Author's posts
May 21
The Ebola Scare Begins: This Is Already The Worst Outbreak Of Bundibugyo Virus Disease In World History, And People Are Starting To Freak Out
May 18, 2026 by Michael Snyder
Global health authorities are extremely concerned about an outbreak of Bundibugyo virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The death toll has already reached triple digits and new cases have been detected hundreds of miles away from the original outbreak. BVD is a type of Ebola disease, but unlike other types of Ebola there is no effective treatment and there is no cure. The incubation period can range from 2 to 21 days, and once you are infected you will either live or you will die. For those that do not recover, it can be an absolutely excruciating death. Unfortunately, we are being told that the death rate for BVD is somewhere between 30 and 50 percent, and the WHO has already designated the outbreak that we are witnessing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a “public health emergency of international concern”.
Normally, outbreaks of Ebola are not a huge concern because doctors have highly effective tools that they can use to fight it.
But BVD is an entirely different story.
There is not much that health authorities can do about BVD except to contain it and hope that an outbreak eventually burns out.
In this case, that may not be so easy for a couple of reasons.
First of all, there are already hundreds of cases, and the death toll has now reached the triple digit mark…
At least 100 deaths have been reported in an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with more than 390 cases suspected, the head of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has told the BBC.
Jean Kaseya warned that with no approved drugs or vaccines people should follow public health measures, including at funerals of Ebola victims.
Secondly, this outbreak has already spread hundreds of miles from where it originally started…
Most cases are in Congo’s eastern Ituri province but it has since been found some 600 miles away in the capital, Kinshasa, and in Uganda, meaning officials do not have a clear idea of how far it might have spread.
The cat is out of the bag, and people are starting to freak out.
On Monday, it was being widely reported that a U.S. doctor is among the confirmed cases…
An American doctor in the DR Congo is among those with a confirmed case, the medical missionary group they were working with and the CDC has said.
The individual, who has not been named, will now be taken to Germany for treatment, they told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.
CBS News also quoted sources as saying that at least six Americans have been exposed to the Ebola virus during the outbreak in the DR Congo.
If authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo would have identified this outbreak very early, they would have had a much better chance of extinguishing it before it became a major problem.
Obviously that did not happen, and now we are being told that we have a “global health emergency” on our hands…
As soon as Ebola was identified in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda late last week, the severity of the outbreak was clear. There were already hundreds of suspected cases and dozens of suspected deaths.
Shortly after the outbreak was announced, the World Health Organization declared it a global health emergency.
But by then, the virus had already been circulating for weeks.
This crisis is not going to be easy to resolve.
In fact, a former member of the Obama administration is openly admitting that this outbreak “has a lot of momentum”…
That delay has allowed the virus to spread, says Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and former director of the United States Agency for International Development’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance during the Obama administration. “This outbreak has a lot of momentum.”
Let’s just hope that BVD doesn’t start spreading outside of central Africa.
According to Politico, a decision has just been made to impose entry restrictions upon any foreign individuals that have traveled to Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or South Sudan within the last 21 days…
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is suspending entry into the U.S. for 30 days for travelers who have visited areas where there is an ongoing outbreak of the Ebola virus, the agency announced on Monday. That restriction does not apply to U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals or lawful permanent residents returning from Ebola outbreak areas.
In a statement posted to its website, the agency said it would impose “entry restrictions” on passengers who do not hold a U.S. passport if they have been to Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo or South Sudan in the previous 21 days. Those restrictions, issued under a Title 42 order, a policy that allows the U.S. to deny certain individuals entry into the country to protect public health, will be in effect for one month.
If this disease gets loose and starts spreading around the world, the level of panic that we will see will be off the charts.
There is no approved treatment or cure, and the death rate for BVD is extremely high…
The outbreak has been identified as a rare type of Ebola caused by the Bundibugyo virus. Spread by bodily fluids, Ebola is highly contagious and often fatal — killing between 30% and 50% of those it infects — and causing symptoms such as fever, rash and vomiting, the WHO said.
Unlike other types of Ebola, Bundibugyo has no approved vaccine or treatment.
The CDC has advised travelers who visited the affected countries recently to seek immediate medical attention if they develop fever, weakness, vomiting, diarrhea or unexplained bleeding.
There have only been two other outbreaks of BVD in our entire history.
In both of those cases, the death toll never even came close to 100…
Before this outbreak, there were two known outbreaks caused by the Bundibugyo virus, and both were smaller than the current one.
The first discovery of the Bundibugyo strain occurred in the Bundibugyo District in Uganda in 2007. There were 149 cases and 37 deaths in that outbreak, The Associated Press reported.
The second known outbreak was in Congo in 2012, with 57 cases and 29 deaths reported, according to the AP.
BVD is not supposed to spread easily.
But somehow hundreds of people have already gotten infected during this outbreak.
Hopefully we will soon learn whether this is the exact same version of BVD that caused the previous two outbreaks.
If it isn’t, that would be extremely alarming.
Interestingly, in January 2026 work began on vaccine candidates that scientists are hoping will be effective against “Bundibugyo and other strains of Ebola”…
In January this year, the University of Oxford announced that, in collaboration with partners including Moderna, it was working on vaccine candidates that would target multiple filoviruses – a group of RNA viruses that can cause lethal haemorrhagic fevers – including Bundibugyo and other strains of Ebola, as well as Marburg viruses.
Now, Esterman says that in light of the new crisis, this work must be brought forward. “The current outbreak makes a compelling case for accelerating this work,” he says. “We’ve known Bundibugyo exists for nearly two decades, yet we still lack vaccine options. This outbreak shows the real cost of that gap.”
Can you imagine the level of fear that a global hemorrhagic disease pandemic would create?
We have seen the panic that a disease with an extremely low death rate can cause.
So what would happen if people started dropping dead from an extremely painful and bloody disease that has an exceedingly high death rate?
It really would be a horror show.
So let us hope that authorities can get on top of this outbreak while they still can, because it certainly wouldn’t take much for a major worldwide frenzy to erupt.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/21/the-ebola-scare-begins-this-is-already-the-worst-outbreak-of-bundibugyo-virus-disease-in-world-history-and-people-are-starting-to-freak-out/
May 19
The Appointment By Trump Of Bilderberg Group Operative Kevin Warsh To The Federal Reserve Shows How Deep The Global Financial Control System Runs
Published May 14, 2026
Donald Trump Puts Bilderberg Insider Kevin Warsh Over The Federal Reserve As The New World Order Money Machine Keeps Right On Turning
President Donald Trump has appointed Kevin Warsh to chair the Federal Reserve, and Warsh is not some outsider brought in to dismantle the system. He is a former Federal Reserve governor, a Wall Street-connected insider, and a former member of the Bilderberg Group Steering Committee — one of the elite private forums long associated with globalist power, transatlantic policy shaping, and the New World Order agenda. That means the so-called “America First” revolution has now placed a Bilderberg-connected financier over the most powerful central bank in the world.
“Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” James 5:3 (KJB)
The Federal Reserve is not just another government institution. It controls the money machinery of America via interest rates, liquidity, banking reserves, inflation policy, emergency lending, and the financial system that affects the entire globe. Whoever runs the Fed has influence far beyond Washington. He sits at the center of the dollar-based world order. So when Trump hands that chair to a man acceptable to the same global financial class conservatives were told he came to defeat, it tells us something important: the system is not being dismantled. It is being rebranded.
This is how the New World Order advances. It does not always arrive through open force. It comes through “stability,” “markets,” “emergency measures,” “financial reform,” “digital modernization,” and “restoring confidence.” It speaks the language of patriotism while keeping the machinery of global control firmly in place. The Bible shows us exactly where this financial centralization is headed, and we talk about it all the time on our Podcast.
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:17 (KJB)
The coming Beast system will be a system of worship, yes — but also a system of economic control. Buying and selling will be regulated by allegiance, identity, and compliance. We are watching the infrastructure of Revelation 13 continue to take shape in real time. Central banking, digital currency, biometric identity, programmable payments, surveillance finance, AI censorship, crisis-driven emergency powers — these are not disconnected developments, and they are all connected to Donald Trump. They are the rails upon which the final system will run. Kevin Warsh at the Fed is another flashing red light that America’s monetary system remains in the hands of the same elite class that has been steering the postwar global order for decades. Trump may speak the language of MAGA nationalism, but make no mistake, this appointment of Warsh shows you that America is run by bankers and the Bilderberg Group, and Trump is happy to be along for the ride.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/19/the-appointment-by-trump-of-bilderberg-group-operative-kevin-warsh-to-the-federal-reserve-shows-how-deep-the-global-financial-control-system-runs/
May 19
I’m a pastor who attended a secret UFO disclosure meeting. We saw images of ‘translucent beings’ that chilled me to the bone… the files could fulfil a dark biblical prophecy
By CHRIS MELORE, DEPUTY SCIENCE EDITOR FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Published: 15 May 2026
Several pastors who claim they were part of secret meetings to prepare for the disclosure of UFO information have come forward to warn that the long-anticipated files may fulfill a dark biblical prophecy.
The Trump administration released the first batch of documents on May 8, revealing never-before-seen images and videos of strange craft and reports of alleged alien encounters. More are set to be disclosed in the coming weeks.
Pastor Joseph Zupetz and evangelist Tony Merkel told the Daily Mail they were invited to a private meeting in remote Tennessee in February, where intelligence insiders and former military personnel discussed the idea that the unidentified objects could be ‘interdimensional beings’ or advanced technology.
‘At the meeting, I was shown images from one of the presenters’ devices of entities that were translucent, standing in a wooded environment, with long arms and legs,’ Zupetz said.
He added that the organizers repeatedly compared the coming disclosure to the biblical ‘Great Deception,’ an end-times prophecy some Christians believe signals a powerful spiritual deception before the return of Jesus Christ.
Until now, the US government has maintained that most reports of mysterious phenomena in the sky have been caused by explainable things, including balloons, drones and even bird sightings.
However, multiple Trump-aligned officials have publicly stated they view many sightings of unexplained phenomenon as supernatural or demonic encounters, rather than UFOs.
Vice President JD Vance, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and former Trump ally and friend Tucker Carlson have tied the appearances of strange craft to passages from Scripture.
A video released in the first wave of UFO files appeared to show a glowing object resembling an ‘eight-pointed star’ with uneven arms moving across the sky
Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna and other religious leaders have drawn comparisons between UFO sightings and an artist’s impression of an angelic being with multiple wings known as the Cherubim
Zupetz said he and Merkel were among six Christian influencers invited to the meeting, which was hosted at an Airbnb in the mountains of Tennessee. He said the organizers were ‘former military personnel now working within groups that investigate non-human intelligence issues involving UAPs (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) and reverse-engineered craft.’
Merkel added that these ‘operators,’ who were not officially part of the US government, had held multiple meetings in recent months, claiming to pastors that the information about to be released would attempt to discredit the teachings of Christianity as part of the Great Deception.
The group provided details on advanced human technology, incidents of people being taken aboard UFO-like craft and beings of light described as ‘fallen angels’ – which were all expected to be included in upcoming UFO files.
Along with images of the mysterious ‘translucent’ beings, Zupetz revealed that he personally asked the experts about sightings of ‘reptilian’ creatures, which were reportedly discussed at a previous meeting with other pastors.
‘I asked at the end of the presentation, while we were preparing to leave, if there was any validity to all the people talking about reptilians,’ Zupetz told the Daily Mail.
‘This person told me that, based on their sources and people they speak with, some in the circles believe this to be true, but had nothing else to share with me on the topic.’
Both men believed that the entities allegedly being revealed in the forthcoming files were directly tied to the biblical warnings of the end times, suggesting that they were demonic in origin, rather than aliens from another world.
‘The great lie in this is that these interdimensional entities – the actual UFOs and every kind of supposed alien – are not benevolent,’ Zupetz claimed, adding that there was a growing belief amongst Christians that these beings were ‘interdimensional evil spirits, fallen angels or demons.’
Pastor Joseph Zupetz (left) and evangelist Tony Merkel both told the Daily Mail they attended a meeting where details of UFO disclosure were revealed in secret
Zupetz and Merkel said they are now warning other religious leaders that the impending images depicting angelic creatures and UFOs, which mirror scenes from the Bible, may push Christians to question how the universe was created and even lose faith in the religion.
Despite the Pentagon leading the interagency effort to release all UFO files to the public, the Department of War’s office in charge of investigating UFOs, known as AARO, has claimed that the majority of strange images and videos are the result of misidentification by witnesses and video compression glitches.
However, President Trump has claimed that data the American people would find ‘very interesting’ would be coming soon, noting that US fighter pilots have told him they were eyewitnesses to non-human craft flying by their jets.
The operators hosting these secret meetings told a different story from the president’s, claiming that up to 90 percent of the UFOs people have seen in the sky were actually ‘terrestrial’ – meaning they were advanced aircraft built by human hands.
‘They stated that the government is being told a lie, the government believes the lie and will disclose it as reality,’ Zupetz claimed.
‘The lie being put forward, according to the hosts, is that as disclosure continues, humanity will be confronted with a narrative about beings coming to raise humanity to a higher consciousness.’
Zupetz and Merkel went further, saying the disclosure had already been set up to paint Christians as the ‘bad guys’ who were holding humanity back. They claimed that those sharing the UFO files are prepared to claim Christians were close to the truth but ultimately mistaken.
As for the true origin of unexplained UFOs or aliens, the religious leaders described them as ‘fallen angel technology,’ citing biblical references in the Book of Enoch.
