Country To Escape The Collapse Of America? 10 Questions To Ask Yourself First

The Economic Collapse
March 9, 2013

Why are so many people leaving the United States right now?  Over the past couple of years, an increasing number of Americans have decided that moving to another country is the best way to prepare for the collapse of America.  According to the U.S. State Department, an all-time record of more than 6 million Americans are now working or studying overseas.  Of course many of those that have left the country do not believe that the U.S. economy is going to collapse, but without a doubt there are an increasing number of preppers that believe that now is the time to "escape from America" while they still can.  And certainly there are a lot of reasons why the U.S. is becoming less appealing with each passing day.  In addition to our economic problems, crime is on the rise in our cities, our liberties and freedoms are being eroded at a frightening pace, political correctness is wildly out of control, and our corrupt politicians continue to make things even worse.  But is life really that much better in the rest of the world?  The sad truth is that life in most other nations is more difficult than it is in the United States.  Yes, there are some nations that are relatively stable and that look promising at first glance, but the truth is that moving to another country is never easy.  If you plan to do it, there are some hard questions that you need to ask yourself first.

If you plan to move permanently to another nation, it would be wise to visit first.  The way that things work in a foreign country is often very, very different from how things work in the United States.  If you are not accustomed to being in a foreign culture, it can feel like your whole world is being turned upside down.

But of course it is definitely possible to make a successful transition to another culture.  Millions of Americans have done it.  The following is from a recent RT article...

Ever dream of leaving it all behind and heading out of America? You’re not the only one. A new study shows that more US citizens than ever before are living outside of the country.

According to statistics from the US State Department, around 6.4 million Americans are either working or studying overseas, which Gallup says is the largest number ever for such statistic.

The polling organization came across the number after conducting surveys in 135 outside nations and the information behind the numbers reveal that this isn’t exactly a longtime coming either — numbers have skyrocketed only in recent years. In the 24 months before polling began, the number of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 living abroad managed to surge from barely 1 percent to over 5.1 percent. For those under the age span wishing to move overseas, the percentage has jumped in the same amount of time from 15 percent to 40.

But picking up and moving to a foreign nation is not something to be done lightly.

The following are 10 questions to ask yourself before you decide to move to another country...

Read the entire article

Ammo Shortages: More Than Simple Supply and Demand?

New American

March 9, 2013

Awr Hawkins, a columnist for Breitbart.com, asked back in February if the present shortages of ammunition are a deliberate attempt by government agencies to so overwhelm existing manufacturers with orders for billions of rounds that it is resulting in “de facto” gun control. Hawkins asked: “What if the shortage is intentional?”

On Wednesday he raised the same question:

While many of the conspiracy theories that have been propounded to explain DHS [Department of Homeland Security] ammo purchases ought to be rejected out of hand, it seems increasingly reasonable to believe these multiple, massive ammo orders have been placed one upon the other to exasperate the already low supplies in the private market.

It continues to sound like gun control by another name.

Certainly there are those who see a conspiracy behind every tree, none more so perhaps than Mac Slavo. Writing for his inelegantly named SHTF Plan, he points out that since President Obama was first elected in 2008, Americans have purchased more than 65 million guns, which averages one new gun purchase every 1.5 seconds. Says Slavo, this “suggests there is much more … than just people stocking up to go hunting or sports shooting.” And then, without providing sources, Slavo ticks off the statistics: Smith and Wesson is running at full capacity, Ruger is ramping up production to meet demand, Armalite is “maxed out,” Colt is increasing its production runs, Springfield Armory is “running 30-45 days behind,” while Magpul “is behind 1 MILLION (his bold) mags.… Do not expect any large quantities anytime soon.”

And as far as re-loaders are concerned, Slavo says, “It could be 6-9 months before things get caught up. Sorry for the bleak news.”

Slavo apparently didn’t get the memo, however, from Hornady Manufacturing Company, the largest independent producer of bullets in the world. On February 12, the company issued a short statement on availability and provided some responses to rumors floating around the Internet:

The current political climate has caused extremely high demand on all shooting industry products, including ours. Empty retail shelves, long back orders, and exaggerated price increases on online auction sites — all fueled by rumors and conjecture — have amplified concerns about the availability of ammunition and firearms-related items.

If the information you hear doesn’t originate from Hornady Manufacturing, don’t believe it.

Here are some of rumors we’ve heard, and questions we’ve received:

•Have you stopped production, or has the government forced you to stop?

◦Not at all.

