TOP 50 LIST OF CHRISTIAN PERSECUTORS

The isolationist regime of North Korea once again tops the Open Doors USA list of the world’s worst persecutors of Christians.

Open Doors USA released its list Wednesday of the world’s 50 worst violators, weighing factors such as the jailing of Christians, executions and legal restrictions on religious freedom.

The Christian group this year added the category of whether or not a nation was a “failed” state.

Operations Director Jerry Dykstra says a failed state is “a weak state where social and political structures have collapsed to the point where government has little or no control.”

Rounding out the top 12 are Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Sudan and Eritrea.

Open Doors Communications Director Emily Fuentes says North Korea is like no other country in the world.

“North Korea remains the most difficult country in the world to be a Christian because it’s an act that is punishable there by death or life in prison,” Fuentes said.

North Korea is thought to have as many as 70,000 people imprisoned in camps that Fuentes likens to the camps in Nazi Germany.

“It’s a sentence that is not just for believers, but the sentence to a concentration camp can be for up to three generations of their family,” Fuentes said. “That’s their parents, their children and their grandchildren. No other country is like North Korea in that way.”

Fuentes added that the actual number of Christians in prison camps could be higher.

“We estimate that the number is between 50,000 and 70,000, but that’s a conservative estimate, probably minimal. There could be even more,” Fuentes said.

WND reported in September that North Korea and its anti-Christian actions are largely unnoticed by most of the world. Human rights activist and pastor Douglas Riggs says it’s hard to believe that North Korea’s persecution flies “under the radar.”

“Where is the international outcry from the international community for the most oppressed and persecuted people in the world who live in North Korea?” Riggs asks. “No nation is planning a military strike against the tyrannical rule of the North Korea.”

International Christian Concern’s Asia analyst, Ryan Morgan, says he’s not surprised by North Korea’s ranking.

“It looks like conditions for Christians in North Korea have grown steadily worse. Between the ongoing detention of Kenneth Bae and the mass executions in November, it is abundantly clear that Kim Jong-un has no plans to change his regime’s status as the worst persecutor of Christians in the world any time soon,” Morgan said.

A recent report by a group called Seoul USA said the North Korean church is holding its own despite the persecution. Morgan agrees.

“When North Korea does eventually collapse, I believe we will see Christian leaders there who have kept the faith despite unimaginable opposition rise up to lead a new revival,” Morgan said.

“It’s going to be much like the rise of the church in China over the past 20 years.”

The Open Doors report listed the African nation of Somalia as No. 2. Fuentes said the Islamic terror group al-Shabaab is responsible for Somalia’s ranking.

“For the first time ever, Somalia holds the second spot, and it’s the first time an African nation has risen so high on the World Watch list. It’s because there’s been a significant increase in violence against Christians this year, specifically by the jihadist group al-Shabaab,” Fuentes said.

In the third spot is Syria, and Fuentes said that’s because the militant groups in the Syrian civil war are using the war as an excuse to target Christians.

“Christians are being specifically targeted for their faith, and the Christians are being targeted by jihadists and extremists fighting in the civil war. They’re using the war as an excuse to rid the country of the Christians,” Fuentes said.

Fuentes added that some towns in Syria have become “ghost towns” because of the violence.

“Christians have had to flee because they don’t want to live there anymore. In October, there was a historic Christian town that was attacked. Over 45 people were massacred, and hundreds more were injured. It was because they were Christians,” Fuentes said.

Open Doors estimates that there are nearly 1,000 Syrian Christians who have been martyred for their faith.

WND reported in September that Christian leaders in Syria were dismayed by the trend of entire Christian communities leaving because of the violence.

International Christian Concern Middle East analyst Todd Daniels said a Syrian church leader told him of how rebels entered a village and began calling out names using the loudspeakers of the mosques. The Christians were given 48 hours to leave.

“We are continuing to hear stories from Syria of forced conversions or killings by those who did not convert,” he said. “It is these existential threats that are leading Christians to flee.”

