon In October 2011, Paul Biya, Cameroon's incumbent president and uninterrupted ruler since 1982, won yet another landslide victory in an election tainted by allegations of electoral fraud. Any hopes that the sentiments of the Arab Spring might migrate southward to Cameroon were firmly quashed by the Biya administration, which imposed a crackdown on dissidents and the opposition in the run-up to the election. And as Biya's rule continues undisturbed, so does a massive cholera outbreak that began in 2010 and has showed little signs of slowing down. Cholera, a disease that spreads largely as a result of poor sanitation systems, speaks volumes about current conditions in Cameroon, where more than a third of children suffer from stunted growth as a result of poor nutrition and 13.6 percent of children will die before the age of five. Here, a hunter in the Cameroon jungle heads out to check traps on July 26, 2011. He is collecting blood smaples from animals for Dr. Nathan Wolfe, founder of a company that seeks to predict and prevent pathogen threats. Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images 27. Nepal Sandwiched between India and China, impoverished, mountainous Nepal has long been a proxy battleground for influence among those powers, often cracking down on Tibetan refugees at the behest of its neighbor to the north. Nepal's biggest problem is that it just can't seem to form a government. A 2008 power-sharing agreement appointed Prachanda ("the Fierce One"), the head of the Maoist rebel group, as the country's prime minister, but he resigned a year later when the president sacked his army chief. As recently as May, another attempt at forming a legislature failed; meanwhile, Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in Asia. Supporters of the Maoist Unified Communist Party of Nepal, above, take part in a torch rally in Kathmandu on Sept. 2, 2011. Nepal's former rebel Maoists handed over thousands of weapons five years after the civil war ended in a move seen as an important part of the nation's troubled peace process. PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP/Getty Images 28. East Timor East Timor celebrated its first decade of independence this past May. Although the new nation's early years were characterized by political infighting and ethnic conflict, things were a bit more stable in 2011, and U.N. peacekeepers, who are planning to pull out of the country at the end of 2012, have already handed over most security responsibilities to local forces. Human rights groups, meanwhile, have criticized East Timor for failing to prosecute perpetrators of human rights abuses during the country's war for independence. Despite impressive economic growth, the country's economy remains almost entirely dependent on oil exports. A general election in July will be a major test of whether this young country can escape the legacy of its violent birth. Above, an East Timorese vendor waits for customers in Dili, the capital, on April 24, 2012. 29. Bangladesh Politics in Bangladesh have long been dominated by a bitter rivalry between Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, and the resulting political volatility has manifested itself in many ways in this impoverished, densely populated South Asian country. Last year, clashes erupted between police and protesters after the government scrapped a system in which neutral caretaker governments oversaw general elections. More recently, the army announced it had foiled a coup plot by Islamist military officers against Hasina's government, and deadly protests and general strikes over the disappearance of an opposition leader paralyzed the country. Still, Bangladesh has managed strong, if faltering, economic growth amid the political jousting. A Bangladeshi activist, above, attends a procession to mark International Workers Day in Dhaka on May 1, 2012. MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/GettyImages 29. Srilanka Sri Lanka's economy grew at an estimated 8.3 percent clip in 2011, buoyed by a peace dividend, as investors and tourists returned to this island nation after its 26-year civil war finally ended in May 2009. But ethnic tensions between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, supported by India, still rankle. The government of President Mahinda Rajapakse, a Sinhalese, has claimed that it "never targeted innocent civilians," but human rights groups estimate that tens of thousands of civilians were killed in the brutal last few months of fighting. Above, a Sri Lankan man walks past a painting in Colombo depicting the recent war between the Army and Tamil guerrillas. INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images 31. Egypt One year ago, Egypt was at the forefront of the Arab Spring as a popular protest movement ended 30 years of autocratic rule by former President Hosni Mubarak. Today, Mubarak has been sentenced to life in prison for his role in the deaths of protesters during the movement, and Egypt recently completed the first free elections in the country's history. But these rosy developments are far from the whole story. The elections led to what many revolutionaries have called a "nightmare scenario": a runoff between Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak's last prime minister, and Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood - hardly a choice the liberal protest organizers welcome. At the same time, Egypt continues to face an economic crisis exacerbated in part by the revolution, with youth unemployment reaching 30 percent and the tourist industry continuing to struggle. Protesters have headed back to the iconic Tahrir Square and other hotspots time and again, often met with violence from the military and police forces. Whether Egypt's new government can bring economic and political stability without sacrificing the gains of the revolution remains to be seen. Above, anti-Mubarak demonstrators pose in front of a mock gallows while riot police provide security outside a court in Cairo on Feb. 22, 2012, as the landmark murder and corruption trial of the former president entered its final day of hearings. MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images 31. Sierra Leone Although Sierra Leone has achieved relative political stability since a brutal civil war ended in 2002, its weak economy is still recovering from the 11-year conflict, which killed tens of thousands of people. The West African country, which has improved by 14 spots on the Failed States Index since 2006, has also shown signs of healing. A government policy in recent years to waive medical fees for women and children has dramatically increased the number of children getting health care and decreased mortality rates. And this past May, former Liberian president Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison for planning and abetting atrocities committed by rebels in Sierra Leone during the civil war. Here, a boy drinks water from a tap on April 28, 2012 in a new town built in Koidu, capital of the diamond-rich Kono district. 33. Republic of the Congo Although security has improved since the end of a bloody civil war in 1999, the country also known as Congo-Brazzaville remains plagued by corruption, poverty, and the spillover of instability from neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In January 2012, Congo-Brazzaville finalized plans to repatriate more than 120,000 DRC refugees; thousands more had arrived in December, fleeing post-election violence next door. In March 2012, an explosion at an arms depot in Brazzaville destroyed several buildings and killed hundreds. A cholera epidemic then broke out among the homeless survivors of the blast. Congo-Brazzaville has also been identified by the United Nations as a major source and destination of child trafficking Here, two locals pass the remains of damaged buildings nearly a week after a massive series of explosions in the Mpila suburb of Brazzaville on March 10, 2012. EPA/Alon Skuy 34. Iran The West's tough sanctions over the country's nuclear program have inflicted much of the country's economic pain this year. (In fact, the International Monetary Fund raised eyebrows in 2011 by praising Iran's economic reforms in a report.) But inflation and high unemployment were already present last year, and human rights abuses and political infighting added to domestic instability. Riot police and pro-government militia fighters battled with protesters as the Arab Spring got underway in February 2011, in a brief reminder of the mass protests that followed Iran's disputed presidential election in 2009. And a power struggle between Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad exposed deep rifts between Iran's conservative leaders. Ahmadinejad, above, delivers a speech under a portrait of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on June 3, 2011. 35. Rwanda Rwanda's feisty president, Paul Kagame, would likely disagree with the designation of his country as a failed state. Perhaps he would point to the 8.2 percent growth rate in 2011, his business-friendly policies, or the statistic that 56 percent of parliamentarians in Rwanda are female - the highest rate in the world. But almost two-thirds of the population still lives below the poverty line. On top of that, Kagame, who has been in office since 2000, won the 2010 election with a questionable 93 percent of the vote. For all his economic success, domestic and international observers worry about his growing dictatorial tendencies, as well as his role in the 1994 genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 to 1 million people. Here, a police officer patrols the street in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, on Aug. 10, 2010. EPA/CHARLES SHOEMAKER 36. Malawi Impoverished and suffering from one of the world's highest HIV/AIDS rates, Malawi nonetheless had seen a decade of relative stability, buoyed by former President Bingu wa Mutharika's program to boost agricultural production through fertilizer subsidies. That calm was shaken last year, when protesters, spurred by fuel shortages, rising prices, and high unemployment rates, took to the streets in July, and security forces loyal to Mutharika retaliated violently, killing 19 people. Mutharika died suddenly this past April of a heart attack, and his vice president, Joyce Banda, assumed the presidency according to democratic process - a sign, one can hope, of a return to more stable times. Here, a woman walks home with her firewood and child on July 13, 2011, in Chinkota village. ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images 37. Cambodia Last year saw the beginning of the trial of three senior members of the Khmer Rouge, accused of their involvement in the deaths of nearly one-quarter of Cambodia's population under Pol Pot in the late 1970s. The shadow of the Khmer Rouge regime still looms over Cambodia; the country's nearly three-decade-serving prime minister Hun Sen is himself a former Khmer Rouge commander, as are many high-ranking members of his government. Hun's cronyism is one of the reasons Cambodia was ranked one of the 20 countries with the highest perceived level of corruption in 2011. Above, a Cambodian solider guards the grounds of the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple on Feb. 8, 2011 in Preah Vihear. Thousands of refugees had fled the area after clashes between Thai and Cambodian troops near the disputed World Heritage site. 38. Mauritania Mauritania is still reeling from the 2008 military coup that overthrew the country's first ever democratically elected government. Coup leader Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz continues to rule, having won an election in 2009. Mauritania saw protests in the early days of the Arab Spring, including self-immolations like those in Algeria and Tunisia, but they never erupted into mass demonstrations. The Mauritanian military continued to clash with al Qaeda-linked militants in the country's western desert and in June 2011 crossed the border to attack targets in neighboring Mali. Mauritania was the world's last country to abolish slavery, in 1981, but the practice remains rampant, with at least 10 percent of the population living in bondage, according to U.N. estimates. Above, a Bedouin takes water from a well near Nema, southeastern Mauritania, on May 4, 2012. Mali's March 22 military coup and the subsequent seizure of half the country by rebels have compounded the already worrying effects of a food crisis across West Africa's Sahel region. 39. Togo Togo, a narrow strip of land in West Africa, began implementing democratic reforms in the early 1990s. But its democratic institutions have been repeatedly compromised, perhaps never more so than in 2005, when a bloody succession crisis followed the death of Gnassingbe Eyadema, who had ruled the country for nearly four decades. Power has since passed to Eyadema's son, Faure Gnassingbe, whose security forces clashed violently with opposition protesters in spring 2011 over the government's attempts to regulate public protests and revise the constitution. Last September, Gnassingbe's half-brother was sentenced to 20 years in prison for plotting a coup. Here, a Togolese security force turns away from protesters on March 7, 2010, in Lome. ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP/Getty Images 41. Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaor'e doesn't have much to show for 25 years of rule in Burkina Faso, where nearly half the population lives below the poverty line and the life expectancy is a mere 54 years, among the lowest in the world. But after the Arab Spring spread throughout much of North Africa and the Middle East last year, residents in the capital of Ouagadougou launched a short-lived revolt in the streets that drew local business owners, students, and even members of the military, police, and presidential guard to protest rising food prices and low wages. More than a year later, the riots have subsided, and the president has managed to hold fast to his power. A child laborer, above, rests in her farmer's storeroom after carrying a large bushel of organic cotton from a field almost a mile down the road near Benvar on Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011. Child labor is endemic to the production of Burkina Faso's chief crop export. Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images 41. Kyrgystan Since 2010, Kyrgyzstan has lived under the cloud of violent ethnic clashes that sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the southern part of the country. The legacy of that conflict remains, with thousands still stranded away from their homes and requiring government services. The Central Asian nation rang in 2012 shortly after the election of a new president, Almazbek Atambayev - previously the country's prime minister - in a "peaceful and largely democratic" election, no small accomplishment for a country that has been through two coups in less than a decade. Atambayev is charting a more pro-Russia course for the former Soviet republic: In the spring of 2012, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Kyrgyzstan, the Atambayev government made it clear it wants the Manas airport, a major U.S. military transportation base for Afghanistan, turned over to strictly civilian uses when the current U.S. lease expires in 2014. Here, children play among ruins near the town of Osh on June 11, 2011. VYACHESLAV OSELEDKO/AFP/Getty Images 43. Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo's assumption of the rotating presidency of the African Union did little to improve political conditions in a country that remains desperately poor, despite oil wealth that gives it a higher GDP per capita than much larger countries such as China, Russia, and South Africa. More than 100 political opponents were rounded up by Obiang's security forces in the run-up to an AU summit in Malabo last June. Despite widespread corruption and human rights abuses in Africa's fourth-largest oil exporter, the U.S. government continues to enjoy cordial relations with Obiang - depicted as a statue in Malabo above - who is now the continent's longest-serving ruler following the death of Muammar al-Qaddafi. Obiang's notoriously high-flying son, Teodorin, was taken down a notch last year when French police seized 11 of his supercars in Paris as part of a criminal investigation, and he is facing a U.S. indictment by the Justice Department as well - despite being elevated to vice president by his father. AFP/Getty Images 44. Zambia Zambia, Africa's largest copper producer, enjoys more political stability than its neighbours in southern Africa. Last September, Michael Sata, a labor leader who vowed to protect workers from exploitation by the many Chinese companies in the country, was elected president in a peaceful transfer of power. But the government is still grappling with secession demands in western Zambia, as well as widespread poverty and disease. In 2010, the United Nations noted that Zambia's score on the Human Development Index had actually decreased since 1970, largely due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS. Above, police officers beat opposition demonstrators during a protest against the suspension of top judges in Lusaka on June 6, 2012. Joseph Mwenda/AFP/GettyImages 45. Lebanon This tiny country has it all: excellent food, stunning beaches, great skiing just a few hours' drive away from one of the world's largest extant Roman ruins. Unfortunately, it also has a messy dispute with Israel; the powerful, armed religious organization Hezbollah, which runs swathes of the country and allies itself with imploding neighbor Syria; and a population so dividedly pluralistic that there's no consensus on whose face to put on the money. As uprisings knocked down leaders across the Arab world last year, Lebanon suffered as a proxy battleground across all sorts of Middle Eastern fault lines. But its own political system has been so combustible for so long, 2011 didn't even seem that strange. Above, Shiite Muslim demonstrators block the Mar Mikhael road at the entrance of Beirut's southern suburbs in protest against the kidnapping of 13 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in the Syrian northern province of Aleppo on May 22, 2012. ANWAR AMRO/AFP/GettyImages 46. Tajikistan This poor, authoritarian Central Asian state is rife with government corruption and barely supports its economy through drug-trafficking and labor exported to Russia. In recent years, the rise of radical Islam has led the Tajik government to crack down on observant Muslims, even monitoring Friday services and, last June, banning children under 18 from attending them. Tajikistan has also seen an uptick in violent clashes along its border with war-torn Afghanistan - tensions that could escalate further following the forthcoming U.S. troop drawdown. A Tajik villager, above, jumps over an irrigation ditch at a cotton field in Yangiabad on Oct. 26, 2006. 47. Solomon Islands The Solomon Islands represent the front lines in the fight to mitigate the impact of climate change. Rising sea levels threaten several key industries for the sprawling Pacific island nation that heavily depends on agriculture and forestry, both of which may suffer from increasing soil salinity. The Solomon Islands have been pummeled by earthquakes in recent years, including at least four major quakes in 2011.The country has also suffered from chronic political instability during the past decade, with six different leaders since 2006. From 1998 to 2003 - the so-called "tension years" - the Solomon Islands were wracked by a civil war. And while an Australian led peacekeeping force has managed to keep a lid on the violence, the country's turbulent politics have showed no signs of quieting. Here, a local looks out over the ocean from a destroyed church in the outskirts of Gizo Island, which was hit by a tsunami in April 2007. WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images 48. Laos Laos is the world's smallest communist state by population. (It's slightly bigger than Cuba.) Mostly ignored by the world's media, the country contains in miniature the same muzzling of the press, intolerance of dissidents, and sham elections as its officially communist neighbors of China to the north and Vietnam to the east. Still, the government does allow some leeway: The land devoted to growing opium increased by 38 percent in 2011, according to the United Nations. Above, a Laotian fisherman casts his net in the Mekong river in the capital Luang Prabang on May 4, 2012. ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP/GettyImages 49. Angola Angola, China's biggest African supplier of crude oil, is flush with cash from oil and diamonds, and the country is leveraging that wealth - and Chinese loans - to finance a construction boom following a devastating 27-year civil war that ended in 2002. (The capital, Luanda, is one of the most expensive cities in the world.) But Angola is also one of the world's poorest and least developed countries - a dichotomy that has fueled repeated allegations of government corruption. