“The Russian Aggression Prevention Act” (RAPA): A Direct Path to Nuclear War with Russia( Source globalresearch.ca) The Russian Aggression Prevention Act”, introduced to Congress by U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), will set the US on a path towards direct military conflict with Russia in Ukraine. Any US-Russian war is likely to quickly escalate into a nuclear war, since neither the US nor Russia would be willing to admit defeat, both have many thousands of nuclear weapons ready for instant use, and both rely upon Counterforce military doctrine that tasks their military, in the event of war, to preemptively destroy the nuclear forces of the enemy. The Russian Aggression Prevention Act, or RAPA, “Provides major non-NATO ally status for Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova for purposes of the transfer or possible transfer of defense articles or defense services.” Major non-NATO ally status would for practical purposes give NATO membership to these nations, as it would allow the US to move large amounts of military equipment and forces to them without the need for approval of other NATO member states. Germany is acutely aware of the distinct possibility that the civil war raging in Ukraine could evolve into a Ukrainian-Russian war. Under such circumstances, deployment of US/NATO forces in Ukraine would make it virtually inevitable they would come into fight with Ukraine against Russia.

Merkel: Ukraine can go to Eurasian Union (Source euobserver.com) Germany’s Angela Merkel has said Ukraine is free to “go to” Russia’s “Eurasian Union”, amid signs of a new willingness to make peace with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Speaking to German public broadcaster ARD on (24 August), the German chancellor said her visit to Kiev was designed to prepare for peace talks between Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and Putin in Minsk , but warned the public not to expect a “breakthrough”. She mentioned Ukrainian “decentralisation”, a deal on gas prices, and Ukraine’s “trade relations” with Russia as elements that could bring about an accord. “And if Ukraine says we are going to the Eurasian Union now, the European Union would never make a big conflict out of it, but would insist on a voluntary decision,” Merkel added. The Minsk event is billed as a summit of the three states – Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia – in Putin’s “Customs Union”. Russia set up the Customs Union as an alternative to the Eastern Partnership, an EU project to create a free trade zone with former Soviet states.

Food Prices Skyrocket as Charities Feed 46 Million Americans (Source thetrumpet.com) The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in July that the average price of ground beef has risen to an all-time high. Over the last five years ground beef prices have risen a staggering 81%. Americans now pay $3.884 per pound compared to $2.147 in July 2009. Droughts in Oklahoma and Texas have contributed to the rising prices. Ground beef is not the only food commodity experiencing a price hike. Severe drought in California—which produces nearly half the nation’s fresh fruit and vegetables—is affecting the price of fruit, eggs and dairy. Since July 2013, the cost of meat has risen 9.3%, fruits and vegetables 2%, and dairy prices have increased 4.3%. “[T]he direction of food prices is somewhat worrisome. Lower and middle income households are likely to be paying a larger percentage of their paychecks for grocery bills,” Chris G. Christopher, director of consumer economics at IHS Global Insight, said. “The rise of food prices makes it more difficult for many American households—especially those households that live paycheck to paycheck.”

Additionally, rising food costs and lower incomes are pummeling middle- and lower-class American.

“I’d rather make a roast with potatoes in the Crock-Pot. My kids like to eat healthy,” Jill Taormina of Ohio told the Huffington Post. “But the price of meat and produce is outrageous.” Taormina, who has two teenage daughters, said, “I can only afford to spend about $100 a month on groceries. I coupon as much as I can, but it’s just not enough.”

YOU DO REALIZE THAT THE U.S. FUNDED AND TRAINED ISIS, RIGHT? (Source DAILY SHEEPLE) Now that ISIS, or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, is becoming a threat so powerful Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters at the Pentagon that the terrorist group is “beyond anything we’ve seen,” it’s time to remind everyone of a few little factoids regarding how exactly that came to be. Apparently the mainstream fail to expose the blatant reality that yes, the U.S. has trained and funded ISIS and without the U.S. government, ISIS would not be the threat it has become. It came out back in 2012 that the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were jointly running a US CIA and Special Forces command training base for Syrian rebels out of the Jordanian town of Safawi, but apparently according the Jordanian officials, that training ‘wasn’t meant to be used in Iraq’: Syrian rebels who would later join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials. The officials said dozens of future ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq. This was, at least superficially, so they could wage war against the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, and again, they weren’t called ISIS at the time, they were referred to as the Syrian rebels. But the government won’t even admit what they’ve done here. Instead, they’re just bombing Iraq and hoping for the best. Meanwhile, our government is still funding the “Syrian rebels” today!

Huge Crack Appears in the Earth (Source newser.com) Scientists are scratching their heads over a crack in the Earth that’s more than half a mile long, Sky News reports. A drone captured video footage of the 16-foot-wide, 26-foot-deep crack, which appeared last week in remote farmland and cuts across Highway 26 between the coast and Hermosillo in northwest Mexico. Some officials speculated a San Andreas Fault earthquake may have caused it—there was an earthquake along the fault, First News notes—but experts at the University of Sonora are eying an underground stream as the possible culprit, Australia’s News Network reports. Experts say a farmer-built levee started leaking, creating an underground stream that weakened the earth above it and caused it to crumble. A Mexican geologist says that rainwater could also be to blame, saturating the ground and causing “ditch flows.” The unstable ground is forcing cars to drive around the area, and a second crack has reportedly opened up nearby.

