The Crisis Is Imminent: “When The Real Crash Comes It Will Be Worse Than the Great Depression”
Mac Slavo SHTF Plan April 30, 2013
“The United States is like the Titanic, and I’m here with the lifeboat trying to get people to leave the ship… I see a real financial crisis coming for the United States.”
Peter Schiff
August 2006
In 2006, when he faced off with many well known Titans of investing and warned of an impending financial disaster and economic collapse, Peter Schiff was laughed at by his colleagues. He urged Americans to exit financial markets and take steps to protect themselves before the wealth held in their savings accounts, retirement investments and real estate was wiped out.
Few listened.
We know what happened next.
Now, those same financial experts who publicly vilified Schiff for his predictions six years ago are at it again. Many, including our politicians, central bankers and leading economists, have unequivocally stated that the worst is behind us, and that a global recovery is on the horizon.
Once again, Peter Schiff disagrees:
“I think we are heading for a worse economic crisis than we had in 2007,” Schiff said. “You’re going to have a collapse in the dollar…a huge spike in interest rates… and our whole economy, which is built on the foundation of cheap money, is going to topple when you pull the rug out from under it.”
Schiff says that, despite “phony” signs of an economic recovery, the cancer destroying America stems from a lethal concoction of our $16 trillion federal debt and the Fed’s never ending money printing.
…
According to Schiff, these numbers are unsustainable. And the Fed has no credible “exit strategy.”
Eventually interest rates will rise… and when they do, Schiff says, stocks will tank and bonds dip to nothing. Massive new tax hikes will be imposed and programs and entitlements will be cut to the bone.
…
“The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. ”I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”
“We’re broke, Schiff added. ”We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”
…
“The Fed knows that the U.S. economy is not recovering,” he noted. “It simply is being kept from collapse by artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing. As that support goes, the economy will implode.”
A noted economist, Schiff has been a fierce critic of the Fed and its policies for years. And his warnings have proven to be prophetic.
…
His recent warnings, however, have been even more alarming. Will they also prove to be true?
In his most recent book, “The Real Crash” How to Save Yourself and Your Country“, Schiff writes that
when the “real crash” comes,” it will be worse than the Great Depression.
Unemployment will skyrocket, credit will dry up, and worse, the dollar will collapse completely, “wiping out all savings and sending consumer prices into the stratosphere.”
…
“All we can do now is prepare for the crash,” Schiff said. “If we brace ourselves properly and control the impact, we will survive it.”
Indeed.
We must understand that none of the fundamental problems leading up to the 2007/2008 financial crisis have been resolved.
If anything, it’s gotten worse.
Our politicians will not change, and therefore, will change nothing in Washington. Wall Street is as corrupt as ever. Our central bank continues to devalue our currency. There is no end in sight for these people. They will continue on this unsustainable path until we as a country finally hit the proverbial brick wall.
As Peter Schiff notes, the destruction to life as we know it in America and the world is imminent. It’s going to be severe.
So much so that the government has been simulating the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society and the potential for widespread violence.
A collapse happened in 2008, but THE collapse is still ahead.
20 Signs That The Next Great Economic Depression Has Already Started In Europe
Michael Snyder Economic Collapse Blog April 30, 2013
The next Great Depression is already happening – it just hasn’t reached the United States yet. Things in Europe just continue to get worse and worse, and yet most people in the United States still don’t get it. All the time I have people ask me when the “economic collapse” is going to happen. Well, for ages I have been warning that the next major wave of the ongoing economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening. In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S. experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Pay close attention to what is happening over there, because it is coming here too. You see, the truth is that Europe is a lot like the United States. We are both drowning in unprecedented levels of debt, and we both have overleveraged banking systems that resemble a house of cards. The reason why the U.S. does not look like Europe yet is because we have thrown all caution to the wind. The Federal Reserve is printing money as if there is no tomorrow and the U.S. government is savagely destroying the future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have by stealing more than 100 million dollars from them every single hour of every single day. We have gone “all in” on kicking the can down the road even though it means destroying the future of America. But the alternative scares the living daylights out of our politicians. When nations such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy tried to slow down the rate at which their debts were rising, the results were absolutely devastating. A full-blown economic depression is raging across southern Europe and it is rapidly spreading into northern Europe. Eventually it will spread to the rest of the globe as well.
The following are 20 signs that the next Great Depression has already started in Europe…
#1 The unemployment rate in France has surged to 10.6 percent, and the number of jobless claims in that country recently set a new all-time record.
#2 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole is sitting at an all-time record of 12 percent.
#3 Two years ago, Portugal’s unemployment rate was about 12 percent. Today, it is about 17 percent.
#4 The unemployment rate in Spain has set a new all-time record of 27 percent. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s the United States never had unemployment that high.
#5 The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 in Spain is an astounding 57.2 percent.
#6 The unemployment rate in Greece has set a new all-time record of 27.2 percent. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s the United States never had unemployment that high.
#7 The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 in Greece is a whopping 59.3 percent.
#8 French car sales in March were 16 percent lower than they were one year earlier.
#9 German car sales in March were 17 percent lower than they were one year earlier.
#10 In the Netherlands, consumer debt is now up to about 250 percent of available income.
#11 Industrial production in Italy has fallen by an astounding 25 percent over the past five years.
#12 The number of Spanish firms filing for bankruptcy is 45 percent higher than it was a year ago.
#13 Since 2007, the value of non-performing loans in Europe has increased by 150 percent.
#14 Bank withdrawals in Cyprus during the month of March were double what they were in February even though the banks were closed for half the month.
#15 Due to an absolutely crippling housing crash, there are approximately 3 million vacant homes in Spain today.
#16 Things have gotten so bad in Spain that entire apartment buildings are being overwhelmed by squatters …
A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.
“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”
#17 As I wrote about the other day [16], child hunger has become so rampant in Greece that teachers are reporting that hungry children are begging their classmates for food.
#18 The debt to GDP ratio in Italy is now up to 136 percent.
#19 25 percent of all banking assets in the UK are in banks that are leveraged at least 40 to 1.
#20 German banking giant Deutsche Bank has more than 55 trillion euros [18] (which is more than 72 trillion dollars) of exposure to derivatives. But the GDP of Germany for an entire year is only about 2.7 trillion euros.
Yes, U.S. stocks have been doing great so far this year, but the truth is that the stock market has become completely and totally divorced from economic reality. When it does catch up with the economic fundamentals, it will probably happen very rapidly like we saw back in 2008.
Our politicians can try to kick the can down the road for as long as they can, but at some point the consequences of our foolish decisions will hunt us down and overtake us. The following is what Peter Schiff had to say about this coming crisis the other day…
“The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. ”I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”
“We’re broke, Schiff added. ”We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”
Schiff points out that the market gains experienced recently, with the Dow first topping 14,000 on its way to setting record highs, are giving investors a false sense of security.
“It’s not that the stock market is gaining value… it’s that our money is losing value. And so if you have a debased currency… a devalued currency, the price of everything goes up. Stocks are no exception,” he said.
“The Fed knows that the U.S. economy is not recovering,” he noted. “It simply is being kept from collapse by artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing. As that support goes, the economy will implode.”
So please don’t think that we are any different from Europe.
If the United States government started only spending the money that it brings in, we would descend into an economic depression tomorrow.
The only way that we can continue to live out the economic fantasy that we see all around us is by financially abusing our children and our grandchildren.
The U.S. economy has become a miserable junkie that is completely and totally addicted to reckless money printing and gigantic mountains of debt.
If we stop printing money and going into unprecedented amounts of debt we are finished.
If we continue printing money and going into unprecedented amounts of debt we are finished.
Either way, this is all going to end very, very badly.
Michael Snyder Economic Collapse Blog April 30, 2013
The next Great Depression is already happening – it just hasn’t reached the United States yet. Things in Europe just continue to get worse and worse, and yet most people in the United States still don’t get it. All the time I have people ask me when the “economic collapse” is going to happen. Well, for ages I have been warning that the next major wave of the ongoing economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening. In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S. experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Pay close attention to what is happening over there, because it is coming here too. You see, the truth is that Europe is a lot like the United States. We are both drowning in unprecedented levels of debt, and we both have overleveraged banking systems that resemble a house of cards. The reason why the U.S. does not look like Europe yet is because we have thrown all caution to the wind. The Federal Reserve is printing money as if there is no tomorrow and the U.S. government is savagely destroying the future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have by stealing more than 100 million dollars from them every single hour of every single day. We have gone “all in” on kicking the can down the road even though it means destroying the future of America. But the alternative scares the living daylights out of our politicians. When nations such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy tried to slow down the rate at which their debts were rising, the results were absolutely devastating. A full-blown economic depression is raging across southern Europe and it is rapidly spreading into northern Europe. Eventually it will spread to the rest of the globe as well.
The following are 20 signs that the next Great Depression has already started in Europe…
#1 The unemployment rate in France has surged to 10.6 percent, and the number of jobless claims in that country recently set a new all-time record.
#2 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole is sitting at an all-time record of 12 percent.
#3 Two years ago, Portugal’s unemployment rate was about 12 percent. Today, it is about 17 percent.
#4 The unemployment rate in Spain has set a new all-time record of 27 percent. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s the United States never had unemployment that high.
#5 The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 in Spain is an astounding 57.2 percent.
#6 The unemployment rate in Greece has set a new all-time record of 27.2 percent. Even during the Great Depression of the 1930s the United States never had unemployment that high.
#7 The unemployment rate among those under the age of 25 in Greece is a whopping 59.3 percent.
#8 French car sales in March were 16 percent lower than they were one year earlier.
#9 German car sales in March were 17 percent lower than they were one year earlier.
#10 In the Netherlands, consumer debt is now up to about 250 percent of available income.
#11 Industrial production in Italy has fallen by an astounding 25 percent over the past five years.
#12 The number of Spanish firms filing for bankruptcy is 45 percent higher than it was a year ago.
#13 Since 2007, the value of non-performing loans in Europe has increased by 150 percent.
#14 Bank withdrawals in Cyprus during the month of March were double what they were in February even though the banks were closed for half the month.
#15 Due to an absolutely crippling housing crash, there are approximately 3 million vacant homes in Spain today.
#16 Things have gotten so bad in Spain that entire apartment buildings are being overwhelmed by squatters …
A 285-unit apartment complex in Parla, less than half an hour’s drive from Madrid, should be an ideal target for investors seeking cheap property in Spain. Unfortunately, two thirds of the building generates zero revenue because it’s overrun by squatters.
“This is happening all over the country,” said Jose Maria Fraile, the town’s mayor, who estimates only 100 apartments in the block built for the council have rental contracts, and not all of those tenants are paying either. “People lost their jobs, they can’t pay mortgages or rent so they lost their homes and this has produced a tide of squatters.”
#17 As I wrote about the other day [16], child hunger has become so rampant in Greece that teachers are reporting that hungry children are begging their classmates for food.
#18 The debt to GDP ratio in Italy is now up to 136 percent.
