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The New World Order
It's An Evil And Sinister Conspiracy That Involves Very Rich And Powerful People Who Mastermind Events And Control World Affairs Through Governments And Corporations And Are Plotting Mass Population Reduction And The Emergence Of A Totalitarian World Government!   By Using Occult Secret Societies The ILLUMINATI Will Bring All Of The Nations Of This World Together As One.   We'll Have No Recourse But To Submit And Be Under Their Control Utilizing Their Digital Central Bank Currency Or To Reject This Ill-Fated Digital Identification.   The Goal Is UN Agenda 2030!   This Is The Beginning Of The End!

Global Economic Collapse, What Would Happen And How To Prepare


If an economic collapse occurs, it would happen quickly. No one would predict it. The surprise factor is, itself, one of the causes of a collapse. The signs of imminent failure are difficult for most people to see.

Most recently, the U.S. economy almost collapsed on September 17, 2008. That's the day the Reserve Primary Fund broke the buck. Panicked investors withdrew a record $140 billion from money market accounts where businesses keep cash to fund day-to-day operations. If withdrawals had gone on for even a week, the entire economy would have halted. That meant trucks would stop rolling, grocery stores would run out of food, and businesses would shut down. That's how close the U.S. economy came to a real collapse, and how vulnerable it is to another one.

Fortunately, the Federal Reserve Chairman and U.S. Treasury Secretary noticed the signal and knew what it meant. Ben Bernanke was a Great Depression scholar. Hank Paulson was a Wall Street veteran. Their bailout plan supplied enough cash to prevent a total collapse. The 2008 financial crisis did plenty of damage, but it could have been much worse.

If you want to understand what life is like during a collapse, talk to people who lived through the Great Depression. The stock market collapsed on Black Thursday. By the following Tuesday, it was down 25%. Many investors lost their life savings that weekend. The Dow didn't recover until 1954.

By 1933, one out of four people were unemployed. Wages for those who still had jobs fell.


U.S. gross domestic product was cut in half. Thousands of farmers and other unemployed workers moved to California in search of work.

Most became homeless hobos or moved to “Hooverville" shantytowns.

What Would Happen in an Economic Collapse


If the economy collapses, you would lose access to credit. Banks would close. Demand would outstrip supply of food, gas, and other necessities. If the collapse affected local governments and utilities, then water and electricity would no longer be available. As people panic, they would revert to survival and self-defense modes. The economy would return to a traditional economy, where those who grow food barter for other services.

A U.S. economic collapse would create global panic. Demand for the dollar and U.S. Treasurys would plummet. Interest rates would skyrocket. Investors would rush to other currencies, such as the yuan, euro, or even gold. It would create not just inflation, but hyperinflation, as the dollar became dirt cheap.

How Close Are We to a Total Economic Collapse?


Any of the following seven scenarios could create an economic collapse.

If the U.S. dollar rapidly loses value, it would create hyperinflation.


A bank run could force banks to close or even go out of business, cutting off lending and even cash withdrawals.


The internet could become paralyzed with a super-virus, preventing emails and online transactions. 


Terrorist attacks or a massive oil embargo could halt interstate trucking. Grocery stores would soon run out of food.  


Widespread violence erupts across the nation. That could range from inner-city riots, a civil war, or a foreign military attack. It's possible that a combination of these events could overwhelm the government's ability to prevent or respond to a collapse.


In March 2019, the Federal Reserve warned that climate change could threaten the financial system.


Extreme weather caused by climate change is forcing farms, utilities, and other companies to declare bankruptcy. As those loans go under, it will damage banks' balance sheets just like subprime mortgages did during the financial crisis. A study by Pennsylvania State University predicted that extreme weather in North America will increase 50% by 2100.

It will cost the U.S. government $112 billion per year, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Natural disasters could cause a localized collapse. If Hurricane Irma had hit Miami, its damage would have been worse than Hurricane Katrina. If the 2019 polar vortex breakup had lasted weeks instead of days, cities would have shut down.


Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance firm, blamed global warming for $24 billion of losses in the California wildfires.

 It warned that insurance firms will have to raise premiums to cover rising costs from extreme weather. That could make insurance too expensive for most people.

 Some believe the Federal Reserve, the president, or an international conspiracy are driving the United States toward economic ruin. If that's the case, the economy could collapse in as little as a week. The economy is run on confidence that debts will be repaid, food and gas will be available when you need it, and that you'll get paid for this week's work. If a large enough piece of that stops for even several days, it creates a chain reaction that leads to a rapid collapse.


Collapse Versus Crisis


Be very clear that an economic crisis is not the same as an economic collapse. As painful as it was, the 2008 financial crisis was not a collapse. Millions of people lost jobs and homes, but basic services were still provided.

Other past financial crises seemed like a collapse at the time, but are barely remembered now. Here are some these past economic crunches:

1970s Stagflation – The OPEC oil embargo and President Richard Nixon’s abolishment of the gold standard triggered double-digit inflation. The government responded to this economic downturn by freezing wages and labor rates to curb inflation. The result was a high unemployment rate. 


Businesses, hampered by low prices, could not afford to keep workers at unprofitable wage rates.

1981 Recession – The Fed raised interest rates to end the double-digit inflation. That created the worst recession since the Great Depression. President Ronald Reagan had to cut taxes and increase government spending to end it.

1989 Savings and Loan Crisis – One thousand banks closed after illegal real estate investments turned sour. Charles Keating and the other S&L bankers had used bank depositor’s funds. The consequent recession triggered an unemployment rate as high as 7.8%. The government was forced to bail out some banks to the tune of $126 billion, an addition to the U.S. national debt.

Recession after the 9/11 Attacks – Four terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, sowed nationwide apprehension and prolonged the 2001 recession until 2003. America’s response, the War on Terror, added $2 trillion to the already burgeoning national debt.

2008 Financial Crisis – The early warning signs were rapidly falling housing prices and increasing mortgage defaults in 2006. Left untended, the resulting subprime mortgage crisis, which panicked investors and led to massive bank withdrawals, spread like wildfire across the financial community. The U.S. government had no choice but to bail out “too big to fail” banks and insurance companies, like Bear Stearns and AIG, or face both national and global financial catastrophes.

Will the U.S Economy Collapse?


The U.S. economy's size makes it resilient. It is highly unlikely that even these events could create a collapse. When necessary, the government can act quickly to avoid a total collapse.

The Federal Reserve can avoid a financial collapse with a few phone calls. For example, it can use its contractionary monetary tools to tame hyperinflation. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures banks. There is little chance of a banking collapse similar to that in the 1930s.

The president can release Strategic Oil Reserves to offset an oil embargo. Homeland Security can address a cyber threat.8 The U.S. military can respond to a terrorist attack, transportation stoppage, or rioting/civil war. In other words, most federal government programs are designed to prevent just such an economic collapse.

But these strategies won't protect against the widespread and pervasive crises caused by climate change. Rising sea levels, depletion of fish stocks, and extreme weather are just some of the effects. If nothing is done, the World Bank warned that temperatures will increase by 4 C if nothing is done.


That's when all the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica would melt.

Sea levels would rise 33 feet, flooding every major coastal city. Once sea levels rise 10 feet, it would flood 12.3 million people. Seas would continue to rise by one foot per decade. That's too fast to allow humans to build anew. The damage would exceed $600 trillion, double the total wealth of everyone on the planet.

That would shrink the global economy by 20% from what it is today. That's worse than the worst year of the Great Depression.

How to Prepare for an Economic Collapse

Protecting yourself from a collapse is difficult. A catastrophic failure can happen without warning. In most crises, people survive through their knowledge, wits, and by helping each other.

Here are six steps you can take now to prepare for a potential collapse.