•Did you stop selling bullets so you could only make loaded ammunition?

◦Absolutely not.

•Since we can’t find your product you must be selling it all to the government.

◦Nope, less than 5% of our sales are to government entities.

•Why can’t you make more? Ramp up production? Turn on all the machines?

◦ We’ve been steadily growing our production for a long time, especially the last five years. We’ve added presses, lathes, CNC equipment, people and space. Many popular items are produced 24 hours a day.

Several hundred Hornady employees work overtime every week to produce as much as safely possible. If there is any question about that — please take a tour of the factory. You’ll be amazed at what you see.

We are producing as much as we can; much more than last year, which was a lot more than the year before, etc. No one wants to ship more during this time than we do.

We appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience. We don’t know when the situation will improve, so please bear with us a little longer. And remember, when it comes to Hornady Manufacturing, if you don’t hear it from us, please don’t believe it.

This isn’t the first time that demand for ammunition has outstripped supply. Following the election of President Obama in 2008, there was an almost immediate shortage of small arms ammunition but by September 2011, ammunition supplies for the most popular calibers — .45 ACP and .40 S&W — were back to normal.

Back in late 1973, there was a toilet paper shortage. Writers for Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show had learned of a rumor that the Navy was in danger of running out of toilet paper partly because of the 1973 oil crisis and decided to have a little fun with it. In his opening monologue on the evening of December 19, Carson asked: “Do you know what’s disappearing from supermarket shelves? Toilet paper! There’s an acute shortage of toilet paper in the United States!”

The next morning 20 million people headed to their local grocery stores and bought up as much TP as they could carry. By noon nearly every major store’s shelves were empty. Some stores tried rationing. Others just told customers when they expected their next shipment and to come back then.

For three weeks TP was in extremely short supply, so much so that Carson apologized a few days later that there was no shortage after all, that it was just a gag.

The shortage of toilet paper became a self-fulfilling prophecy, a prediction about future events that causes those events to come true. Such self-fulfilling prophecies can be found in ancient literature, and have even been “formalized” in social science. For example, sociologist Robert K. Mertoncodified the expression where he defined such a prophecy as,

a false definition … evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This … perpetuates a reign of error.

M. L. McPherson, writing for the National Association for Gun Rights, explained what is actually happening: Demand suddenly rises so quickly that it outstrips supply. Supply is slow to catch up and so the perception that shortages will last a long time and, further, that they are due to market manipulation increase over time. Whenever supply comes in, buyers sweep it up, leaving shelves empty and the impression that there are continuing shortages.

Explains McPherson, it doesn’t take much of an increase in demand to create the impression of shortages:

Here is the critical fact: before the [election of Obama], no related manufacturer had the facilities to increase production [by] more than about 40%. Moreover, even if a company did have such capacity, it could not affordably obtain raw materials to do so — companies [down line] that supply raw materials cannot increase capacity more than about 40%.

In economics this is called the supply-chain bottleneck: Somewhere down the supply chain there will be a supplier that simply cannot ramp up his production as fast as those up line would like. It becomes the slowest vessel in the convoy. During wartime a whole convoy could only move as fast as the slowest ship. So it is with a sudden increase in demand, no matter what the reason.

McPherson says it’s just reality. Manufacturers will concentrate on their most profitable lines and only pause when either 1) the market becomes saturated, or 2) something breaks and needs fixing.

Massad Ayoob, writing for Back Woods Home magazine, put the matter calmly and matter-of-factly:

[Present shortages] may mean nothing more malignant than that a large government agency wants a contractual guarantee that they’ll be able to get enough to train and qualify their people, even if their actual deliveries never come close to the top level to which that contract holds the manufacturer…

I don’t see this as a harbinger of martial law and civil war as some do. Being in law enforcement myself, I’ve seen the severe shortages that have plagued police agencies in the last several years.

But in the real world he suggests buying when there are supplies available even though eventually, once again, supply and demand will come back into balance. If nothing else, he says,

if inflation runs rampant and turns hundred dollar bills into toilet paper, ammo is always worthwhile for barter.

The Fema Camp Bill is Back! (Video)

Global Political Awakening
Lee Rogers

March 9, 2013

It looks as if Representative Alcee Hastings a Democrat from Florida has decided to reintroduce his FEMA Camp bill. A few years ago I was the first person to write an article about this awful piece of legislation. Fortunately, I was successful in exposing it to a much larger group of people via the alternative media and the bill did not move forward in the legislative process. The latest iteration of this bill has been introduced as House Resolution 390 otherwise known as the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act. This bill would authorize not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers to be run by FEMA under the command of the Secretary of Homeland Security.