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who assumed power in 1979, is one of Africa's longest-serving rulers, and in 2011 Human Rights Watch accused his government of intimidating protesters. General elections in August could spark more turmoil. Here, an Angolan carries garbage on Sept. 9, 2008, collecting recyclable material to make a living at one of the largest municipal dumps in Luanda. GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/Getty Images 50. Libya Muammar al-Qaddafi's three-decade rule over Libya came to a dramatic and bloody end in a drainage ditch near the city of Sirte this year, when the cagey and often eccentric dictator was brought down by an uprising of his own people aided in no small part by NATO airpower. The country has entered a period of political uncertainty under the presumably temporary rule of the rebel National Transitional Council. In early-2012 and mid-2012, tribal violence in Libya's remote southeast has claimed dozens of lives. The ramifications of the removal of Qaddafi - Africa's self-styled "king of kings" - has been felt beyond Libya's borders as well, with guns and returning fighters flooding North Africa and contributing to the instability in nearby Mali. Above, Libyans visit Sirte's damaged cemetery on Nov. 10, 2011. At the time, fewer than 5 percent of the residents of Qaddafi's former stronghold had returned to their homes. JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images 51. Georgia After a 2008 conflict with Russia over control of disputed border territories, Georgia's place on the Failed States Index worsened 23 points between 2008 and 2009, from 56 to 33. Since then, it has nearly regained its (still somewhat unstable) footing. After taking power in a bloodless revolution in 2003, President Mikheil Saakashvili - a Western-educated reformer and U.S. ally - has worked to build up his country's long-suffering post-Soviet economy and wipe out government corruption. In turn, the Georgian economy grew at a 6.8 percent rate last year, and the country jumped from 133rd best to 64th on Transparency International's corruption index between 2004 and 2011. Still, high poverty and unemployment rates, as well as claims that Saakashvili has failed to fulfill the democratic promises he made upon taking power, led thousands of Georgians to take part in anti-government protests in May of last year. Here, a displaced Georgian woman stands by a road on Aug. 16, 2008 just outside the town of Gori, Georgia. Uriel Sinai/Getty Images 52. Colombia Colombia has come a long way since the near-civil war conditions of the 1990s, but it is still not entirely stable. Human rights groups documented scores of extrajudicial killings by elements of Colombian security forces acting independently. Paramilitary groups continued to pray on indigenous people in rural regions, killing dozens. While substantially diminished, the FARC rebels show they are still capable of high-profile actions, including the kidnapping of a French journalist earlier this year. More than half a million Colombian refugees are still living abroad, while there are more than 4 million internally displaced people within the country. Here, a prostitute stands on the street in Cartagena on April 19, 2012. MANUEL PEDRAZA/AFP/Getty Images 53. Djbouti Bordering Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia, and just a short hop over the water from Yemen, Djibouti is located right the middle of one of the world's most unstable regions. But it has managed to remain relatively stable - if increasingly authoritarian - compared with its neighbors. February saw mass demonstrations in the capital against President Ismail Omar Guelleh, whose family has ruled since the country's independence in 1977. Nonetheless, Guelleh was reelected with 80 percent of the vote in April, with the opposition boycotting and amid crackdowns against opposition and civil society groups. Djibouti hosts the largest U.S. military presence in Africa, and its key role in both anti-piracy operations and strikes on militant targets in Yemen may make the international community reluctant to criticize Guelleh's government. A Djiboutian woman with her donkeys, above, look for pastures in Garabtisan on Aug. 17, 2011. The village, located in the middle of a harsh desert of sun-baked gray rocks in northern Djibouti, is prone to extreme drought. 54. Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea's capital Port Moresby is not the world's most dangerous city, but it's close; the carjacking, violent crime, and murder rates there led the Economist Intelligence Unit to rank Port Moresby the world's third least livable city in 2011. If the scandal that added to PNG's 2011 political crisis - in which two rival sets of prime ministers and cabinets both claimed power - was not already bizarre enough, police found the body of a 29-year-old waitress in the home of Prime Minister Sam Abal. They were alerted by a security guard who claimed he heard the woman scream and 20 minutes later reported that Abal's adopted, unemployed son had told him "that he had killed the woman and left her body in the banana garden." PNG's 6.2 million people speak more than 800 languages, and civil war is always seemingly a spark away in this fractured nation. Above, children jump over a dirty drain at Daru in Papua New Guinea on Aug. 17, 2011. Tuberculosis and cholera have killed hundreds of people on the island in recent years. Jason South/The AGE/Fairfax Media via Getty Images 55. Swaziland King Mswati III, Africa's last absolute monarch, rules Swaziland with an iron fist. Swazi police cracked down on a pro-democracy demonstration in April 2011, and the government more recently moved to snuff out critics on Facebook and Twitter. The royal family lives lavishly, while the king's subjects struggle with widespread poverty, the world's highest HIV infection rate, and, in 2011, a crippling budget crisis. When 2,000 people marched to the prime minister's office a year ago to voice their frustration with the economic crisis, the king had a message for them: "Work harder and sacrifice more." Here, the king watches young virgins at a traditional reed-dance ceremony at the stadium at the Royal Palace on August 30, 2009, in Ludzidzini. About 80,000 virgins from all over the country attended this yearly event, the biggest in Swazi culture. It was founded to celebrate the beauty of Swazi women and girls. 56. Phillipines The world's 12th most populous country, with some 100 million people, the Philippines has grown rapidly in recent years. Its economy withstood the global recession better than most in 2008 and 2009, rising to a 7.6 percent growth rate in 2010 before falling to 3.7 percent in 2011. But the wealth has been slow to trickle down, and in fact, the poverty rate increased between 2003 and 2009, from 24.9 to 26.5 percent, or more than 3 million people. Poor governance is at least in part to blame. On that front, unpopular former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was arrested in November on charges of tampering with the results of a 2007 congressional election and appeared in court this past February. Above, residents try to salvage recyclable materials from what used to be houses in the aftermath of a massive fire that engulfed hundreds of makeshift houses in a shanty town community in Tondo district on May 12, 2012 in Manila. Up to 10,000 people were left homeless. Dondi Tawatao/Getty Images 57. Comoros Since achieving independence from France in 1975, Comoros has seen no fewer than 20 coups or attempted coups. Political instability continued in 2011 as the opposition accused the ruling party of widespread electoral fraud in the December 2011 presidential contest. This time, however, the parties took the conflict to the country's Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the winner of that contest, Ikililou Dhoinine. One of the world's poorest countries, Comoros has experienced paltry economic growth rates recently and its economy remains highly dependent on agriculture and fishing. A goat, above, eats garbage piled up in the old port city of Moroni on Grande Comore Island. Since its independence from France in 1975, the Union of the Comoros has experienced more than 20 coups d''etat or attempted coups d''etat and half the population lives under the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. EPA/STEPHEN MORRISON 58. Madagascar Despite the international and regional sanctions imposed after he took power in a military-backed coup in 2009, President Andry Rajoelina continues to cling to power. The government put down another attempted coup by the military in late 2010. Seventy percent of Madagascar's population lives below the poverty line, with the economic distress only exacerbated by sanctions. In January 2012, ousted president Marc Ravalomanana was rebuffed in an attempt to return to the country. Supporters of Antananarivo Mayor Andry Rajoelina, above, run from tear-gas following a rally in the main avenue of the Madagascan capital on Feb. 16, 2009. WALTER ASTRADA/AFP/Getty Images 59. Bhutan Bhutan's fourth "dragon king" coined the term "gross national happiness" in 1972 as the priority for his small, isolated Himalayan kingdom, and PBS ran a documentary about the country, calling it "The Last Shangri-La." But all this happy talk masks an authoritarian streak: Bhutanese are reportedly required to wear their national dress outside during daylight hours, cigarettes are illegal, and tens of thousands of ethnic Nepali Bhutanese citizens have fled to Nepal because of persecution. Above, a Bhutanese woman looks out from her home next to a portrait of King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck and Queen Ashi Jetsun Pema Wangchuck as Bhutan prepares for the royal wedding on Oct. 12, 2011, in Thimphu, the capital. Paula Bronstein /Getty Images 59. Mozambique The year 2011 brought good news for Mozambique on a number of fronts. The government unveiled new anti-graft measures (though government corruption continues to be a problem), and the United Nations reported that the HIV epidemic in the country was "levelling off, albeit at unacceptably high levels." But serious problems remain. In May, the International Monetary Fund noted that Mozambique's economic growth, fueled by largely untapped mineral wealth, is leaving the country's poor (more than half of the adult population) behind and primarily benefiting foreign investors. A WikiLeaks cable in late 2010, meanwhile, warned that Mozambique was becoming a drug trafficking hub. Above, a young Mozambican protester stands near a burning car on a Maputo street on Sept. 2, 2010. Sergio Costa/AFP/Getty Images http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d6a_1371160581 TheFireTiger Worst countries in the world worst,countries,world Thu, 13 Jun 2013 10:18:08 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0ab_1371132882 Ali Baba Superstitious villagers of Sirha area in Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh buried their children up to the neck to appease deities hoping that the ritual would bring early rains. Pictures of the rituals accessed by Headlines Today show several people, mostly women, with these children buried neck deep in mud. It was part of an elaborate ritual to please the rain god. All this while, the villagers who had gathered around the kids kept singing celebratory songs, asking for the god's mercy as they ignored the agony and fear of the younger ones. The villagers were hopeful that the bizarre ritual would bring some relief to the area which has been crippled by drought for three years. Ironically, the villagers ignored the children's well-being as they were made to suffer in the sweltering sun as they were helpless to even use their hands to protect themselves as others indulged in prayer. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/villagers-bury-kids-up-to-neck-to-please-rain-god-in-kanpur/1/279958.html http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0ab_1371132882 Ali Baba INDIA !!! Hindus Villagers bury kids up to neck to please rain god in Kanpur india,hindus,bury,bury a kid,villagers,rain,rain god,Kanpur,rape,bbc,cnn,uk,usa,eu,asia, Thu, 16 May 2013 03:44:41 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d8e_1368688633 Omar-knows Somali Canadian doing their part to help famine victims back home. They raised over $60 000 for the famine in Somalia. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d8e_1368688633 Omar-knows Step Up For Somalia - Thank You Video Somalia, famine, fundraising, charity, Edmonton, walk for Somalia, step up for Somalia, Alberta, Canada, Africa, drought, starvation, help, support Thu, 09 May 2013 02:41:39 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0ee_1368081586 travisjhake http://grist.org/cities/how-cities-can-finally-get-smart-about-water-use/ That's the conclusion from a new study in the journal Water Policy, whose authors compared the water supply histories of four cities - San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Adelaide, Australia. Among the lessons learned? Urban water conservation, recycling, and desalination aren't silver bullets. In fact, the best solution may lie upstream with farmers - saving just 5-10 percent of agricultural irrigation in upstream watersheds could satisfy a city's entire water needs. But the time to act is now, argues Brian Richter, a senior freshwater scientist at The Nature Conservancy and the study's lead author - he says a global urban water crisis is already here. Below, Richter tells us more about what cities need to do to say on the right side of dry. Q. Many cities take a similar pattern of water development, according to your research - going from exhausting local surface and groundwater supplies to importing water to implementing water conservation to finally recycling water or desalination. Why is this pattern unsustainable? A. When we overuse a freshwater source, we set ourselves up for disaster. Each of the cities we reviewed in our study has contributed to the drying of a major river or important groundwater spring. That has obvious ecological impacts and social consequences - it affects livelihoods and human health by compromising fish production, concentrating pollution, or curtailing recreational activities. Our research is revealing that water scarcity also causes severe economic losses by limiting or disrupting agricultural, industrial, and energy production. Texas lost nearly $8 billion in agriculture last year due to water shortages; electricity generation from hydropower dams on the Colorado River in 2010 dropped by 20 percent due to water shortages. Some estimates suggest that China may be losing $39 billion each year due to crop damage and lessened industrial production, and hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are being forced to move due to water shortages. Because these impacts are so pervasive and damaging, we need to begin investing in water supply approaches that don't just minimize these adverse impacts but instead begin to reverse them. Q. Are we looking at a crisis in securing urban water supplies in the near future, either for U.S. cities or globally? A. That crisis is already upon us. Our study revealed that half of all cities - both in the United States and globally - are located in watersheds where more than 50 percent of the renewable supply of water to our rivers and aquifers is being consumed, at least seasonally. Now, that's not a problem as long as we're receiving plentiful precipitation. But if you're using that much water on an average, ongoing basis and you go into a severe drought, there isn't enough water to meet all needs. Q. Phoenix, another one of your case studies, has lowered its per capita water use by 25 percent since 1990 through various water conservation measures - and yet Phoenix is water scarce. Why? A. Water scarcity results when we heavily deplete a freshwater source. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're experiencing regular water shortages in your home or business. But it does mean that you're at considerable risk if the water supplies continue to be increasingly depleted by other users, or you get into a drought situation. Phoenix's water conservation efforts are admirable, but they need to do much more. They are heavily dependent on the Colorado River, which is so thoroughly overused that it dries up before reaching its delta in the Gulf of California. During a severe, prolonged drought, the reliability of that water source will be in jeopardy. Q. So storm- and wastewater recycling aren't enough? A. Contrary to popular belief, water conservation and recycling may not result in a net improvement in the affected water source. If the water that's conserved is simply used to supply additional urban growth, then the water source is no better off. The vast majority (80-90 percent) of water used in cities is returned to the freshwater source after use. So only 10-20 percent of the water is "lost" or "depleted" - most of that goes to outdoor landscaping or golf courses. Water recycling shuts off the return of water to the freshwater source - instead of discharging the used water back to a river, the water is used for domestic, commercial, industrial, or agricultural purposes. So water recycling will "save" water - and reduce water scarcity in the freshwater source - only if it reduces the fraction of water that was previously being lost from the freshwater system. Q. What about desalination if you're a city on the coast? It's expensive - but Adelaide's desal plant is supposed to provide more than 25 percent of that city's water supply by 2013. A. Desalination could be a wonderful solution to our water challenges - more than one in every two people on Earth lives near a coast. But removing salts from ocean water requires a tremendous amount of energy, and the expense of that energy makes desalination the most costly way by far to supply fresh water to cities. And there's a wicked climate change feedback loop for desalination: using it to create fresh water produces carbon emissions that change our climate, which in turn affects the precipitation that supplies fresh water. Without a radical breakthrough in energy production, desalination will continue to supply only a tiny fraction of the world's freshwater needs. (Note that Adelaide is using 100 percent renewable energy to power its desalination plant.) http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0ee_1368081586 travisjhake Will cities ever get smart about water use? Will cities ever get smart about water use Wed, 08 May 2013 23:41:08 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bdd_1368070478 Detroit Iron Posted 06:41 PM ET Junk Science: A new NASA study says global warming could "increase the risk for extreme rainfall and drought." We've heard this sort of threat many times before and, no, there's nothing to see here. According to NASA: "Analysis of computer simulations from 14 climate models indicates wet regions of the world, will see increases in heavy precipitation because of warming resulting from projected increases in carbon dioxide levels. Arid land areas outside the tropics and many regions with moderate rainfall could become drier." How about that? Heavy rain in soggy regions and drought in the parched ones. Pardon us if we don't get too excited about this. If it happens, the world will deal with it. But there's a good chance this forecast will end up like many of the other global-warming predictions of doom. Who can forget that acclaimed 2007 film made by Al Gore, in which the former vice president and failed 2000 White House candidate said sea levels would rise by 20 feet "in the near future" due to man-made global warming? So, if we might employ today's vernacular, how's that working out for you, Al? Not so good, he'd say if he were honest. The "near future" has come and gone, and the sea has not risen 20 feet, or 10 feet or even a single foot. No coastal city has become the new Atlantis and no beach resorts have been overrun by the ocean. Years before Gore made his blustery prediction, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that man-made warming would increase sea levels from 11.8 inches to 39.4 inches by 2100. Eleven years later, in 2001, it revised its prediction. The new range was 3.5 inches to 34.6 inches. Another revision, this one in 2007, put the range between 7.1 inches and 23.2 inches, again by 2100. How about Earth's temperature itself? Well, those projections haven't been too accurate, either. Things were supposed to be pretty warm by now, but global temperatures have stayed flat for 16 years, according to data from Great Britain's Met Office. As we have mentioned before, Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist who believes in man-made global warming, conceded six years ago that "none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate." James Hansen, late of NASA, opened the alarmism gate in 1988 when he told Congress that he was 99% percent sure man-made global warming had begun and temperatures were just beginning to spike. Two years earlier, he had predicted a 2-degree temperature rise by 2006. Of course his projections have been off - and more than a little. John Theon, head of NASA's Weather and Climate Research Program from 1982 to 1994, and Hansen's supervisor, called the 1998 testimony "a huge embarrassment" to NASA. Then there's the storm or "extreme weather" scare that's been peddled. But it's been overhyped. Eric Berger, science blogger at the Houston Chronicle, pointed out last week that the tornado spike of 2011 was "attributed to climate change" then asked "what to make of this year's tornado drought?" And what to make of hurricanes? Aren't we supposed to be living with Sandy-like storms as a matter of course? But again, reality hasn't turned out as the alarmists have predicted. Almost six years ago, in November 2007, the Miami Herald headlined a story "Hurricane Predictions Missed the Mark." Four years later, Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center writing on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's website said "the overall impact of global warming on hurricanes is currently negligible and likely to remain quite tiny even a century from now." Of course there have been the laughable predictions, from then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proclaiming in 2009 that climate treaty negotiators had 50 days to save the world, to Hansen, also in 2009, telling President Obama that he had "only four years left to save the earth" from "runaway warming." It all makes us wonder how many years we have left to save civilization as we know it from the alarmists. Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/050813-655342-nasa-predicts-extreme-rain-from-climate-change.htm#ixzz2SlNsqe4P Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=bdd_1368070478 Detroit Iron NASA Makes Another Useless Global Warming Prediction NASA, Al Gore, United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, James Hansen Wed, 08 May 2013 23:34:22 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5db_1368070041 Detroit Iron OPINION May 8, 2013, 6:37 p.m. ET By HARRISON H. SCHMITT AND WILLIAM HAPPER The demonized chemical compound is a boon to plant life and has little correlation with global temperature. Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity. The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been-and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather. The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a "pollutant" in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants. Using energy from sunlight-together with the catalytic action of an ancient enzyme called rubisco, the most abundant protein on earth-plants convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and other useful molecules. Rubisco catalyzes the attachment of a carbon-dioxide molecule to another five-carbon molecule to make two three-carbon molecules, which are subsequently converted into carbohydrates. (Since the useful product from the carbon dioxide capture consists of three-carbon molecules, plants that use this simple process are called C3 plants.) C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton and many forage crops, evolved when there was much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. So these agricultural staples are actually undernourished in carbon dioxide relative to their original design. At the current low levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, rubisco in C3 plants can be fooled into substituting oxygen molecules for carbon-dioxide molecules. But this substitution reduces the efficiency of photosynthesis, especially at high temperatures. To get around the problem, a small number of plants have evolved a way to enrich the carbon-dioxide concentration around the rubisco enzyme, and to suppress the oxygen concentration. Called C4 plants because they utilize a molecule with four carbons, plants that use this evolutionary trick include sugar cane, corn and other tropical plants. Although C4 plants evolved to cope with low levels of carbon dioxide, the workaround comes at a price, since it takes additional chemical energy. With high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, C4 plants are not as productive as C3 plants, which do not have the overhead costs of the carbon-dioxide enrichment system. That's hardly all that goes into making the case for the benefits of carbon dioxide. Right now, at our current low levels of carbon dioxide, plants are paying a heavy price in water usage. Whether plants are C3 or C4, the way they get carbon dioxide from the air is the same: The plant leaves have little holes, or stomata, through which carbon dioxide molecules can diffuse into the moist interior for use in the plant's photosynthetic cycles. The density of water molecules within the leaf is typically 60 times greater than the density of carbon dioxide in the air, and the diffusion rate of the water molecule is greater than that of the carbon-dioxide molecule. So depending on the relative humidity and temperature, 100 or more water molecules diffuse out of the leaf for every molecule of carbon dioxide that diffuses in . And not every carbon-dioxide molecule that diffuses into a leaf gets incorporated into a carbohydrate. As a result, plants require many hundreds of grams of water to produce one gram of plant biomass, largely carbohydrate. Driven by the need to conserve water, plants produce fewer stomata openings in their leaves when there is more carbon dioxide in the air. This decreases the amount of water that the plant is forced to transpire and allows the plant to withstand dry conditions better. Crop yields in recent dry years were less affected by drought than crops of the dust-bowl droughts of the 1930s, when there was less carbon dioxide. Nowadays, in an age of rising population and scarcities of food and water in some regions, it's a wonder that humanitarians aren't clamoring for more atmospheric carbon dioxide. Instead, some are denouncing it. We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth's atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science. Mr. Schmitt, an adjunct professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was an Apollo 17 astronaut and a former U.S. senator from New Mexico. Mr. Happer is a professor of physics at Princeton University and a former director of the office of energy research at the U.S. Department of Energy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323528404578452483656067190.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5db_1368070041 Detroit Iron Harrison H. Schmitt and William Happer: In Defense of Carbon Dioxide HARRISON H. SCHMITT, WILLIAM HAPPER, carbon dioxide Mon, 06 May 2013 12:46:31 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0c0_1367857926 gregsto Anti-Discrimination is "pop-culture" and should be rejected by real Americans...just like Sam Houston would. Rick Perry, not being one to miss an opportunity to display his monumental ignorance, appears blissfully ignorant of the fact that Houston was A SLAVE OWNER. He did NOT stand up against it resulting in losing his governorship...that nonsense is total bullshit. Perry succeeds in his historical academia to the same extent as he did with his 'Pray for Rain" to end the state's drought lunacy. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0c0_1367857926 gregsto Gov Rick Perry: Allowing Gays In Scouts Same As Supporting Black Slavery rick perry, one dumb fucking cracker, slavery, boy scouts, gay, homosexuals, scouts Wed, 24 Apr 2013 20:32:45 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=02e_1366849905 True Prophet Civil War in America Within 90 Days - Get Ready! Tuesday, April 2, 2013 6:28 % of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents. (Before It's News) I never like to predict dates, but this one is obvious. And if I am wrong, it won't be by much, maybe a few weeks. It's not because I have insider information, it's because of the way things are unfolding. When you put them all together, the result can only be a full blown bloody revolution of the people against a tyrannical government. America has always been the "land of the free and the home of the brave". The American spirit built this land and all Americans take great pride in their heritage and their accomplishments. And rightfully so. But things have changed. Really changed, and not for the better. Since 2008 when we had the financial meltdown, Americans have been faithful and patient, waiting for the government to make things good again. But instead of them doing that, they have instead made things worse. Unemployment is high, gas is high, wages are low, the debt is high, sentiment is low, the future looks bleak, but Washington is living high on the hog. Wall Street and Washington are not suffering, but the rest of the people are. Corruption is out in the open, new laws and executive orders are a weekly event, all of which take away more liberties and freedoms from the people. Governments don't serve the people anymore, they only serve the banksters and big business. How much longer will the people put up with this? When a society reaches this point, only one of two things can happen. Either the government changes it's policies and begins to work for the good of the people again, or the people revolt. In this case, the chances of the government backing down is almost impossible because they are controlled by the elite. And the elite have their agenda laid out. So that leaves only one option; revolution. But will it be a peaceful demonstration demanding change, or will it be violent. The peaceful process is usually tried first because no one wants a war. And if that doesn't work, then each man has to fight for his rights. But I believe we will skip the peaceful process this time and here's why. Most Americans know that their system is totally corrupt. Wall Street, Washington, the FBI, the CIA, DHS, and the Supreme Court just to mention a few are all puppets of the shadow government. What chance does an American stand to fight a peaceful war against tyranny with such odds against them? It's not even worth trying, the corruption is so widespread. Look at what happened to Joe Arpaio. His Cold Case Posse has proven that Obama's birth certificate is a fraud. But now he is not able to get any government department or official to take it to the next step. They shut him down. So what chance do you think you have? This is what the American people are up against and they know it. So all that is left is a violent revolution in the name of Liberty, Freedom, and to Defend the Constitution. I don't believe the American people will start the war. The war will be started by one of these three events. A financial event, a gun event, or a false flag event. One of these will be the last straw. The whole world is in financial crisis. America is deeply in debt. The stock market and the bond markets are overbought and ready for a major correction. The derivatives market is very fragile and could crack at any time. The banking crisis starting in Cyprus could spread to Europe and America very quickly. The US dollar is quickly losing it's reserve currency status. No matter where you look in the financial sector there are major problems just waiting to happen. Any one of these could set off a chain reaction which would escalate into war. If it is a gun event then I think a revolution will break out immediately. The American people realize that if they give up their guns they will become the elite's slaves. They will not do that. If they refuse to comply, the government will send out their goons to try to seize the guns. This will produce pockets of resistance which could easily escalate into a full blown revolution. The last possibility would be a false flag event which the government would create in order to bring in martial law. This is the most likely of all events because it would fit their timeline and they could manifest it whenever the time is right. It could be any type of event as long as it produces the desired results. And it would give them the most options and again make it look like they are just trying to help keep law and order. And it would give them justification to impose martial law. Why do I say 3 months? Because DHS is moving their armoured vehicles around the country. The plastic "fema coffins" are being transported to various camps. They are getting their personnell organized. But the main reason is because the elite want to get on with their agenda before too many people wake up. They have many things on the back burner right now. They have to deal with Syria. They need to have their war with Iran. They have to deal with North Korea. The Middle East is a mess. They need to get the home front under control and martial law in place so that they don't have to bother Congress for permission anymore, they can just do it. Once the home front is secured, they can devalue the dollar, fight all their wars, crash the economy, it's all within reach, and it's all for "the good of the nation". Because of the nearness of these events, it is most important to get ready for what is coming. Hunker down with food and water and whatever other supplies you will need. Put your affairs in order. Prepare for the worse and hope for the best. And above all....make peace with God. Jesus said "Unless a man is born again he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven". Before you go into battle.....get born again. To find out how go to http://www.ItsHisStory.com. It's a very brave thing to fight for one's country and for freedom, and against tyranny, but one has to also consider that there will be casualties. If you're born again and happen to be one of those casualties, you will be rewarded with a home in heaven and all that you have fought for will be worth it. Wouldn't it be absolutely awful to fight so hard for freedom and then to spend eternity with the devil and the tyrants and the elite? That would be totally counter-productive wouldn't it? Get on a winning team first, then go fight for what is right. God Bless You and God Bless America! http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/04/civil-war-in-america-within-90-days-get-ready-2610162.html Homeland Security Insider Warns Orchestrated Collapse of U.S. dollar 'has begun' Wednesday, April 3, 2013 10:28 % of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents. (Before It's News) Homeland Security insider warns orchestrated collapse of U.S. dollar 'has begun' Tuesday, April 02, 2013 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer (NaturalNews) The countdown clock is ticking as the insanely evil cabal known as the "global elite" prepares its final moves for a complete world takeover. As relayed by Canada Free Press (CFP), an insider at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is America's very own reanimation of the Nazi SS, recently delivered an ominous warning that America's days are numbered, and that Americans basically need to ready themselves for the worst, which is yet to come. Not only is a complete collapse of the U.S. dollar on the very near horizon, according to the unnamed source, but a single, uniform currency system is already in the works to take its place. All that needs to happen now is for the final hammer to drop, so to speak, an event to truly shake the people and wake them out of their drunken, entertainment-imbibed stupors. But when this finally happens, it will already be too late for anyone to actually do anything about it. "The first shots in a global economic takeover were fired in Cyprus," explains Doug Hagmann from CFP about the situation as it is currently playing out. "It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the 'middle class' will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus." And just what, exactly, happened in Cyprus? The mainstream media claims it was a simple emergency "tax deal," a "levy" designed to pull the country out of crisis. But in reality, the people of Cyprus, and those with money in Cyprus banks, were literally robbed of untold billions of dollars by the central bankers, who overnight imposed an unannounced freeze on a large portion of depositors' money. According to more recent reports, up to 40 percent of depositors' cash could be apprehended as part of the deal. Federal Reserve recently stole more than 25 percent of Americans' savings and investments with 'quantitative easing' scam But what is happening in Cyprus is also happening in the U.S. Very few Americans, it turns out, are aware of the fact that the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing scheme, which intentionally injects more paper money into the general money supply, causes inflation. And inflation leads to devaluation of money, which in essence is just another form of stealing from the people to bail out the central bankers. Though these cash injections might lead to immediate economic jump starts, they never last, and the long-term consequence of their repeated use is hyperinflation and destruction of the currency. And the unfortunate truth of the matter is that all levels of government have been infiltrated with globalists serving the interests of the central bankers at the expense of the people. "The plan for a global currency or a one world economic order is a matter that transcends political parties," writes Hagmann. "Those who continue to argue in the Republican-Democrat meme are doing nothing more than providing entertainment to distract people from the real issue, that of the global elite versus the rest of us." "The top of the pyramid in this Ponzi scheme is filled with members of both U.S. political parties who are systematically pillaging us and our future generations into financial debt, bondage and slavery. It is a plan that has been in the works for centuries. The problem, however, is that we have been conditioned not to think that big. Yet, the lie is that big." Sources for this article include: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53842 http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53832 Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039744_US_dollar_collapse_Federal_Reserve.html#ixzz2PQ5MSLYK &lt;!-- --&gt;&lt;!-- --&gt; Articles Related to This Article: o Financial alert: Germany's Constitutional Court decision either means a rapid Eurozone financial collapse, or inevitable hyperinflation o 14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun o Burning down the house - the coming global financial firestorm o Should you leave the USA before the collapse? Words of wisdom from someone who tried o Breakthrough honeybee drugs to treat Colony Collapse Disorder (satire) o Just launched: Surthrival Series features Daniel Vitalis, Health Ranger teaching lifesaving principles of urban preparedness Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039744_US_dollar_collapse_Federal_Reserve.html#ixzz2PQ5ah34W NESARA- Restore America - Galactic News 2013-04-03 10:21:21 Source: http://nesaranews.blogspot.com/2013/04/homeland-security-insider-warns.html http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/04/homeland-security-insider-warns-orchestrated-collapse-of-u-s-dollar-has-begun-2611254.html The Greatest Story Ever Told About The Greatest Man That Ever Lived Get on a Winning Team - Here's God's Free Gift To You! At Christmas time, when the presents are under the tree, there is a gift there with your name on it waiting to be opened. It was bought for you by someone who loves you. But, even though it has your name on it, it is not yours until you receive it and open it. In the same way there is another FREE GIFT with your name on it waiting to be opened. This FREE GIFT is the gift of salvation which Jesus Christ bought for you becaues He loves you. He paid for your sins by dying in your place because he knew that you couldn't pay for them. Now he offers you this FREE GIFT so you could spend eternity in heaven with Him. To receive your FREE GIFT, thank Jesus for dying in your place and ask him to forgive your sins and to be your Lord and Savior. Then you can open your FREE GIFT and here's what you will find inside. 1. Every sin you ever committed will be totally forgiven. 2. Jesus will prepare a place in heaven for you so that when you die you will go to heaven to be with him forever. 