Make sure you understand basic economic concepts so you can see warning signs of instability. One of the first signs is a stock market crash. If it's bad enough, a market crash can cause a recession.


Keep as many assets as liquid as possible so that you can withdraw them within a week.


As for cash, it may not be useful in a total economic collapse because its value might be decimated. 


Stockpiles of gold bullion may not help because they would be difficult to transport if you needed to move quickly. In a severe collapse, they may not be accepted as currency. But it would be good to have a stash of $20 bills and gold coins, just in case. During many crisis situations, these are commonly accepted as bribes. 

In addition to your regular job, make sure you have skills that you'd need in a traditional economy, such as farming, cooking, or repair. 


Make sure your passport is current in case you'd need to leave the country on short notice. Research target countries now and travel there on vacation, so you are familiar with your destination.


Keep yourself in top physical shape. Know basic survival skills, such as self-defense, foraging, hunting, and starting a fire. Practice now with camping trips. If you can, move near a wildlife preserve in a temperate climate. That way, if a collapse occurs, you can live off the land in a relatively unpopulated area.

MIT Shows Off A Smart Tattoo That Can Turn Your Skin Into A Touchpad


With DuoSkin, wearables are no longer just an accessory. They become part of your skin. 

 The MIT Media Lab and Microsoft Research set out to create on-skin user interfaces using gold leaf, which is commonly found in craft stores, as a conductor. Piggybacking on the trend in body-art and metallic jewelry-like tattoos, the team decided to repurpose gold leaf because it is “robust to movements and skin deformations during motion…[and] both workable and aesthetic in appearance.” The smart tattoos, outlined in a paper that has been presented at the International Symposium on Wearable Computers, look like fashion statements but they include other materials and electrical components that make the tattoos interactive. 

The tattoos can turn into an interface that can be used, for example, as a trackpad or a button to remotely control your phone. Alternatively, they can track and show you information about yourself. For example, by including thermochromic displays that change color in reaction to heat, the tattoos can show you your body temperature. 

A third possible function is wireless communication. The tattoo could include an NFC (near field communications) tag, an electrical component that includes small microchips to store data that can be read by phones or other NFC devices nearby. In the near future, the technology could serve as a substitute for identification, subway cards, and even movie tickets, DuoSkin’s lead researcher Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao said in an interview. 

Kao calls DuoSkin a “project” and not, as you might expect, a product or prototype. The team hopes that others will read their research and use the information as a basis to create their own personalized on-skin wearables. 

In theory, the process is simple. First, you sketch the circuitry with a graphic design software. Then, you have to create stencils of the circuitry by applying a layer of vinyl film on thin tattoo paper and cut it with an electronic cutter. After that, you layer the conductive gold leaf on top with spray adhesives. The next step is mounting the electronics. The DuoSkin device is planted on the user’s skin like a regular tattoo through water-transfer: apply the tattoo to your skin, press down with a damp cloth, peel off the backing paper, and then remove it, leaving the tattoo behind. 

Kao says anyone can replicate the process for around $175—$150 to buy a craft electronic cutter from Amazon and another $10 each for the gold leaf and the tattoo paper. That’s a steep price for one tattoo that can only be worn for up to a full day, but it’s sort of scalable: after the electronic cutter has been purchased, each subsequent tattoo will cost less and less. 

Although this isn’t the first time researchers have tried to use the skin as a touchscreen, previous iterations have proved to be expensive and required a device to project an interface onto the skin. Other innovations that have attempted to bring electronics to tattoo-style applications include UV detectors and blood alcohol measurements but no technology has been as simple and affordable as DuoSkin. 

Not everyone is going to be rushing to read through a scientific paper in order to design their own device, of course, but Kao believes there is commercial potential here, too. ”There’s definitely some people who are more maker-type personalities but there’s of course people who would prefer not to do so [themselves],” Kao stated. “We see this developing as a business model.” She thinks users might well be willing to pay a fee at “tattoo parlors” where someone else could custom-design the product. 

 

The Complete History Of The Freemasons And The Creation Of The New World Order

The creation of the New World Order (NWO) agenda was put in motion by the infamous character, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the one who decided to control the entire planet by any means necessary.

Of course, this meant: deception, control, financial enslavement, blackmail and murder... but also far graver things, like: wars, famine and depopulation... a genocide unlike any other before it.


They are the richest clan in the world, and their empire was built on mountains of bones and sufferance.

1773 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild assembles twelve of his most influential friends, and convinces them that if they all pool their resources together, they can rule the world.

This meeting takes place in Frankfurt, Germany. Rothschild also informs his friends that he has found the perfect candidate, an individual of incredible intellect and ingenuity, to lead the organization he has planned – Adam Weishaupt.

May 1, 1776 – Adam Weishaupt (code named Spartacus) establishes a secret society called the Order of the Illuminati. Weishaupt is the Professor of Canon Law at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, part of Germany.

The Illuminati seek to establish a New World Order. Their objectives are as follows:

1) Abolition of all ordered governments 2) Abolition of private property 3) Abolition of inheritance 4) Abolition of patriotism 5) Abolition of the family 6) Abolition of religion 7) Creation of a world government

July, 1782 – The Order of the Illuminati joins forces with Freemasonry at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad. The Comte de Virieu, an attendee at the conference, comes away visibly shaken. When questioned about the “tragic secrets” he brought back with him, he replies: “I will not confide them to you. I can only tell you that all this is very much more serious than you think.”

From this time on, according to his biographer, “the Comte de Virieu could only speak of Freemasonry with horror.”

The insignia of the Order of the Illuminati first appeared on the reverse side of U.S. one-dollar bills in 1933. One can read, at the base of the 13-story pyramid, the year 1776 (MDCCLXVI in Roman numerals). The eye radiating in all directions is the “all-spying eye” that symbolizes the terroristic, Gestapo-like, agency set up by Weishaupt.

The Latin words “ANNUIT COEPTIS” mean “our enterprise (conspiracy) has been crowned with success.” Below, “NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM” explains the nature of the enterprise: a “New Social Order” or a “New World Order”.

1785 – An Illuminati courier named Lanze is struck by lightning, and killed while traveling by horseback through the town of Ratisbon. When Bavarian officials examine the contents of his saddle bags, they discover the existence of the Order of the Illuminati, and find plans detailing the coming French Revolution. The Bavarian Government attempts to alert the government of France of impending disaster, but the French Government fails to heed this warning. Bavarian officials arrest all members of the Illuminati they can find, but Weishaupt and others have gone underground, and cannot be found.

1796 – Freemasonry becomes a major issue in the presidential election in the United States. John Adams wins the election by opposing Masonry, and his son, John Quincy Adams, warns of the dire threat to the nation posed by the Masonic Lodges: “I do conscientiously and sincerely believe that the Order of Freemasonry, if not the greatest, is one of the greatest moral and political evils under which the Union is now laboring.”

1797 – John Robison, Professor of Natural History at Edinburgh University in Scotland, publishes a book entitled “Proofs of a Conspiracy” in which he reveals that Adam Weishaupt had attempted to recruit him. He exposes the diabolical aims of the Illuminati to the world.

1821 – George W. F. Hegel formulates what is called the Hegelian dialectic – the process by which Illuminati objectives are achieved. According to the Hegelian dialectic, thesis plus antithesis equals synthesis. In other words, first you foment a crisis. Then there is an enormous public outcry that something must be done about the problem. So you offer a solution that brings about the changes you really wanted all along, but which people would have been unwilling to accept initially.

1828 – Mayer Amschel Rothschild, who finances the Illuminati, expresses his utter contempt for national governments which attempt to regulate International Bankers such as him:
“Allow me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who writes the laws.”


