I’ve been thinking about the FEMA bullet buy (which has been denied by the mainstream media until lately), and some of the new legislation and executive orders that have been issued such as the NDAA and the PATRIOT act, and it gets my fear glands all worked up.
I ran into a website that has all the answers: Obama’s hidden agenda: MUCH WORSE than The Gun Grab!
It’s official… Obama’s Executive Order 16303 now gives his government total martial law powers over the population in an emergency… or even at peacetime! This law allows them to erase your right to bear arms, throw your family into prison without a trial and even confiscate your food
stockpiles! It’s the end of the constitution…as we know it.
Some excerpts:
There is a reason why they are doing this….
Because there are 4 KEY EVENTS taking place behind the scenes of our great nation that are threatening our very existence.
These 4 Events are poised to collide in the near future, causing an explosion that will end society as we know it. When this “perfect storm” hits it will force your government to ration all private food supplies…
In my latest research I uncovered 4 shocking signs that something big is about to happen in 8 months or less.
I call these signs…”The 4 Horsemen of the U.S. Apocalypse”
The first horseman is…
DEPRESSION
Mainstream economic analysts are now being forced to admit that our economy is on the brink of a depression unlike any other in history.
Paul Krugman of the New York Times says: “We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression only far more severe…”
The reason is simple. Our debts have run completely out of control. Easy money being printed since 2006… have dug a hole of debt 16 trillion dollars deep. This is a debt this nation mathematically cannot ever climb their way out of.
When China officially pulls out of the U.S. treasuries or even just announces their intention to do so, investors start shorting the dollar en mass. The Feds will be forced to print the dollar into oblivion.
Causing everything from food to gas, to prescription drugs to become completely unaffordable.
That’s when the next horseman start galloping towards us…His name is…
HUNGER
Most don’t realize it, but our food supply is already treading on very thin ice. Severe Drought around the world has all but ravaged supplies of corn, soy and other major crops. Causing prices of grain to skyrocket by 10% in 2012 alone.
The heat is also drying up the Ogallala aquifer. A loss that will put an end to the water source every major farmer in the U.S. needs to stay in business…(But Global Warming is a left-wing myth).
[Image]
And remember, when people are hungry and their kids are starving, there is nothing they won’t do.
Which brings us to the third horseman of the U.S. apocalypse…His name is…
CHAOS
Just Imagine your entire neighborhood turned into a war zone, with once middle class families, begging stealing, and fighting to the death over a moldy piece of bread… looters going from store to store and door to door…
Just imagine what it might be like to see them making their way to your home. It’s happened before. In fact, every food crisis in history has triggered riots. So you know it can happen again. Here’s what one Russian had to say about a collapse much similar to the one we face.
That took place in 1917. Translated into English from the original Russian:
“When people are starving the rules go out the window. When you’re desperate and you’re hungry suddenly you can justify anything…
And so can your neighbors. I can still remember men who haven’t hurt a fly, forced to violently steal from neighbors to save the family… Families were torn apart…it was brutal… things no human being should ever have to see…”
Keep in mind: law enforcement will be stretched so thinly, they won’t be able to keep up with the tornado of criminal activity. Rubber bullets will fly, then the real ones.
History tells us what comes next. When chaos reigns the next horsemen is always near And his name is…
MARTIAL LAW
There is a reason why HOMELAND Security recently purchased 1.7 Billion Rounds of ammunition… for use on the homeland.
There’s a reason why massive troop movements including urban drills are happening place in every major U.S. City and there’s a reason why foreign troops are now working in conjunction with local police on our soil for the first time in history.
It’s the same reason that….
Army regulation 201-35 – setup secretly in 1986 and recently declassified… lists 12 camps built by the U.S. Army for detention of U.S. Citizens…
By now it is estimated that there are hundreds of detention camps across the country..
They know what’s coming. So our armed forces are ready to spring into action and take control by force of the homeland at a moment’s notice. And the U.S. government has proven that when they’re in charge, they don’t play nice.
BUT…He has a plan!