Fuentes said Islamic violence is a common thread in the persecution, noting that 37 of the top 50 countries are Muslim.

“Many of these nations are involved in heavy Islamic extremism. So, it’s either terrorist groups or other government officials who are following the extreme version of Islam. That’s what initiates the Christian persecution,” Fuentes said.

In 2013, the worst nation was North Korea, where merely possessing a Bible can be punishable by death.

At that time, eight of the 10 worst offenders were Muslim-majority nations. Egypt, under the Muslim Brotherhood, actually saw its ranking lowered, but not because of any improvement. It was because of worsening conditions elsewhere, the report said. North Korea also was No. 1 in 2012.

The following is the full list:

1) North Korea
2) Somalia
3) Syria
4) Iraq
5) Afghanistan
6) Saudi Arabia
7) Maldives
8) Pakistan
9) Iran
10) Yemen
11) Sudan
12) Eritrea
13) Libya
14) Nigeria
15) Uzbekistan
16) Central African Republic
17) Ethiopia
18) Vietnam
19) Qatar
20) Turkmenistan
21) Laos
22) Egypt
23) Myanmar (Burma)
24) Brunei
25) Colombia
26) Jordan
27) Oman
28) India
29) Sri Lanka
30) Tunisia
31) Bhutan
32) Algeria
33) Mali
34) Palestinian Territories
35) United Arab Emirates
36) Mauritania
37) China
38) Kuwait
39) Kazakhstan
40) Malaysia
41) Bahrain
42) Comoros
43) Kenya
44) Morocco
45) Tajikistan
46) Djibouti
47) Indonesia
48) Bangladesh
49) Tanzania
50) Niger

Credit WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/top-50-list-of-christian-persecutors/#B2rhwzIDTWJ4jCiY.99

Motorola patents e-tattoo that can read your thoughts by listening to unvocalized words in your throat

Imagine trying to patent the smartphone, or for that matter, the tattoo. Any company that could swing that, could probably also patent the fork and knife. Incredibly, a new application from Google-owned Motorola Mobility seeks a patent not for any particular utensil, but rather, for setting the table. In other words, if you have an electronic smart tattoo, and want it to speak to your mobile communications device, you may soon be able to do it in spades, but you will have to do it Google style.

But hold on for a minute, as there is a bit more to the whole concept than might first appear. The tattoo they have in mind is actually one that will be emblazoned over your vocal cords to intercept subtle voice commands — perhaps even subvocal commands, or even the fully internal whisperings that fail to pluck the vocal cords when not given full cerebral approval. One might even conclude that they are not just patenting device communications from a patch of smartskin, but communications from your soul.



Or maybe not. It has been known for decades that when you speak to yourself in your inner voice, your brain still sends neural spike volleys to your vocal apparatus, in a similar fashion to when you actually speak aloud. The main difference between the two, is that the nervous action driving covert speech as it is called, is subthreshold, and does not generate the full muscle contraction. The same might also be said for imagining throwing a baseball — it is probably not possible to even do so without simultaneously calling up and at least partially launching unamplified motor programs. Stated another way, your thoughts are your motor intentions, only they are not always recognizable as such if they are sufficiently abstracted.

The actual patent speaks of picking up an “auditory signal” from the tattoo, and converting it into a digital signal. The signals from the brain, carried by spikes on the hundreds of laryngeal nerve fibers (and other nerves modulating the vocal tract), are already digital. They bear no real resemblance to an auditory signal at this point. After transformation in the numerous muscles that control the speech organs, there is still no single signal that could be sent to a transducer to generate sound recognizable as speech. Looking at an image of a smart tattoo pioneered by John Roger’s Illinois-based research lab, there seems to be all kinds of sensor goodies which can be built in to pick up various biologics. I don’t know if the strain gauges could pick up an actual speech signal in the same way that a conventional microphone could, but they would certainly generate useful information. The built-in EMG and ECG electrodes would not pick up individual spikes so to speak, but could certainly generate electrical records of muscle activity, and perhaps eventually compound nerve potentials. Rogers helped to form a company, MC10, that hoped to commercialize this technology, and although he indicated that he was not involved in these recent ventures, they have joint development efforts with Motorola Mobility.



