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lessons-from-history

The War Against Iran, WWIII, History Is Repeating Itself

May 1, 2012, Submitted by: Ken

The crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression, currency wars, trade wars, World War II, then the panic of 08, the current Depression II, today’s currency wars and trade wars… World War III is unfolding in front of our eyes.

A quote often spoken by Gerald Celente, “When all things fail, they take you to war”.

Look at all the demonstrations and unrest going on in the world. 100,000 protestors in the Czech Republic demonstrating last week against their government and unraveling economy. Look at the similarity to what has happened and is happening in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Italy during the past months.

The powers-that-be need to identify an enemy for everyone to hate, to refocus the attention of the sheeple with the propaganda and fear hysteria to keep people’s mind off of the economy, housing, and unemployment. After 9/11 it was Bin Laden and the Taliban, al-Qaeda. Today it is Iran and other villains.

A few weeks ago the government and the main-stream-media made a big deal about the North Koreans, their rocket launch, and their threat to destroy the south, which had people freaked out for a week (by the way, their test rocket exploded mid-air).

‘Balloons’ have been floated regarding China’s military assistance to North Korea and NK’s secret military cooperation (arms/equipment sales?) with Iran. For years now Iran has supposedly been within ‘months’ and on the verge of building a nuclear bomb. Iran is now under embargo and has been removed from the world’s financial ‘SWIFT’ system, disabling their ability to sell oil on the world market (nearly 80% of their income). Iran is being forced into a ‘war’ position and the establishment is itching for an excuse to start this war.

When examining what happened in Germany leading up to WWII, people ask, why didn’t the people rise up and stop the Germans? How could they have let this happen? The answer is, they didn’t lose their rights in one day, it was week by week, month by month, year by year. It progressed to the point that when you spoke out, they took you away. You couldn’t talk to your relatives – you were afraid… It was an incremental and slow death grip on to the population.

Now look at what has been going on here in the U.S. of late. Many of you who follow alternative news, already know what has been happening – most of which is never reported by the main stream news outlets for the majority of Americans to hear or read about.

Look at the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed by the president on New Years Eve, while no one was paying attention… codifying indefinite military detention without charge or trial into law for the first time in American history. The NDAA’s dangerous detention provisions would authorize the president — and all future presidents — to order the military to pick up and indefinitely imprison people captured anywhere in the world, far from any battlefield. This is for real folks… look it up.

Almost any American could now be labeled a “terrorist” if the government doesn’t happen to like them… for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food (and the FBI says that activists who investigate factory farms can be prosecuted as terrorists).

President Obama has recently stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States. You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion.

“The administration is asserting the authority to kill any American whom the president declares to be an enemy of the state,” said Jameel Jaffer, a national security attorney with the ACLU. “That’s a breathtaking assertion.”

But Holder (Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.) countered that those determinations by the executive branch do not require any court oversight because they “depend on expertise and immediate access to information that only the executive branch may possess in real time.”

Big brother now can listen in on everything. Algorithms are now in place to determine if you are a potential threat to the state.

The NSA is building the world’s largest and massive 2 billion dollar – 1 million square foot heavily fortified spy center complex, located in Bluffdale, Utah. The center is scheduled to be fully operational within a year.

“They’re storing everything they gather.” “You can watch everybody, all the time.”
In secret listening rooms the NSA software examines American’s every email, phone call, tweet, website click, and electronic transactions. Quoted from an NSA insider, “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state”.

The supreme court ruled 3 weeks ago that any American can be strip searched in the process of being arrested.

Martial law can now be declared by a ‘potential’ threat.

History is repeating itself. Except perhaps the U.S. is becoming the old Germany? We are facing an uncertain future, for sure. I would suggest to everyone, get prepared. Something is happening…

(credit: some inspiration for this article from a recent interview between Gerald Celente and Phil Mackesy)

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Analogy Of The 20 Titanic Lifeboats

April 13, 2012, Submitted by: Ken

Just 20 lifeboats. That’s all they had aboard the Titanic when it sank April 15, 1912, 100 years ago.

The Titanic was originally fitted with enough lifeboats for more than everyone on board, but the company ordered the removal of two-thirds of them claiming the full 64 lifeboats made the ship look bad.

For this reason, of the 2,223 people on board, 1,517 lost their lives while only 706 survived.

Nearly as alarming was the percentage of lives that survived based on their cabin class. 61% of the 1st-class passengers survived and 42% of 2nd-class survived, while just 25% of 3rd-class and 24% of the crew survived.

From a survival preparedness standpoint, what can we learn from this tragedy? A few things…

Never trust authority beyond your own ability to reason. In other words, be skeptical, check facts for yourself, open your eyes and look around, analyze the risks, think things through, don’t trust the Marketing hype, position yourself for better odds of survival, don’t put yourself in harms way, avoid being the first to use new technology – particularly if it involves life dependencies, and use reasonable judgement.