It’s called The Patriot Survival Plan. “The
Smart And Simple Way To Beat the Crisis”
“And it’s only 197 dollars but if you are one of our first customers, you may qualify for special pricing. In fact, If you’re here early, you will get the Patriot Survival Plan and all the bonuses for just 37 dollars and not a penny
more.
Please bear in mind though the price will rocket back up to $197 any day now, so I apologize in advance if you miss out.”
…
Well, I do hope this guy’s crystal ball needs batteries. Fear is a great motivator and a good way to make a buck out of DVDs. This guy’s at the edge, but nobody of any significance is predicting a new golden age.
Guru Chris Martenson from nearby Montague, (http://www.peakprosperity.com/about
) has a more practical, less scary approach. He, too, is selling DVDs, but it’s possible to view them on his website for free (http://www.peakprosperity.com/crashcourse
).
Chris sums it up: “The next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last twenty years”.
BTW, the Liberty Union Party screened the entire Crash Course in Brattleboro last spring.
People stayed away in droves.
You forgot the LOL
Wow those Onion articles are just getting wackier and wackier.
Who's Laughing
Unfortunately, this guy’s serious. Besides selling overpriced DVDs, he seems to have conflated patriotism with hoarding food.
However, you ought to check out Martenson. He’s the real deal.
I've checked out Martinson.
I’ve checked out Martinson. I’m not so sure I’d use the phrase “real deal.” Not that impressed, rehashed stuff I’ve heard years ago and he’s selling stuff also even if you can see the videos for free. Everyone’s got a hook, everyone’s selling stuff. I’m not that impressed with any of them.
Chris Martinson's New Job or Why I'm Not All That Impressed
Chris Martinson is a smart guy judging from his cv. And as such, he obviously knows that one of the best ways to pull people in if you’re selling something is to give a taste for free. Yes, he offers a free “view” on his web site but that’s the pull in. Then it quickly escalates to this
“The DVD sets now range from $24.99 to $169.99, and Martenson charges $500 an hour for private consultations. By “enrolling” on his website ($30 for a one-month membership; $300 for a year), followers get premium content, including podcasts, newsletters, access to member forums, and the vow of zero advertising. The website now earns enough to support the Martenson family and to employ a part-time staff of four.
Yet Martenson seems driven solely by an urgent desire to share his ideas. His core message is still available at no charge. Anyone can go online and watch him advise Americans to hunker down and safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. “I deeply care that you get this material,” he tells his viewers.”
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/2010/06/the-end-is-near-inc/
Sure he deeply cares, he’s making money hand over fist off this enterprise. Probably more than he ever did in corporate America. He claims to have been making $250,000 before his awakening, I suspect if you look at the numbers that he’s making that much or more playing off of and creating fears of collapse. He’s not the first one to ever do it and he won’t be the last.
But he’s profiting so whether you want to believe his “the sky is falling” predictions or not you cannot say that he’s doing it for free. He’s hooking people and pulling them into a very expensive “course” with a free bite. That’s all it is and there too he is not the first to do this and won’t I suppose be the last.
Snake oil sellers have been around for thousands of years. Martinson is just a very smart one in my book.
Due diligence
Well, you’ve certainly done exhaustive research. Congratulations.
However, I’m surprised you haven’t figured out how to spell Martenson’s name.
Martinson, Martenson or Whateverenson
The product of early hours and not enough coffee and spell check. But Martenson or Martinson, no matter how you spell it, a huckster is a huckster.
I’m just pointing out that he’s benefiting tremendously from what he tries to color as altruism and caring for others.
Just on that $30 web site alone which apparently has garnered quite a following after the past few years of pretty aggressive marketing on his part.
Just on that web subscription if he has 1,000 followers there alone, do the math. That would be $30,000 a month. And I would offer that 1,000 would be a very low subscription figure, it’s probably much higher than that. But even at that low number he’s already making a lot more just on the subscriptions than he did working for that Fortune 500 company.
For that matter if, as he was quoted in Boston magazine, he was making $250,000 a year, this may sound odd but in actuality that isn’t top level salary ranges for Fortune 500 companies regardless of how he wants to color it. I think somebody is making a heck of a lot of money off of doomsday predictions, fine, but own up to it instead of using an age old advertising ploy and offering it as a sign of how much you care. Puleeeeeez.