I was extremely critical of an earlier version of the bill which was proposed in the 111th Congress as HR 645. The bill used vague language to give the Secretary of Homeland Security carte blanche power to use these facilities for anything that the Secretary felt was appropriate. In other words if the Secretary of Homeland Security felt like using them as death camps than potentially that could have been considered a lawful use of the facilities according to the language in the bill. In this new version it looks like Representative Hastings got the message and decided to remove the vague language even though the Secretary of Homeland Security would still be in charge of the proposed facilities.

One of the minimum requirements of a national emergency center as defined by the bill is that it is capable of meeting for an extended period of time the housing, health, transportation, education, public works, humanitarian and other transition needs of a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster. It basically sounds like a concentration camp. Similar types of facilities were setup by Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II to house large numbers of Japanese Americans. In other words, there is historical precedence for the federal government forcibly relocating large numbers of people into government run concentration camps. There is an increasing amount of rhetoric from the federal government and corporate media that Constitutionalists, gun owners and other liberty minded people might be considered potential terrorists. Would it really be a stretch to think that these facilities could be used to house people that they consider to be enemies?

Considering how much the federal government has lied to the American people in the past, you would be absolutely insane to set foot in one of these proposed national emergency centers. For anybody who believes this is conspiracy theory talk, you have to understand that nobody in the federal government is going to openly propose that they are building facilities to detain large numbers of Americans during a martial law scenario. If they did they’d be widely criticized and the legislation would go nowhere. Instead they are going to make it sound as if these facilities are to be used for a beneficial purpose in order to conceal what they could ultimately be used for which is why they are called national emergency centers instead of FEMA camps or concentration camp facilities. It is the same concept used by the power structure in George Orwell’s book 1984 where the government agency called the Ministry of Love is in reality the Ministry of Torture.

Not only that, but why do we need the federal government specifically establishing national emergency centers on closed military installations? These are places that were designed to control who can enter and who can leave. Interestingly enough, one of the limitations included in the new version of the bill is that it does not authorize any federal officer or employee to force an individual to enter a national emergency center or prevent an individual from leaving a national emergency center. This is funny because a member of the U.S. military is technically not considered a federal officer or employee. So even though a federal officer or employee wouldn’t be able to force a person into one of these facilities or prevent them from leaving, it does not necessarily prevent a member of the military from performing these functions. Considering that members of the military would most likely be the ones responsible for the security of such a facility, it makes the limitation entirely meaningless.

To summarize, it looks as if the new bill has been changed to deflect the most damning criticisms posed towards earlier versions but it still is a dangerous piece of legislation. It is no secret that the federal government already has facilities that can hold large numbers of people if they have the need to do so. The Bush 43 regime approved the refurbishment of the old Japanese internment camps and in the mid-2000s KBR was literally given a multi-million dollar contract to build detention facilities.

In the 1980s, Lt. Col. Oliver North was questioned during the Iran Contra hearings about his role in the development of a continuity of government plan known as Readiness Exercise 1984 or Rex 84 for short. This plan involved the implementation of martial law which included the detainment of large numbers of American citizens who the federal government deemed to be threats to national security. Subsequently, the Miami Herald on July 5th 1987 did a story on this same continuity of government plan even going into how FEMA would run these internment facilities during a declaration of martial law.

In addition to what we just covered with KBR and the refurbishment of the old Japanese internment camps, there have been many people who have identified strange government facilities around the United States that appeared to be setup for the purpose of holding large numbers of people. As a result, this bill if passed into law would simply expand upon pre-existing facilities and create a more robust FEMA camp infrastructure. Keep in mind that the bill authorizes a minimum of 6 national emergency centers but that’s just the minimum. Potentially this bill could authorize the establishment of many national emergency centers or FEMA camps and that is not acceptable.

The Dow Hits An All-Time High! Translation: A Bubble Is Always Biggest Right Before It Bursts

Economic Collapse
March 6, 2013

Reckless money printing by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has pumped up the Dow to a brand new all-time high.  So what comes next?  Will the Dow go even higher?  Hopefully it will.  In fact, it would be great if the Dow was able to hit 15,000 before it finally came crashing down.  That would give all of us some more time to prepare for the nightmarish economic crisis that is rapidly approaching.  As you will see below, the U.S. economy is in far, far worse shape than it was the last time the Dow reached a record high back in 2007.  In addition, all of the long-term trends that are ripping our economy to shreds just continue to get even worse and our debt just continues to explode.  Unfortunately, the Dow has become completely divorced from economic reality in recent years because of Fed manipulation.  All of this funny money that the Federal Reserve has been cranking out has made the wealthy even wealthier, but this bubble will not last for too much longer.  What goes up must come down.  And remember, a bubble is always biggest right before it bursts.