#19 25 percent of all banking assets in the UK are in banks that are leveraged at least 40 to 1.
#20 German banking giant Deutsche Bank has more than 55 trillion euros [18] (which is more than 72 trillion dollars) of exposure to derivatives. But the GDP of Germany for an entire year is only about 2.7 trillion euros.
Yes, U.S. stocks have been doing great so far this year, but the truth is that the stock market has become completely and totally divorced from economic reality. When it does catch up with the economic fundamentals, it will probably happen very rapidly like we saw back in 2008.
Our politicians can try to kick the can down the road for as long as they can, but at some point the consequences of our foolish decisions will hunt us down and overtake us. The following is what Peter Schiff had to say about this coming crisis the other day…
“The crisis is imminent,” Schiff said. ”I don’t think Obama is going to finish his second term without the bottom dropping out. And stock market investors are oblivious to the problems.”
“We’re broke, Schiff added. ”We owe trillions. Look at our budget deficit; look at the debt to GDP ratio, the unfunded liabilities. If we were in the Eurozone, they would kick us out.”
Schiff points out that the market gains experienced recently, with the Dow first topping 14,000 on its way to setting record highs, are giving investors a false sense of security.
“It’s not that the stock market is gaining value… it’s that our money is losing value. And so if you have a debased currency… a devalued currency, the price of everything goes up. Stocks are no exception,” he said.
“The Fed knows that the U.S. economy is not recovering,” he noted. “It simply is being kept from collapse by artificially low interest rates and quantitative easing. As that support goes, the economy will implode.”
So please don’t think that we are any different from Europe.
If the United States government started only spending the money that it brings in, we would descend into an economic depression tomorrow.
The only way that we can continue to live out the economic fantasy that we see all around us is by financially abusing our children and our grandchildren.
The U.S. economy has become a miserable junkie that is completely and totally addicted to reckless money printing and gigantic mountains of debt.
If we stop printing money and going into unprecedented amounts of debt we are finished.
If we continue printing money and going into unprecedented amounts of debt we are finished.
Either way, this is all going to end very, very badly.
Boston marathon bombing happened on same day as 'controlled explosion' drill by Boston bomb squad
by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews)
Two bombs have rocked the streets of Boston and reportedly injured 22 marathon runners (two have reportedly died). It's too early to know the cause of these explosions, but you can rest assured both the state and federal government will try to use this tragic event to blame whatever convenient enemies are most advantageous for the government.No one has yet stepped forward to claim responsibility for the bombs, and the fact that no firearms were used in the attack may indicate this was NOT part of a false flag effort by the government to try to blame gun owners. (But it's still way too early to tell...)Here at Natural News, we are horrified at this loss of innocent life, and we are praying for the victims of this bombing as well as their families.
Bomb squad was running "controlled explosion" on the same day
What's not yet being reported by the mainstream media is that a "controlled explosion" was under way on the same day as the marathon explosion.As the Boston Globe tweeted today, "Officials: There will be a controlled explosion opposite the library within one minute as part of bomb squad activities."Some people believe this explosion might have been part of the demolition of another bomb. It seems unlikely, however, that a bomb at the library, one mile away, could be so quickly located and rigged to be exploded by the bomb squad in less than one hour following the initial explosions at the marathon.Bloomberg news is now saying, "This is very likely a terrorist attack."The question is: Who are the terrorists? It's far too early to take an informed guess on all this. However, it is indisputable that the FBI is actively engaged in carrying out bomb plots in the United States, then halting them at the last minute to "catch the terrorists." This fact has been covered by the New York Times, among other publications.Also read FBI 'entrapment' tactics questioned in web of phony terror plots and paid informants.Keep in mind I am in no way blaming the FBI for this. Most men and women who work with the FBI are upstanding citizens who would be appalled at such acts. But it is theoretically possible that one of the FBI's many "terror plots" went too far and turned into a live bomb instead of a dud followed by an arrest for "domestic terrorism."For the record, the explosions seemed relatively small for a false flag, and most false flags target children in order to maximize the emotional leverage after the event. That these explosions did not target children is yet more evidence that it may not have been a false flag at all.Either way, terrorism always works in the favor of the state. It makes presidents look presidential, and it gives the government an excuse to crack down on civil liberties all across the country.Be wary of who ultimately gets blamed for this, especially if it's a veteran or patriot.
by Mike Adams, NaturalNews Editor (NaturalNews)
Two bombs have rocked the streets of Boston and reportedly injured 22 marathon runners (two have reportedly died). It's too early to know the cause of these explosions, but you can rest assured both the state and federal government will try to use this tragic event to blame whatever convenient enemies are most advantageous for the government.No one has yet stepped forward to claim responsibility for the bombs, and the fact that no firearms were used in the attack may indicate this was NOT part of a false flag effort by the government to try to blame gun owners. (But it's still way too early to tell...)Here at Natural News, we are horrified at this loss of innocent life, and we are praying for the victims of this bombing as well as their families.
Bomb squad was running "controlled explosion" on the same day
What's not yet being reported by the mainstream media is that a "controlled explosion" was under way on the same day as the marathon explosion.As the Boston Globe tweeted today, "Officials: There will be a controlled explosion opposite the library within one minute as part of bomb squad activities."Some people believe this explosion might have been part of the demolition of another bomb. It seems unlikely, however, that a bomb at the library, one mile away, could be so quickly located and rigged to be exploded by the bomb squad in less than one hour following the initial explosions at the marathon.Bloomberg news is now saying, "This is very likely a terrorist attack."The question is: Who are the terrorists? It's far too early to take an informed guess on all this. However, it is indisputable that the FBI is actively engaged in carrying out bomb plots in the United States, then halting them at the last minute to "catch the terrorists." This fact has been covered by the New York Times, among other publications.Also read FBI 'entrapment' tactics questioned in web of phony terror plots and paid informants.Keep in mind I am in no way blaming the FBI for this. Most men and women who work with the FBI are upstanding citizens who would be appalled at such acts. But it is theoretically possible that one of the FBI's many "terror plots" went too far and turned into a live bomb instead of a dud followed by an arrest for "domestic terrorism."For the record, the explosions seemed relatively small for a false flag, and most false flags target children in order to maximize the emotional leverage after the event. That these explosions did not target children is yet more evidence that it may not have been a false flag at all.Either way, terrorism always works in the favor of the state. It makes presidents look presidential, and it gives the government an excuse to crack down on civil liberties all across the country.Be wary of who ultimately gets blamed for this, especially if it's a veteran or patriot.
DHS and FBI Warn of Terrorists with Cameras Following Boston Bombing
Kurt Nimmo April 26, 2013
“Possible indicators” of terrorist activity include “[d]iscret use of cameras or video recorders, sketching, or note taking consistent with pre-operational surveillance.”
The terrorist attack, or staged terrorist attack, in Boston, like the 9/11 attack before it, will result in the continued destruction of our constitutionally guaranteed liberty. The police state, led by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, are already spearheading the effort.
On April 16, the day after the attack in Boston, the DHS and FBI created a “Joint Intelligence Bulletin” instructing law enforcement and private sector safety officials on how they should identify and mitigate potential terrorist threats.
After stating that behavior outlined in the bulletin may “constitute the exercise of rights guaranteed by the US Constitution,” the DHS and FBI say “possible indicators” of terrorist activity include “[d]iscret use of cameras or video recorders, sketching, or note taking consistent with pre-operational surveillance.” Photography should be considered part of a “totality of behavioral indicators and other relevant circumstances” before “any law enforcement response or action,” according to the bulletin.
In addition, the “suspicious purchases” of items such as “hydrogen peroxide, acetone, gasoline, propane, or fertilizer” should be considered suspect by law enforcement, Fire-EMS, private security personnel, and emergency managers and “forwarded to the appropriate fusion center and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for further action.”
As documented by Infowars.com and others, fusion centers serve primarily to surveil political groups and individuals considered threatening to the establishment. For instance, in 2009, we examined a Missouri fusion center report describing supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists.
In March, the director of the Arkansas State Fusion Center, Richard Davis, said the fusion center in Little Rock does not monitor the activity of al-Qaeda, but rather “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government.”
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) includes over 600 state, local and federal agencies, the U.S. military and the CIA. Following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a follow-up report by the Inspector General revealed that the JTTF and the FBI conduct widespread surveillance of political groups exercising their right to free speech and freedom of assembly under the Fist Amendment. The report also proved the FBI lied to hide its improper activities from Congress and the American public.
The Boston bombing will allow the FBI’s latest iteration of COINTELPRO – a surveillance and agent provocateur program that has operated uninterrupted for more than 40 years – to expand and flourish. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are not primarily concerned with al-Qaeda or even homegrown supposed jihadi terrorism, but political activity that threatens the establishment and the global elite’s political status quo. The Tsarnaev brothers, who are obvious patsies, are being exploited in order to push police state propaganda.
In the weeks and months ahead, we should expect more FBI and DHS bulletins calling into question activity previously considered normal and non-threatening. The point is to create an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion on the part of law enforcement and emergency response personnel. The government will continue to exploit this manufactured fear and paranoia and direct a response against it in the direction of its political enemies.
Download DHS-FBI Bulletin as a PDF
“Possible indicators” of terrorist activity include “[d]iscret use of cameras or video recorders, sketching, or note taking consistent with pre-operational surveillance.”
The terrorist attack, or staged terrorist attack, in Boston, like the 9/11 attack before it, will result in the continued destruction of our constitutionally guaranteed liberty. The police state, led by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, are already spearheading the effort.
On April 16, the day after the attack in Boston, the DHS and FBI created a “Joint Intelligence Bulletin” instructing law enforcement and private sector safety officials on how they should identify and mitigate potential terrorist threats.
After stating that behavior outlined in the bulletin may “constitute the exercise of rights guaranteed by the US Constitution,” the DHS and FBI say “possible indicators” of terrorist activity include “[d]iscret use of cameras or video recorders, sketching, or note taking consistent with pre-operational surveillance.” Photography should be considered part of a “totality of behavioral indicators and other relevant circumstances” before “any law enforcement response or action,” according to the bulletin.
In addition, the “suspicious purchases” of items such as “hydrogen peroxide, acetone, gasoline, propane, or fertilizer” should be considered suspect by law enforcement, Fire-EMS, private security personnel, and emergency managers and “forwarded to the appropriate fusion center and FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force for further action.”
As documented by Infowars.com and others, fusion centers serve primarily to surveil political groups and individuals considered threatening to the establishment. For instance, in 2009, we examined a Missouri fusion center report describing supporters of presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr as “militia” influenced terrorists.
In March, the director of the Arkansas State Fusion Center, Richard Davis, said the fusion center in Little Rock does not monitor the activity of al-Qaeda, but rather “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government.”
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) includes over 600 state, local and federal agencies, the U.S. military and the CIA. Following a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a follow-up report by the Inspector General revealed that the JTTF and the FBI conduct widespread surveillance of political groups exercising their right to free speech and freedom of assembly under the Fist Amendment. The report also proved the FBI lied to hide its improper activities from Congress and the American public.