Yes these are all very general things.

How many people are into appearances? I would say the majority are. The owners of the Titanic got rid of 2/3 their lifeboats because they didn’t look good and they gave the ship an appearance of doubt regarding sea-worthiness. By removing the visual evidence of a backup plan, people may be lulled into a sense of presumption and security that no backup plan is necessary. After awhile, having no backup plan or resources becomes ‘normal’. I wonder how many people look at the preparations of others who have personally prepared for disaster, as being unsightly because the prepper has what appears to be an abnormally high amount of food and supplies, and why bother to stock up on such things? We don’t need so many lifeboats, do we? Get the idea?

Also, what about the fact that the majority of the Titanic First-class passengers survived the ordeal while the lower classes suffered progressively more? Is it not the same in real life? Interesting parallels, yes? So what does that tell us? It tells us that the powers-that-be, and those in higher positions will take advantage of their position and resources to secure their own survival. This is human behavior. In other words, they may screw over the little guy in a heartbeat. When it comes to survival, and it’s every man for himself, those that ‘have a heart’ will surely be trampled first. Think about that.

While the anniversary of the sinking of the mighty Titanic is upon us, let it be a lesson to us all to have a natural skepticism of anything considered to be ‘unsinkable’. How about paralleling that thought to the almighty dollar and the U.S. / global economic system as we know it? It couldn’t possibly sink could it? Nah… Never…

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Fight For Your Life

April 11, 2012, Submitted by: Ken

Guest post: by Todd Sepulveda

Everyday starts with the potential for trouble and/or good. Whether you are out on a homestead, working a 9-5 or taking care of the kids at home, there is plenty to keep you busy and active. If you’re like me, every once in a while I get a little bit of quiet time and my vivid imagination kicks in. I sometimes think about times that are not so pleasant. One situation that I thought about recently was if there will ever come a time when my family needs to fight to save their lives. In a fight or die situation, could my family fight adequately enough…are they prepared to “pull the trigger?”

This article could go many different ways. Many people will have recommendations, thoughts, condemnation, etc… I just want to approach it from a Bible story that came to mind when I started thinking about this scenario and let you make up your own mind on the rest of the topic. While I was thinking about this scenario, the story of Esther came to mind.

Esther opens up with King Xerxes upset at his queen, Vashti. She is sent away and the King embarks on a search for a new queen. Eventually, he chooses Esther. In the meantime, an evil guy by the name of Haman became the Prime Minister. Haman hated the Jews because Esther’s uncle Mordecai wouldn’t bow to him in respect. Haman wasn’t satisfied to just take out Mordecai for being disrespectful; he wanted to exterminate all the Jews. So he approached King Xerxes,

“There is a certain race of people scattered through all the provinces of your empire. Their laws are different from those of any other nation, and they refuse to obey even the laws of the king. So it is not in the king’s interest to let them live. If it pleases Your Majesty, issue a decree that they be destroyed, and I will give 375 tons of silver to the government administrators so they can put it into the royal treasury.” The king agreed, confirming his decision by removing his signet ring from his finger and giving it to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite—the enemy of the Jews. “Keep the money,” the king told Haman, “but go ahead and do as you like with these people.” On April 17* Haman called in the king’s secretaries and dictated letters to the princes, the governors of the respective provinces, and the local officials of each province in their own scripts and languages. These letters were signed in the name of King Xerxes, sealed with his ring, and sent by messengers into all the provinces of the empire. The letters decreed that all Jews—young and old, including women and children—must be killed, slaughtered, and annihilated on a single day. This was scheduled to happen nearly a year later on March 7. The property of the Jews would be given to those who killed them. A copy of this decree was to be issued in every province and made known to all the people, so that they would be ready to do their duty on the appointed day. At the king’s command, the decree went out by the swiftest messengers, and it was proclaimed in the fortress of Susa. Then the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa fell into confusion. Esther 3:8-15 (NLT)

When Esther, Mordecai and all the Jews heard the news, they were devastated. Talk about your TEOTWAWKI situation! But Mordecai was a man of faith and believed that Esther had become Queen for “such a time as this.”

To make a long story short, Esther reveals to the king that she is a Jew. Because the law of the Medes-Persians could not be changed, there was another law that was passed that the Jews could defend themselves on the March 7 date.

Here is where my vivid imagination kicks in. There was no guarantee that non-Jews were not going to attack the Jews. As March 7 approached, what must have gone through the minds of those fathers/husbands and parents, knowing that on a certain day they could all lose their lives?