There is already a device known as a throat microphone that has been used to record an auditory signal in noisy conditions like, for example, the cockpit of a jet fighter. Developed along with the first pressure suit back in 1934, it used a direct contact microphone to pick up sound waves traveling through solid objects such as the throat wall. Later so-called throat microphones, such as the Xbox 360 accessory, only use an open-air microphone. They do not really exclude background noise, nor have the ability to pick up unvoiced signals. What got some folks attention recently, namely those over atPatently Apple, was a few peculiar statements in the patent regarding the recording of galvanic skin responses. These guys first heard about the e-skin tattoo from Regina Dugan, the former DARPA head who is now in charge of advanced research at Motorola. Their article notes that the e-tattoo would provide a nice way to do authentication, but the seemingly out of place inclusion of the lie detection talk certainly raises some questions.

Covert voice activation of your device in a crowd would definitely be a nice feature. Instead of actually speaking to Siri or Google Now, you could merely think your voice command. Detecting stress and other emotion could have some applicability too, although who else really needs to know if you have a lump in your throat? Perhaps I have not read that many patents recently, but there certainly did seem to be an excess of wording, and scope. Every wireless communications protocol I am familiar with was included in some form, somewhere. Not only were there definitions for words like “a” and “an,” but also actual percentages associated with a list of words like “about,” “approximately”, “essentially”, and “substantially”. Clearly this is one among several recent patents that we all may want to keep an eye on.

Credit to extreme Tech

The Fed's Dangerous Game

The death of the common sense

When do we declare a nation dead on arrival? Aside from being conquered by a foreign power, does a nation die when it is broke? Does a nation come to an end during a time of revolution? When one traces the demise of America, it appears that a nation dies when it loses its common sense.

The Death of Common Sense

America’s closest ally, Common Sense, is in grave danger. Recent reports indicate that our best friend, Common Sense has come down with a terminal case of globalism and is presently on life support while lingering in a profound coma.

For nearly two centuries, Common Sense successfully guided our country. Nobody knows for sure when Common Sense slipped into a coma, but the safe bet is that following a series of catastrophic decisions, Common Sense is now on death’s doorstep.

When Did It All Go Wrong?

When did the patient take a turn for the worse? Was it when our country adopted the free trade agreements which forced manufacturing and its jobs to foreign markets? Was it when John F. Kennedy was murdered and the globalists completely took over the presidency? Was it when Common Sense lost his mind and provided free health care for illegal aliens while charging citizens and arm and a leg? Was it when we allowed our Congress to insider-trade on Wall Street with impunity? Was it when the globalists were permitted to begin to use electronic voting machines in order to make it harder to detect voter fraud? Was it when corporations were allowed to lobby  and bribe Congress? Was it when the NDAA was passed and every citizen became vulnerable to government kidnapping and murder? Was it when we allowed unmarked planes to spray us with chemicals? Was it when Monsanto force fed us unlabeled GMO’s? Was it when we fought endless wars of occupation which hastened the bankrupting of the country? Was it when we let the banks steal our mortgages by selling our notes dozens of times over through the MERS mortgage fraud? Was it when we bailed out the bankers who destroyed our nation’s economy through their participation in illegal Ponzi schemes? Or, did Common Sense slip into a coma the day we re-elected a foreign born communist to be our President after a disastrous first term?

Common Sense Had Served Us Well

During the course of its lifespan, Common Sense espoused and exhibited many virtues. Below, is a small representation of the wisdom once imparted by Common Sense.

 If it is not in the Constitution, do not do it. 

A penny saved is a penny earned. 