The Boston bombing will allow the FBI’s latest iteration of COINTELPRO – a surveillance and agent provocateur program that has operated uninterrupted for more than 40 years – to expand and flourish. The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are not primarily concerned with al-Qaeda or even homegrown supposed jihadi terrorism, but political activity that threatens the establishment and the global elite’s political status quo. The Tsarnaev brothers, who are obvious patsies, are being exploited in order to push police state propaganda.
In the weeks and months ahead, we should expect more FBI and DHS bulletins calling into question activity previously considered normal and non-threatening. The point is to create an atmosphere of paranoia and suspicion on the part of law enforcement and emergency response personnel. The government will continue to exploit this manufactured fear and paranoia and direct a response against it in the direction of its political enemies.
Download DHS-FBI Bulletin as a PDF
Boston Bombing: Citizen Video-analysts Create Major Problems for Controlled Media
Jon Rappoport
You’re a reporter for a TV news outlet.
You’ve become aware of a disturbing trend. Thousands of private citizens are now analyzing video and photographs of crime scenes and posting their findings.
They’re hounds, and they can’t be stopped. They’re looking at news footage, casual video, photos, and what they’re coming up with challenges the official story lines your network pushes.
Some of their analysis is ridiculous, but some of it isn’t.
For example, video footage of the first bomb in Boston doesn’t appear to show any shrapnel damage to the fencing near the explosion, or to the blue canopy just above the street. You, the reporter, wonder about that.
The now-famous 78-year-old runner who fell down in the street, just after the first explosion? Security personnel wearing yellow jackets were standing closer to the bomb, but they didn’t wobble or duck or waver. You, the reporter, wonder about that, too.
You, the reporter, see a photo of a storefront which was presumably right next to the first bomb. The windows are blown out. But all the glass is lying in the street, which would indicate the force of the explosion was coming from inside the store. How is that possible, you ask yourself.
Then there are the quickly circulating photos of the man in the wheelchair. He’s missing large parts of both legs. People are pushing the chair. His legs are bleeding. But other posted photos? Do they show he already was wearing prosthetics? Is it true he should already be dead from the massive blood loss? You, the reporter, are disturbed by this.
You also look at several photos of the pressure-cooker bomb. In the twisted metal remains, you see discoloration, but no signs the nails or ball bearings in the bomb penetrated the pressure cooker or pitted it or ended up embedded in it.
You look at photos of men standing near the Marathon finish line, the men in identical uniforms, who have variously been described as Navy Seals, Coast Guard, and Craft International security personnel.
What were they doing there? Running a drill? Watching suspects or patsies or bomb-planters? What was going on?
You look at a photo of the younger Tsarnaev brother leaving the scene after the bombs went off. He’s still…wearing his backpack? And another photo, the one of the ripped-apart backpack on the ground. Is that a white square on it? Because one of the Seal-Craft-Coast Guard guys had a white square on his intact backpack…and is that him, leaving the scene of the bombing without that backpack? Hmmm…
You, the reporter, now face several quandaries.
First, if you decide to look into all this, you’ll have to do actual work. Investigation. That isn’t part of your job description. You basically talk to official sources, obtain their statements, repeat them, and sound like you know what you’re talking about. Investigation? What’s that?
Second, if you undertake a serious inquiry, you’re going to have to verify that all these photos and all this video footage are pristine and haven’t been altered or cropped in order to mislead.
You’ll have to find experts to help you. More work. You’re already feeling exhausted, just thinking about it.
On the other hand, your network has shown faked and cropped photos and edited footage in the past, to slant stories. So maybe you can get by with less work.
However, there is a rule in your business. Reporters aren’t allowed to follow their noses. They aren’t allowed to do investigations on their own. They most definitely aren’t permitted to do technical analysis of evidence, like crime-scene photos or video. No, all technical interpretation has to come from government agencies.
If you go off the reservation, you’ll take heavy hits from your bosses.
But all this is meaningless. It’s just mental masturbation, because, finally, you know there is no possible way your producer will allow you to present evidence that the official Boston scenario has gaping holes in it.
Your own network has the explicit job of promoting that scenario.
You’d be torpedoing your own people. Professional suicide. Just walking into your producer’s office and pointing to issues raised by private-citizen analysis of video? It would put you on a watch list.
Your producer would think, “This guy’s gone soft in the head. He wants to pursue a story on his own. He must be some kind of grandstanding goof. He doesn’t have a firm grip on things. He doesn’t know what his job really is. And he wants to raise doubts about the Boston bombing? Wow…”
To the degree that you have any shred of conscience left, you’re in a bind. Maybe it’s the moment to offload that last bit of idealism and go completely corporate. It’s not as if you’ve been challenging your bosses; you’ve just been asking yourself questions privately. So what’s the problem? Just stop asking the questions.
Maybe you’re depressed. Maybe you should go in and see a shrink and get a script for Zoloft. Something to take the edge off. Of course, then you’d have to cut back on your drinking. Screw that. Just up the booze. Have a few more every night after work. Make the coffee stronger in the morning.
Wait. An idea is forming.
It’s coming.
Sit there. Let it formulate.
Mmmm….
Yes. Yes! Here it is. Some of these video hounds are saying no one at all was hurt or killed in Boston; the whole bombing thing was a hoax. Well, tell that to the doctors at the hospitals who were doing amputations.
Okay. Okay. Now you’re on to something. You can feel it. There’s an obvious way to destroy all this wildcat video evidence in one fell swoop and, at the same time, endear yourself to your bosses.
They’ll be grateful. You can rack up some brownie points. They’ll think of you as a company man. A tough defender of the realm, their realm.
Anyway, you’ve got a deadline to meet. You have to put something together. It may as well be this:
Take the most radical opinions these video hounds are promoting, package them all into one article, and imply that every hound is a complete freak. All their video analysis must be wrong, because they’re all crazy. It’s the old rejection by generality. And by ad hominem. By straw man. Didn’t you learn something about those logical fallacies in college? Time to put them to use.
Do the conspiracy-theorist thing. Say these weirdos have far too much time on their hands. And what else? They’re dangerous. Sure. Refer back to that FBI dude who’s in charge of the Boston investigation, DesLauriers, who said people should focus on helping the investigation by looking at certain photos and no others.
How did he put it? He said there were irrelevant photos out there, and if people tipped the FBI to them, they’d overload agents and delay the search for the bombers.
That’s it. These private video hounds are dangerous. They’re giving people too much information.
So they have crazy ideas, one. They’re saying nobody was hurt, there were no bombs, two. They’re claiming all the bleeding people at the Marathon were actors brought in from some outfit in Colorado, three. They’re saying these massacre ops are designed to shut down freedom in America, four. They’re dangerous, five.
Roll all that up into a ball and you’re good to go. Whatever they’ve actually got in terms of troubling and disturbing and truthful video and photo evidence will disappear in a sea of ridicule.
Perfect.
Imply there are two basic classes of people: the normals and the crazies. The crazies are threatening the rest of us. They’re multiplying like fruit flies. They’re swarming the Internet. They’re disrespecting the wounded and dead—don’t forget that one. How dare they come out with all this insanity as the families are grieving and in turmoil.
Yeah. There is only one true stream of information, and the public has to know it. It comes from the major networks. There has to be a central story line, because if there isn’t, the whole country will fall into chaos. Don’t actually say that, but realize you’re on the side of the angels here. You’re standing tall against the barbarians at the gates.
Right. You’re giving the audience a choice. Do they want to be nuts, or do they want to be normal. Normal is the wave of the future. Soon, that’s all there will be. The others will be wiped out. They have no cache. They have no right to challenge the order of things.
Isn’t that what Arthur Jensen said in the movie Network? There is one planetary, galactic order of things, and everybody has to live under it.
Expand the piece. Take it all the way back to 9/11, and the loonies who claimed the towers couldn’t have been taken down by the planes. Yeah. They said there were bombs inside the buildings. They said Building 7 didn’t go down from a fire. Idiots.
Why not do history? Makes you sound smarter. JFK. “Oswald didn’t act alone.” That’s where it all started, that’s how the conspiracy germ spread. It was a disease.
That’s a great metaphor. The plague of conspiracy theories. It had a ground zero, in Dallas, on November 22nd, 1963. From there, the virus moved through time. It’s all one epidemic.
Call a few shrinks. Get comments from them. A psychological pandemic. These guys always want face time. Give it to them. Let them speculate on why the plague is accelerating.
Geez. Maybe this could become a three-part series. “We investigate the trend of conspiracy thinking. Why is it happening? Who are these people? Where do they come from? What do they really want?”
Then…oh yeah. We find some guy who was a conspiracy nut but he woke up and realized he was about to go off the cliff, so he stepped back. He was addicted. It was an addiction. He had alienated his whole family and all his friends.
Then he had a revelation. He saw what had happened to him. Get a few juicy quotes. “I needed a way to rebel against society, so I chose this. It was a fad. I joined up. It was a kind of cult. I made new friends. But then I saw that these people weren’t like me. I was ruining my life. I was walking around paranoid all the time…I finally came to my senses…”
Nail down the place and time when he woke up. Maybe take a camera crew there. “This was the spot. I was walking along this stretch of beach one night, all alone, and it hit me. I was isolated. I had no ties left to my community…”
Yeah. Plays very well. Do you want to be in the cold, on the outside, or do you want to be near the hearth, where the tribe is safe?
With a series, a three-part “investigation,” you could establish yourself as the go-to guy whenever a new conspiracy theory pops up. They’d come to you. You, the expert. This could be a very good career move.
And why pretend? That’s what you’re in this for, isn’t it? A career? So stop fooling around with all the freakazoid photo and video evidence. Just go for it.
It’s a war. The independent journalists and bloggers and video loons are trying to steal food out of your kids’ mouths. You can lie down in the road or you can fight back. If you’re going to fight, take off the gloves. Screw that half-way stuff.
Who knows more about conspiracies than anyone else? The CIA, the FBI, the intelligence community. Hell, after a few years of attacking the weirdos and nutballs out there, you might graduate up into a more distinguished and rarefied atmosphere, where real conspiracies are planned and carried out for the sake of national security. The real stuff, the right stuff.
You could become a “our national intelligence correspondent.” Wouldn’t that be something. You’d have access to the big boys and some of their secrets. You’d prove you could be trusted.
You’d never have to look at another foot of video put together by losers who’ll never get within a thousand miles of real news.
You’ll never have to wonder whether you’re doing the right thing. You’ll live in a place that’s far from the madding crowd. You’ll drink single malt instead of rotgut. You’ll sit down with senators and lobbyists and bankers and diplomats.
You’ll turn into a controlled drunk who knows when to start and when to stop. You’ll find inner peace and all that crap, knowing you’re serving the best interests of your country and the people who own it and run it.
You’ll write a movie script about the Agency stopping a terrorist plot in New York. You’ll meet people from Hollywood.
