While Americans still enjoy easy access to basic necessities like food and medicine, the last several years have shown us just how bad things can get when it all hits the fan.

When the country of Greece collapsed in 2012 we highlighted the desperate situation faced by its millions of residents:

With untold billions in private and public sector debt, the situation in Greece (and other debt laden European countries like Spain and Italy) has devolved to such an extent that some EU member nations are mobilizing their military personnel in preparation for full spectrum meltdown across the entire region.

Jobs are so scarce that many have been forced into underground barter economies and family farming to make ends meet. From massive austerity spending cuts that have torn to shreds the government social safety net, to shortages in critical life saving medicines and the near breakdown of the nation’s power grid, Greece is experiencing all of the overt signs of a nation on its last leg.

It’s a story that we have seen time and again throughout history, and one that is once again playing out before our eyes. Though the economic factors that trigger a crisis may be different, the outcome is often the same for the general populace.

We need look no further than the deteriorating situation in Venezuela, where the government has tried everything from currency devaluations and price controls to blaming the country’s malaise on “hoarders” and speculators who purportedly drove up prices. As anger and frustration gripped the country, the government took unprecedented steps to restore order, to no avail:

In 2013, many began to suspect that the outlook for Venezuela was grim when prepping became illegal.  The Attorney General of Venezuela, Luisa Ortega Díaz, called on prosecutors to target people who are “hoarding” basic staples with serious sanctions.

Shortly thereafter, grocery stores instituted a fingerprint registry to purchase food and supplies. Families had to register and were allotted a certain amount of supplies to prevent “hoarding.”

Then, just over a year ago, it became even more apparent that the country was falling. when long lines for basic necessities such as laundry soap, diapers, and food became the norm rather than the exception. Thousands of people were standing in line for 5-6 hours in the hopes that they would be able to purchase a few much-needed items.

Now with the collapse of oil prices, which account for a large portion of Venezuela’s exports and are necessary for the country to generate cash flow for trade, things have gotten even worse.

Though we can understand why most Americans have bought into the propaganda that it can’t happen here, because, well, it’s America and we’re the richest nation on Earth, if a serious economic or monetary crisis were to strike, it might look something like this:

Cardboard signs on the door warning of “No bread” have become increasingly common at Venezuelan bakeries.

Venezuela gets 96 percent of its foreign currency from oil exports, and as crude prices have plunged, so have the country’s imports — among them wheat.

The leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro has tightly controlled access to hard currency, and this has affected imports ranging from medicine to toilet paper. Now it is seriously affecting imports of wheat, which Venezuela does not grow.

Add to this the soaring inflation rate — 181 percent in 2015, the world’s highest — and you see why customers are mainly interested in buying basic food items such as bread.

…

“We are truly worried about the wheat mills being paralyzed,” Federation of Flour Workers chief Juan Crespo said.

Five of Venezuela’s 12 wheat mills, which employ some 12,000 people, have closed, Crespo said. The remaining mills employ another 8,000 people.

An industrialist who requested anonymity said there is currently “only enough wheat for the next 12 days.“

So, are we overreacting when we suggest there is a possibility that such events could take place here in America?

If you have your head in the sand and believe that the Ivy-league educated leaders who run our government and financial institutions have everything under control, then the answer is yes. Take the kids to Disney Land. Max out the credit card. Buy a new car. If something goes wrong, they’ll bail us out, right? They have contingency plans for all of this stuff.

If, however, you understand that our insatiable borrowing from foreign creditors, massive job losses, and negative economic growth rate could pose a problem in the near future, then you are well within your rights to “overreact” and prepare some contingency plans of your own.

In fact, if anyone has overreacted, it’s our own government. While you may be considered a domestic terrorist or person of interest for storing food and emergency supplies, it turns out that this is exactly what the Department of Homeland Security has been doing for years. They’ve stockpiled millions of emergency meals, guns and literal tons of ammunition to the tune of over two billion rounds. Moreover, though it is a total impossibility as mentioned above, they have even begun simulating economic collapse scenarios with the U.S. military, including widespread riot control.

Is America destined to go the way of Venezuela?