Government cannot spend more money than it has in gold to back up the paper money.

 Congress shall have the power to coin money, not the corrupt central bankers

Teachers know what is best for their students, not a faceless bureaucrat in Washington D.C. or  at the United Nations.

Central Banking is a very, very bad idea not to mention that they are profoundly unconstitutional.

Executive Orders are a very, very bad idea and unconstitutional.

Avoid foreign entanglements.

Live within one’s means.

Any foreigner let into the country should pass a test on the Constitution, demonstrate English proficiency and swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution prior to being given citizenship.

The Beginning of the End 

Common Sense got into trouble when it allowed this criminal government to pass Obamacare against the will of the people and the people did not even put up a fight.

Common Sense slipped into a coma when well-intentioned but asinine administrative policies were set in place (e.g. reports of a 5-year-old boy for being suspended from school as he made his lunch bread into the shape of a gun.)

Common Sense lost ground when parents allowed teachers and television to replace them as the main disciplinarian in the lives of their children.

His health further declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer Tylenol or give an inhaler to a student. However, these same schools were not allowed to inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion, or if the school wanted to administer psychotropic medication without notifying the parent.

Common Sense went into a profound state of shock when it was discovered that many of the clergy became coerced into joining the Department of Homeland Security’s Clergy Response Team as pastors, priests and rabbi’s are paid to spy on the members of their respective congregations.

Common Sense took a beating when the government declared that you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense‘s health further deteriorated, after an Albuquerque woman failed to realize that a hot, steaming cup of coffee could produce a painful response if the woman carried the coffee in her lap as she drove.  The woman spilled the coffee and was awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense appears to have given up on life when the government begin the first steps toward seizing the guns from its citizens as it left the country vulnerable to the growing number of despots ruling over us.  

Common Sense Will Be Survived By the Following Globalist Edicts

The Government Would Never Do that

Every Elected Official Promises to “Protect and Defend” the Constitution

If You Did Not See It On CNN, It Did Not Happen

The Government Is the Answer To All Questions

Freedom Is Slavery and Slavery Is Freedom

Chemtrails, GMO’s, Vaccines, Fluoride and Fukushima Radiation Are All Good for You

Be Good and You’ll Get an Obama Phone

The Government Will Take Care of You

Two People Would Never Get Together and Plan to Break the Law. In Other Words, There Is No Such Thing As a Conspiracy Theory

If you by chance, happen to see Common Sense, Tell Him That We Miss Him Dearly

Credit to The Common Sense Show

If You Are Waiting For An “Economic Collapse”, Just Look At What Is Happening To Europe

If you are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the "economic collapse", just open up your eyes and look at what is happening in Europe.  The entire continent is a giant economic mess right now.  Unemployment and poverty levels are setting record highs, car sales are setting record lows, and there is an ocean of bad loans and red ink everywhere you look.  Over the past several years, most of the attention has been on the economic struggles of Greece, Spain and Portugal and without a doubt things continue to get even worse in those nations.  But in 2014 and 2015, Italy and France will start to take center stage.  France has the 5th largest economy on the planet, and Italy has the 9th largest economy on the planet, and at this point both of those economies are rapidly falling to pieces.  Expect both France and Italy to make major headlines throughout the rest of 2014.  I have always maintained that the next major wave of the economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening.  The following are just a few of the statistics that show that an "economic collapse" is happening in Europe right now...

-The unemployment rate in the eurozone as a whole is still sitting at an all-time record high of 12.1 percent.

-It Italy, the unemployment rate has soared to a brand new all-time record high of 12.7 percent.

-The youth unemployment rate in Italy has jumped up to 41.6 percent.

-The level of poverty in Italy is now the highest that has ever been recorded.

-Many analysts expect major economic trouble in Italy over the next couple of years.  The President of Italy is openly warning of "widespread social tension and unrest" in his nation in 2014.