1848 — Moses Mordecai Marx Levy, alias Karl Marx, writes “The Communist Manifesto.” Marx is a member of an Illuminati front organization called the League of the Just. He not only advocates economic and political changes; he advocates moral and spiritual changes as well. He believes the family should be abolished, and that all children should be raised by a central authority. He expresses his attitude toward God by saying:
“We must war against all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed.”


Jan. 22, 1870 – In a letter to Italian revolutionary leader Giuseppe Mazzini, Albert Pike – Sovereign Grand Commander of the Southern Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry – announces the establishment of a secret society within a secret society:
“We must create a super rite, which will remain unknown, to which we will call those Masons of high degree of whom we shall select. With regard to our brothers in Masonry, these men must be pledges to the strictest secrecy. Through this supreme rite, we will govern all Freemasonry which will become the one international center, the more powerful because its direction will be unknown.” 


This ultra-secret organization is called The New and Reformed Paladian Rite. (This is why about 95% of the men involved in Masonry don’t have a clue as to what the objectives of the organization actually are. They are under the delusion that it’s just a fine community organization doing good works.)

1875 – Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founds the Theosophical Society. Madame Blavatsky claims that Tibetan holy men in the Himilayas, whom she refers to as the Masters of Wisdom, communicated with her in London by telepathy. She insists that the Christians have it all backwards – that Satan is good, and God is evil. She writes:
“The Christians and scientists must be made to respect their Indian betters. The Wisdom of India, her philosophy and achievement, must be made known in Europe and America.” 


1884 – The Fabian Society is founded in Great Britain to promote Socialism. The Fabian Society takes its name from the Roman General Fabius Maximus, who fought Hannibal’s army in small debilitating skirmishes, rather than attempting one decisive battle.

July 14, 1889 – Albert Pike issues instructions to the 23 Supreme Councils of the world. He reveals who is the true object of Masonic worship:
“To you, Sovereign Grand Instructors General, we say this, that you may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st and 30th degrees: The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian doctrine.” 


1890-1896 – Cecil Rhodes, an enthusiastic student of John Ruskin, is Prime Minister of South Africa, a British colony at the time. He is able to exploit and control the gold and diamond wealth of South Africa. He works to bring all the habitable portions of the world under the domination of a ruling elite. To that end, he uses a portion of his vast wealth to establish the famous Rhodes Scholarships.

1893 – The Theosophical Society sponsors a Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago. The purpose of the convention is to introduce Hindu and Buddhist concepts, such as belief in reincarnation, to the West.

1911 – The Socialist Party of Great Britain publishes a pamphlet entitled “Socialism and Religion” in which they clearly state their position on Christianity:

“It is therefore a profound truth that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion. A Christian Socialist is in fact an anti-Socialist. Christianity is the antithesis of Socialism.”

1912 – Colonel Edward Mandell House, a close advisor of President Woodrow Wilson, publishes “Phillip Dru: Administrator”, in which he promotes “socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx.”

Feb. 3, 1913 – The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, making it possible for the Federal Government to impose a progressive income tax, is ratified. Plank #2 of “The Communist Manifesto” had called for a progressive income tax. (In Canada, the income tax is introduced in 1917, as a “temporary measure” to finance the war effort.)

1913 – President Woodrow Wilson publishes “The New Freedom” in which he reveals:
“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” 


Dec. 23, 1913 – The Federal Reserve (neither federal nor a reserve – it’s a privately owned institution) is created. It was planned at a secret meeting in 1910 on Jekyl Island, Georgia, by a group of bankers and politicians, including Col. House. This transfers the power to create money from the American Government to a private group of bankers. The Federal Reserve Act is hastily passed just before the Christmas break. Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Sr. (father of the famed aviator) warns:
“This act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this act the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized.” 


1916 – Three years after signing the Federal Reserve Act into law, President Woodrow Wilson observes:
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”


1917 – With aid from Financiers in New York City and London, V. I. Lenin is able to overthrow the government of Russia. Lenin later comments on the apparent contradiction of the links between prominent capitalists and Communism:
“There also exists another alliance – at first glance a strange one, a surprising one – but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists.”
(Remember the Hegelian dialectic?)

May 30, 1919 – Prominent British and American personalities establish the Royal Institute of International Affairs in England and the Institute of International Affairs in the U.S. at a meeting arranged by Col. House; attended by various Fabian socialists, including noted economist John Maynard Keynes.

1920 – Britain’s Winston Churchill recognizes the connection between the Illuminati and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He observes:
“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.  


It played a definitely recognizable role in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last this band of extra- ordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.” 


1920-1931 – Louis T. McFadden is Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Curency. Concerning the Federal Reserve, Congressman McFadden notes:
“When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by International Bankers and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure.  


Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers, but the truth is – the Fed has usurped the Government. It controls everything here, and it controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will.” 


Concerning the Great Depression and the country’s acceptance of FDR’s New Deal, he asserts: “It was no accident. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. The International Bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so they might emerge as the rulers of us all.”

1921 – Col. House reorganizes the American branch of the Institute of International Affairs into the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). (For the past 60 years, 80% of the top positions in every administration – whether Democrat or Republican – have been occupied by members of this organization.)

December 15, 1922 – The CFR endorses World Government in its magazine “Foreign Affairs.” Author Philip Kerr states:
“Obviously there is going to be no peace nor prosperity for mankind as long as the earth remains divided into 50 or 60 independent states, until some kind of international system is created. The real problem today is that of world government.” 


1928 – “The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution” by H. G. Wells is published. A former Fabian socialist, Wells writes:
“The political world of the Open Conspiracy must weaken, efface, incorporate, and supersede existing governments. The Open Conspiracy is the natural inheritor of socialist and communist enthusiasms; it may be in control of Moscow before it is in control of New York. The character of the Open Conspiracy will now be plainly displayed. It will be a world religion.” 


1933 – “The Shape of Things to Come” by H. G. Wells is published. Wells predicts a second world war around 1940, originating from a German-Polish dispute. After 1945, there would be an increasing lack of public safety in “criminally infected” areas. The plan for the “Modern World State” would succeed on its third attempt, and come out of something that occurred in Basra, Iraq. The book also states:
“Although world government had been plainly coming for some years, although it had been endlessly feared and murmured against, it found no opposition anywhere.” 


Nov. 21, 1933 – In a letter to Col. Edward M. House, President Franklin Roosevelt writes:
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government since the days of Andrew Jackson.” 


March 1942 – An article in “TIME” magazine chronicles the Federal Council of Churches (which later becomes the National Council of Churches, a part of the World Council of Churches) lending its weight to efforts to establish a global authority.

A meeting of the top officials of the council comes out in favor of:

1) a world government of delegated powers;
2) strong immediate limitations on national sovereignty;
3) international control of all armies and navies.

Representatives (375 of them) of 30-some denominations assert that “a new order of economic life is both imminent and imperative” – a new order that is sure to come either “through voluntary cooperation within the framework of democracy or through explosive revolution.”

June 28, 1945 – U.S. President Harry Truman endorses world government in a speech:
“It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in a republic of the United States.” 


October 24, 1945 – The United Nations Charter becomes effective. Also on October 24, Senator Glen Taylor (D-Idaho) introduces Senate Resolution 183, calling upon the U.S. Senate to go on record as favoring creation of a world republic, including an international police force.

Feb. 7, 1950 – International financier and CFR member James Warburg tells a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee:
“We shall have world government whether or not you like it – by conquest or consent.” 


Feb. 9, 1950 – The Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee introduces Senate Concurrent Resolution #66 which begins:
“Whereas, in order to achieve universal peace and justice, the present Charter of the United Nations should be changed to provide a true world government constitution.” 