Fortunately, it looks like an increasing number of people out there are starting to recognize that the primary reason why stocks have been going up is because of the Fed.  Just check out this excerpt from a recent article by the USA Today editorial board…

The Federal Reserve’s purchases have driven interest rates to near zero. This has stimulated the economy but not without cost. Savers, particularly older ones trying to live on income from their investments, are starved for safe options. They’ve been forced into stocks, which is one reason the market has been acting as if it’s on steroids. Further, with borrowing costs low, Congress and the White House have less incentive to rein in the national debt. Rock-bottom interest rates have also distorted markets.

The best indication that the Fed’s bond-buying purchases are pushing stocks up artificially is that investors run for cover whenever there is a hint that the Fed might change course, as happened recently. On Monday, billionaire superinvestor Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett told CNBC that markets are on a “hair trigger” waiting for signs of change from the Fed. The market is “hooked on the drug” of easy money, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher told Reuters.

Fisher’s comparison of Fed policies to a drug is apt. Markets might not like the idea of the drug being withdrawn now, when the Fed holds a portfolio of $3 trillion. But the withdrawal symptoms will be a lot worse once the portfolio grows to $4 trillion, or more.

Those sentiments were echoed by Gordon Charlop, a trader at Rosenblatt Securities, during a recent appearance on CNBC…

“The Wizard of the Fed, Ben [Bernanke], has done a great job propping up the market, but the question is how does the wizard move the pin from the balloon without blowing the whole thing up?” said Charlop. “This is getting out of balance and he’s got to figure out a way to justify the levels that we’ve gotten to and draw back on some of the stimulus.”

Of course, in the end, the bursting of this bubble is going to be very messy.

The Fed has dramatically distorted the market in an attempt to make things look good, but now the financial markets are completely and totally addicted to easy money.  Is there any chance that the Fed will be able to take away that easy money without causing disaster?

There are only a few ways that this current scenario can play out.  The following is what Stanley Druckenmiller recently told CNBC…

“I don’t know when it’s going to end, but my guess is, it’s going to end very badly; and it’s going to end very badly because, again, when you get the biggest price in the world, interest rates, being manipulated you get a misallocation of resources and this is going to end in one of two ways – with a malinvestment bust which we got in ’07-’08 (we didn’t get inflation). We got a malinvestment bust because of the bubble that was created in housing. Or it could end with just monetizing the debt and off we go in inflation. So that’s a very binary outcome – they’re both bad.”

What the Fed has done to the money supply in recent years has been absolutely unprecedented.  Just check out how our money supply has skyrocketed since the last financial crisis…

So what happens when the amount of money in an economy rises rapidly?

Well, if I remember Econ 101 correctly, that would mean that prices should go up.

And that is exactly what has happened.  And since most of the money that the Fed has created has gone into the financial system first, it should not be a surprise that we have seen a bubble in financial assets.

In a previous article that I wrote last September, I warned that QE3 would cause stocks to go up…

So what have the previous rounds of quantitative easing accomplished?  Well, they have driven up the prices of financial assets.  Those that own stocks have done very well the past couple of years.  So who owns stocks?  The wealthy do.  In fact, 82 percentof all individually held stocks are owned by the wealthiest 5 percent of all Americans.  Those that have invested in commodities have also done very nicely in recent years.  We have seen gold, silver, oil and agricultural commodities all do very well.  But that also means that average Americans are paying more for basic necessities such as food and gasoline.  So the first two rounds of quantitative easing made the wealthy even wealthier while causing living standards to fall for all the rest of us.  Is there any reason to believe that QE3 will be any different?

Of course not.

So will stocks continue to go up indefinitely?

No way.

As I have also written about previously, the money printing that the Fed is doing right now is not nearly enough to stop the mammothderivatives crisis that is coming.

A derivatives crisis was one of the primary reasons for the financial crash of 2008, but most Americans still have no idea what derivatives are.

They can be very complex, but I think that it is easiest just to think of them as side bets.