Were fathers training their children to take up swords, knives or whatever else was available to defend themselves? Were they loving or forceful in their training? Did moms cry themselves to sleep at night? What was the dinner talk like on March 6th?

I have three sons. They all have different interests and passions. They all know my reasons for preparing and can even share some of the reasons for it. To break them in, I started jokingly talking about the zombie apocalypse. But now they know that is just a metaphor. However, even though they see the need for the preparedness mindset/lifestyle, they are still kids and want to do kid stuff. My middle son seems to take to the idea of guns and knives and such a little more than the other two. He started a “knife collection” with money that he has saved and has gone to the gun show with me before. At the gun show, he could pick out all the different battle rifles because he plays the Modern Warfare games online. He shoots the pellet gun outside (we live in a suburban neighborhood and take precautions) and practices proper gun safety with the air rifle.

I was proud that the other two were willingly to shoot the other weapons recently. Hopefully, I plan on enrolling them in the Appleseed project here real soon.

But in the back of my mind, I always think about if they could “pull the trigger” in a time of need. We value life so much here in the US. My inclination is that when the family is in danger they will. But just like soldiers in the military, this needs to be practiced and conditioned.

I wrestle with this idea. Does this cause a child to lose their innocence? I know that children of all ages have had to take up arms throughout all of time. However, the topic is a sobering one.

Please understand that I don’t dwell on this topic. The words written here are based on one moment of time when my imagination was given the time to run a little, but I believe that there will be many out there who have had thoughts along the same lines.

Note – As I was writing this, Matthew 6 came to mind. Matthew 6:34 (NLT) says, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” This Scripture and the preceding verses don’t mean that we shouldn’t prepare, or that we shouldn’t think about this topic. It does mean that we shouldn’t be so worried or anxious that we sit in a corner afraid of what might happen, it shouldn’t cause you to just give up. So I’m not advocating that you allow your imagination to run so wild that it causes you to hold up in your room and not come out afraid of what might happen. That wouldn’t be healthy.

Raising a family to be compassionate, kind and live the servant life is a worthy calling. But attaching discernment and the tools to act, if necessary, are just as important. What do you think?

Todd Sepulveda is the editor/webmaster of The Prepper Website – http://www.prepperwebsite.com. He is also an assistant principal in the public school system and a bi-vocational home church pastor.

Great Depression

January 18, 2012, Submitted by: Ken

I discovered this succinct brief summary/story of the Great Depression and thought you may be interested to read it, especially given today’s very uncertain times. Things were quite different then (attitudes, respect, lack of motor travel, infrastructure, gov’t handouts) and one wonders how a modern day depression would play out.

Preface

It was a time of utter despair, nearly unimaginable today. The memory of those years still lives in the minds of people who experienced unemployment, insufficient food, homelessness and lost family wealth.

For those born after World War II, it is inconceivable that such a time ever existed in America. In the days before Interstates connected the country, people were forced to travel west in search of a better life.

Destitute mothers had few, if any, options to provide for their children. Fathers throughout the country were forced to leave home to look for work elsewhere.

The Great Depression

The “Great Depression” was a time of unprecedented despair. After the 1929 stock market crash, America (and many other countries) endured long, trying years of economic downturn, lost fortunes (the link is a picture of the stock exchange floor just after the crash), and personal tragedies.

People were uprooted when out-of-work families packed up everything they owned and moved to California. By 1932, the worst year of the depression, nearly 25% of the American work force was unemployed. Without means of transportation, people had to walk miles just to see their families. Living in squatter’s camps (called “Hoovervilles”), dislocated families tried to stay together.

In other parts of the country, men left their families “at home” while they went to the industrial north to find work. Their “bachelor cabins” were nothing more than shanty towns. But there was also “No Work” for people in the north. The bustling docks of New York City were quiet.

Before the days of the FDR along the East River, and the Westside Parkway along the Hudson, an artist could walk to the water’s edge where he drew images of human hopelessness. Employment agencies in New York City were inundated with applications from well-dressed, out-of-work people. The “land of plenty” had become the land of hard times.

Starving People

As if the economic disaster were not enough, the American Midwest was hit with unprecedented drought. Food supplies were diminished as formerly fertile fields became dust bowls. And in the south, once-productive cotton fields were transformed into eroded wastelands.

People in America were starving. Oral histories, recorded by the Library of Congress, relate tales of despondent people. Some picked dandelion greens to use as food. Others had to relocate, like 76-year-old Perry Rupert and Alvin Sharpe of North Carolina.

By 1936, tenant farmers and their families had become homeless wanderers. Farmers that had worked their own land were also forced to “evacuate.” People moving west had little to go on but hope for a better future. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath had its roots in real-life America. Sometimes the struggle to retain one’s dignity was almost more than a human being could manage.