1952 – The World Association of Parliamentarians for World Government draws up a map designed to illustrate how foreign troops would occupy and police the six regions into which the United States and Canada will be divided as part of their world-government plan.

1954 – Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands establishes the Bilderbergers: international politicians and bankers who meet secretly on an annual basis.

1961 – The U.S. State Department issues Document 7277, entitled “Freedom From War: The U.S. Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World.” It details a three-stage plan to disarm all nations and arm the U.N. with the final stage in which “no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened U.N. Peace Force.”

1966 – Professor Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton’s mentor at Georgetown University, authors a massive volume entitled “Tragedy and Hope” in which he states:
“There does exist and has existed for a generation, an international network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. 


I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims, and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies, but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.” 


April 1972 – In his keynote address to the Association for Childhood Education International, Chester M. Pierce, Professor of Education and Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard University, proclaims:
“Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances toward our founding fathers, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being. It’s up to you, teachers, to make all of these sick children well by creating the international child of the future.” 


July 1973 – International banker and staunch member of the subversive Council on Foreign Relations, David Rockefeller, founds a new organization called the Trilateral Commission, of which the official aim is “to harmonize the political, economic, social, and cultural relations between the three major economic regions in the world” (hence the name “Trilateral”). He invites future President Jimmy Carter to become one of the founding members. Zbigniew Brzezinski is the organization’s first director.

There are three major economic areas in the world: Europe, North America, and the Far East (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc.). If, under the pretext of having to join forces to be able to face economic competition with the two other economic regions, the member countries of each of these three regions decide to merge into one single country, forming three super-States, then the one-world government will be almost achieved. Like Fabian socialists, they achieve their ultimate goal (a world government) step by step.

This aim is almost achieved in Europe with the Single European Act (Maastricht Treaty) that was implemented in 1993, requiring all the member countries of the European Community to abolish their trade barriers, and to hand over their monetary and fiscal policies to the technocrats of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium.

In January, 2002, all these European countries abandoned their national currencies to share only one common currency, the “Euro”. Moreover, the Nice Treaty removed more powers from countries to give them over to the European Commission. What begun innocently in 1952 as the EEC (European Economic Community, a common authority to regulate the coal and steel industry among European nations), finally turned into a European super-state.

Jean Monnet, a French socialist economist and founder of the EEC, had this in mind when he said: “Political union inevitably follows economic union.” He also said in 1948:
“The creation of a United Europe must be regarded as an essential step towards the creation of a United World.” 


As regards the North American area, the merger of its member countries is well under way with the passage of free trade between Canada and the U.S.A., and then Mexico. In the next few years, this free-trade agreement is supposed to include also all of South and Central America, with a single currency for them all.

Mexico’s President Vucente Fox said on May 6, 2002, in Madrid:
“Eventually, our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union.” 


1973 – The Club of Rome, a U.N. operative, issues a report entitled “Regionalized and Adaptive Model of the Global World System.” This report divides the entire world into ten kingdoms.

1979 – FEMA, which stands for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is given huge powers. It has the power, in case of “national emergency”, to suspend laws, move entire populations, arrest and detain citizens without a warrant, and hold them without trial. It can seize property, food supplies, transportation systems, and can suspend the Constitution.

Not only is it the most powerful entity in the United States, but it was not even created under Constitutional law by the Congress. It was a product of a Presidential Executive Order. 

An Executive Order becomes law simply by a signature of the U.S. President; it does not even have to be approved by the Representatives or Senators in the Congress.

A state of “national emergency” could be a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, or a stock market crash, for example. Here are just a few Executive Orders associated with FEMA that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years, and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:

# 10995: Right to seize all communications media in the United States.

# 10997: Right to seize all electric power, fuels and minerals, both public and private.

# 10999: Right to seize all means of transportation, including personal vehicles of any kind, and total control of highways, seaports, and waterways.

# 11000: Right to seize any and all American people and divide up families in order to create work forces to be transferred to any place the Government sees fit.

# 11001: Right to seize all health, education and welfare facilities, both public and private.

# 11002: Right to force registration of all men, women, and children in the United States.

# 11003: Right to seize all air space, airports, and aircraft.

# 11004: Right to seize all housing and finance authorities in order to establish “Relocation Designated Areas”, and to force abandonment of areas classified as “unsafe”.

#  11005: Right to seize all railroads, inland waterways, and storage facilities, both public and private.

# 11921: Authorizes plans to establish Government control of wages and salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institutions.

1991 – President George Bush Sr. praises the New World Order in a State of the Union Message:
“What is at stake is more than one small country; it is a big idea – a new world order… to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind... based on shared principles and the rule of law… The illumination of a thousand points of light... The winds of change are with us now.” 


(Theosophist Alice Bailey used that very same expression – “points of light” – in describing the process of occult enlightenment.)

June, 1991 – World leaders are gathered for another closed door meeting of the Bilderberg Society in Baden Baden, Germany. While at that meeting, David Rockefeller said in a speech:
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”


Oct. 29, 1991 – David Funderburk, former U.S. Ambassador to Romania, tells a North Carolina audience:

“George Bush has been surrounding himself with people who believe in one-world government. They believe that the Soviet system and the American system are converging.”

May 21, 1992 – In an address to the Bilderberger organization meeting in Evian, France, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declares:
“Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. 


It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government.” 


July 20, 1992 – “TIME” magazine publishes “The Birth of the Global Nation,” by Strobe Talbott, Rhodes Scholar, roommate of Bill Clinton at Oxford University, CFR Director and Trilateralist (and appointed Deputy Secretary of State by President Clinton), in which he writes:
“Nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single global authority... All countries are basically social arrangements... No matter how permanent or even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary... Perhaps national sovereignty wasn’t such a great idea after all... But it has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government.” 


1993 – A second Parliament of World Religions is held in Chicago on the 100th anniversary of the first. Like the first convention, this one seeks to join all the religions of the world into “one harmonious whole,” but it wants to make them “merge back into their original element.” Traditional beliefs of monotheistic religions such as Christianity are considered incompatible with individual “en- lightenment”, and must be drastically altered.

July 18, 1993 – CFR member and Trilateralist Henry Kissinger writes in the “Los Angeles Times” concerning NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement):
“What Congress will have before it is not a conventional trade agreement but the architecture of a new international system…a first step toward a new world order.” 


1994 – In the Human Development Report, published by the UN Development Program, there was a section called “Global Governance for the 21st Century.” The administrator for this program was appointed by Bill Clinton. His name is James Gustave Speth. The opening sentence of the report said:
“Mankind’s problems can no longer be solved by national government. What is needed is a world government. This can best be achieved by strengthening the United Nations system.”


May 3, 1994 – President Bill Clinton signs Presidential Decision Directive 25, and then declares it classified so the American people can’t see what it says.

(The summary of PDD-25 issued to members of Congress tells us that it authorizes the President to turn over control of U.S. military units to U.N. command.)

Sept. 23, 1994 – The globalists realize that as more and more people begin to wake up to what’s going on, they have only a limited amount of time in which to implement their policies. Speaking at the United Nations Ambassadors’ dinner, David Rockefeller remarks:
“This present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long… We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order.” 


March 1995 – U.N. delegates meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, to discuss various methods for imposing global taxes on the people of the world.

Sept. 1995 – “Popular Science” magazine describes a top secret U.S. Navy installation called HAARP (High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) in the state of Alaska. This project beams powerful radio energy into the earth’s upper atmosphere. One of the goals of the program is to develop the capability of “manipulating local weather” using the techniques developed by Bernard Eastlund.

(The program has been underway since 1990.)

September 27, 1995 – The State of the World Forum took place in the fall of this year, sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation located at the Presidio in San Francisco. Foundation President Jim Garrison chairs the meeting of who’s-who from around the world, including Margaret Thatcher, Maurice Strong, George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and others.