Someone in the upper echelons of our government thinks so and that’s why the President has already signed executive orders that not only outlaw hoarding of resources like food in a crisis, but give control of said resources, including your body and the labor it is capable of producing, to the government.

So while we totally understand that no crisis on the order of Greece, Venezuela, Argentina, Zimbabwe, or Weimar Germany could ever happen here, we suggest to you, the reader, to do your own due diligence and to keep in mind that all of those emergency supplies being stockpiled by our benevolent leaders are not for you at all.

Also Read:

The Prepper’s Blueprint – A Step By Step Guide To Prepare For Any Disaster

How Horrific Will It Be For The Non-Prepper?

Mark Levin: Government Is “Simulating the Collapse of Our Financial System, the Collapse of Our Society and the Potential for Widespread Violence”

Jeremiah Johnson’s Green Beret Survival Guides

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

The beginning of 2016 revealed what some have known for quite some time – financial markets are an epic disaster just waiting to be realized. With stock indexes having rebounded somewhat since the initial meltdown, financial pundits and mainstream analysts would have us believe that the worst of it has passed. But don’t be fooled, warns Economic Collapse Blog publisher Michael Snyder in his latest interview with Future Money Trends, because we’re still in the early chapters of what may be the most devastating financial, economic and monetary collapse in history:

A total of $16.5 trillion dollars had been wiped out from stock markets around the world… that doesn’t even count bonds and other things. So we have seen this massive amount of wealth wiped out globally… almost as much as the U.S. national debt.

Of course, the past few days we’ve seen a bounce back… markets never go down in a straight line… If you go back to 2008, the two best days in terms of a point increase in U.S. stock market history were right in the middle of the Crash of 2008… just because stocks go up for a day or two does not mean the crisis is over.

In my perspective we’re still in the early chapters… all of the red flags are still screaming that a lot more is to come… the entire global economy is imploding.

(Watch at Future Money Trends or Youtube)

As the collapse takes hold we can expect unprecedented maneuvers from our monetary masters. With central banks preparing to introduce negative interest rates, for example, savers and bank account holders will actually be paying for the privilege of keeping their money in the bank. The likely response, as we witnessed with a run on personal safes in Japan, is that people will simply take their money out of the bank and hold it in cash.

But such a work-around will be short lived, explains Snyder, because they’ll simply outlaw certain cash transactions or ban them altogether, which is, incidentally, the very recommendation we’ve heard in recent weeks from large financial institutions and ‘renowned’ economists. Of course, they argue that banning cash will stop drug dealers and tax dodgers, but as Snyder explains, such a ban is being specifically designed so that they can take total control of not just our currency, but every aspect of our lives:

This sets up the kind of scenario where all of a sudden the government becomes the gatekeeper… they can say ‘alright, if you want to use the system, then we can put some conditions on you for using the system. You’ve got to comply what we’re demanding of you or else you can’t have a bank account, you can’t get a job, you can’t buy, you can’t sell, you can’t participate in this electronic digital system.‘

We can only speculate that control of such a digital currency system will necessitate the implementation of ‘beast technology’ that may include forced embedding of tracking chips into the general populace. That may sounds conspiratorially crazy, but so too did the notion that physical cash will be banned around the globe… until a few weeks ago.

But never mind that global trade has collapsed or the widespread job losses, because the average person on the street really won’t believe it until the stock market tells them something’s wrong.

That day is certainly coming. The only question is, who will be blamed when it does?

We all know it could not possibly have been the machinations of central banks, Western governments and entrenched financial firms that are responsible for global economic malaise.

As Michael Snyder notes, there is a huge wild card in the middle east right now and the very scapegoat the elite need to set this whole thing in motion is just waiting for the green light:

The Russians have already warned Turkey that they are willing to use tactical nukes to keep forces away from Damascus… so the Russians have nukes… Saudi Arabia has nukes… And many people believe Iran already has nuclear weapons.

So we’re talking about a situation where we can potentially see nuclear war in the middle east, at least to a limited degree.

What would that do to the global economy and financial system?

This is a huge wildcard.

It’s something to keep an eye on…

Make no mistake, those who have orchestrated the fleecing of America, Europe and the rest of the world have absolutely no intention of admitting they are responsible for the disaster to come. As Future Money Trends suggests, a tactical nuclear war would be the perfect out for central banks and Keynesian economists.