The Book of Enoch is said to expand on certain portions of the Bible. Specifically, it mentions ‘sons of God’ taking human wives and producing a long-lost race of giants known as the Nephilim.
Approximately 200 of these angels, also called Watchers, were said to have also taught humans about forbidden knowledge, such as weapon-making, sorcery and astrology, causing God to punish the fallen angels and wipe away their creations in the Bible’s Great Flood.
‘I personally believe that what we’re dealing with when it comes to the UAP-UFO phenomenon is the advanced staging of the teaching man how to do things they were never meant to know how to do,’ Merkel said.
‘What unfolded in the book of Enoch was the beginning stages of what we might be experiencing today with very advanced technology, because mankind has now gotten to the point where they’re able to do such things.’
Merkel, who had been in contact with the Christian operators hosting the meetings for more than a year, added that the organizers of their meeting said the timetable for the disclosure is ‘urgent,’ with the most shocking revelations potentially coming by July 8 – the anniversary of the Roswell UFO crash.
‘There is going to be disclosure coming, there is going to be a narrative spun, there is going to be, there’s going to be such great intel and information handed over, over time, they believe, that it could lead people astray,’ Merkel said.
‘Their whole point is to tell people this is happening whether you like it or not, and you need to be prepared for it.’
‘We don’t know if this is the Great Deception, but if this is the Great Deception, then it’s going to be so strong that people who even are professing Christians and believe in Jesus could be led astray.’
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/19/im-a-pastor-who-attended-a-secret-ufo-disclosure-meeting-we-saw-images-of-translucent-beings-that-chilled-me-to-the-bone-the-files-could-fulfil-a-dark-biblical-prophecy/
May 15
If You Think Prices Are High Now, Just Wait Until The Shortages Really Start Kicking In
May 12, 2026 by Michael Snyder
On Monday morning, the front page of the Drudge Report featured a very alarming two word headline in all capital letters: “INFLATION ACCELERATES”. Of course that headline was 100% accurate. Prices are rising and our seemingly endless cost of living crisis is beginning to accelerate once again. I have heard from many of you that are not happy with what economic conditions are like now, and you are really not going to be happy with what is going to happen during the months to come. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already begun to create shortages all over the globe. As the months roll along, those shortages will steadily intensify. That is going to directly affect our cost of living, because the law of supply and demand tells us that when there is less stuff to buy prices go up. So the truth is that inflation will go to an entirely new level once the shortages caused by the crisis in the Middle East really start kicking in.
Needless to say, in many industries prices have already risen to absolutely absurd levels.
This week, I was stunned to learn that a large bucket of chicken at KFC now costs close to 50 bucks…
When I was growing up, KFC was a place where you could feed your family inexpensively.
But now only the wealthy can afford to go to KFC on a regular basis.
These days, many families just stay home and don’t go much of anywhere because the price of gasoline is so high…
Amid concerns over the economic fallout from the war, the average price of gasoline in the United States has climbed to more than $4.55 per gallon, up more than $1.50 since the war began.
Where I live, many people are spending over a hundred dollars just to fill up their vehicles a single time.
But in California things are much worse.
Some residents of Los Angeles are now paying more than 8 dollars for a gallon of gasoline, and the outlook for the months ahead is extremely bleak because politicians in California have been thumbing their noses at our domestic oil industry for years…
A supertanker docked in Long Beach just delivered California’s last incoming shipment of Middle Eastern oil, a grim milestone for drivers already paying the nation’s highest fuel prices.
After the New Corolla fully discharges its Iraqi oil at the berth, another tanker carrying Middle Eastern crude won’t dock in California until months after the Strait of Hormuz waterway reopens, according to market intelligence firms Vortexa and Kpler.
For California, the economic pain of the Iran war will last well beyond the arrival of the next tankers. U.S. drillers have fled the state and dozens of refineries have closed since the mid-1980s, forcing California to import 75% of the oil it consumes. Almost one-third of that comes from the Middle East, making California more reliant on crude-oil shipments from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates than any other U.S. state.
When fuel shortages begin to pop up in the United States, it is likely that they will start in California.
But that won’t happen right away.
Asia and Europe will experience supply shocks before we do, and Eric Nuttall is warning that we could start to see oil rationing “within weeks”…
Energy expert and investor Eric Nuttall predicted in early May that the world was heading toward what may be the “largest energy crisis in modern history,” one that could spark oil rationing “within weeks” – and with the two-week mark now fast approaching, observers across the political spectrum began expressing alarm on Monday.
“We’re not talking months or quarters. In the next couple of weeks, you will have to rationalize demand by more than during COVID,” Nuttall told Bloomberg on May 1. “This is by far the biggest energy crisis that anybody alive is experiencing. There remains a lot of apathy in the market, because I just don’t think people can wrap their heads around it.”
I very much agree with that last sentence.
It truly is difficult for a lot of people out there to wrap their heads around what is about to happen.
But the truth is that the pain has already begun.
On Sunday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his country that it is time to start conserving fuel and fertilizer…
India on Sunday became the latest country to call for sacrifices, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking his country’s 1.4 billion residents to conserve fuel and fertilizer, two essential goods usually shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. He also told them to cut back on foreign travel.
Over the past couple of months, the world has been running an oil deficit.
We have been able to keep things going by running down our inventory levels and our strategic reserves, but now we are rapidly approaching a breaking point.
There simply is not going to be enough fuel for everyone, and supplies of jet fuel are particularly low…
Growing anxieties around the jet fuel shortage caused by the Iran war have rocked the travel industry.
Tony Fernandes, chief executive of Air Asia, said last week: “I thought I’d seen it all with Covid […] but having seen jet fuel go up almost three times — this is much worse.”
It comes after supplies for jet fuel have tumbled to their lowest level since records began, as the war blocks crucial shipping lanes for fuel.
Of course we will soon be facing very serious shortages of other vital commodities as well.
In fact, such shortages have already started to emerge…
Also in India, some restaurants have warned they’ll be forced to close due to a shortage of cooking gas, and factories in the country’s plentiful ceramics industry have halted production as natural gas shortages impact kiln operations.
Qatar, which accounts for about one-third of the world’s helium supply, stopped producing helium in March after Iranian strikes hit two liquid natural gas facilities, and the resulting shortage threatens the operation of MRI machines and the manufacturing of artificial intelligence chips, smartphones and electric vehicles.
Also needed for AI chip manufacturing is tungsten, a metal with extreme heat resistance and electrical conductivity that also makes it critical for armor-piercing munitions, which the U.S. and Israel are using quickly in the war, burning through American tungsten stocks.
The war is also heavily impacting the world’s supply of sulfur, much of which comes from Persian Gulf oil refineries, which is used across industries to grow food, make toothpaste, balance drink flavors and treat municipal water.
If the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened soon, we will be facing the greatest global supply chain shock that any of us have ever experienced.