3. He will be your best friend, someone you can talk to about anything. And he will always help you and watch over you. Jesus wants you to have this FREE GIFT! Jesus wants to be your best friend! Do you want to be his? If you do, then take a minute to tell him so right now. Jesus said " I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6) When I first read this many years ago, I thought that either Jesus was who he said he was, the Son of God, or else he was the biggest liar that ever lived because who else would say something like that. Jesus said that there is only one way to get to God, and that is through him. There are teachings that say that there are many ways to get to God. Jesus said that is not true, there is only one way and He is the only way. The reason for this is because he is the only one that died for our sins. No one else did. And for us to spend eternity with God, our sins have to be forgiven. Hebrews 9:22 tells us that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness". Jesus was the only one that fulfilled that requirement. We deserved death, but because God loves us so much, he gave his Son who was the perfect sinless sacrifice to die for our sins so that we could be re-connected to Him. Jesus said " I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. You should not be surprised at my saying You must be Born Again" (John 3:3 &amp; 7) What this means is that you were already born once by entering physical life. You now need to be born spiritually. This goes way back to Adam and Eve. God placed them in a beautiful garden called the Garden of Eden. He said that they could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or they would surely die. They disobeyed God and ate from it. That is when they died spiritually. Ever since then man has been dead spiritually, not having a relationship with God. Now Jesus made a way for us to be Born Again and to be re-connected to God. Jesus said "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16) God made us a promise. If we accept his Son Jesus as our Saviour, he will give us eternal life with him in Heaven. That's a pretty good deal, who doesn't want to go to Heaven. All we have to do is believe in Jesus. God must sure love us alot if he went to that extent just to make a way for us to be re-connected to him. The word believe means to acknowledge, to trust in, and to rely upon in the original Greek. And that is what God wants us to do. Acknowledge that Jesus was the Son of God that died for our sins. Trust in him. And once you see what an awesome friend he is, to rely on him for everything. We can't lose. And God always keeps his promises. So if we do our part, we can be sure that God will do his part. I pray that you would chose to accept Jesus as your Saviour. It's easy to do, just tell him Thank You for dying for your sins and ask him to come into your life and be your Lord and Saviour. Just find a quiet place and pour out your heart to him. He is a great listener and will be more than happy to be your friend forever. You will find that he is the best friend you will ever have. If you don't want Jesus as your friend right now, that's okay. He will still love you and watch over you. And he will wait for you. When you are ready, he will welcome you with open arms any time you want him as your friend. All you have to do is ask whenever you are ready because he will never impose himself on you or ask you to do something you don't want to do....it's always your choice. He has already chosen you, now he wants you to choose him. He would love to have you spend eternity with Him in Heaven, but that is your choice, not his. I pray that you would choose to do so, even right now. Not only to make sure you go to Heaven, but also to have the best friend you could ever have until then. There is more information on different topics of the Bible on this website, just click on the link below. When you do ask Jesus to be your Saviour, talk to him every day, find a good Church to go to, and start reading your Bible to find out more about Jesus. It will Change Your Life like it changed mine and so many many other people's lives as well. God Bless You! John Stewart http://itshisstory.com/ Is t he Bible the Absolute True Word of God? Who Is God Anyway? Who Is Jesus ? Who is the Holy Spirit and What Does He Do? Are There Really Angels ? Who is Satan and What Did He Do? What is Heaven Like? What is Hell Like? What is Sin and What Isn't? What Does it Mean to Repent ? What Does it Mean to be Born Again ? Do I Need to be Baptis ed? Is There Also a Holy Spirit Baptism ? How and When Should We Pray ? What is Faith ? What is The Greatest Commandment ? What Does the Bible Say About Money ? Is it Necessary to Go To Church ? What Does God Think of Us ? What is the Difference Between The Law and The New Covenant ? Is My Name in the Book of Life ? Quick Study Helps Which You Can Use to Pray, Meditate, or Proclaim Out Loud Abortion - Psalm 127:3 Psalm 139:13-16 Alcohol - Romans 13:13-14 Ephesians 5:18 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 1 John 1:8-9 Anger - Ephesians 4:26-27 &amp; 31-32 James 1:19-20 Galatians 5:22-23 Adultery - Hebrews 13:4 Proverbs 2:16-19 John 8:3-11 Anxiety - Philippians 4:6 1 Peter 5:7 Matthew 11:28-30 Backsliding - John 6:37 Hebrews 7:24-25 1 John 1:9 Luke 15:17-24 Bitterness - James 3:14-16 Ephesians 4:31-32 Matthew 6:14-15 Romans 12:14-21 Confusion - Jeremiah 10:23 James 1:5 John 8:12 John 14:26 Child Abuse - Psalm 127:3 Ephesians 6:4 2 Corinthians 5:10 Disappointment - Romans 8:28 Proverbs 14:12 Isaiah 55:8-9 Depression - Matthew 11:28-30 Romans 8:28 &amp; 37 Philippians 4:13 2 Timothy 1:7 Divorce - Malachi 2:16 Matthew 19:3-9 1 Corinthians 7:10-15 Drugs - Romans 12:1 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 1 John 3:8 Despair - James 1:12 2 Thesolonians 3:3 Psalm 46:1 Envy - Psalm 37:1-2 Proverbs 23:17 Galatians 5:26 Faith - Romans 10:17 Matthew 17:20 Romans 5:1 Hebrews Chapter 11 Fear - Psalm 27:1 Isaiah 41:10 Hebrews 13:6 1 John 4:15-18 Failure - 1 Corinthians 15:58 Hebrews 10:35-36 Romans 14:4 Forgiveness - Psalm 103:10-12 Isaiah 43:25 Matthew 6:14-15 1 John 1:9 Fasting - Matthew 9:14-15 Matthew 6:16-18 Finances - Matthew 6:19-21 Matthew 6:33 Malachi 3:8-10 Philippians 4:18-19 Guidance - Proverbs 14:12 Jeremiah 10:23 Proverbs 3:5-6 Matthew 6:33 Guilt - 1 John 1:9 Matthew 6:14-15 Ephesians 2:4-7 Gossip - Leviticus 19:16 Luke 3:14 James 4:11-12 Greed - Colossians 3:5 Ephesians 5:3-5 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Healing - Isaiah 53-4-5 Mark 11:24 1 John 5:14-15 James 5:14-16 Jeremiah 30:17 Homosexuality - Leviticus 20:13 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Romans 6:11-13 Humble - Isaiah 66:2 1 Peter 5:5 Matthew 23:11-12 Hatred - Leviticus 19:17 1 John 2:9 and 4:20 Hope - Hebrews 11:1 Romans 8:24-25 1 John 3:2-3 Jealousy - 1 Corinthians 3:3 Galatians 5:19-21 Romans 13:13-14 Judging - Matthew 7:1-2 Luke 6:41-42 Romans 14:4 Lust - Romans 12:1 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 Romans 8:12-13 Colossians 3:1-10 Loneliness - Hebrews 13:5 John 6:37 John 14:15-18 John 14:23 Obeying - James 1:22 John 14:23-24 Luke 6:46-49 Occult - Deuteronomy 18:10-11 Galatians 5:19-21 Revelations 21:8 Patience - 2 Peter 3:9 1 Thessalonians 5:14 Psalm 37:7 Revelation 3:10 Pride - James 4:6 Proverbs 16:5 Proverbs 27:1-2 Pray - Luke 18:1-8 1 Peter 3:12 Mark 11:24 Persecution - 2 Timothy 3:12 James 1:2-4 John 15:20 Matthew 5:10-12 Rejection - Jeremiah 33:3 James 4:8-10 Psalm 100:5 John 6:37 Suffering - 2 Timothy 3:12 Romans 8:18 1 Peter 5:10 Suicide - John 10:10 Ephesians 2:10 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Revelation 3:20 Selfishness - 1 Corinthians 10:24 2 Corinthians 9:6 Galatians 6:7-10 Sexual Sins - Ephesians 5:3 Galatians 5:19-21 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 Smoking - 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Romans 12:1 2 Peter 2:19 Romans 6:12 Submission - Luke 22:25-26 Galatians 5:13 1 Timothy 2:5 1 Peter 5:1-4 Salvation - John 6:38-40 1 Timothy 2:4 2 Peter 3:9 Temptation - Genesis 4:6-7 James 1:13-15 1 Corinthians 10:13 Unpardonable Sin - 1 John 1:9 1 Timothy 1:12-13 Matthew 12:31-33 Weakness - Hebrews 4:15-16 Romans 8:26-27 2 Corinthians 12:9 Worry - Matthew 6:25-34 http://itshisstory.com/studies.html Our current financial situation was not bred out of incompetence, but by design DHS Insider update: It has begun - Doug Hagmann ( Bio and Archives ) Tuesday, March 19, 2013 (20) Comments Print friendly Subscribe Email Us Much like my high-level source within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security outlined in a series of interviews beginning last year, the orchestrated collapse of the U.S. dollar and the entire world's economic system has begun. The first shots in a global economic take-over were fired in Cyprus as my esteemed colleague and founding editor of Canada Free Press, Judi McLeod laid out in frank detail in her column yesterday and her follow up today . Please read it and heed her advice, or suffer the consequences of your own normalcy bias that such an event will not happen in the United States, Canada, or from wherever you might be reading this. It will, and the plan appears to be on schedule for a shot across the bow later this spring here in the West, with a more aggressive take-over starting sometime this fall, according to my source. The Plan To those needing a quick refresher, the plan is quite simple and can be summarized by the Clinton-era quip attributed to political strategist James Carville, "the economy, stupid" and the June 9, 2010 statement by former Obama czar Van Jones, Socialist extraordinaire, "top down, bottom up, inside out." It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the "middle class" will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus. Doug Hagmann's Insider series DHS Insider: Obama's cyber warriors &amp; preparing for collapse The latest from "DHS Insider" Benghazi explained: Interview with an "Intelligence Insider" (Part III) Benghazi: Behind the scenes (Part II) Benghazi explained: Interview with an "Intelligence Insider" Based on the events in Cyprus, it should be quite clear to even the most vocal critic of the legitimacy of the information provided to me by my source within the DHS as published on this web site is no longer at issue. The U.S. dollar, the backbone of world currencies and the proverbial firewall preventing the erosion of our national sovereignty, is the ultimate target of a takedown by the global banking interests controlled by a handful of banks and families of the "royal elite." The plan for a global currency or a one world economic order is a matter that transcends political parties. Those who continue to argue in the Republican-Democrat meme are doing nothing more than providing entertainment to distract people from the real issue, that of the global elite versus the rest of us. The top of the pyramid in this Ponzi scheme is filled with members of both U.S. political parties who are systematically pillaging us and our future generations into financial debt, bondage and slavery. It is a plan that has been in the works for centuries. The problem, however, is that we have been conditioned not to think that big. Yet, the lie is that big. The parties Our current financial situation was not bred out of incompetence, but by design. The occupancy of Barack Hussein Obama as the putative President of the United States was a plan in the making long ago, to usher in this oppressive system where we will be left at the mercy of the global ruling class. It is not by accident that we have been prevented from knowing exactly who this man is, from the controversy of his birth records to his college transcripts and even his social security number. Contrary to what the state-controlled media wants you to believe, these questions have never been answered with any measure of authenticity. For example, does anyone honestly believe that it is merely a coincidence that Obama's alleged mother, Stanley Ann Dunham-Soetoro, just happened to work with Timothy Geithner's father, Peter Geithner, at the Ford Foundation in Indonesia? Is it reasonable to believe that the Republican party had no knowledge of the background of Barack Hussein Obama? Yet not one word from the Republican establishment as they not only watched, but facilitated the takeover of the United States from within. As I've written before, our nation is a captured operation. The plan was set into motion long ago, stemming back to the founding of the United States and the temporary resistance to the central banking system. In 1913, the creation of the Federal Reserve set the countdown clock in motion for the complete subjugation of the United States to the interests of the global bankers and the global elite. The secret supra-governmental cabals such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission worked behind the scenes, under the cover provided by the complicit media, to bring us to this point in history. Perpetual wars were induced to occupy the masses while the chess pieces were placed into their current positions. We are now about to pay the price for our inability or unwillingness to confront the establishment and incremental advancements leading to our own demise. DHS source: Everything is not "coming up roses" According to the most recent information provided to me from my source within the Department of Homeland Security known as "Rosebud," the final preparations are being made to deploy heavily armed federalized forces onto the streets of America. They will be deployed under the pretext of "restoring and maintaining order from the chaos brought about by the economic collapse," adding that "many will demand and embrace their deployment on the streets of America. They will get what they ask for, and more. " Much like the security theater we have seen following the attacks of 9/11, we will be subjected to the jack-booted control of a federal army whose allegiance is not to the American people, but to the very architects of the chaos. "This is the reason that drones are flying over U.S. cities and farmland, and gun control legislation is on the fast track for complete implementation," stated this source. "How can people look at the situation in Cyprus and not think it won't happen here? It will, and the blowback will be unlike this country has ever seen. Surveillance, disarming the public, and conditioning the people to believe it's for their own safety is and has been part of the plan all along. Anyone owing a gun will be demonized and described as contributing to the problem." "What happens when the middle class loses much of their wealth, or it is confiscated, by the stroke of a pen or a keyboard? What will the stores look like when people, unprepared due to the damn lies of the corporate media and the shills for the ruling elite, run to empty out everything they can get their hands on as the world, as they know it, collapses around them?" It was during my most recent contact with my source yesterday that he admitted that the situation will be blamed not on the bankers and the elected leaders who are raping us of our wealth and buying power, but on "right-wing, gun-toting Conservative 'militia' groups who believe that the situation is orchestrated." And, of course, it is orchestrated . "There is no Republican-Democrat argument to be made anymore. It's all political theater to keep the majority of the masses occupied while the true enemy has already captured both parties," he added. "They are all in on it, either knowingly or unwittingly, the takeover, that is. And it's getting harder to believe that there are any who are unwitting accomplices at this point." "When the curtain is pulled back to reveal the true agenda of a single digital world currency, the people who have been yelling the loudest about such 'conspiracy theories' will be specifically singled out and demonized. They will be blamed for causing the panic we will see, and of course, dealt with by the army we asked for, accepted and even tolerated." Anyone who still believes that the information provided by this insider is "doom porn" or some self-created fantasy need to look at the events taking place in Cyprus. It's coming to America. It has already begun. (20) Comments Copyright (c) Douglas Hagmann Douglas J. Hagmann and his son, Joe Hagmann host The Hagmann &amp; Hagmann Report , a live Internet radio program broadcast each weeknight from 8:00-10:00 p.m. ET. Douglas Hagmann, founder &amp; director of the Northeast Intelligence Network , and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website. Doug can be reached at: director@homelandsecurityus.com Older articles by Doug Hagmann http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53842 Meanwhile, pray that what is happening in Cyprus this weekend is not precedent setting for other nations EU theft of private bank accounts a "sacrifice" to mainstream media - Judi McLeod ( Bio and Archives ) Tuesday, March 19, 2013 (15) Comments Print friendly Subscribe Email Us The mainstream media downplaying of what is happening in the Mediterranean Island of Cyprus this weekend is already muddying the water. Tens of thousands of unwitting little people have had their bank accounts ripped off over the long weekend by their own government, in a fashion where their ripped off funds were already a fait accompli before word began to leak out over social media. Media downplaying notwithstanding, the unvarnished truth about what is happening in Cyprus is both precedent setting and staggering in dimension. Yet mainstream media reports are already describing the robbery of ordinary depositor's money as a "one-off levy", and writing "the first time a deal has called for savers to sacrifice some of their cash holdings". As the Brits, who have already come to the rescue of their military personnel and ex-patriots would say: "Bollocks!" The European Union is run by mainly socialist politicians whose agenda is based on the redistribution of assets and goods. America, on which so many other countries in the world are dependent, is now under the clutches of a Marxist president following the same playbook. Outgoing President Demetris Christofias of Cyprus is a Communist. They say Christofias was the "only" Communist in the EU, but how far away from Communism is Socialism? An indication about how the EU socialists feel about communists? Under the EU's rotating chairmanship, Christofias, the communist, chaired EU meetings from July 1st until the end of 2012. Describing the 9.9% levy on savings over C100,000 and a 6.75% levy on savings below C100,000 as a "one-off levy" would be akin to a caught-in-the-act bank robber saying he was only planning to rob the bank once. Stealing money from savers then describing it as sacrificing some of their cash holdings, is an outrage. The governments of our day never sacrifice, many getting rich while serving public office. The story of the Cyprus levy on savings is further clouded by media chatter about the Russian banks' cross-board loans to Cypriot-based Russian companies which totaled $30-40 bn at the end of 2012, or equal to 15-20 per cent of Russian banks' capital base in Russia, and 5-6 per cent of their gross corporate loans. Ordinary bank depositors should not lose out no matter how many cross-board loans to Cypriot-based Russian companies exist. Nor are big banks in bed with big government politicians an anomaly peculiar to the beleaguered Island of Cyprus. The hypocrisy of socialists in bed with big banks is jaw-dropping. Two days before Cyprus depositors were relieved of their cash, the Deutsche Bank's global head of FX strategy, Bilaf Hafeez gave a speech indicating the euro area needs a role model that people across Europe can respect. "I can only think of one figure that is respected by most Europeans and has never sinned, Jesus!" Hafeez said. (Business Insider, March 14, 2013) Incredible to note that the Deutsche Bank's research department transcribed Hafeez's speech and sent it out to clients in a note. The EU threw the image of the Savior over at their formation 14 years ago, replacing His image with that of Europa, Woman on a Bull, whose image is permanently parked in front of the EU Parliamentary Building in Strasbourg with a corresponding statue in front of the EU Commission Building in Brussels. Meanwhile, pray that what is happening in Cyprus this weekend is not precedent setting for other nations. If this blatant EU rip-off of its own people is allowed to stand, unscrupulous socialist politicians in office will set policy that forces their populations to sacrifice some of their cash holdings to greedy governments the world over. (15) Comments Copyright (c) Canada Free Press RSS Feed for Judi McLeod Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years' experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and Glenn Beck. Judi can be emailed at: judi@canadafreepress.com Older articles by Judi McLeod http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53832 Should you leave the USA before the collapse? Words of wisdom from someone who tried Wednesday, December 14, 2011 by Mike Adams , the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) (NaturalNews) One of the most common questions I'm asked today from people who are aware of what's really going on is, "Should I leave the USA to get away from the coming police state?" Three years ago, I would have said YES, but today, after having experienced such an effort myself and now having a clear understanding of the ramifications of such an effort, I must urge people to reconsider. As you'll read here, you may ultimately be far safer and more successful living right where you are, in your "home country," even if that home country becomes a police state. I've lived in many countries, by the way: Taiwan, Australia and Ecuador. I've traveled extensively throughout Asia, giving seminars in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. I've traveled across England, France, Spain and even Portugal. Spent quite a bit of time in Central America and South America. I speak decent Spanish and decent Chinese, so there's almost nowhere I go in the world that I can't speak to the local people in either English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese. I've seen extreme wealth, extreme poverty and extreme corruption in all its world flavors, and I've seen what corruption does to nations and its populations, first hand . I don't claim to be a prophet of any kind, but today I'm a bit wiser, a bit more experienced and a bit less foolish than I was a few years ago, and I'd like to pass on whatever nuggets of wisdom might help you and your family prepare for the powerful global changes which have already begun to unfold. Here, I share with you five powerful realizations you need to keep in mind when considering where to locate (or relocate) before the collapse becomes a reality. (Time is growing short, so read up...) For starters, there is a universal truth you must accept if you hope to make a truly wise decision about where to locate: Corruption is everywhere. Realization #1 - Corruption is far worse outside the USA If you think the USA is corrupt, you should try living in Peru, or Bolivia, or Panama. And if you think that's corrupt, head over to Haiti for a double heaping serving of corruption. Yes, we may all legitimately complain about the USA, but from what I've seen everywhere around the world, the United States is