One night, high above the city of angels, a beautiful actress will take you in her arms…
And some day, through your CIA connections, you’ll learn about a brain-bending scandal that’s brewing under the surface of Washington, and they’ll give you the green light to go out there and dig up the information you already have in your back pocket.
You’ll be Bob Woodward and the doors will open for you wherever you go.
You’ll be unstoppable.
You’ll be the man who finds out all the secrets.
Except the real ones.
Jon Rappoport
You’re a reporter for a TV news outlet.
You’ve become aware of a disturbing trend. Thousands of private citizens are now analyzing video and photographs of crime scenes and posting their findings.
They’re hounds, and they can’t be stopped. They’re looking at news footage, casual video, photos, and what they’re coming up with challenges the official story lines your network pushes.
Some of their analysis is ridiculous, but some of it isn’t.
For example, video footage of the first bomb in Boston doesn’t appear to show any shrapnel damage to the fencing near the explosion, or to the blue canopy just above the street. You, the reporter, wonder about that.
The now-famous 78-year-old runner who fell down in the street, just after the first explosion? Security personnel wearing yellow jackets were standing closer to the bomb, but they didn’t wobble or duck or waver. You, the reporter, wonder about that, too.
You, the reporter, see a photo of a storefront which was presumably right next to the first bomb. The windows are blown out. But all the glass is lying in the street, which would indicate the force of the explosion was coming from inside the store. How is that possible, you ask yourself.
Then there are the quickly circulating photos of the man in the wheelchair. He’s missing large parts of both legs. People are pushing the chair. His legs are bleeding. But other posted photos? Do they show he already was wearing prosthetics? Is it true he should already be dead from the massive blood loss? You, the reporter, are disturbed by this.
You also look at several photos of the pressure-cooker bomb. In the twisted metal remains, you see discoloration, but no signs the nails or ball bearings in the bomb penetrated the pressure cooker or pitted it or ended up embedded in it.
You look at photos of men standing near the Marathon finish line, the men in identical uniforms, who have variously been described as Navy Seals, Coast Guard, and Craft International security personnel.
What were they doing there? Running a drill? Watching suspects or patsies or bomb-planters? What was going on?
You look at a photo of the younger Tsarnaev brother leaving the scene after the bombs went off. He’s still…wearing his backpack? And another photo, the one of the ripped-apart backpack on the ground. Is that a white square on it? Because one of the Seal-Craft-Coast Guard guys had a white square on his intact backpack…and is that him, leaving the scene of the bombing without that backpack? Hmmm…
You, the reporter, now face several quandaries.
First, if you decide to look into all this, you’ll have to do actual work. Investigation. That isn’t part of your job description. You basically talk to official sources, obtain their statements, repeat them, and sound like you know what you’re talking about. Investigation? What’s that?
Second, if you undertake a serious inquiry, you’re going to have to verify that all these photos and all this video footage are pristine and haven’t been altered or cropped in order to mislead.
You’ll have to find experts to help you. More work. You’re already feeling exhausted, just thinking about it.
On the other hand, your network has shown faked and cropped photos and edited footage in the past, to slant stories. So maybe you can get by with less work.
However, there is a rule in your business. Reporters aren’t allowed to follow their noses. They aren’t allowed to do investigations on their own. They most definitely aren’t permitted to do technical analysis of evidence, like crime-scene photos or video. No, all technical interpretation has to come from government agencies.
If you go off the reservation, you’ll take heavy hits from your bosses.
But all this is meaningless. It’s just mental masturbation, because, finally, you know there is no possible way your producer will allow you to present evidence that the official Boston scenario has gaping holes in it.
Your own network has the explicit job of promoting that scenario.
You’d be torpedoing your own people. Professional suicide. Just walking into your producer’s office and pointing to issues raised by private-citizen analysis of video? It would put you on a watch list.
Your producer would think, “This guy’s gone soft in the head. He wants to pursue a story on his own. He must be some kind of grandstanding goof. He doesn’t have a firm grip on things. He doesn’t know what his job really is. And he wants to raise doubts about the Boston bombing? Wow…”
To the degree that you have any shred of conscience left, you’re in a bind. Maybe it’s the moment to offload that last bit of idealism and go completely corporate. It’s not as if you’ve been challenging your bosses; you’ve just been asking yourself questions privately. So what’s the problem? Just stop asking the questions.
Maybe you’re depressed. Maybe you should go in and see a shrink and get a script for Zoloft. Something to take the edge off. Of course, then you’d have to cut back on your drinking. Screw that. Just up the booze. Have a few more every night after work. Make the coffee stronger in the morning.
Wait. An idea is forming.
It’s coming.
Sit there. Let it formulate.
Mmmm….
Yes. Yes! Here it is. Some of these video hounds are saying no one at all was hurt or killed in Boston; the whole bombing thing was a hoax. Well, tell that to the doctors at the hospitals who were doing amputations.
Okay. Okay. Now you’re on to something. You can feel it. There’s an obvious way to destroy all this wildcat video evidence in one fell swoop and, at the same time, endear yourself to your bosses.
They’ll be grateful. You can rack up some brownie points. They’ll think of you as a company man. A tough defender of the realm, their realm.
Anyway, you’ve got a deadline to meet. You have to put something together. It may as well be this:
Take the most radical opinions these video hounds are promoting, package them all into one article, and imply that every hound is a complete freak. All their video analysis must be wrong, because they’re all crazy. It’s the old rejection by generality. And by ad hominem. By straw man. Didn’t you learn something about those logical fallacies in college? Time to put them to use.
Do the conspiracy-theorist thing. Say these weirdos have far too much time on their hands. And what else? They’re dangerous. Sure. Refer back to that FBI dude who’s in charge of the Boston investigation, DesLauriers, who said people should focus on helping the investigation by looking at certain photos and no others.
How did he put it? He said there were irrelevant photos out there, and if people tipped the FBI to them, they’d overload agents and delay the search for the bombers.
That’s it. These private video hounds are dangerous. They’re giving people too much information.
So they have crazy ideas, one. They’re saying nobody was hurt, there were no bombs, two. They’re claiming all the bleeding people at the Marathon were actors brought in from some outfit in Colorado, three. They’re saying these massacre ops are designed to shut down freedom in America, four. They’re dangerous, five.
Roll all that up into a ball and you’re good to go. Whatever they’ve actually got in terms of troubling and disturbing and truthful video and photo evidence will disappear in a sea of ridicule.
Perfect.
Imply there are two basic classes of people: the normals and the crazies. The crazies are threatening the rest of us. They’re multiplying like fruit flies. They’re swarming the Internet. They’re disrespecting the wounded and dead—don’t forget that one. How dare they come out with all this insanity as the families are grieving and in turmoil.
Yeah. There is only one true stream of information, and the public has to know it. It comes from the major networks. There has to be a central story line, because if there isn’t, the whole country will fall into chaos. Don’t actually say that, but realize you’re on the side of the angels here. You’re standing tall against the barbarians at the gates.
Right. You’re giving the audience a choice. Do they want to be nuts, or do they want to be normal. Normal is the wave of the future. Soon, that’s all there will be. The others will be wiped out. They have no cache. They have no right to challenge the order of things.
Isn’t that what Arthur Jensen said in the movie Network? There is one planetary, galactic order of things, and everybody has to live under it.
Expand the piece. Take it all the way back to 9/11, and the loonies who claimed the towers couldn’t have been taken down by the planes. Yeah. They said there were bombs inside the buildings. They said Building 7 didn’t go down from a fire. Idiots.
Why not do history? Makes you sound smarter. JFK. “Oswald didn’t act alone.” That’s where it all started, that’s how the conspiracy germ spread. It was a disease.
That’s a great metaphor. The plague of conspiracy theories. It had a ground zero, in Dallas, on November 22nd, 1963. From there, the virus moved through time. It’s all one epidemic.
Call a few shrinks. Get comments from them. A psychological pandemic. These guys always want face time. Give it to them. Let them speculate on why the plague is accelerating.
Geez. Maybe this could become a three-part series. “We investigate the trend of conspiracy thinking. Why is it happening? Who are these people? Where do they come from? What do they really want?”
Then…oh yeah. We find some guy who was a conspiracy nut but he woke up and realized he was about to go off the cliff, so he stepped back. He was addicted. It was an addiction. He had alienated his whole family and all his friends.
Then he had a revelation. He saw what had happened to him. Get a few juicy quotes. “I needed a way to rebel against society, so I chose this. It was a fad. I joined up. It was a kind of cult. I made new friends. But then I saw that these people weren’t like me. I was ruining my life. I was walking around paranoid all the time…I finally came to my senses…”
Nail down the place and time when he woke up. Maybe take a camera crew there. “This was the spot. I was walking along this stretch of beach one night, all alone, and it hit me. I was isolated. I had no ties left to my community…”
Yeah. Plays very well. Do you want to be in the cold, on the outside, or do you want to be near the hearth, where the tribe is safe?
With a series, a three-part “investigation,” you could establish yourself as the go-to guy whenever a new conspiracy theory pops up. They’d come to you. You, the expert. This could be a very good career move.
And why pretend? That’s what you’re in this for, isn’t it? A career? So stop fooling around with all the freakazoid photo and video evidence. Just go for it.
It’s a war. The independent journalists and bloggers and video loons are trying to steal food out of your kids’ mouths. You can lie down in the road or you can fight back. If you’re going to fight, take off the gloves. Screw that half-way stuff.
Who knows more about conspiracies than anyone else? The CIA, the FBI, the intelligence community. Hell, after a few years of attacking the weirdos and nutballs out there, you might graduate up into a more distinguished and rarefied atmosphere, where real conspiracies are planned and carried out for the sake of national security. The real stuff, the right stuff.
You could become a “our national intelligence correspondent.” Wouldn’t that be something. You’d have access to the big boys and some of their secrets. You’d prove you could be trusted.
You’d never have to look at another foot of video put together by losers who’ll never get within a thousand miles of real news.
You’ll never have to wonder whether you’re doing the right thing. You’ll live in a place that’s far from the madding crowd. You’ll drink single malt instead of rotgut. You’ll sit down with senators and lobbyists and bankers and diplomats.
You’ll turn into a controlled drunk who knows when to start and when to stop. You’ll find inner peace and all that crap, knowing you’re serving the best interests of your country and the people who own it and run it.
You’ll write a movie script about the Agency stopping a terrorist plot in New York. You’ll meet people from Hollywood.
One night, high above the city of angels, a beautiful actress will take you in her arms…
And some day, through your CIA connections, you’ll learn about a brain-bending scandal that’s brewing under the surface of Washington, and they’ll give you the green light to go out there and dig up the information you already have in your back pocket.
You’ll be Bob Woodward and the doors will open for you wherever you go.
You’ll be unstoppable.
You’ll be the man who finds out all the secrets.
Except the real ones.
Merkel To Europe: "Prepare To Cede Sovereignty"
By Tyler Durden
The liquidity tsunami that started in September of 2012 in the Marriner Eccles building and continued with the BOJ's own epic QEasing expansion three weeks ago, has so far provided the impetus for Europe to kick the can of its inevitable dissolution for a few more months, yet slowly but surely the market is starting to read through the artificial levels implied by Italian and Spanish bonds, driven by recycled ECB funding via bank and repo conduits and of course Japanese carry cash, and rumblings of a return to crisis conditions are back.