I do not say that lightly.
The commodities that come out of the Middle East are absolutely essential to the functioning of the global economy.
Now thousands upon thousands of intricate supply chains are being disrupted, and conditions are going to continue to get worse every single day that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/15/if-you-think-prices-are-high-now-just-wait-until-the-shortages-really-start-kicking-in/
May 15
The Euphrates is dying and the Bible saw it coming
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
May 13, 2026
Aerial view of the Euphrates River in Halfeti, Sanliurfa, Turkey. (Source: Shutterstock)
The river that watered the Garden of Eden, defined the borders of the Promised Land, and gave birth to the world’s first civilizations, is running dry. Scientists, government officials, and the United Nations now warn that the Euphrates River, the longest and most historically significant river in Western Asia, could be reduced to nothing more than a muddy trickle by 2040. This is happening now, in real time, and tens of millions of people are already suffering the consequences.
The Euphrates stretches 1,700 miles from the mountains of southern Turkey, flowing through Syria and Iraq before merging with the Tigris River to form the Shatt al-Arab, which then empties into the Persian Gulf. Together, the Euphrates and the Tigris form the Tigris-Euphrates river system — the ancient Mesopotamia, a Greek term meaning “the land between the rivers.” This was the Fertile Crescent, where human civilization first planted roots, where the Sumerians built the world’s first cities, where writing was invented, where agriculture transformed nomadic peoples into settled nations.
Today, that same basin is losing water at one of the fastest rates ever recorded on Earth.
Satellite data collected between 2003 and 2013 documented a staggering loss of 144 cubic kilometers, roughly 34 cubic miles, of freshwater from the Tigris-Euphrates basin. That is approximately 13 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, gone in a single decade. In a 2021 report, Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources issued a direct warning: the rivers could run completely dry by 2040. Flow levels across the system have already dropped to less than half of average annual levels during dry years. At the Tishrin Dam, the first point at which the Euphrates enters Syria, water levels have fallen five meters, sitting a mere ten centimeters above “dead level,” the point at which turbines stop producing electricity entirely.
Roughly 60 million people across Turkey, Syria, and Iraq depend on this river system for survival. For Syria alone, the Euphrates has historically supplied 85 percent of the country’s agricultural water demand. That number tells the story of what is now unfolding.
The crisis is being driven by three converging forces. Climate change is the first. Rising temperatures have accelerated evaporation rates while simultaneously reducing the rainfall and snowmelt that replenish the river. The region is getting hotter and drier, and the river cannot keep pace.
Damming is the second. Turkey alone built 22 dams along the Euphrates, including the massive Ataturk Dam constructed in the 1980s and 90s, designed to generate hydroelectric power and supply irrigation to Turkish agriculture. Each dam upstream is a drain on the countries downstream. Syria and Iraq, already politically unstable, receive what Turkey does not use. International negotiations over shared management of the basin have stalled since the early 2000s, leaving downstream nations with no legal leverage and diminishing water.
Aerial panoramic view of Ataturk Dam and reservoir Bozova Sanliurfa Birecik Turkey (Source: Shutterstock)
The third driver is environmental collapse compounding itself. As water levels fall, what water remains becomes more saline and contaminated, making it unusable for both agriculture and drinking. The marshes of southern Iraq, once a vast and thriving ecosystem, are drying up again after a brief restoration following Saddam Hussein’s drainage campaigns.
The consequences are already catastrophic. Syria’s wheat harvest has dropped by 75 percent since the civil war broke out in 2011, and the drought has made the situation even more desperate. In northeastern Syria, farmers are losing crops not only to low water levels but to the contamination of whatever water remains. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that nearly 90 percent of rain-fed crops, primarily wheat and barley, failed in recent seasons in Iraq.
Three million people in Syria rely on hydroelectric plants powered by the Euphrates for their electricity. Two dams in northern Syria are facing imminent closure. In Iraq, the water crisis is spawning a public health emergency. A March 2023 article in the British Medical Journal documented surging rates of cholera, typhoid, measles, and chickenpox — all tied directly to the collapse of access to clean water. The potential for mass displacement and regional conflict over water resources is the direction everything is pointing.
Beneath the dried riverbed in Iraq, archaeologists have already begun uncovering what the receding waters leave behind: the remains of nearly 80 sites from the ancient city of Telbas, including jails and cemeteries, once submerged and now exposed by the dying river.
The Euphrates appears in the Hebrew Bible from its very opening pages. In the book of Bereishit (Genesis), the river is described as one of the four rivers flowing from the Garden of Eden:
“The name of the third river is Tigris, the one that flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” (Genesis 2:14)
Later in that same book, God establishes the borders of the land He covenanted to Abraham’s descendants, with the Euphrates as the northeastern boundary:
“On that day Hashem made a covenant with Avram, saying, ‘To your offspring I assign this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.’” (Genesis 15:18)
The Euphrates marks the outer edge of the Promised Land. Its fate is woven into the fate of the nations that dwell in its basin.
The prophet Jeremiah did not mince words about what would befall the land of Babylon, the region encompassing modern-day Syria and Iraq, because of its idolatry. His prophecy was a warning that the land itself would be cursed:
“A drought against its waters, that they be dried up! For it is a land of idols; They are besotted by their dread images. Assuredly, wildcats and hyenas shall dwell there, and ostriches shall dwell there; It shall never be settled again, nor inhabited throughout the ages.” (Jeremiah 50:38-39)
Jeremiah did not merely predict drought as a natural phenomenon. He described it as divine consequence: the land’s water supply stripped away as a direct result of the spiritual condition of the people who inhabit it. The region he described, once the most agriculturally productive in the ancient world, once the very Fertile Crescent that fed the rise of civilization, is now watching its food supply collapse and its water disappear. Those who study prophecy take note: Jeremiah’s words describe not just an ancient moment but an ongoing trajectory.
The Sages understood the prophets as speaking across time. The Nevi’im, the Prophets, were not merely reporting on their own era; they were transmitting divine communication about the arc of history. When Jeremiah describes the waters of Babylon drying up, he is pointing to a reality that unfolds in stages — and the stage being set right now along the banks of the Euphrates fits his description with precision.
Both Islamic and Jewish prophetic traditions assign enormous significance to the fate of the Euphrates in the end of days. In Islamic hadith, Muhammad warned that the Euphrates would dry up, exposing a mountain of gold over which a catastrophic war would be fought, a war in which 99 of every 100 combatants would perish. The hadith frames this not as metaphor but as one of the concrete minor signs of the approaching Day of Judgment.
The biblical prophetic framework, read through Jewish eyes, sees the Euphrates not as a random river but as a boundary marker for world history. The drying of those waters signals the unraveling of a world order, not as an environmental tragedy alone, but as a divine statement about the civilizations that built themselves along its banks and the choices those civilizations made.