Conversation centers around the oneness of mankind and the coming global government. However, the term “global gov- ernance” is now used in place of “new world order” since the latter has become a political liability, being a lightning rod for opponents of global government.

1996 – The United Nations’ 420-page report “Our Global Neighborhood” is published. It outlines a plan for “global governance,” calling for an international “Conference on Global Governance” in 1998 for the purpose of submitting to the world the necessary treaties and agreements for ratification by the year 2000.

2003 - The world is on the verge of another global war, the “state of emergency” looked for by the one-worlders to impose martial law and the universal microchip under the skin...

The World Is Accelerating Towards Digital IDs For All


The coronavirus pandemic has triggered a new focus on a global ID system. But if we're unlucky, it could be an Orwellian nightmare.

The coronavirus outbreak has accelerated initiatives focused on creating a global digital ID system.


Governments and Big Tech are building surveillance apps to control the spread of COVID-19.


But if the apps aren't built with privacy in mind they could be a dystopian disaster.


The United Nations, World Economic Forum, and Big Tech have been working together to create global digital IDs since 2014, in an effort recognized by the World Bank as important for sustainable development. Now the coronavirus is pushing this development even further.

The coronavirus pandemic has already prompted a shift towards a digital everything—including digital ID. With many people working from home, conferences are now being held virtually, work is being done remotely and people are having to sign documents electronically. But to prove that you’re you, digital ID is a must.

With more than 1.6 million confirmed cases of coronavirus and the death total set to hit 100,000 deaths in the next 24 hours, the effects of the virus haven’t stopped there. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the global economy, with the US Federal Reserve resorting to printing money at a rate of $1 million a second just to keep it afloat.

Towards a technological surveillance regime


According to Jacob Nordangård, PhD student at Linköping University in Sweden and a speaker at the Eighth International Conference on Climate Change, this shows the world needs a global pandemic response.

“The COVID19 outbreak, with all its tragic consequences, happened to be the perfect trigger event to show the world the need for a global coordination and management of the planet, as well as the need for [a] technological surveillance regime in order to track and monitor all people and diseases (and the global value chains),” he said, in a blog post on April 6.

Tech companies and governments are already working together to build surveillance apps in order to control the spread of the coronavirus. There are at least 60 apps trying to collect this data—but while some are privacy-first, others are dystopian hellscapes.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said, in a TED Talk last month, “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”

A global identity system


Microsoft is already a founding member of a platform designed to create a global identity system, which could be used to track the spread of outbreaks, called ID2020.

ID2020 launched an alliance, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and consulting firm Accenture, in 2017. The alliance’s main goals were also defined that year: to develop and test technological solutions for digital identity, and to work with governments and “existing, established agencies to implement these solutions.”

In the same year, the World Economic Forum stated, in a report called Digital Borders, that its goals—including for a global digital ID technology—should be prioritized because of threats such as pandemics.

The report identified key problems with the growing global population—in particular, the expected growth of international travel over the next decade. But in order to find a solution to such global problems, it said that a global digital ID is necessary.

“Yet, the proposed solutions are based on the premise that individuals have a recognized identity, when 1.5 billion people today do not,” the report stated. To ensure that such a framework is inclusive, the report added, “the broader issue of identity and digital identity has to be addressed to determine how to create effective and efficient digital identity management through acceptable global standards and norms.”

“The objective is to combine and enable the customer’s sharing of data and verified identity through a platform which, in turn, creates an effortless experience by connecting systems, facilitating passage and improving security,” it said.

Could a global digital ID threaten privacy?


A global digital ID could be used to track the spread of the coronavirus, to monitor travel and restrict the movement of those who are infected. In China, it’s already common to have your body temperature checked when you enter a building, if this data was matched to your ID—then you would have an identity that proved you weren’t infected.

But here’s the catch. It would give governments a lot of information and control over their citizens—which could be a bad idea.

NordangÃ¥rd argues that the “utopian smart society” that is currently being built by ID2020 and its partners around the world may lead to people losing access to all basic human services—unless they opt-in and have their digital identity recorded.

“Just like the Social Credit system in China,” he added.''

On the other hand, it’s possible for this information to be collected and stored in a privacy-preserving way. For example, Elastos is building a blockchain-based system that will log certain health information but where you own your own data.

Likewise, privacy-first protocol Enigma is building a coronavirus monitoring app that shares location data and infection status without revealing the personal data of the people involved.

“It is possible to leverage the power of highly detailed, accurate and widespread data to fight viral infections, without putting individuals at risk by exposing this sensitive data,” it stated, in a blog post.

With governments around the world stepping up work on digital currencies, the world might be digital before we know it.


Coronavirus Surveillance May Mean The End Of Personal Privacy


Authorities around the world are launching increasingly intrusive mass surveillance systems to track COVID-19. But will they step back afterwards?

Governments around the world are increasing surveillance.


This surveillance will be used to help stop the spread of the coronavirus.


But once over, will governments stop acting like Big Brother?


Numerous governments around the world are beginning to roll out mass surveillance systems in an attempt to slow the pandemic.

But privacy advocates are worried that when these measures have been introduced, there will be no going back. Once governments have this ability to track the population, they may be loath to give it up, begging the question, is it worth the risk?

According to The New York Times, various governments around the world are taking increasingly drastic measures in their attempt to slow the coronavirus’s spread. Many countries are currently working on or already have implemented various tracking systems that could potentially help to identify people who came in contact with positive-tested individuals.

Per the report, South Korea’s government started to post disturbingly detailed location histories of people who tested positive for the coronavirus in January. The information included when individuals went for work, whether they wore protective masks in the subway and at what stations they changed trains. Even more uncanny, people’s favorite massage parlors and karaoke bars were also publicly disclosed.

Unsurprisingly, this patient data was soon exploited and used to identify the individuals. Later on, the South Korean government made a u-turn on the decision, stating they would revise the data-sharing guidelines “to minimize patient risk.”

“We will balance the value of protecting individual human rights and privacy and the value of upholding public interest in preventing mass infections,” said Jung Eun-kyeong, the director of South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet, South Korea is just one example as mass surveillance related to the coronavirus is getting traction in many more countries around the world. EUobserver reports that people under home quarantine in Poland are required to take geo-located selfies within 20 minutes of receiving the corresponding SMS-request. Fail to comply, and you risk to face a police squad on your doorstep.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently approved a surveillance program that uses the domestic security agency’s data cache to track the locations of people potentially infected with the virus. The system, initially designed to fight terrorism, has now been turned against the country’s own people.

An amendment to an emergency bill in France is proposing to enable telecoms data collection for six months, in Belgium—for three months. At the same time, Austrian telecom operator A1 has reportedly granted limited government access to anonymized location data for the first two Saturdays in March.

The US is not too far behind. According to the NYT, the White House is currently in talks with Google, Facebook and other tech companies that could potentially provide aggregated location data captured from Americans’ mobile phones to help track the coronavirus.

“We could so easily end up in a situation where we empower local, state or federal government to take measures in response to this pandemic that fundamentally change the scope of American civil rights,” Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told the NYT.

Big Brother gets out of control


Experts around the world are expressing concerns that mass surveillance on such a scale might not stop with the outbreak. When the governments are given such power during times of crisis, who can be sure that they’ll easily let go of it when the pandemic starts to decline? 

There are a lot of ways even location data could be used for political or other gains—to track political opponents and their acquaintances, for example.

"We need to make sure it doesn't lead to surveillance after the outbreak," Estelle Massé, a senior policy analyst at the Access Now, told EUobserver.

The outlet also reports that Belgium, France and the United Kingdom are already facing the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg for their “Big Brother approach” to the pandemic.