I almost have more respect for the local guy who’s now moved from offering web subscriptions to make you wealthy to hypnosis sessions that will help make you rich.
But as I said, the only way I spell this is “S N A K E O I L”
I'd like to respond to the concerns you raise, Rosa
I work with Chris Martenson and I’m part of the Peak Prosperity team. Our goal is spreading our message, not profiting from it. We are anything but a doom-and-gloom outfit. One of our key goals is to help grow and support people’s optimism in a more resilient, more rewarding future than the one we are currently fueling unsustainably with growing debt and dwindling natural resources. We believe a rewarding future is possible even with the challenges we face worldwide in the areas of energy, the economy, and the environment.
This work is a labor of love for Chris, his business partner Adam Taggart (who left a job as a senior VP at Yahoo! to join Peak Prosperity), and the rest of our small team. We’re well aware that many people don’t have the means for financial investing and just want/need to increase their personal and/or community resilience. It is our fundamental point that ‘prosperity’ should not be defined by money at all. That is not to say that money isn’t important and even necessary in our culture, but it does not have to define our overall quality of life or our happiness.
Yet we also have a large group of readers who want specific advice on preserving their investments under a forward-thinking economic model that prioritizes resilience.
So we tailor our offerings to address the needs of both groups in different ways. Our premium (paid) content has more investment-level financial nitty-gritty, while our public (free) content covers information that applies to a diverse range of financial circumstances. When we have things to say that we feel everyone must hear, we always say them publicly and freely.
Unfortunately, without some form of self-sustaining income, the site would not be even remotely possible in its present form. The cost of creating, maintaining, hosting, and troubleshooting a high-quality website, keeping it free of contaminants such as trolls and spam, is high. For the first five years, Chris subsidized this venture almost exclusively out of his own pocket (including my own paycheck, which is and always has been quite moderate). We also rely on the help of a number of unpaid volunteers. Our enrollment fees have not risen at all since the inception of the enrollment program seven years ago.
As for DVD sales, the full DVD contents are available free online, and we sell DVDs (a $10 basic DVD, available in bulk, and a $24.99 special edition for community showings) primarily because our readers asked us to provide something they could hand to others and easily show to groups. There is no $169.99 DVD, and I am curious to know where you got that number, Rosa. For years we have encouraged people to copy and distribute the Crash Course on their own at no profit to us.
I myself could not afford a Peak Prosperity enrollment. I don’t have funds to manage or invest. I live pretty frugally and go paycheck-to-paycheck like most everyone else around here. Perhaps there is your proof – if Chris Martenson and his team were raking in the dough, I’d be sharing in it (and spending it locally)! But that’s not the reality.
Yet I have a strong desire to buffer myself and my children and my community from the economic turbulence that is now being felt in our country and in the world. I need reliable sources of information to be able to do that. And I know other people need that, as well. So this informs my work.
Although you won’t generally see my name in the headlines at Peak Prosperity, I have been a key member of the team since early 2008, when Chris was first working on putting together the Crash Course and a website to share it through. So if you (or anyone reading this) have questions about our work, or what “prosperity” and “resilience” and “optimism” might mean to Brattleboro and our community going forward, or how we might even begin to think about a future that will undoubtedly be very different from the one we have been raised to expect, feel free to contact me at amanda @ peakprosperity.com. Let me know you’re from Brattleboro (I read a lot of e-mail from all over — it’s my job) and please introduce yourself. Who knows; we might even know each other already.
If you want to know what you can get out of Chris Martenson’s work and the Peak Prosperity website without paying anything at all, I’d be happy to point you in the direction of the Crash Course, our public blog, discussion forums, learning groups, Daily Digest, Daily Prep, free reports, and other resources that are available to all. You can find Peak Prosperity here and the Crash Course here. There is also a Crash Course book available, authored by Chris and edited by me (ISBN 047092764X; check the library or order it through Everyone’s Books).