When someone buys a derivative, they are not buying anything real.  They are simply betting that something will or will not happen.

For example, if you bet $100 that the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series this year, would you be “investing” in anything real?

Of course not.

Well, it is the same with most derivatives.

Today, Wall Street has become the biggest casino in the entire world and trillions of dollars of very reckless bets have been made.

In fact, most Americans would be absolutely shocked to learn how exposed to derivatives some of our largest financial institutions are.  The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles entitled “The Coming Derivatives Panic That Will Destroy Global Financial Markets“…

It would be hard to overstate the recklessness of these banks.  The numbers that you are about to see are absolutely jaw-dropping.  According to the Comptroller of the Currency, four of the largest U.S. banks are walking a tightrope of risk, leverage and debt when it comes to derivatives.  Just check out how exposed they are…

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $1,812,837,000,000 (just over 1.8 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $69,238,349,000,000 (more than 69 trillion dollars)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,347,841,000,000 (a bit more than 1.3 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $52,150,970,000,000 (more than 52 trillion dollars)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $1,445,093,000,000 (a bit more than 1.4 trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,405,372,000,000 (more than 44 trillion dollars)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $114,693,000,000 (a bit more than 114 billion dollars – yes, you read that correctly)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $41,580,395,000,000 (more than 41 trillion dollars)

That means that the total exposure that Goldman Sachs has to derivatives contracts is more than 362 times greater than their total assets.

When the derivatives crash happens, there won’t be enough money in the entire world to fix it.

So enjoy this little stock market bubble while you can.

It will end soon enough.

And of course stocks should not be this high in the first place.  The underlying economic fundamentals do not justify these kinds of stock prices whatsoever.

A recent CNN article noted that the last time the Dow hit a record high that unemployment in the U.S. was much lower…

Consider this. When the Dow hit its now old record high back in October 2007, the economy was still in good shape — although it was just a few months away from the beginning of the Great Recession.

The unemployment rate in October 2007 was 4.7%. In January of this year, the unemployment rate was 7.9%.

And that same article also pointed out that GDP growth and housing prices were also much stronger back in 2007…

Gross domestic product grew 3% in the third quarter of 2007. Revised figures from the government last week showed that GDP in the fourth quarter of 2012 rose a scant 0.1%. But I guess that’s good news considering the first estimate showed a 0.1% decline.

And despite all the hoopla about the steady recovery in the housing market over the past year, real estate is still in a bear market. The most recent level of the S&P Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index, one of the most widely watched gauges of the health of housing, is still 24% below where it was in October 2007.

We have never even come close to recovering from the last economic crisis.  Most Americans seem to have forgotten how good things were back then, but a recent Zero Hedge article included some more points of comparison between October 2007 and today…

• Dow Jones Industrial Average: Then 14164.5; Now 14164.5
• Regular Gas Price: Then $2.75; Now $3.73
• GDP Growth: Then +2.5%; Now +1.6%
• Americans Unemployed (in Labor Force): Then 6.7 million; Now 13.2 million
• Americans On Food Stamps: Then 26.9 million; Now 47.69 million
• Size of Fed’s Balance Sheet: Then $0.89 trillion; Now $3.01 trillion
• US Debt as a Percentage of GDP: Then ~38%; Now 74.2%
• US Deficit (LTM): Then $97 billion; Now $975.6 billion
• Total US Debt Oustanding: Then $9.008 trillion; Now $16.43 trillion
• US Household Debt: Then $13.5 trillion; Now 12.87 trillion
• Labor Force Particpation Rate: Then 65.8%; Now 63.6%
• Consumer Confidence: Then 99.5; Now 69.6

And of course anyone that reads my site regularly knows that the U.S. economy has been in a state of persistent decline over the past several years.

Read the entire article

Eric Holder: Drone strikes against Americans on U.S. soil are legal

Washington Examiner

Attorney General Eric Holder

March 6, 2013

Attorney General Eric Holder can imagine a scenario in which it would be constitutional to carry out a drone strike against an American on American soil, he wrote in a letter to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

“It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” Holder replied in a letter yesterday to Paul’s question about whether Obama “has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.”

Paul condemned the idea. “The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” he said in a statement.

Holder noted that Paul’s question was “entirely hypothetical [and] unlikely to occur,” but cited the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as the type of incidents that might provoke such a response.

“Were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the President on the scope of his authority,” he concluded.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, an attorney and Judiciary Committee member, told The Washington Examiner last month that the drone policy so far outlined by the administration is too vague.