“We need to have a framework that would allow companies and public authorities to cooperate, to enable proper response for the public good. To reduce the risk that coronavirus surveillance efforts might violate people’s privacy, governments and companies should limit the collection and use of data to only what is needed,” noted Mila Romanoff, data and governance lead for United Nations Global Pulse.

But how much data is enough?

The Point of No Return: Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here

Walruses, like these in Alaska, are being forced ashore in record numbers. Corey Accardo/NOAA/AP

Historians may look to 2015 as the year when things really started getting worse. In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory.

London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventy fold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.

On July 20th, James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who brought climate change to the public's attention in the summer of 1988, issued a bombshell: He and a team of climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback mechanism off the coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted: 10 feet by 2065. The authors included this chilling warning: If emissions aren't cut, "We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization."

Eric Rignot, a climate scientist at NASA and the University of California-Irvine and a co-author on Hansen's study, said their new research doesn't necessarily change the worst-case scenario on sea-level rise, it just makes it much more pressing to think about and discuss, especially among world leaders. In particular, says Rignot, the new research shows a two-degree Celsius rise in global temperature — the previously agreed upon "safe" level of climate change — "would be a catastrophe for sea-level rise."

Hansen's new study also shows how complicated and unpredictable climate change can be. Even as global ocean temperatures rise to their highest levels in recorded history, some parts of the ocean, near where ice is melting exceptionally fast, are actually cooling, slowing ocean circulation currents and sending weather patterns into a frenzy. Sure enough, a persistently cold patch of ocean is starting to show up just south of Greenland, exactly where previous experimental predictions of a sudden surge of freshwater from melting ice expected it to be. Michael Mann, another prominent climate scientist, recently said of the unexpectedly sudden Atlantic slowdown, "This is yet another example of where observations suggest that climate model predictions may be too conservative when it comes to the pace at which certain aspects of climate change are proceeding."

Since storm systems and jet streams in the United States and Europe partially draw their energy from the difference in ocean temperatures, the implication of one patch of ocean cooling while the rest of the ocean warms is profound. Storms will get stronger, and sea-level rise will accelerate. Scientists like Hansen only expect extreme weather to get worse in the years to come, though Mann said it was still "unclear" whether recent severe winters on the East Coast are connected to the phenomenon.

And yet, these aren't even the most disturbing changes happening to the Earth's biosphere that climate scientists are discovering this year. For that, you have to look not at the rising sea levels but to what is actually happening within the oceans themselves.

Water temperatures this year in the North Pacific have never been this high for this long over such a large area — and it is already having a profound effect on marine life.

Eighty-year-old Roger Thomas runs whale-watching trips out of San Francisco. On an excursion earlier this year, Thomas spotted 25 humpbacks and three blue whales. During a survey on July 4th, federal officials spotted 115 whales in a single hour near the Farallon Islands — enough to issue a boating warning. Humpbacks are occasionally seen offshore in California, but rarely so close to the coast or in such numbers. Why are they coming so close to shore? Exceptionally warm water has concentrated the krill and anchovies they feed on into a narrow band of relatively cool coastal water. The whales are having a heyday. "It's unbelievable," Thomas told a local paper. 
"Whales are all over the place."

Last fall, in northern Alaska, in the same part of the Arctic where Shell is planning to drill for oil, federal scientists discovered 35,000 walruses congregating on a single beach. It was the largest-ever documented "haul out" of walruses, and a sign that sea ice, their favored habitat, is becoming harder and harder to find.

Marine life is moving north, adapting in real time to the warming ocean. Great white sharks have been sighted breeding near Monterey Bay, California, the farthest north that's ever been known to occur. A blue marlin was caught last summer near Catalina Island — 1,000 miles north of its typical range. Across California, there have been sightings of non-native animals moving north, such as Mexican red crabs. 

No species may be as uniquely endangered as the one most associated with the Pacific Northwest, the salmon. Every two weeks, Bill Peterson, an oceanographer and senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Oregon, takes to the sea to collect data he uses to forecast the return of salmon. What he's been seeing this year is deeply troubling.

Salmon are crucial to their coastal ecosystem like perhaps few other species on the planet. A significant portion of the nitrogen in West Coast forests has been traced back to salmon, which can travel hundreds of miles upstream to lay their eggs. The largest trees on Earth simply wouldn't exist without salmon.

But their situation is precarious. This year, officials in California are bringing salmon downstream in convoys of trucks, because river levels are too low and the temperatures too warm for them to have a reasonable chance of surviving. One species, the winter-run Chinook salmon, is at a particularly increased risk of decline in the next few years, should the warm water persist offshore.

"You talk to fishermen, and they all say: 'We've never seen anything like this before,' " says Peterson. "So when you have no experience with something like this, it gets like, 'What the hell's going on?' "

Atmospheric scientists increasingly believe that the exceptionally warm waters over the past months are the early indications of a phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a cyclical warming of the North Pacific that happens a few times each century. Positive phases of the PDO have been known to last for 15 to 20 years, during which global warming can increase at double the rate as during negative phases of the PDO. It also makes big El Niños, like this year's, more likely.

The nature of PDO phase shifts is unpredictable — climate scientists simply haven't yet figured out precisely what's behind them and why they happen when they do. It's not a permanent change — the ocean's temperature will likely drop from these record highs, at least temporarily, some time over the next few years — but the impact on marine species will be lasting, and scientists have pointed to the PDO as a global-warming preview.

"The climate [change] models predict this gentle, slow increase in temperature," says Peterson, "but the main problem we've had for the last few years is the variability is so high. As scientists, we can't keep up with it, and neither can the animals." Peterson likens it to a boxer getting pummeled round after round: "At some point, you knock them down, and the fight is over." 

Attendant with this weird wildlife behavior is a stunning drop in the number of plankton — the basis of the ocean's food chain. In July,another major study concluded that acidifying oceans are likely to have a "quite traumatic" impact on plankton diversity, with some species dying out while others flourish. As the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it's converted into carbonic acid — and the pH of seawater declines. According to lead author Stephanie Dutkiewicz of MIT, that trend means "the whole food chain is going to be different."

The Hansen study may have gotten more attention, but the Dutkiewicz study, and others like it, could have even more dire implications for our future. The rapid changes Dutkiewicz and her colleagues are observing have shocked some of their fellow scientists into thinking that yes, actually, we're heading toward the worst-case scenario. Unlike a prediction of massive sea-level rise just decades away, the warming and acidifying oceans represent a problem that seems to have kick-started a mass extinction on the same time scale.

Jacquelyn Gill is a paleoecologist at the University of Maine. She knows a lot about extinction, and her work is more relevant than ever. Essentially, she's trying to save the species that are alive right now by learning more about what killed off the ones that aren't. The ancient data she studies shows "really compelling evidence that there can be events of abrupt climate change that can happen well within human life spans. We're talking less than a decade."

For the past year or two, a persistent change in winds over the North Pacific has given rise to what meteorologists and oceanographers are calling "the blob" — a highly anomalous patch of warm water between Hawaii, Alaska and Baja California that's thrown the marine ecosystem into a tailspin. Amid warmer temperatures, plankton numbers have plummeted, and the myriad species that depend on them have migrated or seen their own numbers dwindle.

Significant northward surges of warm water have happened before, even frequently. El Niño, for example, does this on a predictable basis. But what's happening this year appears to be something new. Some climate scientists think that the wind shift is linked to the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice over the past few years, which separate research has shown makes weather patterns more likely to get stuck.

A similar shift in the behavior of the jet stream has also contributed to the California drought and severe polar vortex winters in the Northeast over the past two years. An amplified jet-stream pattern has produced an unusual doldrum off the West Coast that's persisted for most of the past 18 months. Daniel Swain, a Stanford University meteorologist, has called it the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge" — weather patterns just aren't supposed to last this long.