The great river is dying. The Bible told us it would.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/15/the-euphrates-is-dying-and-the-bible-saw-it-coming/
May 15
The “Super El Niño” Of 1877-1878 Killed More Than 50 Million People, And Now A Similar “Super El Niño” Is Coming In 2026
May 12, 2026 by Michael Snyder
The Pacific Ocean is aggressively heating up, and that means big trouble for the months ahead. It is being projected that we will experience a “Super El Niño” similar to the one that the world experienced in 1877 and 1878. That “Super El Niño” created horrifying droughts and famines all over the planet. As a result, more than 50 million people died. It truly was one of the worst environmental disasters in recorded history, and now a repeat performance is on the way.
Each “El Niño” is different. Some are quite weak, and some are quite strong.
Unfortunately, scientists are telling us that the “El Niño” that is coming in the middle of this year will be immensely powerful…
Multiple forecast systems, spanning the United States, Europe, Japan, and Australia, project that an El Niño event will emerge by mid-2026. Some model runs go further, tracking into territory that would rival or exceed the most powerful El Niño episodes ever recorded. The last time the Pacific warmed this aggressively was during 1877 and 1878, when the resulting droughts and harvest failures across India, China, and Brazil contributed to famines that killed tens of millions of people. That history, combined with an ocean already running hotter than any 19th-century baseline, has forecasters treating the current signal with unusual urgency.
I really don’t understand why more people aren’t focusing on this. We aren’t just talking about a minor shift in the weather.
According to the Washington Post, the “Super El Niño” of 1877 and 1878 resulted in a global famine that killed over 50 million people…
The climatic shift devastated crops nearly 150 years ago, raising the question of whether a similar disruption could threaten global food security yet again. The strongest El Niño on record from 1877 to 1878 fueled conditions that led to a global famine which killed more than 50 million people across India, China, Brazil and elsewhere. That was 3 to 4 percent of the estimated global population at the time, equal to at least 250 million people if it happened today.
“It was arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity,” researchers have written about the event.
This disaster took years to unfold. Drought began spreading across the tropics and subtropics in 1875. In the years that followed, a combination of strong climate forces in the Indian and Atlantic oceans formed alongside the record-breaking El Niño, amplifying and prolonging the drought.
That particular “Super El Niño” literally changed the course of history. Now a similar “Super El Niño” is set to begin later this year.
As a result of this “Super El Niño”, 2027 could be the hottest year ever recorded…
A powerful “super El Niño” weather pattern is set to drive up temperatures around the world in the coming months and will probably make 2027 the hottest on record, scientists have said.
The weather pattern could bring the return of 40C heat to Britain, a temperature only before experienced in 2022, as well as an increase in the price of tropical crops, such as coffee and sugar.
Of course not every area of the world will be affected the same way.
In some parts of the globe there will be more rain than usual, while others will experience severe drought…
The practical implications are wide-ranging. During past strong El Niño events, California and the U.S. Gulf Coast experienced heavier-than-normal winter rainfall and flooding, while Australia, Indonesia, and parts of southern Africa faced prolonged drought. Atlantic hurricane activity typically decreases during El Niño years due to increased wind shear, but Pacific typhoon tracks shift eastward, threatening island nations that are normally spared. Global wheat, rice, and sugar prices have historically spiked during strong El Niño episodes as production drops in key exporting regions.
Wheat production will likely drop in 2027 here in the United States too, because warmer and drier conditions than usual are expected for America’s heartland.
And that is really bad news, because in 2026 it is being projected that U.S. farmers will grow the fewest acres of wheat since records began in 1919.
Conditions are particularly dire in the western half of the nation.
We are in the midst of an epic multi-year megadrought, and many areas received record low levels of snow this winter…
From the Rockies to the Cascades to the Sierra Nevada, mountainsides across the West are sparsely covered by the snow that usually blankets the high country well into the summer.
That snowpack is like a savings account that the West draws on when the hot, dry months arrive. It moistens the landscape as it melts, lessening the risk of severe wildfire. The runoff feeds into river basins, and the swelling waterways provide power to hydroelectric dams, irrigation to farmers and drinking water to cities.
This year, Western states are heading into the summer with a desperately low balance — threatening wildfires, drinking water, crops, electricity and more.
So many of our farmers suddenly find themselves in desperate situations, and the same thing is true for many of our ranchers.
It is exceedingly difficult to feed cattle when conditions are bone dry, and at this stage the size of the U.S. cattle herd is the smallest that it has been in 75 years…
Beef prices aren’t easing anytime soon and economists warn the pressure could last for years.
That’s because the U.S. cattle herd has fallen to its smallest size in 75 years, after years of drought, rising feed costs and an aging ranching workforce forced producers to scale back.
“The biggest thing has been drought,” Eric Belasco, head of the agricultural economics department at Montana State University, told Fox News Digital.
Years of dry weather have wiped out grasslands across the West and Plains, leaving ranchers without enough feed or water to sustain their herds. Many have been forced to sell cattle early, including breeding cows needed to produce the next generation of calves, making it harder to rebuild.
On top of everything else, many fear that the extremely dry conditions are setting the stage for an absolutely nightmarish fire season.
In fact, the global fire season has already gotten off to an all-time record pace…
“This year the global fire season has got off to a very fast start,” said Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather researcher at Imperial College London, who is part of World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of climate scientists.
Wildfires have scorched 50% more than the average for this time of year, and the current area burnt by wildfires globally is more than 20% higher than the previous record set since tracking began in 2012, he said.
We have never seen anything like this before, and now a “Super El Niño” that will rival the “Super El Niño” of 1877 and 1878 is coming.
There will be monster storms. There will be droughts. There will be famines.
And if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed during the months ahead, the famines that the world will experience will be off the charts.
Is it just a coincidence that this “Super El Niño” is arriving at a time when global events are already going haywire?
As I have warned before, we really are facing “the perfect storm”, and the months ahead are going to be extremely challenging.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/15/the-super-el-nino-of-1877-1878-killed-more-than-50-million-people-and-now-a-similar-super-el-nino-is-coming-in-2026/
May 13
The secret hidden traps set for Trump as he meets Xi Jinping face-to-face in China amid Iran tensions…. and the phrase he MUST avoid or risk WWIII
By ELINA SHIRAZI, US SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER
Published: 12 May 2026
President Donald Trump is departing for Beijing to face off with President Xi Jinping, a high-stakes meeting shadowed by a deadlocked conflict with Iran that has left China positioned as a precarious and powerful middleman.
The visit, originally scheduled for March but delayed by the volatility of the Iran war, comes as the White House seeks to leverage China’s unique economic ties to Tehran to force a diplomatic breakthrough.
However, the role of peacemaker remains complicated by allegations that Beijing has provided weapons and intelligence to aid Iranian war efforts.