“That has the potential to swallow the rule,” Lee said after the drone program white paper was leaked. “If you’re going to regard somebody as presenting an imminent threat of an attack on the U.S. simply because you have concluded that they are an ‘operational leader’ or they are involved in planning an attack in one way or another, you find yourself giving way to much discretion to the government.”

Lee said that the White House should release the formal legal analysis underpinning the drone program. “We know that in some instances where the government has released its legal analysis, it gets it wrong,” he said.

Government arms race kicks into high gear as DHS buys 2,700 armored vehicles for streets of America

Natural News
March 5, 2013

When DHS purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition to be used domestically, inside the USA, and I said this looks like a government agency preparing for war with the American people, I was told, “That’s crazy. The government would never do that.”

When DHS purchased 7,000 full-auto assault rifles to be used inside the United States, calling them “personal defense weapons” that could be used in urban warfare, I was once again told I was crazy for suggesting the government was arming up for war with the American people.

Now DHS has retrofitted 2,717 “Navistar Defense” armored vehicles for service on the streets of America. Click here to see pictures and specs for this vehicle from the manufacturer’s website.

These vehicles, which people who don’t know any better might call “light tanks,” are specifically designed to resist mines and ambush attacks. They use bulletproof windows and are designed to withstand small arms fire, including smaller-caliber rifles such as .223 Remington.

The retrofit was completed in May, 2012, and these 2,700+ armored vehicles are now ready to deploy across the streets of America, reports Modern Survival Blog, the primary source for this story.

A domestic arms race

Importantly, none of these armaments — billions of bullets, thousands of full-auto assault rifles and thousands of armored assault vehicles — are being purchased by the Pentagon for use in wars overseas. Instead, these are being purchased by DHS for use inside the United States… on the streets of America.

This is a domestic department of the federal government that is clearly and unambiguously arming for war against the American people.

This war will also involve the use of armed military drones attacking American citizens, which is exactly why the Obama administration now claims the legal authority to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil using militarized drones.

This is at the same time the American people are arming up like never before as well. U.S. ammunition manufacturers are currently producing over one billion rounds per week. All that ammo is flying off the shelves, with virtually nothing remaining in stock anywhere.

Magazine manufacturers like ProMag Industries are backordered for over a year, and gun manufacturers are anywhere from 6 months to 18 months behind schedule, desperately trying to keep up with customer demand that continues to grow. I called Desert Tactical Arms today and confirmed their guns are running six months behind schedule. This is the company that makes the portable .338 Lapua and .50 BMG rifles favored by U.S. troops in activities such as so-called “hard target interdiction.” (i.e. killing vehicles.)

As the government arms race continues to stockpile weapons and ammo in the hands of DHS, the American people are increasingly turning to large-caliber weapons for their own stockpiles. Just last week, I recently went shooting here in Texas where we had three .50 cal Barrett BMG rifles, plus two .338 Lapua magnum sniper rifles, all firing on some thick steel targets. The targets were decimated, and every single shooter in our group was able to put lead on target, even from long-range distances.

Holocaust deniers and DHS deniers

Of course, there are people who deny DHS is engaged in an arms race, just as there are Holocaust deniers who deny Hitler ever took guns away from the Jews (before committing mass murder). Those deniers either claim that these purchases are not happening (but they are), or that the government is only buying such large quantities “to save money.”

This is a distraction, of course. You don’t “save money” buying things you don’t need. Clearly, someone at the top of DHS believes the government needs these armored vehicles and full-auto assault rifles deployed on the streets of America.

But the bigger question — and this is the question the mainstream media refuses to even ask — is WHY does DHS need:

• 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition
• 7,000+ assault rifles
• 2,700+ armored assault vehicles

Unless you’re insane or a denier, the answer is clear: DHS is expecting a large-scale domestic conflict.

Why is DHS expecting a domestic war?

So then, the commonsense question becomes: Why is DHS expecting a domestic war?

I’ve asked this question of many of my contacts, and what I keep hearing is that an economic collapse is fast approaching, and DHS is likely going to use all this equipment to try to maintain government power during the chaos and riots that are sure to follow the economic collapse. This equipment will all be needed to “maintain order on the streets,” I’m told.

But that’s only one possible scenario. Another scenario involves the criminally-run government announcing a nationwide gun confiscation scheme (just as Sen. Feinstein says she wants), then attempting to defend itself against the inevitable civil war that will result. The most likely outcome here is that DHS will only be able to control the areas that have been forcibly disarmed such as Chicago and New York City. They will be utterly unable to hold rural territories where freedom-loving Americans have already decided to fight back against tyranny no matter what the cost.