As for the previous local Liberty Union presentation of the Crash Course video, I’m sorry to say that this is the first I’ve heard of it. I would have loved to have been able to be there. Perhaps it’s worth another try now, as more people are starting to become aware of how changes and convergences in the economy, energy, and the environment are increasingly affecting them. Please keep me posted if anyone has plans to host another local showing, and I’d be happy to publicize it on the site. (I’ll even lend my copy of the special edition DVD, if necessary.)
We’re totally not in this for the money. We want a sustainable future for ourselves, our families, our communities, our nation, and the world, and we believe that personal and community resilience is the best way to ensure that.
– Amanda
Good job
Good explanation of Peak Prosperity.
I get their weekly newsletter, and I learn something every time I read it. And I’ve never paid a nickel.
Thanks.
Thanks for your interesting response
Amanda
All my information sources are cited in my post. The figures I used came from the Boston Magazine article I quoted (note quote marks) and then I posted the link.
I am somewhat familiar with the setting up and maintaining of web sites and I am not so convinced that it’s as expensive or involved as you seem to think. Labor intensive perhaps but……
At any rate are you knowledgeable about the number of subscribers to the $300 course and the number of people who additionally take the extra classes and what they cost? I would think that the subscribers number could easily be in the high thousands since he did a pretty aggressive marketing campaign when starting out. Does 5 or 6 thousand seem accurate to you?
While I don’t doubt your sincerity I find it a little concerning that you say that you have been working for this organization at a salary that means you cannot afford the actual enrollment in the course. And thank you for offering to help me get involved but I’ve looked at the material and I’m not a good prospective client or enrollee for you. But I sure would be interested in what you think might be the actual number of subscribers beyond the initial access to the DVDs. Thanks in advance
Optimism
I wish I had the optimism to believe a new golden age is just around the corner. I just don’t think it’s possible.
Read this by Tim Stevenson in today’s Reformer:
And while, perhaps, the most urgent of our challenges, climate change is but the eye of a perfect storm of crises that has gathered, including the demise of our democracy with the rise of the national security, corporate state; the self-perpetuating, global war on terror; the class warfare being waged by the 1% (and its allies), through the imposition of “free market” extremism and radical right political ideology on the rest of us; the omnipresent spectra of nuclear holocaust, whether from warring nations or peaceful reactors; not to mention peak water, the growing food crisis, failed (and failing) states, and nations of refugees on the move. These are but some of the most dramatic instances of a world coming unstuck, in great turmoil, and undergoing fundamental change.
This is not happening next year, it’s happening right now. It may not be Armageddon, but it’s not the Garden of Eden either.
Last night, I watched the 1954 B&W version of “1984”. It’s here, Baby! Once you understand that this is all going on today is so easy to see the parallels. The Ministry of Truth is the Mainstream Media. The 2 Minutes Hate is directed at 911 hijackers, Saddam and Gaddhafi, etc. The Telescreen is the computers and cell phones. (and now they have TVs that can watch you! ). There are perpetual wars so we always have someone at which to direct our hate. The doublespeak, such as who is a Terrorist and who is a Freedom Fighter. The list goes on and on. We are living 1984 right now.
“It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude.” — Aldous Huxley (March 20, 1962)
I don't disagree with most of
I don’t disagree with most of what you’ve written. But I also didn’t have to pay Martenson/Martinson/Whoeverinsen any money to figure this out.
I'm confused
I thought that when we had the election in 2008 and Barack Obama was put in office that none of this was going to happen. I was told by many on here that I was wrong for thinking that a societal collapse would come. Many here berated me for disagreeing that the cost of everything would increase and there would be a move toward what existed in an eastern soviet bloc country and now you’re sounding like me 5 yrs ago.
Oh Dang It Now I see that I
Oh Dang It
Now I see that I only agree with your 1st paragraph where you quote the climate change etc. stuff. You’re losing me when you start in with the 1984 comparisons.
These are not issues that have anything to do with who is in office, Mike. We would be facing the same issues with climate change creating new problems whether it was Romney, Obama or yes, even you in office.
However, Mike, I know you’re confused but really there’s nothing much that can be done to help you unless you really want to be helped and that doesn’t seem to be the case. My condolences.