still less corrupt than most places in the world . Yes, there are bad apples everywhere throughout local police, federal FBI agents and even the court system, but for every bad apple there are probably three times as many honorable people who are truly just trying to do their jobs. In years past, I served in a non-profit support role, the local police in Tucson, Arizona, and I came to know them as some of the most upstanding, honorable peace officers I've ever met. Yes, they had a history of outrageous corruption (which you'll find in every police force from time to time), but they rooted out that corruption and restored integrity to their operation. You'll find the same dedication to honest public service all across the nation, even if there is a little corruption that normally goes along with it. So don't make the mistake of thinking you can escape corruption by leaving the USA . You are actually likely to discover MORE corruption elsewhere. For example, in Ecuador, where I lived for two years and held a local driver's license, it wasn't unusual for me to be stopped at an armed military roadblock and asked questions. These were staffed with soldiers carrying what appeared to be variants of the standard U.S. issue M4 rifles (AR-15 in the civilian editions). They never gave me any trouble, it turns out. They asked a couple of questions and looked at my documentation, then waved me through. In fact, I had many friends in law enforcement in Ecuador, and I spoke with them regularly. Sure, they were a little corrupt, but not in an over-the-top criminal way like we see with the FBI in the United States actually masterminding terrorist plots and then magically "discovering" those plots just in time to halt them ( http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_FBI_entrapment_terror_plots.html ). Costa Rica has been described as a "police state" by numerous people who have visited or even lived there. Yes, the country if a beautiful paradise in terms of climate, and it is perhaps the most socially advanced nation in Central and South America, but like all such nations, it has a socialist police state mentality. South Americans love socialism , it turns out. And this has everything to do with preparedness... Realization #2 - Many cultures do not practice long-term preparedness thinking In observing all this first hand, I've come to the conclusion that the embracing of socialism throughout South America is the result of cultural short-term thinking . For example, throughout South America, people often buy prescription medicines one pill at a time. They buy a bag of twenty screws from the hardware store, then return to the store after they run out to buy another twenty. This is often infuriating to the "gringos" who are trying to build a house, for example, because they operate with the idea that you should just buy 5,000 screws all at once and have plenty to get the job done. I can assure you from first-hand experience that such a concept is completely alien to a great many South Americans (most notably in rural areas). I make no judgments about this, by the way. There are pros and cons on both sides of this equation. But in my experience living in Ecuador, finding people engaged in preparedness planning was virtually impossible unless they were of European descent. For example, rural Ecuadorians often buy a small baggy of spices in a quantity for cooking one meal . And in doing this kind of thing, they nickel-and-dime themselves into actually losing money because they don't take advantage of the purchasing efficiencies realized through long-term planning. The idea, for example, of buying large quantities of facial tissue at a Costco or Sam's Club is completely foreign to most South American cultures (more so in rural areas than urban). Even if they might save 40% from buying in bulk, their cultural tendency is to buy one tissue box at a time, paying a much higher overall price over time. This concept is also reinforced by the very heavy reliance on state-run lotteries throughout South America. In any nation, high participation in lotteries is a powerful demonstration that a culture lacks the cognitive coherence necessary for intelligent financial planning. You see this heavily reflected throughout Peru and Brazil, by the way. You'll even find this in many poorer areas of rural USA where the lack of mathematics education (and, perhaps, an irrational belief in luck) motivates many people to hand over their money to the state. That's why the mathematically inclined call the lottery "a tax on people who can't do math." There is, of course, an interesting up-side to short-term thinking, because the very same phenomenon might also be called "living in the moment." Some in the new age movement call it "the power of NOW." South Americans know all about the power of NOW, as you'll clearly see on a Sunday morning when driving your car down the road, weaving around drunken citizens sleeping in the ditches, sometimes still clutching an empty bottle of sugar cane alcohol. The night before, they all lived in "the now," you see, and they weren't necessarily thinking about the hangover implications that would inevitably arrive the next morning. You see, to actually get anything done in society, you have to live at least a little bit in the future. On the food production front, by the way, it is extremely difficult to buy a John Deere tractor in many Central and South American nations. Much of the food production there is still done by hand (not as much in Brazil, of course, where agricultural mechanization is in full swing...). In Texas, by comparison, John Deere tractors are available everywhere. More importantly, there are lots of people who know how to fix 'em. Given that a tractor is one of the most fundamental work multipliers in agriculture , if you hope to survive the coming collapse, you need a reliable tractor on your land in a community that's familiar with tractors, and you need a few hundred gallons of stored diesel fuel to power it through the disruptions. It's no exaggeration to say that one gallon of diesel fuel can replace the labor of twelve men working twelve hours . It's a powerful force multiplier if you own the right hardware. If you get a tractor, by the way, avoid all those more recent John Deere tractors which are fifty percent electronics and plastic. Buy the old ones, made out of iron and grit, because they're the only ones that will still operate after an electromagnetic pulse attack, in case you were wondering. Climate reveals a lot about the planning tendencies of any culture Getting back to the preparedness mentality of different cultures, climate shapes cultural tendencies, too. The climate in Central and South America is so much more amenable to easy food production (except at very high altitudes) that there really isn't a cultural impulse to engage in behaviors such as "storing food to survive the winter." With food literally falling off the trees year-round in places like Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, generations after generations of people there have settled into a rhythm of day-to-day living with relatively little planning. The very best preparedness planners, not surprisingly, are people whose ancestors survived harsh climates and brutal winters. A lack of planning in South American culture is also evident in the surprising lack of family planning you'll find there, where it's not unusual to find women with four, six or even ten children, none of which seems to own a decent pair of shoes. It makes you seriously wonder about the "thinking ahead" portions of the brain and why they have not been activated in some people. There is a part of the brain -- the future planning part -- that can imagine a particular future emerging as a result of today's actions and then use that imagined future to reshape today's actions in order to improve the future (which eventually becomes the NOW, of course, as you've no doubt noticed). People who are cognitively skilled at this process are, by definition, good planners. They tend to have better outcomes in life. Those who are poor at this skill, for whatever reason, tend to have poorer outcomes in life. Women's rights advocacy groups correctly point out that a lack of family planning among women usually stems from a cultural devaluing of the female, which then leads to a chronic lack of women's education, subsequently correlated to startlingly high birth rates. The best way to reduce birth rates in developing nations, it turns out, is to either build more schools or just go the Bill Gates route and vaccinate everyone into a state of total infertility. (If you're an evil globalist, it's so much easier to just inject women than educate them...) Why does all this matter? I've learned over the last few years that the best place to be in a collapse scenario is living around a bunch of other people who are also prepared because they are long-term thinkers and planners. You might want to live in a Mormon community, in other words, as they are typically the best prepared. You might also find some preparedness communities in places like Ecuador, Uruguay, Panama or Costa Rica where there exists a critical mass of preparedness-minded people who tip the scales in your favor. So that's definitely a solid option for those who are still intent on leaving the USA or Canada and looking for preparedness options elsewhere. I do know first-hand that there are some very viable ex-pat communities in both Panama and Costa Rica where a critical mass of aware citizens already exists. Lots of libertarians down there... but watch out for "retirement communities" in these countries, which are populated by people who have no interest in actively surviving anything because they figure they're close to dying anyway. You do NOT want to live around a whole city of people who culturally and habitually lean toward short-term thinking rather than long-term planning. A city full of starving children with mothers living in total poverty who can barely afford their next meal is not a good backdrop against which you want to build a survival retreat, especially if you're living out in the country by yourself. Read books by Jared Diamond ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond ) if you really want to understand the long-term implications of geography and climate on the development of human culture. You will come to understand that in cultures where food comes too easily, over time there comes to exist a systemic lack of long-term planning in the minds of the citizens. This is a red flag for anyone seeking a preparedness destination. Realization #3 - Don't be the foreigner Another important point to remember in all this is that if you're, let's say, a white person living in a white town in America, you blend in . You can walk around anonymously -- at the grocery store, the shopping mall, the gas station, whatever. But the minute you move to some country town in South America (or Thailand, or whatever), then you suddenly stick out like a sore thumb. In other words, if you're a 6' 1" white guy walking around a town of 5' 8" brown-skinned people, do ya think anyone will notice? You bet they will, and when they see a 6' 1" white guy walking around, what they really see is a walking ATM . You're a symbol of wealth, and the poorer the country you go to, the more wealth disparity you'll find, of course. And what you need to understand is that wealth disparity breeds contempt . So while you're driving around in a brand-new Toyota 4x4 (which I never did, by the way), the locals are looking at you and thinking to themselves that they could never afford that vehicle in their LIFETIME. Why does this matter? From a practical perspective, it means that in a social breakdown scenario, these people have an instant idea of where the goods are. Who has the money? The white people! Who has the nicest houses, cars and electronics? The white people! (Or "the foreigner," even if you're not white.) What I learned from this is that I'd rather be an "average" white guy living in an average neighborhood, driving an average car than sticking out like some sort of person who appears to be relatively well off. That's why today I still live in a modular trailer unit in Austin, I still drive a Toyota pickup truck, I dress like a rancher in blue jeans and flannel shirt, and nobody gives it a second thought when I'm out in public. I blend in , and that's far wiser than sticking out. Some people want to look rich and popular, so they wear a lot of bling, and they drive a high-end car they can't afford, and they live in a house they can't pay off, and they try to fool everybody into thinking they're rich and powerful. I'd rather fool people into thinking I'm NOT powerful. Because underneath all that, I actually am quite capable of defending myself, or taking decisive action, or just quietly removing myself from the situation if required. God help the mugger who tries to mug me on the street someday, because I don't dial 911. Then again, I don't walk around looking wealthy enough to mug in the first place. In fact, half the time when I walk into a hardware store in Austin to buy some equipment, I still have dirt and grime on my face from working on the farm that morning, and I've got mud on my jeans and grease on my shirt from greasing the hydraulics of the tractor loader bucket. The point is, if you try to stand out in a time of crisis, you're an idiot . Blending in is so much wiser, I've learned. And I learned some of this the hard way, being an idiot myself in years past. So the bottom line on this point is simple: Live where you fit in . If you speak with a Cajun accent, live around Cajuns. If you're black, don't be the one black guy in a white neighborhood (nor do you want to be the one white guy in a black neighborhood). It's not racial segregation I'm advocating, by the way, it's simply a preparedness attitude of blending in so you don't attract unwarranted attention to yourself and your daily activities. If you can find a mixed-race neighborhood , then you can usually blend in no matter what your physical appearance. Don't draw attention to yourself You're going to have far better success at preparedness, survival and even home defense if you can engage in preparedness activities without drawing attention to yourself . So if you're out at the local Wal-Mart, let's say, buying up a case of rubbing alcohol to add to your first aid kit, you don't want to leave any kind of strong impression a cashier there who, for example, might later tell some FBI agent, "Oh yeah, there was this 6' 2" guy with red hair and an old-style Western mustache, and he bought up a cart full of shotgun ammo, rubbing alcohol and bandages. I thought that was kinda weird..." So another tip in all this is that if you're buying first aid supplies, or stored food, or anything you need to stay prepared, buy things in small quantities , and better yet use the self checkout lanes at local retailers, so you're not even interacting with a cashier at all. And don't be a moron and buy too many items of anything at once. It's far better to make multiple trips (to different stores, preferably), buying up smaller quantities of things and then combining them at home. And what kind of things should you have? Well, if you want the full details, get my Be Prepared, Not Scared course that I recorded with Robert Scott Bell, as we go over the entire preparedness list covering food, first aid, emergency communications, lighting, safety and much more: Food Security: http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Prepared_Food_Security.htm Economic Security: http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Be_Prepared_Not_Scared_Financial_Prepar... I've also created what I believe to be a very powerful audio recording called "Five Mental Strategies for Surviving Anytime, Anywhere" which is included as a free bonus to our "Surthrival" course recorded with Daniel Vitalis. Read about it here: http://www.naturalnews.com/033985_Surthrival_course.html ...or download the full course at: http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Surthrival_Vitalis_Adams__NN.htm Realization #4 - You cannot escape the global police state I learned this with the help of Alex Jones of InfoWars.com. I was talking to him in the studio one day, during a commercial break, and he was asking me about Ecuador. Then he said something profound: "You can't escape the police state, you know. It's global." And he's right. Think about the controllers and how they operate: It's the global banksters , the global pharmaceutical giants, Monsanto, Coca-Cola, Exxon and all the other evil corporations that infect our world with disease and suffering. These corporations run the global governments, and if you don't believe me, just ask John Perkins, the former "Economic Hit Man." Listen to my interview with Perkins here: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=83B1AF93091799E7CEB88C5C459A530B You will be astounded by what you'll learn there, probably. But the upshot of it is that tyranny is a global phenomenon , and you cannot escape it by simply crossing some national boundary. The simple truth is that our entire world is under assault by criminals right now, and those criminals are deeply embedded in the financial system of Goldman Sachs crooks and Federal Reserve elitists. They are dominating economies across Europe, North America, Asia and even Central and South America. They are planning an economic implosion so they can steal the world's wealth. All assets backed by paper may become worthless in 2012 in the years soon thereafter. This is all by design, and it's global. With economic implosion comes social unrest, and with social unrest comes martial law. So you can expect martial law to be declared in many nations around the world, and in my experience, if you're living under martial law, it's preferable to blend in so that you don't attract unnecessary attention to your own activities. (And by this, I don't mean anything unlawful or subversive. I just mean fundamental commonsense things like buying extra food and supplies, for example, to defend your family and your local community. And have yourself a reliable mechanical lead-slinger as well.) Realization #5 - You are far safer to hunker down than try to go mobile A lot of people talk about having a backup retreat somewhere that they will "drive to" or "fly to" when the collapse strikes. In my view, this is foolish. Highways will become kill zones targeted by marauders, and using vehicles on roads will only get you either robbed or dead (or maybe both). To a gang of armed looters who forgot to plan ahead before the collapse, there's no more juicy target than an RV loaded down with stored food, ammo and gold, and if you're stupid enough to drive one of those as you're trying to get to your destination, you'd better have your own cavalry along for the ride, or you probably won't get very far. Anyone who has studied military tactics, gang mentality or historical accounts of what happens when governments fall knows that roads are to be avoided at all costs . The only safe way to go from point A to point B is to hump it on foot, cross-country style, and even then you'd better only walk at night or you risk being shot by someone defending their own land. Once you start actually thinking about all this, it doesn't take long to realize that the far safer strategy is to live in your castle starting right now. Stay put, stock up, and find a way to defend it. Want a great book on how to accomplish that? Buy and read "Holding Your Ground: Preparing for Defense if it All Falls Apart" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615497551 ) It's written by "Joe Nobody," which itself is a lesson in laying low. This book isn't about turning your house into a concrete bunker armed to the teeth, because that's just an invitation to be hammered by an armed gang of looters. Rather, it's just as much about using cosmetic deception to fool would-be marauders into thinking your place has already been hit, for example, and is therefore worthless. This informative book is really an example "The Art of War-" style thinking for defending your home and your family, using very clever techniques that go far beyond "shooting back." Don't expect the book to be well edited, by the way. A lot of the best survival and prepper books have lousy editing because they're written by people who are experts in practical skills but relatively inexperienced writers. But who cares? I'm not looking for Shakespeare here. I'm looking for tactics that really work, and this book delivers. (Wish I could find who really wrote this because I'd like to interview them here on NaturalNews...) Getting back to the point at hand, even with a vehicle you can't possibly carry everything you need to stay safe and prepared, and on top of that gasoline supplies may be impossible to find for a while, so the very best place to hunker down is the place where you live. That's where you can store your food, emergency first aid supplies, communications equipment (wind-up emergency radios, for example), defensive items such as defensive items, solar battery chargers, cooking gear, instructional books, garden seeds and whatever else you might need to survive an economic collapse. That's why I've decided to ride out the collapse in Austin, Texas , by the way. Well, not exactly in the inner city itself, but near enough to the city to be considered an Austinite. Why Texas? It's not