And as always happens, once the crisis talk is back, so is discussion of a fiscal union. Sure enough, earlier today Germany's Angela Merkel once again reminded everyone just what the stakes are in order to achieve a truly stable, and sustainable European union: nothing short of ceding sovereignty to Germany. And with that we are back to square one, because that has always been the trade off - want a unified, fiscally and monetarily, Europe? You can get it: just bow down to Merkel.
From Reuters:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that euro zone members must be prepared to cede control over certain policy domains to European institutions if the bloc is truly to overcome its debt crisis and win back foreign investors.
Speaking at an event hosted by Deutsche Bank in Berlin alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Merkel also defended her approach to the crisis against critics who argue she has put too much emphasis on austerity, saying Europe must find a way to deliver both growth and solid finances.
The comments came two months before European leaders are due to gather in Brussels to discuss moving towards a so-called "fiscal union".
The punchline:
"We seem to find common solutions when we are staring over the abyss," Merkel said. "But as soon as the pressure eases, people say they want to go their own way.
"We need to be ready to accept that Europe has the last word in certain areas. Otherwise we won't be able to continue to build Europe," she added.
Two conclusions here: Europe will be "staring over the abyss" very soon once again, and where Merkel says "Europe" she means Germany.
This is confirmed by the immediate denial of precisely this, adding "it would be "dangerous" if other countries in Europe felt Germany was imposing its own economic model across the entire bloc."
Oh, ok then.
So just what is Germany's vision for "Europe":
"We don't always need to give up national practices but we need to be compatible," Merkel said. "It is chaos right now."
"We need to be prepared to break with the past in order to leap forward. I'm ready to do this," she said.
So... just give up national practices sometimes. And yes, Merkel is of course ready to head the asset-stripmined continent. The question is who else in Europe is willing to hand over their liberties to the next iteration of the German Reich?
By Tyler Durden
The liquidity tsunami that started in September of 2012 in the Marriner Eccles building and continued with the BOJ's own epic QEasing expansion three weeks ago, has so far provided the impetus for Europe to kick the can of its inevitable dissolution for a few more months, yet slowly but surely the market is starting to read through the artificial levels implied by Italian and Spanish bonds, driven by recycled ECB funding via bank and repo conduits and of course Japanese carry cash, and rumblings of a return to crisis conditions are back.
And as always happens, once the crisis talk is back, so is discussion of a fiscal union. Sure enough, earlier today Germany's Angela Merkel once again reminded everyone just what the stakes are in order to achieve a truly stable, and sustainable European union: nothing short of ceding sovereignty to Germany. And with that we are back to square one, because that has always been the trade off - want a unified, fiscally and monetarily, Europe? You can get it: just bow down to Merkel.
From Reuters:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that euro zone members must be prepared to cede control over certain policy domains to European institutions if the bloc is truly to overcome its debt crisis and win back foreign investors.
Speaking at an event hosted by Deutsche Bank in Berlin alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Merkel also defended her approach to the crisis against critics who argue she has put too much emphasis on austerity, saying Europe must find a way to deliver both growth and solid finances.
The comments came two months before European leaders are due to gather in Brussels to discuss moving towards a so-called "fiscal union".
The punchline:
"We seem to find common solutions when we are staring over the abyss," Merkel said. "But as soon as the pressure eases, people say they want to go their own way.
"We need to be ready to accept that Europe has the last word in certain areas. Otherwise we won't be able to continue to build Europe," she added.
Two conclusions here: Europe will be "staring over the abyss" very soon once again, and where Merkel says "Europe" she means Germany.
This is confirmed by the immediate denial of precisely this, adding "it would be "dangerous" if other countries in Europe felt Germany was imposing its own economic model across the entire bloc."
Oh, ok then.
So just what is Germany's vision for "Europe":
"We don't always need to give up national practices but we need to be compatible," Merkel said. "It is chaos right now."
"We need to be prepared to break with the past in order to leap forward. I'm ready to do this," she said.
So... just give up national practices sometimes. And yes, Merkel is of course ready to head the asset-stripmined continent. The question is who else in Europe is willing to hand over their liberties to the next iteration of the German Reich?
14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies That Big Brother Will Be Using To Spy On You
By Michael
The following are 14 incredibly creepy surveillance technologies that Big Brother will be using to watch you….
#1 “Pre-Crime” Surveillance Cameras
A company known as BRS Labs has developed “pre-crime” surveillance cameras that can supposedly determine if you are a terrorist or a criminal even before you commit a crime.
Does that sound insane?
Well, authorities are taking this technology quite seriously. In fact, dozens of these cameras are being installed at major transportation hubs in San Francisco….
In its latest project BRS Labs is to install its devices on the transport system in San Francisco, which includes buses, trams and subways.#2 Capturing Fingerprints From 20 Feet Away
The company says will put them in 12 stations with up to 22 cameras in each, bringing the total number to 288.
The cameras will be able to track up to 150 people at a time in real time and will gradually build up a ‘memory’ of suspicious behaviour to work out what is suspicious.
Can you imagine someone reading your fingerprints from 20 feet away without you ever knowing it?
This kind of technology is actually already here according to POPSCI….
Gaining access to your gym or office building could soon be as simple as waving a hand at the front door. A Hunsville, Ala.-based company called IDair is developing a system that can scan and identify a fingerprint from nearly 20 feet away. Coupled with other biometrics, it could soon allow security systems to grant or deny access from a distance, without requiring users to stop and scan a fingerprint, swipe an ID card, or otherwise lose a moment dealing with technology.#3 Mobile Backscatter Vans
Currently IDair’s primary customer is the military, but the startup wants to open up commercially to any business or enterprise that wants to put a layer of security between its facilities and the larger world. A gym chain is already beta testing the system (no more using your roommate’s gym ID to get in a free workout), and IDair’s founder says that at some point his technology could enable purchases to be made biometrically, using fingerprints and irises as unique identifiers rather than credit card numbers and data embedded in magnetic strips or RFID chips.
Police all over America will soon be driving around in unmarked vans looking inside your cars and even under your clothes using the same “pornoscanner” technology currently being utilized by the TSA at U.S. airports….
American cops are set to join the US military in deploying American Science & Engineering’s Z Backscatter Vans, or mobile backscatter radiation x-rays. These are what TSA officials call “the amazing radioactive genital viewer,” now seen in airports around America, ionizing the private parts of children, the elderly, and you (yes you).You can see a YouTube video presentation about this new technology right here.
These pornoscannerwagons will look like regular anonymous vans, and will cruise America’s streets, indiscriminately peering through the cars (and clothes) of anyone in range of its mighty isotope-cannon. But don’t worry, it’s not a violation of privacy. As AS&E’s vice president of marketing Joe Reiss sez, “From a privacy standpoint, I’m hard-pressed to see what the concern or objection could be.”
#4 Hijacking Your Mind
The U.S. military literally wants to be able to hijack your mind. The theory is that this would enable U.S. forces to non-violently convince terrorists not to be terrorists anymore. But obviously the potential for abuse with this kind of technology is extraordinary. The following is from a recent article by Dick Pelletier….
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to understand the science behind what makes people violent, and then find ways to hijack their minds by implanting false, but believable stories in their brains, with hopes of evoking peaceful thoughts: We’re friends, not enemies.
Critics say this raises ethical issues such as those addressed in the 1971 sci-fi movie, A Clockwork Orange, which attempted to change people’s minds so that they didn’t want to kill anymore.
Advocates, however, believe that placing new plausible narratives directly into the minds of radicals, insurgents, and terrorists, could transform enemies into kinder, gentler citizens, craving friendship.
Scientists have known for some time that narratives; an account of a sequence of events that are usually in chronological order; hold powerful sway over the human mind, shaping a person’s notion of groups and identities; even inspiring them to commit violence. See DARPA proposal request HERE.
Law enforcement agencies all over the United States are starting to use unmanned drones to spy on us, and the Department of Homeland Security is aggressively seeking to expand the use of such drones by local authorities….
The Department of Homeland Security has launched a program to “facilitate and accelerate the adoption” of small, unmanned drones by police and other public safety agencies, an effort that an agency official admitted faces “a very big hurdle having to do with privacy.”The fact that very few Americans seem concerned about this development says a lot about where we are as a nation. The EPA is already using drones to spy on cattle ranchers in Nebraska and Iowa. Will we eventually get to a point where we all just consider it to be “normal” to have surveillance drones flying above our heads constantly?
The $4 million Air-based Technologies Program, which will test and evaluate small, unmanned aircraft systems, is designed to be a “middleman” between drone manufacturers and first-responder agencies “before they jump into the pool,” said John Appleby, a manager in the DHS Science and Technology Directorate’s division of borders and maritime security.
#6 Law Enforcement Using Your Own Cell Phone To Spy On You
Although this is not new technology, law enforcement authorities are using our own cell phones to spy on us more extensively than ever before as a recent Wired article described….
Mobile carriers responded to a staggering 1.3 million law enforcement requests last year for subscriber information, including text messages and phone location data, according to data provided to Congress.A single “request” can involve information about hundreds of customers. So ultimately the number of Americans affected by this could reach into “the tens of millions” each year….
The number of Americans affected each year by the growing use of mobile phone data by law enforcement could reach into the tens of millions, as a single request could ensnare dozens or even hundreds of people. Law enforcement has been asking for so-called “cell tower dumps” in which carriers disclose all phone numbers that connected to a given tower during a certain period of time.Perhaps you should not be using your cell phone so much anyway. After all, there are more than 500 studies that show that cell phone radiation is harmful to humans.
So, for instance, if police wanted to try to find a person who broke a store window at an Occupy protest, it could get the phone numbers and identifying data of all protestors with mobile phones in the vicinity at the time — and use that data for other purposes.
#7 Biometric Databases
All over the globe, governments are developing massive biometric databases of their citizens. Just check out what is going on in India….
In the last two years, over 200 million Indian nationals have had their fingerprints and photographs taken and irises scanned, and given a unique 12-digit number that should identify them everywhere and to everyone.#8 RFID Microchips
This is only the beginning, and the goal is to do the same with the entire population (1.2 billion), so that poorer Indians can finally prove their existence and identity when needed for getting documents, getting help from the government, and opening bank and other accounts.
This immense task needs a database that can contain over 12 billion fingerprints, 1.2 billion photographs, and 2.4 billion iris scans, can be queried from diverse devices connected to the Internet, and can return accurate results in an extremely short time.
In a previous article, I detailed how the U.S. military is seeking to develop technology that would enable it to monitor the health of our soldiers and improve their performance in battle using RFID microchips.
Most Americans don’t realize this, but RFID microchips are steadily becoming part of the very fabric of our lives. Many of your credit cards and debit cards contain them. Many Americans use security cards that contain RFID microchips at work. In some parts of the country it is now mandatory to inject an RFID microchip into your pet.