One way or the other, regardless of the catalyst, the system as we know it today and how we operate within it is about to change drastically.

You can follow Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse Blog. 

For more news, commentary and interviews like the one you just watched subscribe to Future Money Trends.

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

As these words are being written, the U.S. and its NATO allies continue to posture themselves in Europe and in the Middle East prior to the “big one” being kicked off.  As mentioned in previous reports and articles, the flash points are becoming much more defined: The Senkaku Islands, the Donbass Region of Ukraine, Syria, and the Korean Peninsula.  While the world watches, each side in these potential hot spots continues to build their forces in the regions and make preparations for conflict.  When we examine responses for those preparations, it is obvious that war is imminent.

The United States has been posturing troops in the former SSR nations on Russia’s Western border.  Supplies of tanks, artillery pieces, aircraft, ammunition, and American troops continue to pour into Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland, among others.  The posturing amounts to a regeneration of NATO/USSR Cold War lines with one major difference: with the SSR’s no longer in existence, the NATO lines are that much closer now to Russia.  Before those Soviet satellite nations provided a physical buffer, but those former buffers are now nations that openly host NATO and U.S. troops.

While claiming to have a ceasefire, the U.S. turns a blind eye to the fact that Russia is still pounding away at the “rebels,” as Newspeak terms them.  They’re really insurgents, trying to topple an established government that will not knuckle under to the likes of the Nulands and McCains as Ukraine did.  Furthermore, the Russians are backing Assad with no plans of pulling out of his corner.

Turkey is another matter, and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has been pushing the envelope with deployments of troops to the Syrian border and incursions that mimic “Fabian” tactics – small-scale, limited engagements comprised of small unit skirmishes and then a quick retreat back to the safety of the Turkish border.  Still, Turkey is amassing sizable numbers of men and large quantities of materials and it doesn’t take much cognition to deduce that Turkey is preparing to invade.  Recently President Vladimir Putin declared his willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons if faced with a Turkish and/or Saudi invasion of Syria.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is serious, as Russia proved with the Crimea in 2014.  Crimea is decried by the West as conquest and occupation, but this is not accurate: moreover, it’s a lie.  The U.S. attempted to institute a coup d’état by deposing the rightfully elected leader of Ukraine and inserting Yatsenuk.  They wanted to cut of Sevastopol, Russia’s strategic naval base that enables the Black Sea Fleet to enter the Mediterranean.  The West also paints a picture of imposed servitude over the populace, while “neglecting” to mention that almost 90% of Crimea are Russians ethnically, speaking Russian as their first language.

Russia didn’t play softball.  They won’t be playing wiffleball, either, when things kick off in Syria.  This is not to say there aren’t economic influences that prompt Russia to act; however, they are secondary to the aggressive and imperialistic actions taken by the phony coalition of NATO at the behest of the IMF and the Military-Industrial Complex.

Forbes recently posted a piece by Adam Ereli entitled “Putin’s Newest Satellite State,” in which the following is written:

 “…Russia quietly signed a sweeping air defense agreement with Armenia, accelerating a growing Russian military buildup that has unfolded largely under the radar.  It was the most tangible sign yet that Putin is creating a new satellite state on NATO’s border and threatening an indispensable U.S. ally [Turkey].”

Now Mr. Ereli is listed as a former deputy spokesman of the State Department, and his carefully-chosen words act as if Russia is the aggressor against Turkey.  He also wrote:

 “…as Russia’s war in Syria and pressure on Turkey has intensified…The growing Russian military presence in Armenia is but the latest indicator of a worrisome trend: Putin’s threat to NATO and America’s interests in Europe.”

Last check, Mr. Ereli, it was Turkey that shot down Russian aircraft and helicopters.  Not to mention the fact that with all of these NATO exercises and additional troop deployments, what is Russia supposed to do?  Not defend its interests?

Ereli finishes off his piece with this:

 “In July 2015, Turkey and the U.S. finalized an agreement to work cooperatively to combat Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq.”

Perhaps Ereli is referring to the terrorists that the U.S. created, trained, and funded that have been wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East, now, since the Arab Spring began.  To address the more infuriating issue, the “unfolded largely under the radar” statement, there is nothing that is happening or has happened that is anything other than deliberate and purposeful.