China, which relies on Iranian crude for nearly 20 percent of its imports, wants a ceasefire to hold so shipping in the Persian Gulf can resume.
But the President ominously said on Monday that the ceasefire with Iran is ‘on life support’ and is weighing his military options after peace negotiations stalled.
Trump is set to depart for China on Tuesday, setting up a potentially explosive face-to-face with China’s leader Xi Jinping.
Beyond the oil markets, a central trap for the President during the meeting lies in a dangerous diplomatic sleight of hand that Beijing is eager to exploit.
Tehran knows it ‘cannot hope to outlast Washington in this current conflict and must concede to a deal,’ Brent Sadler, a veteran military diplomat and former nuclear submarine officer, tells the Daily Mail.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
But if Trump isn’t careful, Xi could attempt to use the chaos in the Persian Gulf as a convenient precedent to justify China’s own aggressive maritime ambitions, say experts.
Sadler adds that Trump may be in a predicament.
‘[Trump must] void any equivalency regarding what is occurring in Iran as a rationale for China closing sea lanes in Asia or interfering with international air traffic. International law is very much against what Iran has been doing in the Strait of Hormuz.’
As for the most sensitive flashpoint, one wrong phrase could risk a catastrophic escalation when it comes to their neighbor: Taiwan.
Speaking from the Oval Office on Monday, Trump told reporters he would discuss the topic of continuing to sell weapons to Taiwan this week with Xi.
‘He will bring up Taiwan more than I will. Our discussion will be a little bit about energy and the beautiful country of Iran,’ Trump said of their meeting.
Former State Department consultant John Sitilides cautions that Trump should not verbally oppose Taiwan’s independence.
Instead, he should uphold the long-standing ‘strategic ambiguity’ that states that the island’s status can only be resolved peacefully.
According to Sitilides, Trump must ensure Xi is deterred from even ‘thinking of imposing a quarantine, blockade, or any hybrid ‘grey zone’ measure’ over the island, which must be permitted to trade and operate freely.
As the two leaders prepare for their busy schedule that includes a tour of the Temple of Heaven and a state banquet, the underlying tension of a ‘cold peace’ dominates the agenda.
In geopolitical terms, ‘cold-peace’ is a step up from a ‘cold war.’
While a cold war usually means active hostility, a cold peace means the two countries have a formal treaty or agreement to stay out of a shooting war, but they still deeply distrust each other and have very little cultural or social cooperation.
While Xi has signaled a shift toward national security over market reforms – directing billions toward artificial intelligence and military self-reliance – his economy remains a ‘vulnerable mess’ that White House insiders suggest Trump intends to capitalize on.
‘The focus on economic stability has gained even more significance in the wake of the Iran War; both the United States and China are feeling pain, whether at the pump or on the factory floor,’ notes Jack Burnham, an analyst with the China Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
‘Securing large buys of soybeans and Boeing aircraft matter more now that fertilizer prices have cut margins for American farmers and the price of jet fuel continues to rise.’
Yet, experts warn against any deal that leaves the US permanently exposed.
Experts note that Tehran believes China may publicly signal a diplomatic end to the war but will continue to ‘secretly support Iran’s ability to militarily and diplomatically challenge and thwart the US’
Their visit was originally scheduled for March but delayed by the volatility of the Iran war, comes as the White House seeks to leverage China’s unique economic ties to Tehran to force a diplomatic breakthrough
Experts say the Iranian government, observing the summit from afar, believes it can outlast international pressure.
‘President Trump is focused on securing ‘the greatest deal ever’ with China, but the US remains highly vulnerable to Beijing’s dominance of refined rare earths, pharmaceuticals, and defense industrial supply chains,’ Sitilides said.
On the high-stakes battle for dominance in tech, Burnham warns that Trump must handle negotiations with a healthy dose of skepticism.
‘The Trump administration will likely look to frame discussions as progress without over-promising, wary of Beijing’s habit of viewing dialogue itself as the destination rather than a road to resolution,’ Burnham explains.
Sitilides notes that Tehran believes ‘China may publicly signal a diplomatic end to the war but will continue to secretly support Iran’s ability to militarily and diplomatically challenge and thwart the US.’
For the summit to be a success, both Washington and Beijing would need to commit to a ‘cold peace’ equilibrium that maintains the status quo while progressing any overlapping goals.
‘Both sides would win with a united commitment to isolate Tehran economically and politically and work together to secure more reliable sources (i.e. USA) of petroleum for China,’ Sadler said.
As Sitilides concludes, the cost of failure is high, and President Trump’s love of pomp and circumstance could risk blinding the goal.
‘Substantive policy failures for the sake of Communist propaganda and pageantry will constitute a significant loss for both countries,’ Sitilides warned.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/13/the-secret-hidden-traps-set-for-trump-as-he-meets-xi-jinping-face-to-face-in-china-amid-iran-tensions-and-the-phrase-he-must-avoid-or-risk-wwiii/
May 13
Nearly 400 Earthquakes Rock Southern California – Will A Cataclysmic Seismic Event Soon Rip The San Andreas Fault Wide Open?
May 11, 2026 by Michael Snyder
One day it will happen. As millions of people living in Southern California go about their daily lives, a cataclysmic earthquake will suddenly strike. The geography of the California coastline will be permanently changed, and the ground on the western side of the San Andreas fault will drop by several feet. Since much of Southern California is just barely above sea level, the Pacific Ocean will start rushing in. What I have just shared with you is not the plot to some really bad disaster movie. As I have documented repeatedly over the years, this is a scenario that scientists are telling us will happen someday. Millions of lives will be at risk when “the Big One” finally strikes. Could it be possible that “the Big One” will strike a lot sooner than most people think?
The shaking that we have witnessed over the past 72 hours has been extremely alarming.
On Saturday, the city of Brawley was rocked by more than 150 earthquakes…
A reported earthquake swarm rattled Imperial County on Saturday, with over 150 recorded quakes in the city of Brawley, south of the Salton Sea — including one 4.5 magnitude.
The United States Geological Survey has recorded at least 29 quakes over 2.5 magnitude, but well over 150 earthquakes total, including small ones, have been recorded on Saturday, according to the Caltech Seismological Laboratory.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.
The shaking continued throughout the night and into the next day.
On Sunday, Brawley continued to experience constant earthquakes. This included a magnitude 4.0 quake, a magnitude 4.4 quake, a magnitude 4.5 quake, and a magnitude 4.7 quake…
More than 150 earthquakes were recorded during the earlier phase of the swarm, totaling close to 400 by 08:00 UTC on May 11. The sequence was centered near Brawley and the southern Salton Sea region within the Brawley Seismic Zone.
The M4.7 earthquake was registered at 07:10 UTC on May 10, at a depth of 14 km (8.7 miles), according to the USGS, which received nearly 200 reports of people who felt it. Shaking was felt across parts of Imperial County and elsewhere in Southern California.