What's increasingly uncontroversial among scientists is that in many ecosystems, the impacts of the current off-the-charts temperatures in the North Pacific will linger for years, or longer. The largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific is exhibiting cyclical variability to greater extremes than other ocean basins. 

While the North Pacific is currently the most dramatic area of change in the world's oceans, it's not alone: Globally, 2014 was a record-setting year for ocean temperatures, and 2015 is on pace to beat it soundly, boosted by the El Niño in the Pacific.

Six percent of the world's reefs could disappear before the end of the decade, perhaps permanently, thanks to warming waters.

Since warmer oceans expand in volume, it's also leading to a surge in sea-level rise. One recent study showed a slowdown in Atlantic Ocean currents, perhaps linked to glacial melt from Greenland, that caused a four-inch rise in sea levels along the Northeast coast in just two years, from 2009 to 2010. To be sure, it seems like this sudden and unpredicted surge was only temporary, but scientists who studied the surge estimated it to be a 1-in-850-year event, and it's been blamed on accelerated beach erosion "almost as significant as some hurricane events." 

Possibly worse than rising ocean temperatures is the acidification of the waters. Acidification has a direct effect on mollusks and other marine animals with hard outer bodies: A striking study last year showed that, along the West Coast, the shells of tiny snails are already dissolving, with as-yet-unknown consequences on the ecosystem. One of the study's authors, Nina Bednaršek, told Science magazine that the snails' shells, pitted by the acidifying ocean, resembled "cauliflower" or "sandpaper." A similarly striking study by more than a dozen of the world's top ocean scientists this July said that the current pace of increasing carbon emissions would force an "effectively irreversible" change on ocean ecosystems during this century. In as little as a decade, the study suggested, chemical changes will rise significantly above background levels in nearly half of the world's oceans.

"I used to think it was kind of hard to make things in the ocean go extinct," James Barry of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California told the Seattle Times in 2013. "But this change we're seeing is happening so fast it's almost instantaneous." 

Thanks to the pressure we're putting on the planet's ecosystem — warming, acidification and good old-fashioned pollution — the oceans are set up for several decades of rapid change. Here's what could happen next.

The combination of excessive nutrients from agricultural runoff, abnormal wind patterns and the warming oceans is already creating seasonal dead zones in coastal regions when algae blooms suck up most of the available oxygen. The appearance of low-oxygen regions has doubled in frequency every 10 years since 1960 and should continue to grow over the coming decades at an even greater rate.

So far, dead zones have remained mostly close to the coasts, but in the 21st century, deep-ocean dead zones could become common. These low-oxygen regions could gradually expand in size — potentially thousands of miles across — which would force fish, whales, pretty much everything upward. If this were to occur, large sections of the temperate deep oceans would suffer should the oxygen-free layer grow so pronounced that it stratifies, pushing surface ocean warming into overdrive and hindering upwelling of cooler, nutrient-rich deeper water.

Enhanced evaporation from the warmer oceans will create heavier downpours, perhaps destabilizing the root systems of forests, and accelerated runoff will pour more excess nutrients into coastal areas, further enhancing dead zones. In the past year, downpours have broken records in Long Island, Phoenix, Detroit, Baltimore, Houston and Pensacola, Florida.

Evidence for the above scenario comes in large part from our best understanding of what happened 250 million years ago, during the "Great Dying," when more than 90 percent of all oceanic species perished after a pulse of carbon dioxide and methane from land-based sources began a period of profound climate change. The conditions that triggered "Great Dying" took hundreds of thousands of years to develop. But humans have been emitting carbon dioxide at a much quicker rate, so the current mass extinction only took 100 years or so to kick-start.

With all these stressors working against it, a hypoxic feedback loop could wind up destroying some of the oceans' most species-rich ecosystems within our lifetime. A recent study by Sarah Moffitt of the University of California-Davis said it could take the ocean thousands of years to recover. "Looking forward for my kid, people in the future are not going to have the same ocean that I have today," Moffitt said.

As you might expect, having tickets to the front row of a global environmental catastrophe is taking an increasingly emotional toll on scientists, and in some cases pushing them toward advocacy. Of the two dozen or so scientists interviewed for this piece, virtually all drifted into apocalyptic language at some point.

For Simone Alin, an oceanographer focusing on ocean acidification at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, the changes she's seeing hit close to home. The Puget Sound is a natural laboratory for the coming decades of rapid change because its waters are naturally more acidified than most of the world's marine ecosystems.

The local oyster industry here is already seeing serious impacts from acidifying waters and is going to great lengths to avoid a total collapse. Alin calls oysters, which are non-native, the canary in the coal mine for the Puget Sound: "A canary is also not native to a coal mine, but that doesn't mean it's not a good indicator of change."

Though she works on fundamental oceanic changes every day, the Dutkiewicz study on the impending large-scale changes to plankton caught her off-guard: "This was alarming to me because if the basis of the food web changes, then . . . everything could change, right?"

Alin's frank discussion of the looming oceanic apocalypse is perhaps a product of studying unfathomable change every day. But four years ago, the birth of her twins "heightened the whole issue," she says. "I was worried enough about these problems before having kids that I maybe wondered whether it was a good idea. Now, it just makes me feel crushed." 

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and evangelical Christian, moved from Canada to Texas with her husband, a pastor, precisely because of its vulnerability to climate change. There, she engages with the evangelical community on science — almost as a missionary would. But she's already planning her exit strategy: "If we continue on our current pathway, Canada will be home for us long term. But the majority of people don't have an exit strategy. . . . So that's who I'm here trying to help."

James Hansen, the dean of climate scientists, retired from NASA in 2013 to become a climate activist. But for all the gloom of the report he just put his name to, Hansen is actually somewhat hopeful. That's because he knows that climate change has a straightforward solution: End fossil-fuel use as quickly as possible. If tomorrow, the leaders of the United States and China would agree to a sufficiently strong, coordinated carbon tax that's also applied to imports, the rest of the world would have no choice but to sign up. This idea has already been pitched to Congress several times, with tepid bipartisan support. Even though a carbon tax is probably a long shot, for Hansen, even the slim possibility that bold action like this might happen is enough for him to devote the rest of his life to working to achieve it. On a conference call with reporters in July, Hansen said a potential joint U.S.-China carbon tax is more important than whatever happens at the United Nations climate talks in Paris.

One group Hansen is helping is Our Children's Trust, a legal advocacy organization that's filed a number of novel challenges on behalf of minors under the idea that climate change is a violation of intergenerational equity — children, the group argues, are lawfully entitled to inherit a healthy planet.

A separate challenge to U.S. law is being brought by a former EPA scientist arguing that carbon dioxide isn't just a pollutant (which, under the Clean Air Act, can dissipate on its own), it's also a toxic substance. In general, these substances have exceptionally long life spans in the environment, cause an unreasonable risk, and therefore require remediation. In this case, remediation may involve planting vast numbers of trees or restoring wetlands to bury excess carbon underground.

Even if these novel challenges succeed, it will take years before a bend in the curve is noticeable. But maybe that's enough. When all feels lost, saving a few species will feel like a triumph.        
Odds are good that the worst wildfire disaster in U.S. history might not happen in the West – but in New Jersey.

‘No Cash’ Signs Everywhere Has Sweden Worried It’s Gone Too Far


“No cash accepted” signs are becoming an increasingly common sight in shops and eateries across Sweden as payments go digital and mobile.

But the pace at which cash is vanishing has authorities worried. A broad review of central bank legislation that’s under way is now taking a special look at the situation, with an interim report due as early as the summer.