Under the radar, such as TARS being removed from the Gulf Coast and Southern Border of the U.S.  Under the radar: the mothballing of planned Air Defense installations in Czechoslovakia and other Eastern European nations.  Under the radar, such as when Obama told Medvedev to tell Putin how he (Obama) would “have more leeway [with U.S. ICBM’s] after the election,” a statement as treasonous as they come.  Under the radar for the removal of the SR-71, the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, and the A-10 Tank Killer.  Under the radar for the cashiering of General Officers and Senior Noncommissioned Officers (the word “cashiering” being readily substitutable for the word “purging,” a more applicable and accurate term) from the U.S. military command structure.

The RAND Corporation recently released a study that concluded that Russian forces could overrun the Baltics in under 72 hours.  War games were run by RAND for several months in 2014-2015 and the studies concluded that the NATO forces were so ill-equipped and understrength that a loss would be inevitable.  An article published this month chronicles the gist of the RAND study, entitled If Russia Started a War in the Baltics, NATO Would Lose — Quickly, by Dan De Luce,

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

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

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Also Read:

How To Survive Occupied America: “Red Dawn Just Started… And You’re In It”

Here’s How We Got Here: A Short Primer On The History Of The Petrodollar

Collision Course: As Obama Weakens America, The Russians And Chinese Prepare

Forced Economic Free Fall the Precursor to Collapse: “The World Is About To Enter A Global Depression Unlike Anything Seen Before”

The Trigger: If This Ever Happens You Know You’re Days Away From Nuclear War

Jeremiah Johnson’s Green Beret Survival Guides

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Researchers at the SETI Institute spotted something odd on New Year’s Eve over New Zealand. A stream of meteor showers appeared out of nowhere and now scientists around the world are scrambling to figure out where it originated and whether the parent body of that shower could be headed towards earth.

The shower, dubbed the Volantids, had not been seen before and has never been identified on previous radar observations, suggesting that a new, as of yet unknown object has now entered our solar system.

[Read more…]

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

(To say Hitler was a bit angry is an understatement. Now we may know why.)

It appears that historians may have finally figured out why Adolf Hitler was so incredibly angry and had to attack his perceived enemies with a multi-million strong military at the first sign of being challenged.

In their book Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute, the authors note that the leader of the Third Reich had two genital abnormalities:

‘Hitler himself is believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the under side of the penis.’

The two conditions would go a long way to explaining why the tyrant had a fear of being seen naked and could account for his deep-seated fury.

His personal doctor Theodor Morell, a qualified urologist, is also believed to have noted Hitler’s hypospadias.

He is also understood to have given him hormones, amphetamines and cocaine in a bid to boost his sex drive with partner Eva Braun.

In December, researchers from the University of Erlangen say they had found documents that appeared to back up the claim that Hitler only had one testicle, long considered a myth.

Source: Daily Mail

(I vant you to tell everyvon. It is zis big!)

It was apparently common knowledge that Hitler was missing a testicle and during the war the allies came up with a marching song making fun of Little Hitler:

For decades it was alleged that Hitler had lost his testicle at the battle of the Somme during the First World War. 

The lyrics go: ‘Hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the Albert Hall. His mother, the dirty b****r, cut it off when he was small.’

A micro penis measures somewhere in the area of 1.2 inches and about one in 200 men reportedly suffer from the condition globally. Given the size, it may make sex awkward and difficult, which may explain why Hitler’s contemporaries report that he had an almost non-existent sex life:

People who knew Hitler also noticed he was not into sex with his mistress, Eva Braun.

Nazi architect, Albert Speer, who was tasked with designing his leader massive buildings, said after the war that it was very noticeable.

He said: “By no means would I describe Adolf Hitler as sexually normal in his relationships with women.

“In the case of Eva Braun in particular, it seems clear to me that aside from occasional passionate episodes there was no sexual activity at all for long periods of time.”

The adage that when men go to war they are really just trying to prove whose penis is bigger may well come into play here and it may explain why Hitler just had to have a bigger rocket than everyone else:

It makes us wonder, with all the wars being fought around the globe, is it possible that a much higher percentage of world leaders have a smaller-than-average penis size versus the general male population?