Now, one school system down in Texas actually plans to start using RFID microchips to track the movements of their students….
Northside Independent School District plans to track students next year on two of its campuses using technology implanted in their student identification cards in a trial that could eventually include all 112 of its schools and all of its nearly 100,000 students.#9 Automated License Plate Readers
District officials said the Radio Frequency Identification System (RFID) tags would improve safety by allowing them to locate students — and count them more accurately at the beginning of the school day to help offset cuts in state funding, which is partly based on attendance.
In a previous article, I quoted a Washington Post piece that talked about how automated license plate readers are being used to track the movements of a vehicle from the time that it enters Washington D.C. to the time that it leaves….
More than 250 cameras in the District and its suburbs scan license plates in real time, helping police pinpoint stolen cars and fleeing killers. But the program quietly has expanded beyond what anyone had imagined even a few years ago.#10 Face Reading Software
With virtually no public debate, police agencies have begun storing the information from the cameras, building databases that document the travels of millions of vehicles.
Nowhere is that more prevalent than in the District, which has more than one plate-reader per square mile, the highest concentration in the nation. Police in the Washington suburbs have dozens of them as well, and local agencies plan to add many more in coming months, creating a comprehensive dragnet that will include all the approaches into the District.
Can computers tell what you are thinking just by looking at your face?
Don’t laugh.
Such technology is actually being actively developed. The following is from a recent NewScientist article….
IF THE computers we stare at all day could read our faces, they would probably know us better than anyone.#11 Data Mining
That vision may not be so far off. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab are developing software that can read the feelings behind facial expressions. In some cases, the computers outperform people. The software could lead to empathetic devices and is being used to evaluate and develop better adverts.
The government is not the only one that is spying on you. The truth is that a whole host of very large corporations are gathering every shred of information about you that they possibly can and selling that information for profit. It is called “data mining“, and it is an industry that has absolutely exploded in recent years.
One very large corporation known as Acxiom actually compiles information on more than 190 million people in the U.S. alone….
The company fits into a category called database marketing. It started in 1969 as an outfit called Demographics Inc., using phone books and other notably low-tech tools, as well as one computer, to amass information on voters and consumers for direct marketing. Almost 40 years later, Acxiom has detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the U.S., and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers in Conway, just north of Little Rock, collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data ‘transactions’ a year.#12 Street Lights Spying On Us?
Did you ever consider that street lights could be spying on you?
Well, it is actually happening. New high tech street lights that can actually watch what you do and listen to what you are saying are being installed in some major U.S. cities. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson for Infowars.com….
Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level.#13 Automated ISP Monitoring Of Your Internet Activity
As I have written about before, nothing you do on the Internet is private. However, Internet Service Providers and the entertainment industry are now taking Internet monitoring to a whole new level….
If you download potentially copyrighted software, videos or music, your Internet service provider (ISP) has been watching, and they’re coming for you.#14 Spying On Us Through Our Appliances
Specifically, they’re coming for you on Thursday, July 12.
That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.
Word of the start date has been largely kept secret since ISPs announced their plans last June. The deal was brokered by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and coordinated by the Obama Administration.
Could the government one day use your refrigerator to spy on you?
Don’t laugh.
That is exactly what CIA Director David Petraeus says is coming….
Petraeus says that web-connected gadgets will ‘transform’ the art of spying – allowing spies to monitor people automatically without planting bugs, breaking and entering or even donning a tuxedo to infiltrate a dinner party.For many more ways that Big Brother is spying on you, please see these articles….
‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies,’ said Petraeus.
‘Particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft. Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.’
Petraeus was speaking to a venture capital firm about new technologies which aim to add processors and web connections to previously ‘dumb’ home appliances such as fridges, ovens and lighting systems.
“Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make – 14 New Ways That The Government Is Watching You”
“30 Signs That The United States Of America Is Being Turned Into A Giant Prison”
The things that I have written about above are just the things that they admit to.
There are also many “black box technologies” being developed out there that the public does not even know about yet.
So how far will all of this go?
Has Big Brother already gone way too far?
FBI Organizes Terror Plots In The US?
By Rt.com
The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs upwards of 15,000 undercover agents today, ten times what they had on the roster back in 1975.
If you think that’s a few spies too many — spies earning as much as $100,000 per assignment — one doesn’t have to go too deep into their track record to see their accomplishments. Those agents are responsible for an overwhelming amount of terrorist stings that have stopped major domestic catastrophes in the vein of 9/11 from happening on American soil.
Another thing those agents are responsible for, however, is plotting those very schemes.
The FBI has in recent years used trained informants not just to snitch on suspected terrorists, but to set them up from the get-go. A recent report put together by Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkley analyses some striking statistics about the role of FBI informants in terrorism cases that the Bureau has targeted in the decade since the September 11 attacks.
The report reveals that the FBI regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others. Regardless of their intentions, agents are sent in to converse within the community, find suspects that could potentially carry out “lone wolf” attacks and then, more or less, encourage them to do so. By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize.
Additionally, one former high-level FBI officials speaking to Mother Jones says that, for every informant officially employed by the bureau, up to three unofficial agents are working undercover.
The FBI has used those informants to set-up and thus shut-down several of the more high profile would-be attacks in recent years. The report reveals that the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City subway plot, the attempt to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and dozens more were all orchestrated by FBI agents. In fact, reads the report, only three of the more well-known terror plots of the last decade weren’t orchestrated by FBI-involved agents.
The report reveals that in many of the stings, important meetings between informants and the unknowing participants are left purposely unrecorded, as to avoid any entrapment charges that could cause the case to be dismissed. Perhaps the most high-profile of the FBI-proposed plots was the case of the Newburgh 4. Around an hour outside of New York City, an informant infiltrated a Muslim community and engaged four local men to carry out a series of attacks. Those men may have never actually carried out an attack, but once the informant offered them a plot and a pair of missiles, they agreed. Defense attorneys cried “entrapment,” but the men still were sentenced to 25 years apiece.
"The problem with the cases we're talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents," Martin Stolar tells Mother Jones. Stolar represented the suspect involved in a New York City bombing plot that was set-up by FBI agents. "They're creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror." For their part, the FBI says this method is a plan for "preemption," "prevention" and "disruption."
The report also reveals that, of the 500-plus prosecutions of terrorism-related cases they analyzed, nearly half of them involved the use of informants, many of whom worked for the FBI in exchange for money or to work off criminal charges. Of the 158 prosecutions carried out, 49 defendants participated in plots that agent provocateurs arranged on behalf of the FBI.
Experts note that the chance of winning a terrorism-related trial, entrapment or not, is near impossible. "The plots people are accused of being part of — attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building — are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury," David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, tells Mother Jones. Since 9/11, almost two-thirds of the cases linked to terrorism have ended with guilty pleas. “They don't say, 'I've been entrapped,' or, 'I was immature,’” a retired FBI official remarks.
All of this and those guilty pleas often stem for just being in the right place at the wrong time. Farhana Khera of the group Muslim Advocate notes that agents go into mosques on “fishing expeditions” just to see where they can get interest in the community. "The FBI is now telling agents they can go into houses of worship without probable cause," says Khera. "That raises serious constitutional issues."
From the set-up to the big finish, the whole sting operation is ripe with constitutional issues such as that. A decade since 9/11, however, the FBI is reaching through whatever means it can pull together to keep terrorists — or whom they think could someday become one — from ever hurting America.
Police State Lockdown in Boston
Officials in Boston have imposed what is being described as a “total lockdown” as police search for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.
ABC News reports:
Across the area, as police cars screamed down streets and helicopters hovered ahead, authorities urged the public to stay inside, their doors locked to anyone but a law-enforcement officer.
“There is a massive manhunt under way,” Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said. “We are asking people to shelter in place.”
The lockdown initially affected more than 300,000 people in Cambridge, Watertown, Newton, Brighton, Allston and Belmont, but by 8 a.m., the entire city of Boston was paralyzed, officials said.
On Thursday evening, Boston police tweeted: ”Door-to-door search 4 suspect in Watertown continues. Uniformed officers searching. Community consent critical.”
Travel in the city of over 600,000 is now virtually impossible. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has suspended activity. All schools and public buildings are closed. “All city employees were told to stay in place and not come to work. If they are already at work, they have been asked to stay in place,” NBC News reports this morning. All taxi service in the city of Boston has been suspended pending further notice, according to Fox 4 News.
In Watertown, Massachusetts, State Police confirm they are conducting a door-to-door, house-to-house search. “Police will be going door by door, street by street, in and around Watertown. Police will be clearly identified. It is a fluid situation,” Dailybhaskar reports.
According to CBS News, “Shelter in place” is usually used for chemical or biological attack.
US Senate: Will Back Israeli Attack On Iran
Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate votes in favor of resolution stipulating that US will support Israel in case it was forced to take military action against Iran
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON — Members of the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee have adopted "Senate Resolution 65," according to which the US will support Israel in case it is compelled to take military action and actualize its right to self defense in the face of an Iranian threat.
The resolution stipules that Israel will enjoy Washington's diplomatic, economic and military aid.
According to the resolution, sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez and Sen. Lindsey Graham, the US's policy is to halt Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Senate Resolution 65 has successfully gained the support of 70 of the 100 senators.
In a statement issued by AIPAC it was noted that “The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has sent a very clear and enormously important message of solidarity with Israel against the Iranian nuclear threat—which endangers American, Israeli, and international security.”
President Barack Obama sent his holiday wishes to Israel on its 65th Independence Day, stating: "On this date 65 years ago, the Jewish people realized their dream of the ages – to be masters of their fate in their own sovereign state."
"The strong and prosperous Israel we see today proves Herzl's vision – 'if you will it, it is no dream," the US president added.
The Tribulation Period And The Great Tribulation
The Great Tribulation is a future time period when the Lord will accomplish at least two aspects of His plan: 1) He will complete His discipline of the nation Israel (Daniel 9:24), and 2) He will judge the unbelieving, godless inhabitants of the earth (Revelation 6 - 18). The length of the Tribulation is seven years. This is determined by an understanding of the seventy weeks of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27). The Great Tribulation is the last half of the Tribulation period, three and one-half years in length. It is distinguished from the Tribulation period because the Beast, or Antichrist, will be revealed, and the wrath of God will greatly intensify during this time. Thus, it is important at this point to emphasize that the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation are not synonymous terms. Within eschatology (the study of future things), the Tribulation refers to the full seven-year period while the “Great Tribulation” refers to the second half of the Tribulation.
It is Christ Himself who used the phrase "Great Tribulation" with reference to the last half of the Tribulation. In Matthew 24:21, Jesus says, "For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall." In this verse Jesus is referring to the event of Matthew 24:15, which describes the revealing of the abomination of desolation, the man also known as the Antichrist. Also, Jesus in Matthew 24:29-30 states, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days . . . the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory." In this passage, Jesus defines the Great Tribulation (v.21) as beginning with the revealing of the abomination of desolation (v.15) and ending with Christ's second coming (v.30).