Additional notable earthquakes reported during the sequence included an M4.5 at 03:39 UTC on May 10, an M4.4 at 02:22 UTC on May 10, and an M4.0 at 03:13 UTC on May 10.
The total number of earthquakes in this multi-day swarm is approaching 400, and the shaking still hasn’t stopped.
In fact, there have been more earthquakes in Southern California just within the past hour.
I have no idea why this isn’t getting more attention from the big news networks, because this is an extremely unusual multi-day event.
One woman that lives in the area said that the earthquakes “just kept on coming and coming and coming and coming”…
“I was just scared. All of a sudden, it was a big jolt, and everything started moving. I was like, ‘Holy crud.’ They just kept on coming and coming and coming and coming. And as we’re speaking right now, I do feel it rumbling beneath me.” Kathleen Singh said.
If the ground in a particular area keeps shaking for several days in a row, that should get our attention.
At times, multiple earthquakes have been hitting within a single minute…
This earthquake swarm has erupted right in the middle of the Brawley Seismic Zone in Imperial Valley.
The Brawley Seismic Zone connects the Imperial Fault to the San Andreas Fault. And that is the one that we really want to watch.
Will this swarm of hundreds of earthquakes trigger activity along the San Andreas Fault?
Hopefully not.
But it certainly isn’t a good sign that some small quakes have been registered directly along the San Andreas Fault within the past hour.
And this entire week has been a very active time for seismic activity in California…
In fact, this past week in general has been active with earthquakes in the Golden State, stretching from the North Coast down through the Inland Empire and into the Imperial Valley.
Within the past 7 days, 1,334 earthquakes have been recorded in California and Nevada.
But as long as buildings aren’t falling down and people aren’t dying, most people outside of the affected areas won’t pay much attention.
Unfortunately, “the Big One” is going to happen sooner rather than later.
In my latest book, I have an entire chapter dedicated to the great earthquake that is coming to Southern California.
The following is a short excerpt from that chapter…
If the San Andreas fault does rupture all at once, scientists have warned us that it could produce an earthquake that would be powerful enough to cause the ground on the western side of the San Andreas fault to suddenly drop several feet. Since most of southern California is just barely above sea level, that would allow water from the Pacific Ocean to come pouring in.
Can you imagine the kind of death and destruction that such a disaster would cause?
It would look like much of the southern California coast had just gone into the Pacific Ocean, but actually the Pacific Ocean would suddenly be covering vast stretches of the coast that have now dropped several feet lower than they were previously.
Researchers tell us that similar catastrophes have actually happened along the west coast in the past, and it is just a matter of time before it happens again.
If you live in southern California, it critical for you to understand that it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” strikes.
I have been attempting to sound the alarm about what is going to happen for years, but of course most of those living in the region are not interested in such warnings.
Scientists have warned that the San Andreas Fault is way overdue for a major earthquake.
Once it finally becomes unstuck, it could suddenly rip wide open all at once.
When that day finally arrives, you won’t want to be living anywhere in Southern California.
Sadly, most people won’t believe warnings such as this until it actually happens.
At that point, it will be too late to do anything about it.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/13/nearly-400-earthquakes-rock-southern-california-will-a-cataclysmic-seismic-event-soon-rip-the-san-andreas-fault-wide-open/
May 13
Iran says forces ready to respond to attacks as Trump reportedly mulls renewing war
Ghalibaf says only option is to accept ‘rights of the Iranian people’ laid out in ceasefire proposal; Pakistan reportedly hosting Iran’s military aircraft despite mediator role
By Lazar Berman, Stav Levaton, Jacob Magid and Reuters
Today, 6:01 am
Iran’s chief negotiator in talks with the US said on Monday the Islamic Republic is “ready to deliver a well-deserved response to any aggression,” as US President Donald Trump reportedly considered restarting the war after negotiations with Tehran reached a dead end.
“Mistaken strategy and mistaken decisions will always lead to mistaken results,” Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf wrote on X. “The whole world has already figured this out.
“We are prepared for all options; they will be surprised,” he wrote.
In a later post, Ghalibaf added, “There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal.
“Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another. The longer they drag their feet, the more American taxpayers will pay for it,” he stated.
Negotiations with Iran again reached a dead end over the weekend after Tehran refused to make significant concessions on its nuclear program.
Trump said on Monday Iran’s response was a “piece of garbage” and that the current ceasefire was “unbelievably weak.”
The US president claimed that Iranian negotiators told their American counterparts that they were prepared for the US to retrieve Tehran’s stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, but then refrained from putting that concession in the response paper submitted over the weekend. Iran has shown no public indication that it is prepared to make such a concession.
Trump also told Fox News on Monday that he is considering renewing the operation to assist stuck ships out of the Iran-blocked Strait of Hormuz after he called it off last week, about a day after it began. He told the TV station that if he decides to renew Project Freedom, it would “only be a piece” of a larger military operation.
The US has been blockading Iran’s ports, as Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon as part of the talks as well; while there is technically a truce in place there, it has largely unraveled.
While Iran has warned against a global effort to open the Hormuz Strait, the United Kingdom and France announced they will host a multinational meeting on Tuesday of more than 40 defense ministers, on military plans to restore trade flows through the strait.
Trump on Monday held a high-level security meeting in the White House Situation Room to discuss next steps on Iran, a US official told The Times of Israel.
Participants in Monday’s meeting included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
Channel 12 reported, citing two senior US officials, that Trump is considering renewed military action to increase pressure on Iran, with one official quoted as saying: “Trump is going to hit them a bit.”
Separately, US officials told CBS News that Pakistan has been providing a safe haven for Iranian military aircraft, even as it acted as a mediator between Tehran and Washington in an attempt to reach a permanent ceasefire.
The report said that shortly after Trump announced a ceasefire in early April, Islamabad allowed Iranian military aircraft to seek refuge at its airbases, seemingly to prevent them from being struck by the US military.
Israel, which launched the military campaign against Iran jointly with the US in late February, is not represented at the talks. Host Pakistan has no diplomatic ties with Israel and does not recognize its sovereignty.
The ceasefire declared by Trump in April came with core declared goals of the war unfulfilled, including ensuring that Iran does not attain nuclear weapons, destroying its missile program, and creating the conditions for the Iranian public to overthrow the regime.
US sanctions firms, individuals for aiding Iran’s oil trade with China
The US government, meanwhile Monday, announced sanctions against three people and nine companies, including four based in Hong Kong and four in the United Arab Emirates, for aiding Iran’s shipment of oil to China. The ninth company is based in Oman.
The US Treasury move follows sanctions announced on Friday on individuals and companies aiding Iranian purchases of weapons and components used to make drones and ballistic missiles.