-Citigroup is projecting that Italy's debt to GDP ratio will surpass 140 percent by the year 2016.

-Citigroup is projecting that Greece's debt to GDP ratio will surpass 200 percent by the year 2016.

-Citigroup is projecting that the unemployment rate in Greece will reach32 percent in 2015.

-The unemployment rate in Spain is still sitting at an all-time record high of 26.7 percent.

-The youth unemployment rate in Spain is now up to 57.7 percent - even higher than in Greece.

-The percentage of bad loans in Spain has risen for eight straight months and recently hit a brand new all-time record high of 13 percent.

-The number of mortgage applications in Spain has fallen by 90 percent since the peak of the housing boom.

-The unemployment rate in France has risen for 9 quarters in a row and recently soared to a new 16 year high.

-For 2013, car sales in Europe were on pace to hit the lowest yearly level ever recorded.

-Deutsche Bank, probably the most important bank in Germany, is the most highly leveraged bank in Europe (60 to 1) and it has approximately70 trillion dollars worth of exposure to derivatives.

Europe truly is experiencing an economic nightmare, and it is only going to get worse.

It would be hard to put into words the extreme desperation that unemployed workers throughout Europe are feeling right now.  When you can't feed your family and you can't find work no matter how hard you try, it can be absolutely soul crushing.

To get an idea of the level of desperation in Spain, check out the following anecdote from a recent NPR article...

Having trouble wrapping your head around southern Europe's staggering unemployment problem?

Look no further than a single Ikea furniture store on Spain's Mediterranean coast.

The plans to open a new megastore next summer near Valencia. On Monday, Ikea's started taking applications for 400 jobs at the new store.

The company wasn't prepared for what came next.

Within 48 hours, more than 20,000 people had applied online for those 400 jobs. The volume crashed Ikea's computer servers in Spain.

Of course that should kind of remind you of what I wrote about yesterday.  We are starting to see this kind of intense competition for low paying jobs in the United States as well.

As global economic conditions continue to deteriorate, things are going to get even tougher for those on the low end of the economic food chain.  Poverty rates are going to soar, even in areas where you might not expect it to happen.  In fact, one new report discovered that poverty has already been rising steadily in Germany, which is supposed to be the strongest economy in the entire eurozone...

A few days before the Christmas holidays, the Joint Welfare Association published a report on the regional development of poverty in Germany in 2013 titled “Between prosperity and poverty—a test to breaking point”. The report refutes the official propagandathat Germany has remained largely unaffected by the crisis and is a haven of prosperity in Europe.

According to the report, poverty in Germany has “reached a sad record high”. Entire cities and regions have been plunged into ever deeper economic and social crisis. “The social and regional centrifugal forces, as measured by the spread of incomes, have increased dramatically in Germany since 2006,” it says. Germany faces “a test to breaking point.”

Of course poverty continues to explode on this side of the Atlantic Ocean as well.  In the United States, the poverty rate has been at 15 percent or above for three years in a row.  That is the first time that this has happened since the 1960s.

And this is just the beginning.  The extreme recklessness of European banks such as Deutsche Bank and U.S. banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citibank and Goldman Sachs is eventually going to cause a financial catastrophe far worse than what we experienced back in 2008.

When that crisis arrives, the flow of credit is going to freeze up dramatically and economic activity will grind to a standstill.  Unemployment, poverty and all of our current economic problems will become much, much worse.

So as bad as things are right now, the truth is that this is nothingcompared to what is coming.

I hope that you are getting prepared for the coming storm while you still can.

Credit to Economic Collapse

IMF Says Collapse Likely

UK's Economics of Extinction

Iran defies five key Geneva Pact commitments…. heads for nuclear arsenal

Iran’s utilization of advanced IR-2m centrifuges for enriching uranium, in violation of the interim Geneva accord, was presented by the US and the five powers Wednesday, Jan. 8, as the main difficulty in its implementation. 