perfect, but it's well-armed Why Austin? Because Texas has its own power grid unlike the rest of the nation. Texas can grow its own food. Texas is the energy capital of the nation and can produce natural gas, diesel, oil and even jet fuel. Texas has masses of armed patriots who own more guns than they do pairs of shoes, and that makes Texas practically impenetrable to any invading force. For example, suppose North Korea launches an ICBM into the high atmosphere over North America and unleashes an EMP weapon that destroys nearly all electronics ( http://www.naturalnews.com/034344_EMP_weapons_electronics_modern_civi... ) This could theoretically be followed by a naval invasion of forces from Red China and North Korea, both of which suffer from too many young males that can hardly be fed and might as well be thrown at some enemy nation as cannon fodder. These forces would plow right through Southern California, with all its anti-gun laws and totally unprepared populations. Oregon would fare a lot better, thanks to the country folks who know how to live off the land, and although Seattle would be quickly overrun by enemy forces, the eastern (country) parts of Washington state would put up a fierce resistance. And any enemy forces foolish enough to try to make it into Idaho would, of course, be viciously intercepted by highly capable resistance forces that would snipe, explode and shred the enemy's supply lines, halting any advance no matter how strongly intentioned. (You do not want to mess with American rebels and patriots in Idaho, for the record.) If some enemy force was foolish enough to try to enter Texas, they would be obliterated by a mass of Texas farmers, ranchers, National Guardsmen, law enforcement officers and ex-military men who are all locked and loaded to the hilt. That's where I feel safest , in the midst of the best-armed and most well-skilled riflemen in the country, most of which are upstanding, community-minded citizens who defend life and liberty. Texas is a fortress of determined men and women who will not, under any circumstances, willfully surrender their freedoms or their Bill of Rights. Interestingly, Austin is also a progressive town with lots of raw foods, vegans, yoga studios and amazing artists. It's a progressive, almost liberal town, surrounded by conservative country folks who ultimately serve as a safety buffer that protects the city of Austin itself. When SHTF time comes, you can bet all the unarmed Austin residents will be begging the rural cowboys to protect them from looters and armed gangs. That's why people who don't own guns dial 911 -- because they want men who DO own guns to arrive as quickly as possible and solve their problem. Are your current skills based in reality? Or fiction... As you consider where to go in a time of crisis, think about where you are right now. Is your local community able to defend itself? Do you live among people who know how to repair cars, weld equipment, repair a rifle, clean fresh fish, grow vegetables, raise chickens and chop firewood? If not, you might want to think about relocating to a place where you live among some more capable people rather than the city-minded people who -- let's face it -- live in an artificial reality that's extremely fragile and won't last but a few days in a true collapse scenario. If your top skills today are things like: texting while driving, finding the best sales at Macy's, and beating the level 12 boss on your Xbox video game, then you're not likely to survive very long in a real crisis. Xbox skills, it turns out, do not translate into the real world. All those people who are currently experts at artificial skills need to think long and hard about picking up a few reality skills that might help them in the real world. You don't know jack, Jack! Above all, as much as you think you know about preparedness, survival and the like, you probably don't know jack. And that goes for myself, too, even as I study this subject and work to learn as much as I possibly can in the short time remaining. Do you know how to suture an open wound? I have literally spent an afternoon reading a suture book and practicing stitches on chicken meat bought from the grocery store. Seems silly, right? Who spends their Saturday suturing a chunk of chicken? Then again, if you're cut and bleeding more than a little, I'm the guy who knows how to apply a tourniquet in 60 seconds, sanitize the wound and sew it up. It will be ugly as all hell, as I'm no cosmetic surgeon, but as long as you didn't sever some major artery, you'll probably live. I've also been known to pack open wounds with freshly-cut aloe vera gel. I just stuff it right into the wound then use a skin stapler to staple the surface shut. Never had an infection problem , as aloe vera gel is a powerful antibacterial substance that also pulls the wound shut as it dries. It's crude, free and highly effective. Just the kind of country remedy I like to have handy in a time of crisis. That's why I always grow aloe vera everywhere I go. Get some skillz, Jack! These days, my goal in preparedness is to know as many useful skills as possible , which is why I study emergency first aid and other practical skills. In a crisis, I can prep emergency food for an entire community, sanitize water for a small group, perform basic emergency medical procedures on the wounded or even be part of a rifle fire team that defends a church, for example, against a band of armed looters. I'm not the best at any one of those things, but I'm useful in them all. I know how to grow medicine, grow food and (somewhat) handle farm animals. I know how to clean a rifle, repair a torn belt on a broken piece of farm equipment, operate a John Deere tractor, start a fire without matches, and stitch back together a torn piece of canvas or clothing. I still don't know how to field dress a wild pig or deer, but I figure I can always barter with someone who does, as I've got a complement of other useful skills that they probably don't possess. (I'm not into hunting or skinning anything. Can't stand to shoot live animals. That's just not my thing, y'know?) Most of all, I'm determined to survive , and I'm determined to help as many of my fellow human beings survive with me, to the best of my ability and resources. And that's ultimately what's going to get me through the coming collapse, so help me God. Wherever you go, assess the basics The other day I was thinking about Jim Rogers, the wealthy investor who lives in Singapore and often appears on alternative news shows like RT America or InfoWars. As much as I totally agree with Jim's advice on learning Chinese (which is one reason why I speak a fair amount of Mandarin myself), if you know anything about Singapore, you also know it is perhaps the last place in the world you want to live in a collapse scenario. Singapore is a concrete jungle with virtually no usable space for growing food in proportion to its population. Even worse, Singapore has virtually no water supply and must import a huge portion of its water from Malaysia, a nation with which Singapore has dicey relations. The food for Singapore must all be imported from surrounding nations (such as Malaysia), and Singapore's claim to fame -- a financial hub of Asia -- is in many ways based on the very false derivatives and fragile debt instruments that are on the verge of total collapse in the years ahead. If Asia suffers much in the way of economic collapse, Singapore may become a desperate place. Certainly, a resourceful guy like Jim Rogers can probably weather the storm and still come out on top (he's got assets in multiple currencies, in many financial institutions around the world), but for your average run-of-the-mill citizens, Singapore could become a very dangerous place to try to survive. When people look at relocating for preparedness reasons, they often overlook the basics such as water resources . That's why I recommend people buy the book "Strategic Relocation -- North American Guide to Safe Places, 3rd Edition" ( http://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Relocation--North-American-Guide-Plac... ) by Joel Skousen. I've been a fan of Skousen for over a decade, and this book will walk you through the key decision-making process of finding a place that can keep you and your family alive. That place is NOT New York City, nor Los Angeles, obviously. Those are places to go if you want to DIE in a collapse. But there are many places across North America that are quite suitable for creating your preparedness retreat as a primary residence. Many of these places even have internet bandwidth available, so you can potentially earn a living on the 'net while you prepare your location. If you read the book, you'll discover that Austin has its own pitfalls, including being relatively close to both nuclear power facilities and the border with Mexico. Both of those are legitimate concerns, of course, and there's no perfect spot that has everything you want. You have to find the best combination of factors that matter to you, then do the best you can with the time, skills and resources available to you. Timing: Are you prepared yet? If you're not already well along with your own preparedness plans, you run the risk of missing this train entirely. 2012 is nearly upon us , and while I don't believe all the Mayan calendar nonsense being rumored around the internet, I certainly see a financial collapse headed our way in 2012 or very soon thereafter. It takes 2-3 years to really get squared away with your retreat if you consider the process of making good quality soil for gardening, planting some fruit trees, squaring away your irrigation system, getting some backyard chickens and so on. You can't just "buy a place" and move in and suddenly expect to be fully covered. Building a retreat requires experience that only time will deliver -- experience dealing with weather, garden pests, wild predators, knowing the lay of the land and so on. Just squaring away your own home water supply can be a daunting task if you don't know where to begin, and even getting a well drilled can be a six-month process in terms of acquiring permits and waiting on drilling companies (which are often backlogged). Time is running short. If you're not already in the process of storing the supplies you need -- and learning the skills that go with them -- you're late. Get on top of this NOW. And don't worry if you're not in the "perfect" geographic location or the perfect house or whatever. Work with what you have . A family with skills and just a few basic supplies is far better off than a wealthy family with a house full of gear they don't know how to use. I can't even tell you how many people out there just buy stuff, toss it on a shelf and never learn how to use it. That's about as silly as owning a guitar and thinking you're suddenly a "musician" because you have the gear. Whatever you buy to be prepared, practice with it and practice with your entire family. Even if you don't own firearms (or don't want to), a family of four armed with a few cans of heavy duty pepper spray can make a small group of attackers think twice. Plan ahead for what's coming, and you won't be left behind. Stay informed! FREE subscription to the Health Ranger's email newsletter http://www.naturalnews.com/034404_preppers_collapse_bugging_out.html Burning down the house - the coming global financial firestorm Tuesday, December 13, 2011 by: Mark Sircus., AC, OMD (NaturalNews) This week a fire might start that will burn the western financial system down to the ground. Important people like George Soros warned, "The current global financial system is in a self-reinforcing process of disintegration, the developed world is falling into deflationary debt trap." I have been holding back this essay for months. It is not a good sign that I am finally bringing myself to publish it. I have tired of being a prophet of doom so have been waiting for the drums of doom, which are now sounding loudly. I hope this essay will help people understand what we are about to suffer through. Mr. George Soros himself warned, "The current global financial system is in a self-reinforcing process of disintegration, the developed world is falling into deflationary debt trap." Peter Schiff president of Euro Pacific Capital, identified the state of the Union saying, "Our government doesn't have enough spare cash to bail out a lemonade stand. Our standard of living must decline to reflect years of reckless consumption and the disintegration of our industrial base. Only by swallowing this tough medicine now will our sick economy ever recover." The Economist writes 'Unless Germany and the ECB act quickly, the single currency's collapse is looming '. "Mrs. Merkel is possibly underestimating the speed and ferocity at which a market panic could crush her ambitious integration plans. We also agree that there are a number of potential events that could become the triggers for such a panic. There is considerable risk that in the case of the failure of a big bank, a wave of cascading cross-defaults could engulf the system." Britain's Foreign Office is advising its overseas embassies to draw up plans to help expats should the collapse of the Euro turn explosive. Almost incredibly, a senior minister has revealed that Britain is now planning on the basis that a euro collapse is matter of time . British ministers privately warned that the break-up of the euro, once almost unthinkable, is now increasingly plausible . Hardly a week goes by, without a major summit between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, trying to devise another clever scheme to save the Euro. Yet after 1-? years of trying to contain the wildfire, - the Euro-zone's debt crisis is more dangerous than ever . &gt;Gary Dorsch "The raging European monetary collapse will ripple through America's banking system, completing the 2008 meltdown that never ended because Wall Street fought all reforms. But now, a bigger meltdown as history repeats a dangerous cycle like the 1929 Crash and Great Depression. History will also deal a fatal blow to Wall Street. Martin Weiss adds a key warning: No bank bailouts. America's banking system is bankrupt, structurally and morally.Washington is broken. And thanks to the Occupiers Revolution the masses will never accept new bank bailouts. Never. They'll toss politicians and overthrow government first. No new bailouts will be the stake in the heart of Wall Street , ending the 'greed is good' power of America's 'bloodsucking vampire squid,' handing the Occupiers new political power in Washington." - Market Watch . - Greece will default very soon. - The contagion of fear will spread. - European mega banks will collapse. - EU governments suffer new credit rating downgrades. - Spain and Italy are &gt;next to face defaults on their massive debts. - Global debt markets will suffer a critical meltdown. - The vicious cycle -- sovereign defaults, bank failures, global depression -- will continue. We have been living through an agonizingly slow death of the system for years, so at this point, or a point very soon, the entire system will go down and go down fast like a house does when on fire. Since 2008 all the financial remedies have only made the wood dryer so when things start to burn, when bond holders lose their shirts, when banks go down, when governments default, the fire will burn hotter. Accountants know that there is only so far you can stretch, leverage and borrow before the bomb bay doors to bankruptcy open and the system falls to its doom. Hope has lost its battle against simple arithmetic and it is frightening to look at the harpoon targeting all of our lives. What we are faced with depends on the mathematics of balance sheets that are tilting far over into insolvency. Authorities around the globe will certainly do all they can to keep things stable, but in the end it is inevitable that the house of cards is going to come crashing down. "The current system will not so much collapse as evaporate," writes Trace Mayer, J.D., who is predicting what is called a Kondratieff Winter , which is the correction of a credit expansion. Like a black hole, the entire world of money and commerce gets sucked into it as money runs out at an increasing rate for more and more people, towns, cities, counties, states, businesses and countries. The world financial system is a total fraud. It is one gargantuan Ponzi scheme, no better than the one Bernie Madoff used to swindle his friends and neighbors, and thousands of times worse if you add up the total number of victims it has ripped off over countless generations. Paul Hellyer Mayer's chart below speaks volumes about what's going to evaporate. It will be like an attic full of squirrels running from one end of the attic to another. There is a point when a stampede occurs and in a credit collapse everyone runs at once into gold and silver and away from paper full of fancy ink and images. Right now though the squirrels are running to buy up paper instead, American paper and its worthless values are going up, meaning many other currencies are going down hard. Just as an individual can go bankrupt no matter how rich she starts out, a financial system can collapse under the pressure of greed, politics, and profits no matter how well regulated it seems to be. Ken Rogoff &amp; Carmen Reinhart Eight Centuries of Financial Folly "Much as I'd like to see the end of the extend-and-pretend game, I'm pretty convinced that it's the only thing left standing between the world as we knew it and the demise of the financial and political system that went along with it," writes the Automatic Earth . For the few who have used these past few years of borrowed time to prepare for a general depression and financial collapse one can only be thankful for the extra time, but it looks like time is just about up. I have written a lot about the nature of our deteriorating reality and have been watching circumstances develop for decades. It's a deplorable and absolutely unprecedented situation that has gotten steadily worse because " the world is controlled by a bunch of genocidal maniacs hell bent on extending the system for one more day ," writes Tyler Durden . The reality of the situation is this: there are no magic monetary tools that can fix the global monetary crises hidden in the basement of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, or any of the others. The fiat moneyinstruments themselves -- dollars, euros, yen, etc. -- are the problem. Daily Bell Durden says, "The entire European insolvent periphery is now merely squeezing as much money out of the core as they can before everything falls apart ." September might very well be the month of doom for the European Union, or at least the beginning of a precipitous fall. Unless aliens land with trillions lining their pockets it looks like we are headed for another massive credit crunch. "It's not really the end of the world , but to read some of the analysis and data over the past week, it's hard not to wonder if it's not the beginning of the endgame at the very least," wrote conservative John Mauldin a few weeks ago. David Icke is at his best in this video. His lecture on the engineering of economic collapses by those who think they are better than everyone else is riveting. We are beyond the point where playing the blame game counts for anything though but Karl Denninger tells us to "Make sure you thank Con gress and our wonderful 'President,' all of whom are far more interested in making sure that the banksters simply rob you blind than anything else when it comes to the economy. In fact, by their actions it's clear that's all they care about," he writes. " Mankind is reeling under a whopping $158 trillion debt pile that, according to analysts and economists, might get out of hand if not dealt with carefully. Gulf News takes a look at how this massive debt pile was created and how the world can get out of this mess. Every human being on earth currently carries a debt burden of nearly $22,733 on average, if the latest reports are to be believed. Every child is sharing the same debt burden at birth, as debt growth rates beat the global population growth rate," writes Saifur Rahman for the Gulfnews If someone can't pay his debts, you don't help him by giving him a larger loan. The problem of over-indebtedness is tearing the world's economy apart. We're on the cusp of a global recession that will turn into a full blown depression or collapse because the first world will hit a brick wall in terms of ability to pay up on its debts. Louis James asked Doug Casey about the coming crash, about leaving "the eye of the storm and backing into the raging winds of financial, political, and social turmoil -- What if you're wrong?" Doug responded, "I honestly hope I am, because if I'm right, the global economic devastation is going to have a very real and significant death toll . The price in human suffering these fools in government are setting us up for is truly monstrous. As a human being, of course I'd rather see good times," but he and many others are no longer dreaming of fairytale endings. The speed of the disintegration said everything. It took less than 48 hours for London to descend from self-styled capital of the world into a circuit of burning dystopian hells. Gautam Malkani In Kondratieff Winters, or what are otherwise known as great depressions, millions starve . In our next Kondratieff Winter it will probably be hundreds of millions if not a billion or two who will