14 Signs That Most Americans Are Flat Broke And Totally Unprepared For The Coming Economic Crisis
by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse
Feb 23, 2015
When the coming economic crisis strikes, more than half the country is going to be financially wiped out within weeks. At this point, more than 60 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and a whopping 24 percent of the country has more credit card debt than emergency savings. One of the primary principles that any of these “financial experts” that you see on television will teach you is to have a cushion to fall back on. At the very least, you never know when unexpected expenses like major car repairs or medical bills will come along. And in the event of a major economic collapse, if you do not have any financial cushion at all you will be a sitting duck. Yes, I know that there are millions upon millions of families out there that are just trying to scrape by from month to month at this point. I hear from people that are deeply struggling in this economy all the time. So I don’t blame them for not being able to save lots of money. But if you are in a position to build up an emergency fund, you need to do so. We have been experiencing an extended period of relative economic stability, but it will not last. In fact, the time for getting prepared for the next great economic downturn is rapidly running out, and most Americans are not ready for it at all. The following are 14 signs that most Americans are flat broke and totally unprepared for the coming economic crisis…
#1 According to a survey that was just released, 24 percent of all Americans have more credit card debt than emergency savings.
#2 That same survey discovered that an additional 13 percent of all Americans do not have any credit card debt, but they do not have a single penny of emergency savings either.
#3 At this point, approximately 62 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
#4 Adults under the age of 35 in the United States currently have a savings rate of negative 2 percent.
#5 More than half of all students in U.S. public schools come from families that are poor enough to qualify for school lunch subsidies.
#6 A study that was conducted last year found that more than one out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“.
#7 One survey discovered that 52 percent of all Americans really cannot even financially afford the homes that they are living in right now.
Shock Report: Domestic Black Sites Now Operational
by Mac Slavo
Activist Post
Feb 26, 2015
For nearly two decades alternative media has warned of government internment camps where citizens would be disappeared, detained and tortured with no regard for their rights. For nearly two decades the notion has been dismissed by the general population as just another conspiracy theory.
But a new report out of Chicago suggests that not only are such facilities real, they have now been actively integrated into the nation’s law enforcement apparatus.
The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.
The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights.
[…]
“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”
According to those who have been detained at the site against their will and absent their natural and constitutional rights, the Chicago facility is exactly what you might expect from a government-run internment and detention center.
- Family members and attorneys are unable to locate a detainee because those arrested and sent to the black site are never entered into booking databases. They are simply “disappeared.”
- Detainees are beaten by police in what can only be described as torture.
- Access to phone calls and judges are restricted so once you are in there is no way to call for help to let anyone know you are there
- Attorneys are denied access because the site has been deemed a high security facility
- People are regular shackled for extended periods of time
Russia: US-Backed Opposition Leader Gunned Down in Moscow
by Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Feb 28, 2015
Martyrdom on demand: if not of use alive, perhaps of use dead? US-backed opposition groups in Russia have so far failed utterly to produce results. Their transparent subservience to Washington coupled with their distasteful brand of politics has left a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth of most Russians. Each attempt to spread the “virus” of color revolution to Moscow, as US Senator John McCain called it, has failed – and each attempt has fallen progressively flatter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has never been more popular. His ability to weather serial provocations aimed at Russia by NATO has made him a champion against the perceived growing injustice exacted against the developing world by an increasingly militaristic and exploitative West.
So when US-backed opposition groups in Russia decided to gather again this coming March 1, Sunday, many wondered just exactly what they expected to accomplish.
Bloomberg just a day ago, would report in an article titled, “Anti-Putin Opposition Looks to Russian Spring for Revival,” that:
Just before he was jailed for handing out leaflets at a metro station, Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny used his last moments in a Moscow court to record a video urging supporters to join a March 1 protest against President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny’s removal from the “Spring” rally by a 15-day sentence underlined the beleaguered state of an opposition movement that brought 100,000 onto Moscow’s streets three years ago as well as the Kremlin’s unease about the potential for unrest in Russia.
Squeezed by government persecution and Putin’s near-record approval rating, Russia’s opposition is betting that an unfolding economic crisis will spark a spring revolt on a scale last seen at the winter protests of 2011-2012, the largest since the collapse of Communism 20 years earlier. It seeks to draw as many as 100,000 people to the “anti-crisis march” in Moscow, with protests also planned in 15 other cities. They’ll highlight declining living standards and the conflict in eastern Ukraine that triggered U.S. and European Union sanctions against Russia.
The article however, also stated that:
The opposition “hasn’t been this weak for many years,” Stefan Meister, an analyst at the German Council of Foreign Relations in Berlin, said by phone. “Even when we have a growing economic crisis in Russia, there’s still high support for Putin.”