This claim allowed the follow-up meeting to take place in Geneva on Thursday, Jan. 9. DEBKAfile’s Iranian and intelligence sources report that this was a lame excuse to account for the real situation, which is that Iran has not even started implementing any part of the Geneva accord it signed last November 24. The follow-up talks this week are not expected to break out of this impasse, any more than the first round did on Dec. 19-20.

This is because the obstacles are far from technical; they arise from Iranian domestic politics. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has fenced in President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif with hard-line objectors to the tactics employed till now by the Iranian team, led by Iranian deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi. In future, negotiators will be required to refer all the conclusions reached with the powers to the policy-making levels in Tehran for approval and abide by their guidelines.

Using a “senior Western diplomatic source” to paint the centrifuge issue as the main obstacle to progress allowed the three figures running the show – US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy R. Sherman, EU Foreign Policy Coordinator Catherine Ashton, and her deputy Helga Schmidt – to keep the negotiations alive while disregarding the full scale and blatancy of Iran’s misconduct.

DEBKAfile’s sources reveal that the new state of the art centrifuges are not only already in place at the enrichment plants of Fordo and Natanz, but Tehran has brazenly informed the negotiating powers that even more advanced centrifuges have been developed and will soon be installed for test-runs.

The Iranians maintain that they are covered in this action by the Geneva clause acknowledging their right to pursue “nuclear research and development.”

Tehran is therefore treating this signal advance in uranium enrichment capacity as a done deal, even though it belies President Barack Obama’s words on November 25, which hailed Iran’s consent to halting the production and installation of advanced centrifuges as a major breakthrough won at the Geneva event.

So that there would be no misunderstandings about the use of the new centrifuges, Iranian Majlis member Mohammed Nabavian took the podium on Friday January 3 to explain: “We had a few sessions on the nuclear issue at the Majlis with Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araqchi, Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht Ravanchi and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, and one session in which President Hassan Rouhani personally participated…”

After listing the five sections of the Geneva nuclear pact, Nabavian assumed the voice of Washington to declare in the name of the United States: “ 'Never before have we succeeded in ensuring Israel's security as we did today by means of the agreement… If a certain country has 270 kg of enriched uranium at a level of 20% and 10 tons [of enriched uranium] at a level of 5%, and 20,000 centrifuges, it will be in a breakout position and could manufacture a nuclear bomb on the uranium track within two weeks.' “
After this “US quote,” the Iranian lawmaker commented: “We don't aspire to obtain a nuclear bomb, but it is necessary so that we can put Israel in its place…”

The main point of Nabavian’s narrative wasn’t just confirmation that Iran possesses the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb at extremely short notice, but its continued development of ever-faster centrifuges that will dramatically change these figures within a short time and produce a complete arsenal aimed at a single target: Israel

This is not what President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry or Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to hear or bring to general knowledge. The Iranians have no such inhibitions and are making no bones about flouting at least five separate clauses of the nuclear pact they signed in Geneva - plus one:

1. There has been no suspension or slowdown of 20-percent uranium enrichment.

2. Uranium enrichment to 3.5- and 5-percent purity continues apace in disregard of the ceiling agreed in Geneva.

3. Advanced IR-2m centrifuges continue to roll off the assembly lines. Making a slight bow to the pact, they are being installed at Fordo and Natanz in individual units, not cascades. The Geneva pact bans their installation in any shape or form.

4. Iran has not stopped preparations for moving up to 60-percent enrichment and is being urged by many voices at home to go up to 80 percent. Iran’s pretext is that this level is necessary to fuel the reactors of the nuclear vessels it is building.

5. There has been no pause in the high-speed construction of the heavy water-plutonium plant at Arak.

6. Neither is there any slowdown at the research and development centers for nuclear weapons. Since the military dimension of Iran’s nuclear program was left unmentioned in the Geneva accord, Tehran is at liberty to continue this pursuit free of international inspection while denying it is taking place.




Credit to DEBKAfile

Radiation Out of Control in California