Private parties offered cheap (or free) food. People stood in “bread lines” which stretched many blocks, only to be disappointed by the time it was “their turn.” Food, in increasingly short supplies, was already gone. These were desperate times.

Before he became President, Herbert Hoover was the “United States Food Administrator.” Although he tried to distribute food throughout the country, as he had provided wheat to America’s allies during World War I, Hoover could not do his job the way he wanted to do it. There simply wasn’t enough to go around.

Color Photos of the Great Depression

Although most photos depicting the Great Depression are black-and-white, America’s Library of Congress has a series of color transparencies which have been digitized. Photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration (also known as the FSA, which later merged with the Office of War Information) took the pictures between 1939 and 1943.

Providing a glimpse into the lives of people enduring hardship, while sharing family love, these amazing FSA pictures are part of an exhibit which the Library calls “Bound for Glory: America in Color.” Take a look at some of the exhibit’s 70 featured photos (and learn the stories behind the pictures):

Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43

Causes of the Great Depression

The Great Depression caused many suicides, massive unemployment, disrupted lives, and destroyed fortunes. But what caused the Great Depression? Why were so many people out of work? Why were thousands of families forced to uproot and migrate to places like California? Did the stock market crash – of October 24, 1929 – itself cause the ” run on banks” a few years later? And – significantly – why did the Great Depression last so long?

Knowledgeable people have debated these issues ever since the Great Depression. Some economists conclude that wild stock market speculation contributed to the nightmare. (1929 headlines, from The New York Times, show economists were seriously debating the strength of the market in the days before the crash.)

President Hoover thought the depression was caused by the disruptions of World War I, the poor structure of American banks, and the failure of Congress to act on many of his proposals. Still others blamed Hoover himself, and the policies of his administration.

At the time, people throughout the world cared more about finding ways to survive than they cared about finding reasons for the cause of the economic decline. Songs of the day, (like 1932′s Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?) reflect anguish but other tunes (All of Me and On the Sunny Side of the Street) demonstrate human resiliency.

Government intervention (introduced by Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal”) helped, but America remained in the grip of the Great Depression until 1941. Not until World War II, when millions of men were drafted and millions of women went to work in factories to support the war effort, did the United States emerge from its darkest economic downturn.

Credit author: Carole D. Bos, J.D.

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Modern Survival Blog: Popular Posts of 2011

January 1, 2012, Submitted by: Ken

Of the 365 posts of the year, and 2,482,547 pageviews from the 1,564,431 visitors, the 10 most popular posts of the year as defined by pageviews are as follows, and represent 25% of all MSB views of the year.

#10 (21,772 PageViews)
North Pole Shift races and speeds up while South Pole Shift slows down to a crawl. See the images and graphs that illustrate the remarkable difference.
Pole Shift: North Races, South Crawls

#9 (23,274 PageViews)
Some observations of the Comet Elenin occurrence as it related to an alignment with earth.
Comet Elenin Alignment September 26, 2011

#8 (26,574 PageViews)
A planetary alignment which occurred during May seemed like a fun circumstance to report on, given the popularity of the category.
Planetary Alignment, May 2011

#7 (27,695 PageViews)
I thought it would be fun to put a twist on the notion of melting arctic ice, and highlighted a few facts regarding the apparent ‘increasing’ ice ‘depth’ of late. It was a narrow window of observation, comparing ice depth during previous winter months, but it generated lots of controversy.
70 Trillion cubic feet of New Arctic Ice

#6 (28,466 PageViews)
While doing my own personal investigation, I used the data to write a post providing a general picture of the differences in state taxes around the country.
Lowest to Highest Taxes by State

#5 (31,114 PageViews)
The nuclear disaster in Japan generated lots of interest, and this post brought lots of curious folks to the site.
Jet-Stream Animation, Japan to USA, Fallout?

#4 (34,579 PageViews)
When the U.S. recalled all of their ambassadors, it seemed highly unusual to me (it never has happened before), so I raised some questions about why this may have been done.
All Ambassadors Called Back to Washington!

#3 (43,195 PageViews)
The occurrence of Comet Elenin generated lots of curiosity in the blogosphere. This post illustrates an alignment during September that many felt had some significance.
Comet Elenin September 29, 2011, Alignment

#2 (68,162 PageViews)
It was interesting to discover the rapid increase of magnetic north pole shift of late when compared with historical data. The data doesn’t lie, and ‘something’ is happening…
Alarming NOAA data, Rapid Pole Shift

#1 (285,507 PageViews)
With 1,562 comments to the article itself, the most popular post of 2011 by far was this one, which essentially is a string of updates of the Fukushima-Japan nuclear plant meltdown following the massive earthquake and tsunami.
West Coast USA Danger IF Japan Nuclear Reactor Meltdown