Also Read:

Eyewitness to Hitler Warns: “Keep Your Guns and Buy More Guns”

Yes, Hitler and Stalin Did Take The Guns

The Surprising Parallell Between Modern Germany and Pre-Hitler Germany

All Aboard the Auschwitz Express: “People Don’t Want to Believe It”

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

In case you haven’t heard, the Oregon state legislature has recently approved a new minimum wage, and Governor Kate Brown has already agreed to sign it. This minimum wage law will be very different from the wage laws of most states, in that it will vary on a region by region basis. There will be gradual increases in each city and rural county until the year 2022. At that point, the city of Portland will have a minimum wage of $14.75, smaller cities will be at $13.50, and rural areas will be at $12.50.

But for all their good intentions, the leftists that pushed this legislation through have no idea what they’re in for. It will be rife with unintended consequences. Take for instance, what happened in Seattle shortly after their city council approved a $15 minimum wage. Before the wage increase even went into effect, restaurants all over the city crunched the numbers for what it would mean to their bottom line, and shuttered their doors. And for those who are still employed, the minimum wage increase hasn’t really helped them at all. Here’s what two cleaning ladies told the Seattle Times last year:

The cleaning woman responded, “It sounds good, but it’s not good,”

“Why?” I asked.

“I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday, and vacation,” she responded. “No more free food,” she added.

The hotel used to feed her. Now, she has to bring her own food. Also, no overtime, she said. She used to work extra hours and received overtime pay.

“What else?” I asked.

“I have to pay for parking,” she said.

I then asked the part-time waitress, who was part of the catering staff.

“Yes, I’ve got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less,” she said. Before the new wage law was implemented, her hourly wage was $7. But her tips added to more than $15 an hour. Yes, she used to receive free food and parking. Now, she has to bring her own food and pay for parking.

It’s simple economics really, which apparently the purveyors of the minimum wage have no knowledge of. They artificially raised the price of services across the board, and look what happened? The businesses that couldn’t afford it either shut down or laid off workers, and the businesses that could afford it simply shifted some money around by eliminating benefits and putting those dollars toward wages.

Big surprise right? We’ll probably see the same thing happen in Oregon before these wage increases are enforced. Businesses owners in that state are saying and thinking the same thing the restaurateurs were saying in Seattle last year.

What the supporters of a higher minimum wage just don’t get, is that it hurts poor unskilled workers the most. They want to believe that it will help these people attain a livable wage, but it won’t. In fact, when states or cities try to raise the minimum wage, it often forces their low skilled workers to move to different states for better work opportunities. The minimum wage is a job killer that takes work away from people who need it the most. And in any case, those who do still have a job now have to pay more for goods and services in certain industries, now that there is no cheap labor.

It also sets the bar too high for workers that lack experience. Think about it. Whenever a business hires a new employee, they’re taking on a big risk. It costs money to train new people, and they have no idea if these people will work out. The less experienced they are, the more risk it entails, and thus they pay these workers less money to hedge those risks. With any minimum wage, it’s difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the newest members of the job market to attain their first work experience. Is it any wonder why all over the developed world, the youngest demographics have the highest unemployment rates? Surely this is a contributing factor.

To those that support a higher minimum wage, or any minimum wage for that matter, this isn’t rocket science. At the end of the day, some jobs simply aren’t worth that much money, no matter how much you pout about how unfair the world is. And when you set a minimum wage, what you’re really doing it outlawing all jobs that are worth less than that arbitrary amount.

It sounds pretty dumb when you put it that way, doesn’t it?

Contributed by Joshua Krause of The Daily Sheeple.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .

Related:

What Prices Look Like Before and After A Mandatory Minimum Wage Increase

Gov Report: Up To ONE MILLION Jobs Will Be Lost Due to Minimum Wage Hike

Here It Comes Seattle: “Stupidity Has A Price”

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

The information in this article will be a short synopsis of how the Petrodollar was created, in order to allow the readers to tie in an understanding to the bigger picture we face today.  We have all seen the volatility in the oil markets and the steady, daily decline in the BDI (Baltic Dry Index), both of which indicate the disease affecting the global economy.  That disease is almost terminal; the policies surrounding the Petrodollar and its influence are major contributing factors to the rapidly-deteriorating world economies that are on the brink of crashing.