It came days before Trump’s planned meeting with Xi Jinping, during which he is expected to press the Chinese leader to help resolve the standoff with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The Treasury said the new designations by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) were aimed at individuals and entities that helped Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sell and ship its allotment of Iranian oil to China using a series of front companies.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the Trump administration would keep using sanctions to deprive the Iranian government and military of funding for weapons, its nuclear program, or support for proxies in the region.
“Treasury will continue to cut the Iranian regime off from the financial networks it uses to carry out terrorist acts and to destabilize the global economy,” Bessent said.
The State Department also announced a reward of up to $15 million for information leading to the disruption of the financial mechanisms of the IRGC, which is designated by Washington as a terrorist organization, and its branches.
The Treasury said the IRGC relies on shell companies to arrange and receive payment for its allotment of Iranian oil shipments. It said Monday’s action builds on sanctions imposed in July 2025 on Golden Globe, a Turkey-based company that Treasury said handles hundreds of millions of dollars in IRGC oil sales annually.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/13/iran-says-forces-ready-to-respond-to-attacks-as-trump-reportedly-mulls-renewing-war/
May 12
Megadrought: We Just Experienced The Driest First Three Months Of A Year In U.S. History
May 6, 2026 by Michael Snyder
January, February and March were insanely dry. In fact, in all of U.S. history conditions have never been so dry during the first three months of the year. Just think about that for a moment. Not even during the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s were conditions this dry. Many were hoping that 2026 would be the year when our multi-year drought would finally break. Needless to say, that hasn’t happened. Scientists are telling us that the southwestern U.S. is in the midst of the worst multi-year drought in at least 1,200 years. We really are experiencing a “megadrought”, and this is something that experts such as Steve Quayle and Dane Wigington have been talking about for a long time. Unfortunately, it appears that our seemingly endless “megadrought” has gone to an entirely new level in 2026.
If it simply doesn’t rain, there is not much that farmers and ranchers can do.
Right now approximately 63 percent of the continental United States is experiencing at least some level of drought, and the first quarter of this year was one for the record books…
Winter wheat is dying in Kansas fields that should be green by now. Ranchers in New Mexico are selling cattle they cannot afford to feed. Reservoir levels along the Colorado River system are dropping weeks ahead of the season when mountain snowmelt is supposed to refill them. Across roughly 63% of the contiguous United States, drought rated moderate to exceptional on the federal scale has taken hold, and the first three months of 2026 were the driest the nation has recorded in 131 years of continuous measurement.
This isn’t just a crisis. This is catastrophic.
It appears that the winter wheat crop in the U.S. is going to be a disaster.
At this stage, more than 81 percent of the Southern Plains is experiencing drought…
Heading into the harvesting season for the key winter wheat crop, much of the western side of the U.S. Plains are locked in drought. Over 81% of Southern Plains is experiencing some form of drought, according to the latest data from the U.S. Drought Monitor. Nearly 20% of the region is experiencing either “extreme” or “exceptional” drought.
Only 30% of U.S. winter wheat is in either good or excellent condition as of the start of this week, according to the most recent weekly Crop Progress report from the Department of Agriculture. By comparison, 49% of the crop was good-or-excellent at this point last year.
The situation is particularly dire in the state of Oklahoma. Last year, the state produced 101.1 million bushels of red winter wheat.
Thanks to the drought, it is being projected that the state will produce less than half of that total this year…
At the 2026 Oklahoma Grain and Feed Association meeting, crop scouts, extension specialists, and grain elevator representatives painted a sobering picture of this year’s hard red winter wheat crop. Their estimates say the 2026 crop is roughly half the size of the previous two years, with production projected at 48.9 million bushels compared to 101.1 million bushels in 2025. The outlook is based on an average yield of 23.93 bushels per acre across an expected 2.043 million harvested acres, highlighting the significant downturn facing Oklahoma wheat producers.
When there is a lot less wheat to go around, prices will go up. It is simply a matter of supply and demand.
One farmer that grows winter wheat in Kansas is saying that his farm has only had a quarter of an inch of precipitation since last fall…
Southwest Kansas farmer Gary Millershaski says his area has only received a quarter-of-an-inch of precipitation since last fall. “For us to get a 30-bushel crop, you’ve really got to be optimistic and believe in prayer. That’s a fact.”
He has done everything right, but the sky has been silent. What is he supposed to do?
So far in 2026, Chicago wheat futures are up about 30 percent…
Chicago wheat futures have gained nearly 30% since the start of the year — the biggest gain among row crop futures — due to the combination of U.S. drought, global fertilizer shortages and a looming El Niño.
If this crisis in the Middle East is not resolved, this will only be just the beginning.
Once upon a time, the U.S. was absolutely swimming in wheat, but now we are moving into a time when it will be considered a “luxury grain”.
Of course beef is already considered to be a “luxury meat”.
When I was growing up, my mother would feed us beef constantly because it was so inexpensive.
But now beef prices have skyrocketed, and some of the prices that we are seeing at the meat counters in our grocery stores are absolutely absurd…
I never thought that I would see beef prices get this high. But this is the reality that we are living in now.
And it appears that beef prices will continue to remain elevated because the size of the U.S. cattle herd is the smallest that it has been since 1951…
The US cattle herd remained the smallest since 1951 at the start of the year, in the latest signal that consumer beef prices will remain near records.
There were about 86.2 million cattle and calves in the US as of Jan. 1, the US Department of Agriculture said in a Friday report. The tally is nearly unchanged from 2025, providing no relief to the ongoing cattle shortage.
The lack of improvement comes as ranchers keep selling animals to slaughter amid high beef demand, rather than retaining the animals to grow their herds. The downsizing — which began years prior when ranchers shrunk their herds due to high production costs and droughts — has sent consumer beef prices to all-time highs.
It is really hard to feed cattle when conditions are bone dry.
Sadly, they could get even drier in the months ahead…
Meanwhile, there’s a 62% chance of the world’s climate shifting from neutral to El Niño between June and August, according to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center forecast. The European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said that this El Niño could be the strongest on record, with peak intensity hitting in October.
El Niño typically results in hot and dry weather in many growing areas, including the U.S. Corn Belt and in Australia. With fertilizer supplies thin, this may further compound production losses for world wheat.
We are being told that we could soon be experiencing a “super El Niño”, and meteorologist Ryan Maue is warning that the long-term forecast for the second half of this year is “off the charts”…
I have been repeatedly warning my readers that global weather patterns are going nuts, and I was not exaggerating one bit.
We really are facing a historic long-term crisis with no end in sight.
As I discussed last week, for the upcoming season U.S. farmers are planting the fewest acres of wheat that we have seen since records began in 1919.
In 1919, there were 104 million people living in the United States. Today, there are 341 million people living in the United States.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we have a major problem on our hands.
Many of us have been warning about this crisis for years, and now we really have reached a breaking point.
Permanent link to this article: https://discerningthetimes.me/2026/05/12/megadrought-we-just-experienced-the-driest-first-three-months-of-a-year-in-u-s-history/
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