starve because we are simultaneously being taken down by Mother Nature who is devastating agriculture around the globe with floods, drought, fire, cold and heat, and now even radiation exposure will cast a dark shadow on the agriculture sector. The gigantic rotting corpses of governments around the world are contracting, stumbling into walls of debt that they simply cannot get around. Our present way of organizing societies, economies and government is now visibly falling apart. Calls for economic "austerity" -- reduced government deficits -- are the early warning signs of hard economic contraction -- the early signs of the Kondratieff Winter that is now starting. Dangerous Times As the crisis mood congeals, people will come to the jarring realization that they have grown helplessly dependent on a teetering edifice of anonymous transactions and paper guarantees. The Fourth Turning - 1997 "Buy a weapon to prepare for what may be the most devastating economic downturn our nation has ever faced. As one trained in economics, I never thought I'd write those words. However, I'll repeat them. Buy a gun. The coming storm will not only impose financial hardships for those unprepared, but also entail a physical threat to you, your family and your property. The threat will come from inside the halls of government with the constant attack on savings and investments through inflation, monetary gimmickry and, eventually, the destruction of our currency. The world around us is deteriorating every day: socially and economically. It's not limited to London," writes Joseph McBrennan, editor of the Taipan Publishing Group . Silver Shield has written an essay Five Reasons American Riots Will Be the Worst in the World , that is just over the top, but in it he says some very serious things to his fellow Americans. "When the dollar collapses, all American illusions will collapse with it. Deep denial will turn into deep anger. The Baby Boomer generation's obsessive pursuit for material possessions was matched by their embrace of debt. The American riots will be the worst the world has seen because of the amount of arrogance, denial, narcissism, drugs and violence in our society. Video: Max Keiser: WW3 is on as Wall St. banks plunder economy I believe the pent-up pressures will explode and what will happen in the course of a few days or weeks will take our collective breath away. So it's a good idea to start now with some deep-breathing exercises to give some extra emotional strength to get ready for the event. It is that close. I think most of us sense it by now -- the approaching danger. The Burning Platform writes, "As I observe the zombie like reactions of Americans to our catastrophic economic highway to collapse, the continued plundering and pillaging of the national treasury by criminal Wall Street bankers, non-enforcement of existing laws against those who committed the largest crime in history, and reaction to young people across the country getting beaten, bludgeoned, shot with tear gas and pepper sprayed by police, I can't help but wonder whether there is anyone home. Why are most Americans so passively accepting of these calamitous conditions? How did we become so comfortably numb? I've concluded Americans have chosen willful ignorance over thoughtful critical thinking due to their own intellectual laziness and overpowering mind manipulation by the elite through their propaganda emitting media machines. Some people are awaking from their trance, but the vast majority is still slumbering or fuming at erroneous perpetrators." For all the references, sources and more articles, please visit Dr. Mark Sircus blog . About the author: About the author: Mark A. Sircus, Ac., OMD, is director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA) http://www.imva.info/. Dr. Sircus was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and at the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla in Mexico, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work. He was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States. Dr. Sircus's IMVA is dedicated to unifying the various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare. He is particularly concerned about the effect vaccinations have on vulnerable infants and is identifying the common thread of many toxic agents that are dramatically threatening present and future generations of children. His book, The Terror of Pediatric Medicine, is a free e-book offered on his web site. Humane Pediatrics will be an e-book available early in 2011 and then quickly as possible put into print. Dr. Sircus is a most prolific and courageous writer and one can read through hundreds of pages on his various web sites. He has recently released a number of e-books including Winning the War Against Cancer, Survival Medicine for the 21st Century, Sodium Bicarbonate, Rich Man's Poor Man's Cancer Treatment, New Paradigms in Diabetic Care and Bringing Back the Universal Medicine: IODINE. Dr. Sircus is a pioneer in the area of natural detoxification and chelation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. He is also a champion of the medicinal value of minerals and seawater. Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, his first published work, offers a stunning breakthrough in medicine, an entirely new way to supplement magnesium that naturally increases DHEA levels, brings cellular magnesium levels up quickly, relieves pain, brings down blood pressure and pushes cell physiology in a positive direction. Magnesium chloride delivered transdermally brings a quick release from a broad range of conditions. His second edition of Transdermal Magnesium Therapy will be out shortly. In addition he writes critically about the political and financial crises occurring around us. International Medical Veritas Association: http://www.imva.info/ http://publications.imva.info/ http://www.naturalnews.com/034388_financial_system_collapse_debt.html 14 signs that the collapse of our modern world has already begun Monday, May 02, 2011 by Mike Adams , the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) (NaturalNews) A lot of people believe the world as we know it is going to end on December 23, 2012. Nonsense, I say. The far more honest answer is that the end of the world as we know it has already begun . And it doesn't mean the end of the world; it means the closing of one era and the birth of a new one. It is a transition between the ages. This particular transition, however, promises to be the most tumultuous and costly transition humankind has ever seen. But don't wait around for December 2012 to look for the signs. Here are 14 signs that the world as we know it is unraveling right now. We are living through the end of one era and the birth of a new one . In the future, they'll look back and call this all one moment in history, but when you're living through it, it seems to move forward at almost a snail's pace. But make no mistake: We are living through the opening chapters of the end of the world as we know it, and on the other side of all this will emerge a new world that's very different from the one we know today. #1 - Tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis - At first it seemed like a fluke; but now it's a pattern. The weather is becoming increasingly extreme. Over 120 tornadoes recently struck the U.S. Midwest. Texas is on fire and suffering through an extreme drought. And where there aren't fires and droughts, there are floods. This is only the beginning... watch for more freak weather over the next 18 months. #2 - The silence of the bees - Colony Collapse Disorder continues to accelerate across North America. We already know it's being caused in part by chemical pesticides (and possibly worsened by GMOs), but the chemical industry is engaged in a full-on cover-up to deny this truth while the pollinators of our world suffer a devastating population collapse. ( http://www.naturalnews.com/028218_pesticides_honeybees.html ) #3 - The failure of nuclear science - The Fukushima catastrophe proves one thing: Scientists are dangerously arrogant in their planning of large-scale projects, and they fail to account for the awesome power of Mother Nature. Nuclear science promised us clean, green energy -- but now it has delivered a silent, invisible poison that's infecting our planet. #4 - The vicious pursuit of Wikileaks - In an age of such rampant deceit, there is no room for the truth. So those who tell the truth (Wikileaks) are viciously pursued as if they were criminals. #5 - The rise of the medical police state - The armed SWAT raids on Maryanne Godboldo in Detroit are only the beginning ( http://www.naturalnews.com/032091_Maryanne_Godboldo_gun_rights.html ). The truth is that the medical system uses guns to force its vaccines and chemotherapy onto children and teens across America. The medical system has become so utterly useless, corrupt and dangerous that it must actually invoke guns in peoples' faces just to "convince" people to take its medicine. This is a gunpoint-enforced medical monopoly that exists as a threat to our health and our freedoms. #6 - The increasing frequency of food shortages and crop failures - Notice the spike in food prices? That's just the beginning: Food prices will continue to skyrocket in the years ahead due to extreme weather, the loss of pollinators and the global contamination of crops by GMOs. Real food is becoming increasingly scarce in our world. You might want to think about starting a home garden... #7 - The runaway destruction of the world by energy companies - The radioactive fallout from Fukushima isn't the only way in which energy companies are destroying our world: Don't forget about the Deepwater Horizon and the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- a spill that isn't over, by the way. They're still spraying Corexit in the Gulf one year later! #8 - The continued GMO contamination of our planet - This may be the worst chapter in the coming collapse : The widespread genetic pollution of our planet through GMOs. This is a crime against nature and against humanity. It is a "gene spill" that may never be contained as it spreads its deadly DNA across the world's food crops, leading to crop failures and starvation ( http://www.naturalnews.com/032167_gene_spill_GMOs.html ). The use of GMOs is the closest thing to "Satanic" that you'll find in modern agriculture. The agenda behind this is pure evil. #9 - The tyranny and criminal crackdowns targeting real food (raw milk) - When you can't even sell honest farm food to your neighbors without being targeted and arrested by the cops, something is terribly wrong with the world. But this is happening today, all across America. Now the feds are even targeting the Amish! ( http://www.naturalnews.com/029322_raw_milk_Amish.html ) #10 - The escalation of the counterfeiting of the money supply - In a failed economic system approaching collapse, the moronic leaders can only think of "solutions" that actually accelerate their own downfall. The runaway counterfeiting of money by the Federal Reserve (with its "quantitative easing" and other counterfeit methods) is a classic sign that the end of our current system is fast approaching. The economic insanities are obvious to anyone who can still do math. #11 - The plummeting intelligence of the masses - One of the most disturbing signs that we're already in the collapse is the great dumbing-down of the masses. The drooling, CNN-watching television zombies who dominate our landscape offer absolutely nothing of value to the world. They are the "mindless consumers" who get vaccinated, watch television and eat processed, pasteurized junk food. They're on psychiatric meds and believe everything the government tells them. Most of these people, of course, won't make it through the collapse. #12 - The complete and utter fabrication of the mainstream news - Much of the mainstream news is now utterly and completely fabricated these days: The reporting on Obama's long-form birth certificate; the news about the war in Libya; the coverage of the economy and the U.S. debt... it's all so utterly false and unbelievable that an intelligent person watching the news can't help but explode with laughter. It is a sign of this collapse that the information sources relied upon by the masses are unable to report the truth anymore and must resort to weaving politically expedient fictions on everything from health care and medicine to the fate of the U.S. dollar itself. #13 - The ongoing pharmaceutical pollution of our world - Beyond the GMO contamination and the radiation contamination of our world, we are also experiencing the mass pharmaceutical contamination of our planet. It's not just the pharma factories that dump their products into the rivers ( http://www.naturalnews.com/025415_water_Big_Pharma_chemicals.html ); it's also the fact that well over half the population is now taking drugs almost daily, and those drugs pass right through their bodies and end up in the water supply where they contaminate the fish ( http://www.naturalnews.com/025933.html ). Even beyond that, the drugs end up in the human sewage sludge that's packaged and sold as "organic soil!" ( http://www.naturalnews.com/029504_organic_biosolids_toxic.html ) #14 - The radioactive contamination of the global food supply - Here's one that's really insidious: The global food supply is now contaminated with the radioactive fallout from Fukushima. We're told the levels are "low," but we're not told the truth of how radioactive cesium isotopes persist in the food supply for centuries . How is the human race going to survive its exposure to CT scans, radioactive food, chest X-rays, TSA body scanners and even the secret DHS mobile X-ray vans that can penetrate your body with X-rays as you're walking into a football stadium? The total radiation burden on the human race is now reaching a point of mass infertility . That may be the whole idea, actually. It's accelerating, too December, 2012 may be a useful date as some sort of mid-point in the crisis, or perhaps as a trigger date for some further acceleration of society's rapid unraveling. But make no mistake: We are already living in the collapse of our modern world. And you have a front-row seat! (Exciting, huh?) Think about what's happening around you these days. These are the signs of the last, desperate clutches of a civilization built on utterly unsustainable practices that don't value life on our world. These are the End Times of the corporate oligarchy; the monopolistic for-profit corporation machine that destroyed everything in our world in exchange for a slightly higher quarterly earnings report. In the quest for more money, humanity has sacrificed its food supply, its pollinators, it's oceans, forests and soils. Greed-driven humans have used other humans as medical experiments and cannon fodder. We have created wars to sell more bombs, and we've invented disease to sell psychiatric chemicals. These are the practices of a failed civilization... and one whose days are numbered. Watching it all crumble is far more interesting than watching it continue its destructive ways, of course, because those of us paying attention realize a future civilization must rise up in the place of this one after the collapse . Say goodbye to the false power of institutions It would be nice if our future leaders remembered the importance of liberty and personal responsibility, of course. The answer to all the world's problems, it turns out, is freedom -- freedom in medicine, freedom in economics and freedom from government tyranny. Because, let's face it: The root cause of most these problems that are bringing down our world right now is bad government . It is bad government (Big Government) that approved the GMOs. Bad government enforced the medical monopoly and allowed the pesticides to kill the honeybees. Bad government drove us into inescapable debt and costly foreign wars. Bad government outlawed health freedom and protected the monopolistic practices of the food companies, drug companies and chemical companies. The downfall of modern human civilization is, as you probably guessed, also the downfall of the very idea that Big Government creates a better society. Because if there's one idea that needs to stay dead after the collapse, it's the idea that We the People somehow need another group of people (government workers) to live off our hard work while hounding us with their false authority, directing every little detail of our lives. What we need in our world isn't more government, but more freedom . If we had freedom, integrity and personal responsibility, we wouldn't even be facing the global collapse that has already begun. But alas, the human race is an infant species and it must learn some lessons the hard way, it seems. This lesson should be long remembered: If you let the corporations, the banks and the governments run your economies, your farms and your lives, they will enslave you and steal your future while you sleep; they will inject silent poisons into the very world around you until you awaken one day to find that all you created has been destroyed. They will promise you paradise but deliver only death. Beware of any entity that is not a living person -- no government, no institution, no corporation has a soul, nor a heart, nor a conscience. They are forces of organized destruction that decimate those things we hold dear while delivering to us things that will only enslave us or harm us. Beware the corporation; the government; the non-profit institution working as a front group for private industry. Never allow yourself to be ruled over by any institution which exists only as a fictional construct organized from the projection of human greed. And be ready for the acceleration of the collapse. Because if you are reading this, you are the future of the human race . You have a duty to stay alive, keep your genes intact, and be around to help create the Next Society after this one crumbles into history. Stay informed! FREE subscription to the Health Ranger's email newsletter http://www.naturalnews.com/032258_economic_collapse_2012.html Financial alert: Germany's Constitutional Court decision either means a rapid Eurozone financial collapse, or inevitable hyperinflation Tuesday, September 11, 2012 by Mike Adams , the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) (NaturalNews) The financial collapse of the Eurozone may be upon us. This Wednesday, September 12, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany must decide whether it is legal for Germany to participate in the financial bailouts of other nations in the Eurozone. The court has been inundated with tens of thousands of petitions (not just petition signers, but tens of thousands of individual petitions) demanding the court say NO to the bailouts and stop draining Germany's economy to rescue the failed debt spending of other nations. Here's why this matters: A NO decision means a rapid financial collapse of the Eurozone If Germany votes NO, then Germany stops bailing out Greece, Spain and other nations on the brink of financial disaster. Sometime in the coming days, weeks or, in the best case, a few months, European nations start collapsing , complete with bank holidays, riots in the streets and almost certainly martial law. This collapse will, at first, cause a flight of capital to the USA, making the U.S. look stronger in the short term, but given how many U.S. banks are invested in European financial instruments (derivatives), the U.S. banking collapse won't be far behind. A YES decision means runaway hyperinflation across the Eurozone If the German court votes YES to the continued financial bailouts, then Germany must crank up the printing presses and start creating money at such a rapid pace that hyperinflation becomes almost inevitable. Literally trillions of Euros would have to be (electronically) printed in Germany , then transferred off to other countries like Italy, Spain and Greece, where banksters and governments have spent themselves beyond the point of collapse and are in desperate need of bailouts. In this scenario, German citizens would be bailing out governments all across Europe... and that's not exactly a happy idea among the Germans who are working for a living and thereby having their wealth stolen away by the state through endless money creation. Either decision spells financial collapse, just on different timelines The upshot of this is that either decision spells financial collapse for the Eurozone. The NO decision means a rapid economic implosion; the YES decision means hyperinflation spiraling out of control. Either decision is bad for the Euro. And just as importantly, either decision also spells eventual catastrophe for the U.S. Here's why: Why the Euro crisis will send a financial tidal wave headed toward U.S. shores U.S. banks have heavy exposure in European debt networks. When the Euro implodes, the ripple effect will very rapidly cause catastrophic debt failures of many of the top U.S. banks -- the big banks with names you know and (foolishly) trust. We are talking about such a massive exposure that when the stuff hits the fan, U.S. banks will be forced to declare bank holidays. A bank holiday, for those who may not know, is when the banks close their doors and announce, "You can't get your money." The term "holiday" was chosen as a kind of Orwellian linguistic trick to make it sound nice, if not downright comforting. In fact, it's a bank seizure of all your deposits and investment