Other passages that refer to the Great Tribulation are Daniel 12:1b, which says, "And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time." It seems that Jesus was quoting this verse when He spoke the words recorded in Matthew 24:21. Also referring to the Great Tribulation is Jeremiah 30:7, "Alas! for that day is great, There is none like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s distress, But he will be saved from it." The phrase “Jacob’s distress” refers to the nation of Israel, which will experience persecution and natural disasters such as have never before been seen.
Considering the information Christ gave us in Matthew 24:15-30, it is easy to conclude that the beginning of the Great Tribulation has much to do with the abomination of desolation, an action of the Antichrist. In Daniel 9:26-27, we find that this man will make a "covenant" (a peace pact) with the world for seven years (one “week”). Halfway through the seven-year period—"in the middle of the week"—we are told this man will break the covenant he made, stopping sacrifice and grain offering, which specifically refers to his actions in the rebuilt temple of the future. Revelation 13:1-10 gives even more detail concerning the Beast's actions, and just as important, it also verifies the length of time he will be in power. Revelation 13:5 says he will be in power for 42 months, which is three and one-half years, the length of the Great Tribulation.
Revelation offers us the most information about the Great Tribulation. From Revelation 13 when the Beast is revealed until Christ returns in Revelation 19, we are given a picture of God's wrath on the earth because of unbelief and rebellion (Revelation 16-18). It is also a picture of how God disciplines and at the same time protects His people Israel (Revelation 14:1-5) until He keeps His promise to Israel by establishing an earthly kingdom (Revelation 20:4-6).
The Great Tribulation is a future time period when the Lord will accomplish at least two aspects of His plan: 1) He will complete His discipline of the nation Israel (Daniel 9:24), and 2) He will judge the unbelieving, godless inhabitants of the earth (Revelation 6 - 18). The length of the Tribulation is seven years. This is determined by an understanding of the seventy weeks of Daniel (Daniel 9:24-27). The Great Tribulation is the last half of the Tribulation period, three and one-half years in length. It is distinguished from the Tribulation period because the Beast, or Antichrist, will be revealed, and the wrath of God will greatly intensify during this time. Thus, it is important at this point to emphasize that the Tribulation and the Great Tribulation are not synonymous terms. Within eschatology (the study of future things), the Tribulation refers to the full seven-year period while the “Great Tribulation” refers to the second half of the Tribulation.
It is Christ Himself who used the phrase "Great Tribulation" with reference to the last half of the Tribulation. In Matthew 24:21, Jesus says, "For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall." In this verse Jesus is referring to the event of Matthew 24:15, which describes the revealing of the abomination of desolation, the man also known as the Antichrist. Also, Jesus in Matthew 24:29-30 states, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days . . . the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory." In this passage, Jesus defines the Great Tribulation (v.21) as beginning with the revealing of the abomination of desolation (v.15) and ending with Christ's second coming (v.30).
Other passages that refer to the Great Tribulation are Daniel 12:1b, which says, "And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time." It seems that Jesus was quoting this verse when He spoke the words recorded in Matthew 24:21. Also referring to the Great Tribulation is Jeremiah 30:7, "Alas! for that day is great, There is none like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s distress, But he will be saved from it." The phrase “Jacob’s distress” refers to the nation of Israel, which will experience persecution and natural disasters such as have never before been seen.
Considering the information Christ gave us in Matthew 24:15-30, it is easy to conclude that the beginning of the Great Tribulation has much to do with the abomination of desolation, an action of the Antichrist. In Daniel 9:26-27, we find that this man will make a "covenant" (a peace pact) with the world for seven years (one “week”). Halfway through the seven-year period—"in the middle of the week"—we are told this man will break the covenant he made, stopping sacrifice and grain offering, which specifically refers to his actions in the rebuilt temple of the future. Revelation 13:1-10 gives even more detail concerning the Beast's actions, and just as important, it also verifies the length of time he will be in power. Revelation 13:5 says he will be in power for 42 months, which is three and one-half years, the length of the Great Tribulation.
Revelation offers us the most information about the Great Tribulation. From Revelation 13 when the Beast is revealed until Christ returns in Revelation 19, we are given a picture of God's wrath on the earth because of unbelief and rebellion (Revelation 16-18). It is also a picture of how God disciplines and at the same time protects His people Israel (Revelation 14:1-5) until He keeps His promise to Israel by establishing an earthly kingdom (Revelation 20:4-6).
THE PURPOSE OF THE 7 YEAR TRIBULATION PERIOD
The first great purpose of the Tribulation Period is to prepare Israel for the reception of her Messiah. Since the days of Christ's ministry the nation of Israel has been blinded to the glories and salvation of their Messiah. God has worked chiefly among the Gentiles during the past two thousand years. Romans 11:25-27 declares: "For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins."
The Tribulation Period is referred to as "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer. 30:7) because God will be dealing with the nation of Israel specifically. The conversion of multitudes of Jews will occur during this period of time. Their eyes will be opened to the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and they will be saved. The salvation of elect Israel during the Tribulation Period will be for the purpose of preparing them to enter into the glories of the Millennial kingdom. God is going to use Daniel's seventieth week as a means to accomplish His purpose with regards to the nation of Israel as revealed in Daniel 9:24 which states: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy." These things have not yet happened with regards to the nation of Israel, but they will be accomplished during the Tribulation Period when God turns to His chosen nation. God's purpose concerning Israel during the Tribulation was revealed long ago in Deuteronomy 4:30-31 which state: "When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, even in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; (For the LORD thy God is a merciful God;) he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them." It is also significant to note that many Gentiles will also be saved during the Tribulation through the witness of converted Jews. The converted Gentiles will comprise the sheep nations mentioned in Matthew twenty five, who will also enter into the glories of the Millennial kingdom.
The second major purpose of the Tribulation Period has already been alluded too. For thousands of years of human history man has been defying the holy government of God and rebelling against His laws. During the Tribulation Period God will pour out His judgments upon an ungodly world. Those who have been deceived by the false prophet and who have submitted to the unrighteous rule of Antichrist will be damned. II Thessalonians 2:11-12 declares: "And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness."
A third purpose of the Tribulation Period will be to judge the apostate church known in Scripture as "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" (Rev. 17:5). She is called a whore because of her spiritual infidelity and prostitution of spiritual powers. This church, under the guise of Christianity, has perverted the true ways of God, given birth to numerous heresies, and has promoted a false worship during her existence. Through the centuries she has hounded, hated, and persecuted the true saints of God and is said to be "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (Rev. 17:6). She is also in league with Satan and the Antichrist. The false prophet who acts as the head of this ecclesiatical organization will aid the Antichrist and encourage idolatrous worship. She will be an apostate church with a universal appeal, allowing several beliefs to exist under her ecclesiatical umbrella. This "MOTHER OF HARLOTS" is the Roman Catholic Church and her apostate Protestant daughters who unite with her. She will unite with political Babylon only to be destroyed by it according to God's sovereign will (Rev. 17:15-18). Her final judgment by God will be the cause for rejoicing and praise among the saints of God in Heaven as Revelation 19:1-3 declares: "And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever."
AN OVERVIEW OF THE EVENTS OF THE TRIBULATION
An entire volume could easily be written explaining the details of the Tribulation Period. In fact, in order to do the Tribulation Period justice, Revelation chapters six through nineteen would have to be examined closely, as they comprise the most thorough picture of the seven-year Tribulation Period. We will examine only the main events that occur during the Tribulation Period.
1. II Thessalonians 2:7-8 declares: "For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he now letteth (Greek word katecho, meaning restrain or hinder) will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed..." At the beginning of the Tribulation Period the world will find itself without the presence or the influence of the Holy Spirit, and thus in a state of moral, political, and spiritual chaos. Confusion, violence, and immorality will be the natural order of the day after believers are translated into the realms of glory and the influence of the Holy Spirit is taken from off the earth.
2. The state of moral, spiritual, and political anarchy will provide Satan with a perfect window of opportunity to unveil the Antichrist. Since the world will be in a state of moral and spiritual darkness, the Antichrist will arise as the one who provides answers to all of the world's problems. He will be an oratorical genius, a man of eloquence, who is able to deceive the masses with ease. He is described in Daniel as one that had "a mouth that spake very great things" (Dan. 7:20). II Thessalonians 2:9-10 describes the Antichrist in the following way: "Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders. And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." The Antichrist will arrive on the scene proclaiming himself as the one who can solve the economic and social problems of the world. For a time the world will prosper under his reign which will only serve to enhance his power and control over the masses of humanity. Daniel 8:25 declares: "And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart..." Even now our world is being primed for a charismatic leader who will be able to unite the nations, promise peace, and be the engineer of a global economy that prospers.
3. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the Antichrist will be the peace pact that he signs with the nation of Israel at the beginning of the Tribulation Period. The world has yet to find a leader who can promise peace to the region known as the Holy Land. One of the first things the Antichrist will do during the Tribulation in order to establish his power will be to sign a peace pact with Israel. Daniel 9:27 declares: "And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week..." Included within this covenant drawn up by the Antichrist will be the re-establishment of the Jewish Temple sacrificial system. This gesture of good will will only enhance the power, prestige, and popularity of the Antichrist among the masses of depraved humanity.
4. A new world order will be established during the reign of Antichrist. A confederation of European states will be at the helm of a new global economy. A global religion will also be established headed up by the false prophet as described in Revelation 13:11-17. The false prophet will encourage the nations in idolatrous worship of the Antichrist. One way in which he will exercise control over the masses will be to require everyone to receive the mark of the beast as Revelation 13:16-17 states: "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name." It is interesting to note that there is already technology that could put a biochip in the hand of every individual to identify them as having the mark of the beast.
5. During the first three and a half years of the Tribulation Period there will be a significant ministry carried on by two men as Revelation 11:3 reveals: "And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth." Because of the description given in Revelation 11:3-6 many believe these two witnesses will be Moses and Elijah, representing the law and the prophets, sent by God to minister during the first half of the Tribulation. The Antichrist will wage war against these two witnesses and they will be killed at the mid point of the Tribulation Period. By satellite all the world will see the dead bodies of the two men lying in the streets of Jerusalem for three and a half days. The depraved inhabitants of the world will rejoice in their demise, only to be shocked when God raises them up and takes them into Heaven (Rev. 11:7-12). Along with the ministry of the two witnesses, God will raise up 144,000 Jewish men, 12,000 out of each of the twelve tribes of Israel, to act as Tribulation evangelists (Rev. 7:4; Rev. 14:4-5; Matt. 24:14). Multitudes will be converted by the sovereign grace of God only to be martyred shortly after declaring their allegiance to Jesus Christ. Revelation 7:13-14 describes these Tribulation martyrs thusly: "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."
6. A flurry of significant events will occur at the midway point of the Tribulation Period. The two witnesses will be slain (Rev. 11:3-10). Satan will be cast out of Heaven by Michael and his angels (Rev. 12:7-9). This will mean real trouble for the inhabitants of the earth during the last three and a half years of the Tribulation as Revelation 12:12 states: "...Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."