Yet a third scenario could involve government anticipation of a nuclear attack from North Korea followed by a “Red Dawn” land invasion from China or Korea. And DHS is here to fight for freedom and defeat the communists. (And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell ya… far more likely is that DHS wants to welcome in the communists!)

This domestic war machine was built by claiming it was for terrorists

Keep in mind that DHS was created by President Bush in response to the 9/11 terror attacks. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. federal government has built a domestic war infrastructure by claiming it was all being constructed to protect us from the terrorists.

Now, in 2013, the government has “flipped the script” on who the threat is. According to Janet Napolitano, head of DHS, the real threat to America is now returning veterans and gun owners. So the feds have this massive armament infrastructure and spy grid lockdown over the entire population, and it turns out it was all built not for terrorists but for YOU.

The terrorists are nowhere to be found in all this, by the way. Every single terror plot halted by the FBI is a terror plot that was literally dreamed up, planned and nearly carried out by the FBI.

TSA has caught exactly zero terrorists trying to sneak through airport security.

The “war on terror” is and always has been a complete hoax. The purpose of the hoax was to provide a cover story for the building up of a massive domestic military force to be used against the American people when the time comes.

That’s what we are really seeing with the purchase of ammo, automatic weapons and armored assault vehicles. This is why cable barriers are being erected on highways across the country. And this is why DHS has recently begun redacting the requested quantities from its public bid documents… in order to make sure the public can no longer learn how much it’s stockpiling weapons and ammo.

But none of this is real, right?

Astonishingly, the vast majority of Americans remain completely unaware of any of this. For those mainstream sheeple, anything that doesn’t appear on CNN must not be real.

So DHS really isn’t buying 1.6 billion rounds of ammo, 7,000+ assault rifles, or 2,700+ armored mine-resistant assault vehicles. All of us who are reporting these purchases are “conspiracy theorists,” we’re all told, even though what we’re reporting on is absolutely true.

Remember this: Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs has now publicly admitted he was ordered by the White House to deny the existence of the U.S. militarized drone program even while the program existed and was known to be real. Denial has always been a key tactic for any government preparing to do something unethical or criminal.

But I’ve been told by some seemingly convincing people that none of this is real. It’s all just a bad dream, you see, and soon you will wake up and find yourself in the land of the free, where there isn’t poison in the crops and there isn’t mercury in the vaccines. The President love you, and corporations are all ethical. Senators are humanitarians who put the good of the country ahead of their own selfish greed. The FDA stops censoring the truth about nutritional therapies and the USDA outlaws GMOs.

That’s the delusional world that 90% of Americans believe they live in, and they even believe that as long as they just “believe” something, then reality doesn’t even matter. Belief IS reality, according to the “Law of Attraction” followers, and if you just believe the government is good, then your belief will make it so.

That’s a fascinating bit of self-hypnosis, because DHS doesn’t care what you believe. It is stockpiling guns, ammo and armored vehicles for some very real reason. This isn’t their imagination: it’s hardware.

And hardware is rarely accumulated in such large quantities unless it is deemed necessary for some specific purpose. It seems that the American people — delusional or otherwise — may soon discover what purpose DHS has in mind.

Pentagon Invites Chinese general who threatened nuclear strike on Hundreds of U.S. Cities

Washington Free Beacon
March 5, 2013

Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu / du.edu

A Chinese general who once threatened to use nuclear weapons against hundreds of U.S. cities will visit the Pentagon this week as part of a U.S.-China military exchange program.

Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu, who is head of China’s National Defense University, will take part in a  “familiarization exchange,” Maj. Catherine Wilkinson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told the Free Beacon.

“The delegation will visit Hawaii and D.C.,” she said. “A military delegation from the U.S. Pacific Command will visit China later this year for a reciprocal exchange.”

Zhu will lead a group of 10 senior colonels from all branches of the Chinese military, Wilkinson said. She declined to provide the names of the officers.

Zhu is best known for inflammatory comments made to two foreign news reporters in 2005 when he said China would use nuclear weapons against the United States in any conflict over Taiwan.

A State Department spokesman at the time called the comments “highly irresponsible.”

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position [sic]-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China’s territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” Zhu told reporters for the Financial Times and the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal, according to their July 14, 2005, editions.