Clearly to match the expectations the “spring” rally was meant to have, to infuse the “virus” US Senator McCain had claimed was intended for Moscow, something drastic would have to be done to change the current calculus.
The prospect of triggering sustainable unrest aimed at the Kremlin was beyond impossible – that is – until the leader of the planned protest was shot dead, practically on the steps of the Kremlin itself in the heart of Moscow.
Boris Nemtsov, was reportedly shot four times in the back on Friday night in a drive-by shooting. His body laid conveniently for media photographers to capture the Kremlin looming in the background.
Russia immediately condemned the killing, with President Putin noting it was an act of “pure provocation.”
Nemtsov’s Questionable Ties to US Agitators
Nemtsov had led US-backed opposition protests for years. In 2012, he was caught literally walking into the US Embassy in Moscow to meet with then newly appointed US Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul who had serve on the board of directors of Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The significance of this cannot be overstated.
BREAKING — The Internet: Nothing lasts forever, say goodbye
Aporvearyan/Wikimedia Commons
Intellihub
Feb 26, 2015
A brilliant go-around, they got us good
By Shepard Ambellas
WASHINGTON D.C. (INTELLIHUB) — Thursday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted on and approved the end of the Internet as we know it.
That’s right the ‘information superhighway’ has just been obliterated by the passage of “Net Neutrality” which allows the FCC to regulate the once free and independent Internet.
Essentially it’s like putting a person or a checkpoint between point A and point B in which one may eventually have to check in with. Call me a conspiracy theorist but that would be a “gatekeeper” which proponents of the plan promised wouldn’t exist. Although this analogy may seem far-fetched to some, and hasn’t fully manifest itself yet, we will just have to wait and see. But rest assured there will be nothing neutral about Net Neutrality.
The whole “Net Neutrality” thing was made to sound good to everyone as they’ve sugar-coated it [their plan] for the dumbed-down masses, hoodwinking them into accepting it.
When past meets the present
Die-hard radio talk show host Howard Stern and others such as rapper Eminem have went toe-to-toe with the FCC on ‘freedom of speech’ issues and know good and well just how diabolic the FCC can truly be at times. And for that reason people like myself will never trust the FCC as nothing good has ever came from the agency.
The fact of the matter is the agency is only there to regulate information which we can watch, read, and listen to. They want to be the middleman between the content and our brains which will eventually lead to the full-on manipulation of and/or the suppression of information in which they [the powers-that-be] deem we don’t need to know.
And encase you didn’t know yet, as sheep, we are already on a ‘need to know’ basis. It’s the program that our masters have designed for us. They have subconsciously transplanted it into our minds slowly through many years of governmental mind control experimentation sessions. The brunt of it all started with the T.V., but has now morphed into what futurists would describe as an active environment, digitally speaking of course. Where man interacts with machine. They want to control cyberspace period.
Interestingly enough the final rules wont be published for several days which is seen by some as a ‘stall’ that may allow regulators to insert more legal muck; i.e. jargon, into the mix before the passage becomes viable law in just a few short months.
You see, just as Hitler positioned himself and his team above the populace of Germany in the 1930′s, the Obama Administration has done the same — driving the final nail into the proverbial coffin, representing the death of the Internet itself.
Moreover now under Executive Orders and National Security Presidential Directives, such as 51, the President of the United States has powers vested in him to shut off the Internet, which has now been classified as a “utility” under the new regulation, during any “crisis” or “national emergency”.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the kill switch. The Internet kill switch.
You have to admit it was a brilliant go-around.
They got us good.
A letter from the President reads:
White House
About the author:
Shepard Ambellas is the founder, editor-in-chief of Intellihub News and the maker of SHADE the Motion Picture. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook. Shepard also appears on the Travel Channel series America Declassified. You can also listen to him on Coast To Coast AM with hosts, both, George Noory on “Chemtrails” and John B. Wells on the “Alternative Media Special“. Shepard Ambellas has also been featured on the Drudge Report, the largest news website in the entire world, for his provocative coverage of the Bilderberg Group.
For media inquires, interviews, questions or suggestions for this author, email: shepard@intellihub.com.
Read more articles by this author here.
Turkey’s Invasion Of Syria Shows Turkish Connection To ISIS; NATO Agenda
by Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post
Feb 24, 2015
Turkey has now officially proven that Israel and the United States are not the only nations that can brazenly violate the sovereignty of other countries, Syria in particular, without fear of reprisal due to NATO support and a blatant culture of aggression.
The Turkish invasion of Syrian soil on February 22 under the guise of protecting and securing the tomb of Sulayman Shah is case in point.