Oil is the most important commodity from an economic perspective, and from the drilling of the first oil well in 1846 in Azerbaijan, formerly known as Baku, the world has embraced the search for and use of it.  Today oil is to be found in every facet of life, from the plastic spoon to the gasoline pump.  John D. Rockefeller built an oil refinery in Cleveland, Ohio in 1863 and subsequently formed Standard Oil of Ohio in 1870.  At its peak, the company controlled the market domestically, owning 90% of the U.S. oil industry until the company was broken up in 1911.  The Supreme Court had deemed it a monopoly, and it separated into smaller firms.

Shortly after World War II, the oil-rich governments around the world began to despise American control over their resources; therefore, the largest producers nationalized the oil fields and their own levels of domestic production.  Saudi Aramco formed in Saudi Arabia became the recognized leader of crude oil production in the world.  Then in 1949, U.S. domestic production of crude oil could no longer keep up with the country’s industrial demands.  For the first time, the U.S. became an importer of crude oil.

In July of 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference (officially the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference) took place in New Hampshire.  The conference lasted for almost a month, and 730 representatives from the 44 allied nations participated in it.  After the conference was concluded, the postwar global financial structure had been decided: gold had been fixed for delivery by the United States at $35 per ounce, and each signing member of the participants agreed on a fixed rate of exchange for currencies.

Meanwhile for the next several decades, the deficit in trade rose in the U.S., along with price inflation that began to erode the confidence in the American structure.  As a result, France withdrew its gold stored with the Federal Reserve in 1967.  Then in 1971, Nixon closed the door by removing the ability of any member nation to convert into gold.  The dollar (used as the world’s reserve currency) was still the reserve; however, it was completely fiat at this point.  At this time, President Nixon dispatched Kissinger to Saudi Arabia with a scheme that made extortionists pale in comparison.

The ruling House of Saud in Saudi Arabia was offered a deal by Kissinger with four parts.

1. America’s military would guarantee protection of Saudi Arabia and her oilfields.
2. The U.S. would also sell the Saudis any weapons needed.
3. The U.S. would furthermore guarantee protection from Israel and the other countries of the region.
4. Finally, the Saudi family was ensured that they would rule in perpetuity.

In return for such “magnanimous” services, the Saudi Arabians would make sure that all oil sales were done only in U.S. dollars.  In addition, the Saudis promised to take their profits and invest them in U.S. treasuries.

The gold would not be needed.  With all oil being sold in U.S. dollars, the other nations were obliged to build up a supply of dollars on the fixed currency exchange to buy the oil.  The Saudis signed on to this in 1974, and shortly thereafter in 1975, the other oil producing countries of OPEC followed suit.  You may notice there was roughly a three-year hiatus for the former, a four-year gap in the latter.

There was a fly in the ointment: The Yom Kippur war of 1973, in which these previously-hesitant nations realized that Israel was a threat to them.  Immediately following this conflict, OPEC raised its price of crude oil by 70% and then cut levels of production by 5%, taking oil from $3.00 per barrel to $12 per barrel virtually overnight.  The embargo lasted from October 1973 to March of 1974, before pressure from the Nixon administration and the threat of Israel and other potentially threatening nations took effect.

So in 1975, the world’s demand for oil was skyrocketing, and all sales were now conducted in U.S. dollars, placing the U.S. over all of the world’s economy for decades.  The underlying illness was the festering fiat currency and the accompanying paradigm shift that saw the decline in American domestic manufacturing and the reduction of our economy to one that was consumer-based, until we reached the point we are today.  In the next article we will examine where the Petrodollar stands as the world’s currency reserve, and cover actions and leading indicators that help to forecast what will be coming down the pike.