funds. This bank holiday may also result in the following devastating effects across the U.S. economy: o A halting of the use of EBT cards (welfare spending cards) o A halting of all e-commerce (online retailing) which goes through those banks o A halting of all commercial payments and transactions through those banks o A halting of all ATMs that use those banks (you can't get your cash out) o A halting of all money transfers and checking activity in those banks o A halting of all PAYROLL from companies using those banks You don't have to be a genius to figure out what this means. Within a matter of days, we're looking at riots in the streets , widespread business bankruptcies, and the inevitable Martial Law, complete with secret arrests, NDAA-authorized killings of American citizens, and the roll out of the government's 1.4 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition to be used against the American people ( http://www.naturalnews.com/036847_ammo_purchases_government_stockpili... ). The global debt meltdown is now impossible to reverse It's not hard to see the writing on the wall with all this. The global debt meltdown that began in the Fall of 2008 is now reaching a point of criticality. Once the collapse begins, it will be impossible to reverse until it "hits bottom." And that bottom could be a very deep hole. I'm not an investment advisor, so I can't give you financial advice. But I can tell you what I believe, which is that anyone who has money in banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America is likely to lose a significant portion of those deposits in the coming debt meltdown. In case you're keeping track of the numbers, the U.S. government is now $16 trillion in debt , with $4 trillion of that being racked up under President Obama. (That's a trillion bucks a year, yeah, I know.) This level of runaway debt spending is, as any honest economist will tell you, utterly unsustainable . That means it must end, and since nobody in Washington has the courage these days to end it responsibly by cutting government spending and paying down the debt, it must therefore end catastrophically. The collapse could happen overnight, without warning This global debt meltdown could literally happen overnight. You wake up one morning and all your bank accounts are frozen. Credit cards don't work. Checks don't work. ATMs don't work. You can't even make a payment on your home, which of course gives the banks their justification to come seize your home and throw you out on the street. (That's part of their plan, of course.) Opinions differ widely on exactly when this meltdown is going to take place. Brilliant investment strategist Max Keiser says the global meltdown will occur before April of 2013, and he's also on the record saying the U.S. government is going to "fire up the incinerators." That's to deal with the hoards of hungry, angry protesters who have no jobs, no savings and suddenly no welfare money to spend, either. Whether you believe that apocalyptic vision or not, even in the most optimistic case, the debt collapse is inevitable. The laws of mathematics cannot be altered by merely hoping so. "Hope and change" doesn't actually work. You have to have REALITY on your side. Responsible spending. The federal government is the most irresponsible organization on the planet, as it is shoving us all into a financial catastrophe which will have an immense cost in human suffering and death, not to mention loss of freedoms. It is difficult to imagine an "orderly" collapse. Hence the need for Martial Law, over a billion rounds of hollow point bullets purchased by the government, and so on. Did you really think all the 1.4 billion rounds of ammunition were just for "training purposes" as claimed by the mainstream media? C'mon. Stop being so naive. They're for deployment against the people when the collapse comes, got it? The government is also working on creepy robotic land drones that can march around the cities with infrared cameras and shoot mounted weapons at selected human targets. You can see the video yourself at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/latest-ls... Or click PLAY to watch it here: LS3 - Legged Squad Support System http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ezXBEBE6U This is not science fiction. It's a DARPA-funded robotic army initiative. They already have the robots playing a game they call "follow the leader" but which is actually "pursue the human prey." The U.S. military is also about to deploy a new wave of "Kamikazee drones" that carry an explosive payload and fly directly into their targets, setting off a massive detonation. This is reported in WIRED (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/suicidal-drone-6-miles-away/) which says: The "Lethal Miniature Aerial Munition System" -- It's for when the Army needs someone dead from up to six miles away in 30 minutes or less. All freedom-loving Americans need to get prepared to not just survive the coming collapse, but also to defend yourself against an army of military robots unleashed against the American people. That's the ultimate dream of the global controllers, of course: To deploy an army of mindless robots that won't question orders when directed to open fire on protesters. By the way, if you REALLY want to see what's coming -- and you can stomach it -- watch this mind-blowing trailer for a film project called "Gray State." WARNING: Extremely disturbing images, but probably quite accurate, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy7FVXERKFE Stay informed! FREE subscription to the Health Ranger's email newsletter http://www.naturalnews.com/037155_Eurozone_financial_collapse_Germany.html Homeland Security insider warns orchestrated collapse of U.S. dollar 'has begun' Tuesday, April 02, 2013 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer (NaturalNews) The countdown clock is ticking as the insanely evil cabal known as the "global elite" prepares its final moves for a complete world takeover. As relayed by Canada Free Press (CFP), an insider at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is America's very own reanimation of the Nazi SS, recently delivered an ominous warning that America's days are numbered, and that Americans basically need to ready themselves for the worst, which is yet to come. Not only is a complete collapse of the U.S. dollar on the very near horizon, according to the unnamed source, but a single, uniform currency system is already in the works to take its place. All that needs to happen now is for the final hammer to drop, so to speak, an event to truly shake the people and wake them out of their drunken, entertainment-imbibed stupors. But when this finally happens, it will already be too late for anyone to actually do anything about it. "The first shots in a global economic takeover were fired in Cyprus," explains Doug Hagmann from CFP about the situation as it is currently playing out. "It is a plan for a one world Communist economy where the 'middle class' will be wiped out through a series of events that will have the same ultimate effect as we are seeing in present day Cyprus." And just what, exactly, happened in Cyprus? The mainstream media claims it was a simple emergency "tax deal," a "levy" designed to pull the country out of crisis. But in reality, the people of Cyprus, and those with money in Cyprus banks, were literally robbed of untold billions of dollars by the central bankers, who overnight imposed an unannounced freeze on a large portion of depositors' money. According to more recent reports, up to 40 percent of depositors' cash could be apprehended as part of the deal. Federal Reserve recently stole more than 25 percent of Americans' savings and investments with 'quantitative easing' scam But what is happening in Cyprus is also happening in the U.S. Very few Americans, it turns out, are aware of the fact that the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing scheme, which intentionally injects more paper money into the general money supply, causes inflation. And inflation leads to devaluation of money, which in essence is just another form of stealing from the people to bail out the central bankers. Though these cash injections might lead to immediate economic jump starts, they never last, and the long-term consequence of their repeated use is hyperinflation and destruction of the currency. And the unfortunate truth of the matter is that all levels of government have been infiltrated with globalists serving the interests of the central bankers at the expense of the people. "The plan for a global currency or a one world economic order is a matter that transcends political parties," writes Hagmann. "Those who continue to argue in the Republican-Democrat meme are doing nothing more than providing entertainment to distract people from the real issue, that of the global elite versus the rest of us." "The top of the pyramid in this Ponzi scheme is filled with members of both U.S. political parties who are systematically pillaging us and our future generations into financial debt, bondage and slavery. It is a plan that has been in the works for centuries. The problem, however, is that we have been conditioned not to think that big. Yet, the lie is that big." Sources for this article include: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53842 http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/53832 http://canadafreepress.com http://www.naturalnews.com/039744_US_dollar_collapse_Federal_Reserve.html http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=02e_1366849905 True Prophet Civil War in America Within 90 Days - Get Ready! USA, civil war Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:18:55 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cbc_1365679604 TheHarvesterScout After spending over 3 billion dollars to combine sewer systems and build a "deep tunnel" overflow , heavy rain has forced Milwaukee to release raw sewage into rivers and Lake Michigan. The last dumping was in 2011 owing to the recent drought. Critics contend that combining the systems (rain and sewage) and eliminating smaller overflow areas is the cause of periodic untreated sewage dumping, and that the system design was merely used to spread the cost of the project to surrounding communities. They also argue that city and state government aggressively pursues businesses for minor environmental issues while exempting themselves. The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District counters that the overall volume of dumping has decreased dramatically since the system was put in place. "The district has reported a total of 46 combined sewer overflows in 19 years, or an average of 2.4 a year. Before the availability of the tunnels, combined sewers overflowed directly to local waterways 50 to 60 times a year." http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cbc_1365679604 TheHarvesterScout Milwaukee dumps raw sewage into drinking water source milwaukee,sewage,sewerage,district,raw,untreated,deep tunnel,lake michigan,river Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:34:40 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f3d_1364416226 Value343 http://www.ibtimes.com/child-bride-practice-rising-iran-parliament-seeks-lower-girls-legal-marriage-age-9-760263# Iranian Child Brides Get Younger - And As Iranian lawmakers now seek to lower the legal age of marriage for girls to nine-years-old, the number of Iranian brides already under 10 years of age is sharply rising The Iranian decision to allow nine-year-old girls the legal opportunity to be married to fully grown men was announced by Mohammad Ali Isfenani, chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee. Isfenani called Iran's current civil legislation, which sets the minimum legal age of marriage for girls at 13-years-old, "un-Islamic and illegal," saying, "We must regard nine as being the appropriate age for a girl to have reached puberty and qualified to get married. To do otherwise would be to contradict and challenge Islamic Sharia law." Isenfani's clarion call for prepubescent marriage comes at the same moment a new report from the Union for the Protection of Children's Rights (UPCR) found 75 Iranian girls less than 10-years-old were forced to marry in the past two months, part of a sharp rise in the overall number of Iranian child brides under the age of 10. According to UPCR, of the 342,000 Iranian marriages among girls under 18-years-old registered in 2010, at least 713 marriages involved girls under 10-years-old, more than twice as many as were registered in the prior three years. Moreover, of these underage marriages, 42,000 involved girls between the ages of 10 to 14. The Iranian appetite for child brides led Farshid Yezdani, an activist with UPCR, to note , "It is a worrying trend to see and something that we are all working hard to end. The best way to end this kind of practice is to give information on how to better one's life without infringing on a child's ability to have a childhood." Tragically, a lost childhood is not just the providence of Iranian girls but rather for a distressingly large and ever-expanding number of little girls worldwide. To that end, there are now more than 50 million child brides , a number that is growing by 10 million each year and which is expected to reach 100 million young victims over the next decade. These unfortunate children are married off for a bevy of cultural and religious reasons, ranging from ensuring familial alliances to economic necessities, such as settling debts or overcoming natural disasters to ensure a family's survival. In that latter example, drought-stricken Africa has witnessed the emergence of so-called "drought brides" who are being sold for as little as $170. As one NGO worker explained, "Some households have 10 children and feeding those children is really hard," so marrying off one young girl ensures "that the rest of the family does not die from lack of food." While the reasons behind these human transactions may vary, the one commonality is that the younger the girl, the better the deal. Specifically, it is important that these girls be sold off at a young enough age to better ensure their virginity, thus increasing their economic value and protecting the honor of their families. Not surprisingly, once handed-off, these child brides are then consigned to a terrifyingly nasty, brutish and short-lived existence at the hands of men who ostensibly should be looking out for their well-being and not using them as sexual toys for their own perverse enjoyment. For starters, these young brides rarely continue their education, denying them any hope of independence, the ability to earn a livelihood or of making an economic contribution to their households, thus condemning them to a grim life of ignorance and poverty. Moreover, the life expectancy of their frightful existence is likely to be cut exceedingly short given the multitude of health risks inherent in being a child bride, not the least of which is the high mortality rate from childbirth injuries, where an estimated 70,000 girls under 15 die each year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth.Yet, while the phenomenon of child marriage may have a global span, most of these child marriages take place in predominantly Islamic countries spread throughout the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. The deeply rooted Islamic attachment to prepubescent marriage finds religious justification in the Prophet Muhammad's marriage to a six-year-old child bride, a marriage consummated when she was nine-years-old, following her first menstruation. In fact, determining when a girl reaches her first menstruation is the threshold by which Islamic religious leaders and scholars determine the basis for what age is proper for a girl to be married off; some believe this begins by or before age 10, while others think by the age of 15. As such, the need to adhere to these Sharia-based marital guidelines has made governments in completely or even predominately Muslim countries reluctant to ban underage marriages. In predominantly Muslim Malaysia, for example, the Minister of Legal Affairs has said girls below the age of 16 are allowed to marry as long as they obtain the permission of the religious courts, arguing, "If the religion allows it, then we can't legislate against it. Islam allows it as long as the girl is considered to have reached her pubescent stage, once she has her menstruation." Yet, even in Muslim countries where child marriage is illegal, Islamists often simply ignore the law, allowing for religious leaders to approve "informal marriages" for underage girls, marriages which allow spouses to live in the same home and have children, but which is only legally registered once she turns 18. While most would find it hard to believe that a 15-year-old-girl, let alone a nine-year-old girl, is physically or emotionally ready to start engaging in sexual activity and carrying a child, others think that girls barely removed from the womb are more than fully capable of handling those activities. That enlightened attitude was on display in January when one of Saudi Arabia's most influential clerics, Sheik Saleh al-Fawzan, issued a fatwa allowing fathers to arrange marriages for their daughters "even if they are in the cradle." However, lest anyone think a man would actually engage in sex with such a young infant, al-Fawzan was quick to add that it wasn't "permissible for their husbands to have sex with them unless they are capable of being placed beneath and bearing the weight of the men." Given that, it's not surprising that many believe that underage marriage is little more than legally permissible and religiously sanctioned pedophilia. Yet, some defenders of the horrid practice argue that critics have no moral or ethical qualms about child marriage but are instead driven by less than pure concerns. One such person is Yemeni Sheik Mohammed Hamzi, an imam and official of the Islamist Yemeni opposition party, Islaah. Hamzi had been asked his opinion in reaction to international complaints to the death of a 13-year-old Yemeni child bride who bled to death after being tied down and forced to have sex with her 23-year-old husband. Hamzi simply ascribed their dissatisfaction due to the fact that "No one wants to marry these women's-rights activists anyway. They're just depressed and jealous that they are not married." Tragically, there's no such shortage of marital suitors for the ten million little girls set in the coming year to join the ranks of the world's burgeoning child bride community, a sisterhood that grows increasingly younger with each passing year. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f3d_1364416226 Value343 Iran Seeks To Lower Age Of Marriage to NINE for little girls....Islam. iran, seeks, to, lower, marriage, age, to, 9, for, little, girls, islam, muslim, pedophiles, rapists, child, molesters, prophet, mohammad, pedo Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:33:05 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8ed_1346178566 VikingRapeSquad US drought 'to hit UK food cost' http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4508216/Drought-America-to-hit-UK-food-cost-prices-supermarket.html By JACK LOSH ublished: 8 hrs ago DROUGHT devastation will trigger soaring food prices in the UK, experts have warned. British shoppers face forking out more for staples such as bread, meat and pasta amid the crisis. A British Retail Consortium spokesman warned of the impact after dozens of drought-hit US states declared disaster areas. A washout summer has also blighted harvests in Britain, adding to the strain. Supermarkets have resorted to stocking expensive imports of common veg such as potatoes and peas from Africa, Central America and the Middle East. Arable land in the US covering an area larger than Belgium and Luxembourg combined has been abandoned. Soaring food prices are already severely impacting millions of families, a Tory MP warned last night. Price hike ... shoppers in Britain face soaring food costs Some parents are already forced to skip meals to feed their children as incomes come under pressure from above-target inflation. Food price threats are a blow to George Osborne's election plan, aimed at curbing inflation. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8ed_1346178566 VikingRapeSquad <span class="highlight">Drought</span> in USA To Trigger Soaring Food Prices In UK. uk, food, prices, increase, drought, Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:34:08 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=942_1344879050 anglosaxonwarlord The prolonged drought across much of the US has devastated crops and cattle herds. Among those affected is Karen Harrelson, an Arkansas cattle farmer who has been in the business for nearly 40 years. She's already had to sell 100 cows this summer. As a single woman working the lands on her own, Ms Harrelson says it can be a tough life. Now she worries that if it doesn't rain in the coming months she could loose more of her cattle - and take an even greater hit to her livelihood. But she tries to remain positive - trying to work every day as if it were normal, while the rain stays away and the sun bakes her land. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=942_1344879050 anglosaxonwarlord <span class="highlight">Drought</span>-stricken woman rancher has to 'sell cows or watch them starve' drought,usa,cattle,rancher,desperate,