The tomb is largely recognized as a Turkish exclave since the early 1920s when, in 1921, it was agreed in the Treaty of Ankara that the Turks would be allowed to raise the Turkish flag over the tomb and place a small number of Turkish guards around the mausoleum given that Sulayman Shah bears such significance to Turkish history. The tomb is located about 23 miles from Turkey itself and thus is located inside Syrian territory.
According to mainstream Western press like CNN, the Turks were forced to evacuate the tomb and its contents due to the escalating violence in the area. CNN also reports that the evacuation was led and conducted with the 40 guards stationed around the tomb.
However, the reality is that the tomb evacuation was actually a relatively large military operation involving about 600 Turkish soldiers, 100 tanks, and APCs.
The Turkish military apparently entered Syria via Kobane (Ayn al-Arab).
Yet, while ISIS presence in towns and cities surrounding the tomb was cited as the reason for the evacuation, it should be noted that ISIS, so close to the tomb, never fired one shot at the Turkish military as it conducted its operations. Since, if Western press reports are to be believed, ISIS is the absolute worst strategist when it comes to avoiding unnecessary conflict with nations not necessarily engaged in combat against it, the fact that ISIS forces would allow the Turkish forces to enter its “territory” without so much as even the threat of violence is questionable to say the least.
What is much more believable, however, is that the Turkish forces acted in coordination with ISIS forces so as to justify an essential invasion of Syria and establish a foothold there as the Israelis direct ISIS forces and bomb Syrian territory from the Southwest and Jordan facilitates terrorism from the South. Of course, the U.S., NATO, and its proxy forces in the eastern portions of Syria simultaneously push toward the same center of the country at the same time.
This is not the first time the tomb of Sulayman Shah has been used to justify Turkish military engagement inside Syrian territory.
Top Ukrainian Nazi Visits U.S. Congress, Pentagon, Canadian Parliament, Seeks Weapons for Ukraine
by Eric Zuesse
Global Research
Feb 26, 2015
The Deputy Speaker of Ukraine’s parliament, Andriy Parubiy, who had been the co-founder of the Nazi-inspired Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, met in Washington on Wednesday, February 25th, with members of the U.S. House and Senate who support his request that the U.S. Government donate weapons to his virtually bankrupt Government. Parubiy also visited with the Pentagon.
Weapons are needed by his Government because his Government is engaged in a civil war against the residents in the area of Ukraine that had voted 90% for the former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Parubiy himself (when he was called “the Mayor of Maidan”) led to overthrow in a violent February 2014 coup.
“Andriy Parubiy together with Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok is a follower of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera, who collaborated in the mass murderer of Jews and Poles during World War II.”
image: Neo-Nazi march honoring Stepan Bandera
According to a recent report by Gabriel Gatehouse of the BBC, witness testimony and photographic evidence both conflict with Parubiy’s account of how the overthrow a year ago occurred. The United States Government strongly supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, and denies that it was a coup. The Obama Administration calls it an expression of Ukrainian democracy, and says that the replacement Government was “duly elected” (though by whom was left unsaid by Mr. Obama), and that whan elections for a new Ukrainian President were held in northwest Ukraine on 25 May 2014, in which no one in the rebelling region participated, the residents in the rebelling region were terrorists if they refused to accept the election’s winner as being their President. The residents still refused to accept the winner of that election as being their leader. The Government, on 2 May 2014, massacred an estimated 100+ peaceful demonstrators against the Government, in Odessa, and sent troops into the southeast to take over their local governments, and so the civil war started. Mr. Parubiy was a member of the small team that planned the Odessa massacre.
The residents in the area of Ukraine that is being bombed and even firebombed by Parubiy’s Government had opposed the overthrow, because they had voted 90% for the person who was being overthrown; they did not feel that an imposed new leader would be acceptable to them. The continued bombing of them by the replacement Government has thus-far failed to persuade the residents there to support Parubiy’s Government; and, so, those residents have declared their region to be no longer a part of Ukraine. Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko, disagrees; he says that they have no right to do that and that they are therefore ‘terrorists’ for seceding from Ukraine. The United States Government supports that position, and Congress voted more than 98% for it.
However, U.S. President Barack Obama, whose Administration ran that coup and actually selected the leader of the interim government to replace Yanukovych, Ukraine’s current Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, hasn’t yet decided whether to send Ukraine more weapons than he has already sent.
Canada’s Parliament held a Reception, 24 Feb. 2015, for Neo-Nazi Leader Parubiy.
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2015/02/24/in-the-city-ukrainian-deputy-speaker-hosted-on-the-hill/
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