The comments raised questions within the Pentagon about the sincerity of China’s policy of not being the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict.

Read the entire article

CURL: Obama just wants to watch the world burn

Washington Times

March 4, 2013

“Some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
— The Joker in “The Dark Knight”

No one can continue to assert that President Obama is simply incompetent. Yes, he is indeed that. Into his fifth year as president, America is worse under his command: Millions are still out of work — unemployment stands exactly where it was the day he took office; millions more are on food stamps; and despite his claim otherwise, the U.S. is less respected in the world than ever before.

But that was all before the “sequester.” The order trims every dollar spent by the federal government — read: your money — by a paltry 2 cents. To understand the enormity of the cut, consider this: The 2013 budget calls for $3,603 billion in spending; now, with the across-the-board automatic cuts, the government can spend only $3,518 billion. Or $3.518 trillion.

For perspective, the federal budget began its rocketlike ascent in 1976. The year before, spending was a scant $331 billion (with a B) in current dollars. The first year Jimmy Carter was in office, it soared to $409 billion. President Reagan, in the midst of the Cold War, continued the deficit spending. By 1987, expenditures topped $1 trillion for the first time. Under President George W. Bush, the budget soared above $2 trillion. And in 2009, the budget went from $2.9 trillion to $3.5 trillion. Estimates show that cash outlays will top $4 trillion just two years from now.

But the annual deficit was not always commensurate with the growing budget. In 1987, the shortfall was just $149.7 billion. In Mr. Bush’s next-to-last year, just $160.7 billion. But in 2009, the year a community organizer from Chicago took office, the deficit ballooned to $1,400 billion. With three $3 trillion-plus budgets under this president, the deficit has remained above $1 trillion each year — even as tax revenue has averaged about $2.2 trillion.

There is little merit in arguments against spending cuts, and not a speck of support for the theory that America can tax itself out of its growing sinkhole. The federal government has simply grown too large, spends too much. We’re now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar we spend. Like any family faced with with a shortfall of cash, the first — and, really, only — solution is to reduce spending. It’s not rocket science. And Americans are doing just that every day.

So, with all the doom and gloom, what did the president do? Did he seek to sooth America, allay its citizens’ fear of Armageddon? Say, “Hey, you are tightening your belt, so the least your government can do is cut spending”? Quite the contrary. The president has spent the last few weeks needling up the horrors that will come from cutting a scant 2 cents from ever federal dollar spent. America will be less safe, parks will shut down, food will go uninspected, illegal aliens will run free, the elderly will die unattended — the list went on and on.

Read the entire article

Courts are likely to get last word on gun control

Washington Times

March 4, 2013

With congressional action on gun control largely stuck in a holding pattern on Capitol Hill, the real battlefields on the issue may become local, state and federal courtrooms.

The New York attorney general’s office is due before the state Supreme Court next month to defend the constitutionality of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s tough new gun control package, and two separate appellate courts recently issued opposing opinions on whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to carry a concealed weapon in public.

Mr. Cuomo signed sweeping gun control measures into law in January that included a beefed-up ban on so-called assault weapons and a limit on magazine capacity to a maximum of seven rounds of ammunition — even less than the 10-round limit proposed by President Obama. But Buffalo lawyer James Tresmond — with the backing of the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups — is arguing on behalf of two gun owners that the law amounts to an unconstitutional seizure of property under the Fifth and 14th amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

State Supreme CourtJustice Diane Devlin has ordered the state to show cause by April 25 — when oral arguments are scheduled — though the state attorney general's office plans to respond by mid-March. Mr. Tresmond also has represented a gun dealer in a separate case challenging the law, with a hearing set for late April.

Read the entire article

Louis Farrakhan: "This Oligarchy is Leading America into Fascism"

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
March 4, 2013

Louis Farrakhan, leader of the "Nation of Islam" stated in an address, that the current Oligarchy in power is leading America into Fascism. He stated that the year of 2013 will bring the "number 6" and with it "dissatisfation and the number of the beast", bringing possible revolution by the masses here in the U.S.

Farrakhan named The U.S., England, Germany, and Italy as fours beasts that are currently causing wars and misery around the world. He stated also that the Obama administration is helping to push an "Israeli war" against Iran. (However, America is protecting Iran, not going against it.)

Farrakhan also claims that the evil being pushed by these "beasts" will certainly backfire against them, and that America does not have the stomach to fight a war against Muslims for decades on in.



Farrakhan accused America of also murdering Thousands in the current drone program of the United States.