China Secretly Conducts Second Test of Ultrasonic Missile (Source theepochtimes.com) The Chinese regime has conducted a second test of its high-speed, ultrasonic missile, according to The Washington Free Beacon which cited unnamed government sources. The hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), or the Wu-14, is part of China’s push to develop weapons that could strike the United States with nuclear warheads. The test was conducted in secret on Aug. 7 at a missile facility in western China, according to the Free Beacon. China conducted its previous test in January, which was later acknowledged by several official sources including the Chinese Defense Ministry. Members of the House Armed Services Committee voiced their concerns over China’s research on hypersonic missiles on Jan. 13. In a joint press release, they stated “While round after round of defense cuts have knocked America’s technological advantage on its back, the Chinese and other competitor nations push towards military parity with the United States; in some cases, as in this one, they appear to be leaping ahead of us.” “The Asia Pacific is fast becoming a powder keg,” they stated. “Allowing nations that do not share our respect for free and open avenues of commerce to gain a strategic advantage over the United States and her allies only brings us closer to lighting the fuse.”

SOROS BET ON MARKET CRASH BIGGEST YET (Source Market Watch) Soros Fund Management increased a bear-call bet on the S&P 500 in a huge way. The fund lifted a put position — a bet the market will go lower — on the S&P 500 ETF SPY +0.31% to its biggest size yet, in terms of value and portfolio percentage, making a 605% leap over the previous quarter. Bullion Baron, who has long kept a beady eye on Soros’s SPY moves, has summed up the latest dealings. He speculated that this could be  a hedge — or Soros is really worried about something. One possible something is China, which the hedge-fund titan referred to as a global uncertainty earlier in the year, notes the Baron. As for that China unease, WSJ’s MoneyBeat reports that China bears are entrenched and see stocks headed for a big fall. One strategist says it’s not good to see that stocks there have been rallying on both good and bad economic news.

The United States of Gomorrica (Source thetrumpet.com) When was the last time you sat down in solitude and seriously thought about where the United States of America is headed?  The United States’ political system has suffered a severed spinal cord and is severely handicapped. Our government no longer functions. Our economy is coughing up blood and is on the brink of collapse. What is even more frightful, our historic enemies, which lust for our destruction, are rising up and growing stronger daily. Why has America (and our entire Western world) gotten so bad? Although a vast majority will likely not agree, it is time to identify the cause: the pervasive decline in our morals. Some want you to believe that America is in the process of turning its morals around. “The United States remains beset by difficulties, political, economic and cultural. Some of the key social trends, however, are more positive. To study them provides hope that the country isn’t, as  Robert H. Bork declared in his1996 bestselling book, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. “Analysis demonstrates that we continue slouching towards Gomorrah. The imperative question is whether there is any possibility of avoiding the condition of Gomorrah,” Bork wrote in the final chapter of his book. Human history shows that once a society slips into such terminal degeneration, it does not come back. America has passed that point of no return. When you consider that 58 percent of Americans believe that homosexual relations are “morally acceptable,” hasn’t America become “Gomorrica”? The Bible shows that catastrophe is looming on the horizon.

THE MILITARY OCCUPATION OF FERGUSON, MISSOURI IS JUST A PREVIEW OF WHAT IS COMING TO AMERICA (Source endoftheamericandream.com) Ferguson, Missouri is under military occupation right now, and the entire world is watching in horror as militarized police fire tear gas and rubber bullets at unarmed protesters. Yes, the rioting and looting in Ferguson needed to be stopped. If order had not been restored, more stores and businesses would have been destroyed. However, there is no excuse for the brutal tactics now being employed. At one point, police snipers were even using laser scopes to target protesters that were obviously unarmed. Sadly, this is just a preview of what is coming to America in the years ahead. As the economy falls apart and people become even more angry and even more frustrated, there will be a lot more incidents of civil unrest like we have just witnessed in Ferguson. And in response, the federal government and our overly militarized police will seek to crush those uprisings with overwhelming force. How is it possible that our once very peaceful nation has fallen apart so dramatically? What we just watched happen in Ferguson was truly bizarre. If you didn’t know any better, you might have thought that you were looking at images from a really bad post-apocalyptic disaster movie. Our system has become so corrupt that there is very little that we can do. In fact, one newly released study discovered that average Americans have a “near-zero”statistical impact on public policy. A startling new political science study concludes that corporate interests and mega wealthy individuals control U.S. policy to such a degree that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Russia seeks safe haven in gold, away from dollar and euro (Source Ria Novosti) Russia is taking steps to ensure that it protects itself from any future dollar or euro sanctions. Moscow boasts the world’s 5th biggest foreign exchange reserves and the 6th largest gold reserves. In total, the assets amount to over $1.5 trillion. While the West is continuing to try and punish Russia via economic sanctions, the response of the Russian Central Bank has been to diversify away from the euro and dollar – and to buy up more gold.

As the geopolitical situation in Ukraine deteriorates, Russia is moving to protect itself from currency risks associated with the euro and the greenback. In the first half of 2014, Russia’s Central Bank reduced its foreign currency reserves by 2.5 percent. “Due to the worsening geopolitical situation, the Central Bank actively redistributed foreign exchange reserves, replacing US Treasury bonds with gold,” Alfa Bank’s chief economist, Natalya Orlova, told Kommersant. Instead of buying euros and dollars, Russia’s Central Bank is eyeing the Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen. Boosting currency swaps and bilateral payments with China and other strategic trade partners will continue to bypass the US dollar.