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

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

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Also Read:

Forced Economic Free Fall the Precursor to Collapse: “The World Is About To Enter A Global Depression Unlike Anything Seen Before”

The Trigger: If This Ever Happens You Know You’re Days Away From Nuclear War

Collision Course: As Obama Weakens America, The Russians And Chinese Prepare

Jeremiah Johnson’s Green Beret Survival Guides

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Note To Readers: This report is based on the assumption that Apple is on the up-and-up about their refusal to create backdoor tools for the FBI. As we know, however, intelligence agencies are experts at disinformation, so for all we know it is possible that backdoors already exist and what we have witnessed this week insofar as the encryption debate is concerned could be a psy-op designed to convince the public that their encryption is unhackable by government agencies. From a security perspective, we must assume that no electronic device is safe from prying eyes, as most theories on these matters are based on publicly known technologies and do not take into account top secret developments with quantum computing or advanced DARPA initiatives. 

Earlier this week Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote an open letter to the American public about the FBI’s attempts to compel the company to crack the iPhone of the San Bernadino Jihad attackers, saying that such a tool for the government is too dangerous to create. Google, Facebook and Twitter have now joined Apple in the phone encryption battle.

As explained by The Intercept, here’s a brief overview of what the FBI wants Apple to do:

The most obvious way to try and crack into your iPhone, and what the FBI is trying to do in the San Bernardino case, is to simply run through every possible passcode until the correct one is discovered and the phone is unlocked. This is known as a “brute force” attack.

…

One obstacle to testing all possible passcodes is that the iPhone intentionally slows down after you guess wrong a few times. An attacker can try four incorrect passcodes before she’s forced to wait one minute. If she continues to guess wrong, the time delay increases to five minutes, 15 minutes, and finally one hour. There’s even a setting to erase all data on the iPhone after 10 wrong guesses.

…

This is where the FBI’s requested backdoor comes into play. The FBI is demanding that Apple create a special version of the iPhone’s operating system, iOS, that removes the time delays and ignores the data erasure setting. The FBI could install this malicious software on the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone, brute force the passcode, unlock the phone, and access all of its data. And that process could hypothetically be repeated on anyone else’s iPhone.

The problem the FBI has is that the iPhone and other phones out there require a time-delay between passcode entries. Moreover, when a series of wrong passcodes is entered the delay is extended to as much as one hour, so even the fastest computer on the planet is rendered impotent while it waits for this delay to reset.

So the FBI is stuck using your iPhone to test passcodes. And it turns out that your iPhone is kind of slow at that: iPhones intentionally encrypt data in such a way that they must spend about 80 milliseconds doing the math needed to test a passcode, according to Apple. That limits them to testing 12.5 passcode guesses per second, which means that guessing a six-digit passcode would take, at most, just over 22 hours.

A six-digit passcode can be unlocked by the FBI in roughly a day. But according to the math behind the security feature, adding just 5 more digits could make hacking the phone in your lifetime almost impossible with current computing technologies (we’ll save quantum computing concepts for another time):

What if you use a longer passcode? Here’s how long the FBI would need:

• seven-digit passcodes will take up to 9.2 days, and on average 4.6 days, to crack
• eight-digit passcodes will take up to three months, and on average 46 days, to crack
• nine-digit passcodes will take up to 2.5 years, and on average 1.2 years, to crack
• 10-digit passcodes will take up to 25 years, and on average 12.6 years, to crack
• 11-digit passcodes will take up to 253 years, and on average 127 years, to crack
• 12-digit passcodes will take up to 2,536 years, and on average 1,268 years, to crack
• 13-digit passcodes will take up to 25,367 years, and on average 12,683 years, to crack

As The Intercept notes, remembering a totally random 11-digit passcode may seem like a daunting task, but anyone who was around before cell phone contact lists probably had at least five to ten different phone numbers memorized for family and close friends. This is essentially the same thing.

As a side note, using your phone’s fingerprint scanner as the primary mechanism for security is not sufficient.

First, a determined hacker, especially a state-sponsored one, could easily find a way to get your fingerprint, just as was done to Germany’s Minister of Defence in 2014 when hackers used internet photos of her hand to re-create her fingerprint. Second, and perhaps more importantly, a Virginia court has ruled you can be forced by police to unlock a phone or computer with your fingerprint – but not your password:

A Virginia state trial court held that a suspect “cannot be compelled [by the police] to produce his passcode to access his smartphone but he can be compelled to produce his fingerprint to do the same.”

….