Also at the midpoint of the Tribulation the abomination of desolation will occur when the Antichrist breaks his peace pact with Israel, does away with the Temple worship and sacrifices, and sets himself up as God in the Temple, thus desecrating the Temple. This abomination of desolation is referred to in several passages of Scripture. Daniel 9:27 declares: "And he (Antichrist, the prince that shall come v. 26) shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate." Jesus also referred to this event in Matthew 24:15 which states: "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand)." Paul also referred to this event in II Thessalonians 2:4 which states: "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."
From the midpoint of the Tribulation Period until the end, the judgments and wrath of God become more intense and severe reaching their crescendo at the Battle of Armageddon when Jesus is revealed from Heaven to smite His enemies that are gathered for battle.
7. The judgments of the Tribulation are revealed in the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials of the Book of Revelation. The details of these judgments are recorded in Revelation chapters six through nineteen. As the Tribulation progresses, the severity and intensity of the judgments will increase. It must be reemphasized that these judgments represent the wrath of God against unbelievers, not Satanic wrath against believers as Revelation 16:1 declares: "And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth." Time and space in this present volume prevent me from going into the details of the horrible judgments that will be poured out upon the inhabitants of the earth during the Tribulation Period. I will leave it to the reader to carefully study Revelation chapters six through nineteen.
8. After the judgment of religious and political Babylon (Rev. 17-18) the Antichrist will gather his forces and make his way to Armageddon (Rev. 16:16) to do combat against the Lord Jesus Christ. Zephaniah 3:8 declares: "Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the LORD, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy." The assembled masses, under the leadership of the Antichrist, will be defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ when He comes back from Heaven with the saints. There are four pictures of the Battle of Armageddon culminating in the Second Advent of Christ found in the Book of Revelation (Rev. 6:12-17; Rev. 14:14-20; Rev. 16:16-21; and Rev. 19:11-21). Perhaps the most graphic illustration of the destruction that will occur at the Second Advent of Christ is recorded in Revelation nineteen. Jesus will come back with His saints from Heaven to put down His enemies on earth as Revelation 19:15 declares: "And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." Jesus will then cast the Antichrist and the false prophet into the Lake of Fire to suffer eternal punishment (Rev. 19:20). He will also bind Satan in the bottomless pit for one thousand years as He and His saints rule upon the earth in righteousness (Rev. 20:1-6). Thus, the most terrible time upon earth known to man will end with the Second Advent of Jesus Christ which will usher in the most glorious time the earth has known since the fall of Adam and Eve in Eden. The darkness of the Tribulation Period will give way to the brightness of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ who shall reign upon the throne of David for a thousand years. The violence, bloodshed, and warfare that characterizes the Tribulation period will give way to the millennial blessings of unsurpassed spirituality, peace, and righteousness. The unrighteous and wicked reign of the Antichrist will give way to the glorious reign of Jesus Christ upon the earth. Though the Tribulation Period proves to be the darkest chapter in the history of man's existence on earth it will be followed by a most glorious and wonderful reign of righteousness.
THE TIME FRAME OF THE TRIBULATION PERIOD
The Tribulation Period will consist of a seven year increment of time which will begin immediately after the 7 year peace treaty is signed with Israel and will conclude when Christ comes back with the saints in the Second Advent to establish His righteous rule of one thousand years upon the earth. The Tribulation Period is usually called Daniel's seventieth week because it is the last time frame in the seventy sevens of years recorded in Daniel chapter nine.
Daniel 9:24-27 declares: "Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself, and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate."
Several things may be gleaned from this passage of Scripture in relation to the time frame of the Tribulation Period. First, the seventy weeks of years or 490 years deals specifically with the nation of Israel, Daniel's people, whose capital is Jerusalem, the holy city. The prophecy of Daniel's seventy weeks must be understood in relation to God's purpose concerning His chosen nation Israel.
From Daniel 9:26 we know that the weeks of the prophecy must be interpreted as years. Jesus did not come as the Messiah to be cut off for the sins of His people 483 days after the decree of Artaxerxes in 445 B.C, but rather 483 years after the commandment. The Hebrews often used the term week to represent seven years. For example Genesis 29:27-30 records: "Fulfill her week, and we will give thee this also for the service which thou shalt serve with me yet seven other years. And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he have him Rachel his daughter to wife also. And Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah his handmaid to be her maid. And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years." In the original Hebrew the word for seventy weeks is shibim meaning seventy sevens, without expressing days, weeks or years. The actual duration of the shibim is determined by the context. The Biblical calendar consists of 360 days or twelve months of thirty days. This may be calculated by examining Genesis 7:11-24 and Genesis 8:3-4. In the account of the flood we find that the five months from the seventeenth day of the second month until the seventeenth day of the seventh month are reckoned as one hundred and fifty days or thirty days to a month which equals three hundred and sixty days to a year.
The first seven weeks of years is calculated from the time that Artexerxes gave the command to rebuild Jerusalem in 445 B.C. This took exactly 49 years just as Daniel 9:25 reveals. From the time that Jerusalem was rebuilt until the time that Jesus Christ was crucified was 62 weeks of years or 434 years. When you add 49 plus 434 you come up with 483 years as the time period between the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the time when Jesus Christ came to pay the sin debt for His people and redeem them from the curse of the law. Galatians 4:4-5 declares: "But when THE FULNESS OF TIME WAS COME, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."
Sir Robert Anderson in his book entitled The Coming Prince wrote:
"An era therefore of sixty-nine weeks or 483 prophetic years reckoned from the 14th March, B.C. 445 B.C. should close with some event to satisfy the words, "unto the Messiah the Prince."... The Julian date of the 10th Nisan was Sunday the 6th April, A.D. 32. What then was the length of the period intervening between the issuing of the decree to rebuild Jerusalem and the public advent of "Messiah the Prince,"--between the 14th March, B.C. 445, and the 6th April, A.D. 32? THE INTERVAL CONTAINED EXACTLY TO THE VERY DAY 173,880 DAYS, OR SEVEN TIMES SIXTY-NINE PROPHETIC YEARS OF 360 DAYS, the first sixty nine weeks of Gabriel's prophecy....Anderson arrives at these figures by the following method of calculation:
The 1st Nisan in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes (the edict to rebuild Jerusalem) was 14th March, B.C. 445.
The 10th Nisan in Passion Week (Christ's entry into Jerusalem) was 6th April, A.D. 32.
The intervening period was 476 years and 24 days (the days being reckoned inclusively, as required by the language of the prophecy, and in accordance with the Jewish practice).
But 476 x 365 = 173,740 days
Add (14 March to 6th April, both inclusive 24 days
Add for leap years 116 days
__________
173,88 days
And 69 weeks of prophetic years of 360 days (or 69 x 7 x 360) = 173,880 days." (1)
Since the first 483 years of Daniel's prophecy have had a literal fulfillment then it makes good sense to believe that the last seven years will also have a literal fulfillment. The Messiah was crucified after the 69 weeks and before the 70th week. However, there is a parentheses of an indefinite period of time between the 69th and the 70th weeks. It is not uncommon for there to be gaps in Old Testament Prophecy. There are prophetic gaps in all of the following Scriptures: Isaiah 61:1-2 declares: "The Spirit of the LORD GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God..." There has already been a gap of almost 2000 years between the "acceptable year of the Lord" and the "day of vengeance of our God." It is interesting to note that when Jesus read this Scripture in the synagogue, He did not read the last half of verse two because its fulfillment was yet future (Luke 4:16-21). Hosea 3:4-5 is another example of a lengthy interval or parentheses of time: "For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim: Afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek the LORD their God, and David their king; and shall fear the LORD and his goodness in the latter days." The contents of verse four have already been fulfilled with regards to the nation of Israel, but the contents of verse five have not yet occurred, meaning that a great interval of time exists between the fulfillment of these two verses.
The teaching of the great parenthesis of time between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel's prophecy is further bolstered by the fact that Jesus regarded the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel as an event yet future (Matt. 24:15-21). Jesus even identified this period of time as the Tribulation Period which is precisely what Daniel's seventieth week is referring too!
The duration between Daniel's 69th and 70th week comprises the church age in which Christianity would be spread throughout the whole world. This makes sense to the student of prophecy because the church was a mystery that was not revealed to the Old Testament saints (Eph. 3:1-6). This is the reason for the great parenthesis of time between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel's prophecy. Because Israel rejected the ministry and Messiahship of Christ she was set aside by God. The New Testament Church was established as the means through which God would be glorified during the church age. Israel will not be restored and regenerated until the terms of Daniel's seventieth week are fulfilled (Dan. 9:24).
Another way to figure the time frame of the Tribulation period is to examine two passages in the Book of Revelation. The first deals with the length of the ministry of the two witnesses before they are slain by the beast. Revelation 11:3 states: "And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.” 1,260 days equals exactly three and one half prophetic years. The death of the two witnesses coincides with the midpoint of the Tribulation known as the abomination of desolation when the Antichrist breaks the covenant with Israel. At this point the Antichrist will reveal his true blasphemous intentions as Revelation 13:4-5 declares: "And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven." When you combine the three and a half year ministry of the two witnesses with the forty two months after the Antichrist sets up the abomination of desolation in the Jewish Temple, you come up with exactly seven years which is the exact time frame of Daniel's seventieth week. You will notice that power was given unto the Antichrist to continue forty and two months, implying that his ministry and reign was already in progress. He was revealed right after the Rapture, but the fierceness and cruelty of His unrighteous reign does not go into full force until the last three and one half years of the Tribulation Period. In the first three and a half years the Antichrist spends time deceiving the masses of humanity into thinking he is a social, political, and religious Messiah. In the last three and a half years, after Satan is cast down from Heaven, and given only a short time to work his devious plan, the Antichrist becomes more cruel and blasphemous. Daniel 11:36 describes the reign of Antichrist from the midway point of the Tribulation Period thusly: "And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done." Yet the reign of the Antichrist will be short-lived because Daniel 11:45 declares: "...yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him." At the end of the seven- year Tribulation Jesus will come back with the saints, and the reign of the Antichrist and the ministry of the false prophet will come to a violent end as Revelation 19:19-20 reveals: "And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."
The end of the seven-year Tribulation Period will not only signal the end of the reign of Antichrist, it will also be the time when God pours out His Spirit in a miraculous way upon the elect nation of Israel. Multitudes of Jews will be converted when they see the Messiah coming in power and great glory as Zechariah 12:9-10 declares: "And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn."
How I long for the grand and glorious day when the glorified saints come back with Christ to end the seven-year Tribulation Period. I long to see King Jesus put an end to the reign of unrighteousness and injustice. I long to see elect Israel restored to God's favor and possessing the land that was promised to her in the Abrahamic Covenant. I long to see the earth and all its inhabitants enjoying a Sabbath of rest for a thousand years. I long to see King Jesus exalted as king over all the earth, reigning in majesty and great glory. Zechariah 14:9 declares: "And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one."
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