“If this development with cash disappearing happens too fast, it can be difficult to maintain the infrastructure” for handling cash, said Mats Dillen, the head of the parliamentary review. He declined to give more details on the types of proposals that could be included in the report.

Sweden is widely regarded as the most cashless society on the planet. Most of the country’s bank branches have stopped handling cash; many shops, museums and restaurants now only accept plastic or mobile payments. But there’s a downside, since many people, in particular the elderly, don’t have access to the digital society.

“One may get into a negative spiral which can threaten the cash infrastructure,” Dillen said. “It’s those types of issues we are looking more closely at.”

Last year, the amount of cash in circulation in Sweden dropped to the lowest level since 1990 and is more than 40 percent below its 2007 peak. The declines in 2016 and 2017 were the biggest on record.

An annual survey by Insight Intelligence released last month found that only 25 percent of Swedes paid in cash at least once a week in 2017, down from 63 percent just four years ago. A full 36 percent never use cash, or just pay with it once or twice a year.

In response, the central bank is considering whether there’s a need for an official form of digital currency, an e-krona. A final proposal isn’t expected until late next year, but the idea is that the e-krona would work as a complement to cash, not replace it completely.

Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves has said Sweden should consider forcing banks to provide cash to customers. In its annual report on Monday, the Riksbank said the question is what role it should play in a future with even fewer cash payments.

“The Riksbank is carefully analyzing this development,” Ingves said. “Overall, I think we are facing structural changes in areas that have previously been stable. This is a development which will affect all the Riksbank’s departments and we will need to make strategic decisions regarding the way forward.”
 
 
  
 
In Sweden, A Cash-Free Future Nears
 

Parishioners text tithes to their churches. Homeless street vendors carry mobile credit-card readers. Even the Abba Museum, despite being a shrine to the 1970s pop group that wrote “Money, Money, Money,” considers cash so last-century that it does not accept bills and coins.

Few places are tilting toward a cashless future as quickly as Sweden, which has become hooked on the convenience of paying by app and plastic.

This tech-forward country, home to the music streaming service Spotify and the maker of the Candy Crush mobile games, has been lured by the innovations that make digital payments easier. It is also a practical matter, as many of the country’s banks no longer accept or dispense cash.

At the Abba Museum, “we don’t want to be behind the times by taking cash while cash is dying out,” said Bjorn Ulvaeus, a former Abba member who has leveraged the band’s legacy into a sprawling business empire, including the museum.

Not everyone is cheering. Sweden’s embrace of electronic payments has alarmed consumer organizations and critics who warn of a rising threat to privacy and increased vulnerability to sophisticated Internet crimes. Last year, the number of electronic fraud cases surged to 140,000, more than double the amount a decade ago, according to Sweden’s Ministry of Justice.

Older adults and refugees in Sweden who use cash may be marginalized, critics say. And young people who use apps to pay for everything or take out loans via their mobile phones risk falling into debt.

“It might be trendy,” said Bjorn Eriksson, a former director of the Swedish police force and former president of Interpol. “But there are all sorts of risks when a society starts to go cashless.”

But advocates like Mr. Ulvaeus cite personal safety as a reason that countries should go cash-free. He switched to using only card and electronic payments after his son’s Stockholm apartment was burglarized twice several years ago.

“There was such a feeling of insecurity,” said Mr. Ulvaeus, who carries no cash at all. “It made me think: What would happen if this was a cashless society, and the robbers couldn’t sell what they stole?”

Bills and coins now represent just 2 percent of Sweden’s economy, compared with 7.7 percent in the United States and 10 percent in the euro area. This year, only about 20 percent of all consumer payments in Sweden have been made in cash, compared with an average of 75 percent in the rest of the world, according to Euromonitor International.

Cards are still king in Sweden — with nearly 2.4 billion credit and debit transactions in 2013, compared with 213 million 15 years earlier. But even plastic is facing competition, as a rising number of Swedes use apps for everyday commerce.

At more than half of the branches of the country’s biggest banks, including SEB, Swedbank, Nordea Bank and others, no cash is kept on hand, nor are cash deposits accepted. They say they are saving a significant amount on security by removing the incentive for bank robberies.

Last year, Swedish bank vaults held around 3.6 billion kronor in notes and coins, down from 8.7 billion in 2010, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Cash machines, which are controlled by a Swedish bank consortium, are being dismantled by the hundreds, especially in rural areas.

Mr. Eriksson, who now heads the Association of Swedish Private Security Companies, a lobbying group for firms providing security for cash transfers, accuses banks and credit card companies of trying to “price cash out of the market” to make way for cards and electronic payments, which generate fee income.

“I don’t think that’s something they should decide on their own,” he said. “Should they really be able to use their market force to turn Sweden into a cashless society?”

The government has not sought to stem the cashless tide. If anything, it has benefited from more efficient tax collection, because electronic transactions leave a trail; in countries like Greece and Italy, where cash is still heavily used, tax evasion remains a big problem.

Leif Trogen, an official at the Swedish Bankers’ Association, acknowledged that banks were earning substantial fee income from the cashless revolution. But because it costs money for banks and businesses to conduct commerce in cash, reducing its use makes financial sense, Mr. Trogen said.

Cash is certainly not dead. The Swedish central bank, the Riksbank, predicts it will decline fast but still be circulating in 20 years. Recently, the Riksbank issued newly redesigned coins and notes.

But for an increasing number of consumers, cash is no longer a habit.

At the University of Gothenburg, students said they almost exclusively used cards and electronic payments. “No one uses cash,” said Hannah Ek, 23. “I think our generation can live without it.”

The downside, she conceded, was that it was easy to spend without thinking. “I do spend more,” Ms. Ek said. “But if I had a 500 krona bill, I’d think twice about spending it all.” (Five hundred kronor is about $58.)

The shift has rippled through even the most unlikely corners of the Swedish economy.

Stefan Wikberg, 65, was homeless for four years after losing his job as an I.T. technician. He has a place to live now and sells magazines for Situation Stockholm, a charitable organization, and began using a mobile card reader to take payments, after noticing that almost no one carried cash.

“Now people can’t get away,” said Mr. Wikberg, who carries a sign saying he accepts Visa, MasterCard and American Express. “When they say, ‘I don’t have change,’ I tell them they can pay with card or even by SMS,” he said, referring to text messages. His sales have grown by 30 percent since he adopted the card reader two years ago.

At the Filadelfia Stockholm church, so few of the 1,000 parishioners now carry cash that the church had to adapt, said Soren Eskilsson, the executive pastor.

During a recent Sunday service, the church’s bank account number was projected onto a large screen. Worshipers pulled out cellphones and tithed through an app called Swish, a payment system set up by Sweden’s biggest banks that is fast becoming a rival to cards.

Other congregants lined up at a special “Kollektomat” card machine, where they could transfer funds to various church operations. Last year, out of 20 million kronor in tithes collected, more than 85 percent came in by card or digital payment.

“People give more money to the church now because it’s electronic and easy,” said Mr. Eskilsson, adding that the church saved on security costs by handling less cash.

Despite the convenience, even some who stand to gain from a cashless society see drawbacks.

“Sweden has always been at the forefront of technology, so it’s easy to embrace this,” said Jacob de Geer, a founder of iZettle, which makes a mobile-powered card reader.

“But Big Brother can watch exactly what you’re doing if you purchase things only electronically,” he said.

But for Mr. Ulvaeus, the music magnate, such concerns are overblown.

“Everything speaks in favor of a cashless society,” he said as he strolled past the Abba Museum to retrieve his car. “It’s a utopian thought, but we’re very close to it.”

He paused at a hot-dog stand for a snack. But when he was ready to pay, the card reader was broken.

“Sorry,” the vendor said. “You’ll have to use cash.”