Judge Frucci ruled that phone passwords were entitled to protection under the Fifth Amendment’s promise that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”He stressed that the password existed only in the defendant’s mind, and thus compelling the defendant to provide a passcode constituted a testimonial communication. The Fifth Amendment protects against such compulsion.

We live in a brave new world, and while you may think you have nothing to hide, keep in mind that with the literal millions of laws on the books in the United States the average American commits three felonies per day. Thus, if a law enforcement agency were to target you, they would most certainly find evidence of wrong doing and you can be assured that your phone will be one of the first pieces of evidence they will target.

Also Read:

“Too Dangerous to Create”: Apple Defies FBI Order to Build Backdoor Software To Unlock Any iPhone

New “Geo Fence” Technology Lets DHS, FBI and Apple Command Your Phone’s Camera and Microphone

Hackers Cause Blackout For First Time In History

What Is The Best Method Of Rebellion Against Tyranny?

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

In 2014 a new Federal law made it possible for pension funds to cut benefits for their recipients. Much to the protest of pensioners, the government and numerous unions supporting the change cited pension plans that were in imminent danger of collapse, saying that the only way to save the funds was to cut benefits to potentially millions of recipients. Six months later, the U.S. Supreme Court took things a step further when they opined that the government has the right to fully seize 401(k) and pension funds that were being poorly managed.

Of course, most Americans were either not paying attention or completely ignored the ramifications of the new rules set forth by their government because, well, anyone who talks about the potential for a collapse of pension funds or the economy is, as President Barack Obama so eloquently noted in his recent State of the Union Speech, “peddling fiction.”

Except in October of last year the canary in the coal mine fell over and died when Illinois announced that the State was posting pension payments because it ran out of money.

Fast forward a few more months and things have been taken to the next level. The Central State pension fund in Kansas became the first such fund to take advantage of the 2014 law as 400,000 Americans who depend on their monthly pension income to pay for such things as their mortgage, groceries and medical expenses saw an average of $1,400 per month sliced of their monthly benefits.

Dale Dorsey isn’t happy.

After working 33 years, he’s facing a 55% cut to his pension benefits, a blow which he says will “cripple” his family and imperil the livelihood of his two children, one of whom is in the fourth grade and one of whom is just entering high school.

Dorsey attended a town hall meeting in Kansas City on Tuesday where retirees turned out for a discussion on “massive” pension cuts proposed by the Central States Pension Fund, which covers 400,000 participants, and which will almost certainly go broke within the next decade.

“A controversial 2014 law allowed the pension to propose [deep] cuts, many of them by half or more, as a way to perhaps save the fund,” The Kansas City Star wrote earlier this week adding that “two much smaller pensions also have sought similar relief under the law, and still more pensions are significantly underfunded.”

And if you think this is the end of it, consider the words of long time teamster member Jay Perry who says the writing is on the wal:

“What’s happening to us is a microcosm of what’s going to happen to the rest of the pensions in the United States”

It was all fun and games during the boom times when governments and companies promised pensioners exorbitant retirements based on an unlimited growth rate model. Now reality is setting in.

And keep in mind that this is just the first part of the coming retirement fund destruction. As we noted above, the Supreme Court ruling gives the government the “right” to step in and seize these underperforming funds.

So, the first step is to give pension funds the ability to cut benefits, which we are seeing now and will continue to see going forward as funds all over the country struggle to keep the benefits flowing. Next, the government will identify these funds as under-performing and mismanaged, at which point they will outright seize the entire industry just as they did with health care.

The pain is coming, America. You’d better be prepared to deal with the fallout.

Also Read:

13 Urgent Reports To Help You Collapse-Proof Your Life

Prepare For Economic Collapse And Other Disasters: The Prepper’s Blueprint

New Federal Law Targets Retirement Benefit Cuts: “We Thought Our Pension Was Secure”

Coming for Your Funds: Supremes “Justify Seizure of Pension Funds to PROTECT Pensioners”

Peter Schiff Warns: “The Whole Economy Has Imploded… Collapse Is Coming”

7 Jobs That Are Going to Survive the Next Economic Crash

Mark Levin: Government Is “Simulating the Collapse of Our Financial System, the Collapse of Our Society and the Potential for Widespread Violence”

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com