Tuesday, April 14, 2015
The Six Too Big To Fail Banks In The U.S. Have 278 TRILLION Dollars Of Exposure To Derivatives
The very same people that caused the last economic crisis have created a 278 TRILLION dollar derivatives time bomb that could go off at any moment. When this absolutely colossal bubble does implode, we are going to be faced with the worst economic crash in the history of the United States. During the last financial crisis, our politicians promised us that they would make sure that “too big to fail” would never be a problem again. Instead, as you will see below, those banks have actually gotten far larger since then. So now we really can’t afford for them to fail.
The six banks that I am talking about are JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. When you add up all of their exposure to derivatives, it comes to a grand total of more than 278 trillion dollars. But when you add up all of the assets of all six banks combined, it only comes to a grand total of about 9.8 trillion dollars. In other words, these “too big to fail” banks have exposure to derivatives that is more than 28 times greater than their total assets.
This is complete and utter insanity, and yet nobody seems too alarmed about it. For the moment, those banks are still making lots of money and funding the campaigns of our most prominent politicians. Right now there is no incentive for them to stop their incredibly reckless gambling so they are just going to keep on doing it.
So precisely what are “derivatives”? Well, they can be immensely complicated, but I like to simplify things. On a very basic level, a “derivative” is not an investment in anything. When you buy a stock, you are purchasing an ownership interest in a company. When you buy a bond, you are purchasing the debt of a company. But a derivative is quite different. In essence, most derivatives are simply bets about what will or will not happen in the future. The big banks have transformed Wall Street into the biggest casino in the history of the planet, and when things are running smoothly they usually make a whole lot of money.
But there is a fundamental flaw in the system, and I described this in a previous article…
The big banks use very sophisticated algorithms that are supposed to help them be on the winning side of these bets the vast majority of the time, but these algorithms are not perfect. The reason these algorithms are not perfect is because they are based on assumptions, and those assumptions come from people. They might be really smart people, but they are still just people.
Today, the “too big to fail” banks are being even more reckless than they were just prior to the financial crash of 2008.
As long as they keep winning, everyone is going to be okay. But when the time comes that their bets start going against them, it is going to be a nightmare for all of us. Our entire economic system is based on the flow of credit, and those banks are at the very heart of that system.
In fact, the five largest banks account for approximately 42 percent of all loans in the United States, and the six largest banks account for approximately 67 percent of all assets in our financial system.
So that is why they are called “too big to fail”. We simply cannot afford for them to go out of business.
As I mentioned above, our politicians promised that something would be done about this. But instead, the four largest banks in the country have gotten nearly 40 percent largersince the last time around. The following numbers come from an article in the Los Angeles Times…
Just before the financial crisis hit, Wells Fargo & Co. had $609 billion in assets. Now it has $1.4 trillion. Bank of America Corp. had $1.7 trillion in assets. That’s up to $2.1 trillion.And the assets of JPMorgan Chase & Co., the nation’s biggest bank, have ballooned to $2.4 trillion from $1.8 trillion.
During this same time period, 1,400 smaller banks have completely disappeared from the banking industry.
So our economic system is now more dependent on the “too big to fail” banks than ever.
To illustrate how reckless the “too big to fail” banks have become, I want to share with you some brand new numbers which come directly from the OCC’s most recent quarterly report (see Table 2)…
JPMorgan Chase
Total Assets: $2,573,126,000,000 (about 2.6 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $63,600,246,000,000 (more than 63 trillion dollars)
Citibank
Total Assets: $1,842,530,000,000 (more than 1.8 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $59,951,603,000,000 (more than 59 trillion dollars)
Goldman Sachs
Total Assets: $856,301,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $57,312,558,000,000 (more than 57 trillion dollars)
Bank Of America
Total Assets: $2,106,796,000,000 (a little bit more than 2.1 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $54,224,084,000,000 (more than 54 trillion dollars)
Morgan Stanley
Total Assets: $801,382,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $38,546,879,000,000 (more than 38 trillion dollars)
Wells Fargo
Total Assets: $1,687,155,000,000 (about 1.7 trillion dollars)
Total Exposure To Derivatives: $5,302,422,000,000 (more than 5 trillion dollars)
Compared to the rest of them, Wells Fargo looks extremely prudent and rational.
But of course that is not true at all. Wells Fargo is being very reckless, but the others are being so reckless that it makes everyone else pale in comparison.
And these banks are not exactly in good shape for the next financial crisis that is rapidly approaching. The following is an excerpt from a recent Business Insider article…
The New York Times isn’t so sure about the results from the Federal Reserve’s latest round of stress tests.In an editorial published over the weekend, The Times cites data from Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the FDIC, who, in contrast to the Federal Reserve, found that capital ratios at the eight largest banks in the US averaged 4.97% at the end of 2014, far lower than the 12.9% found by the Fed’s stress test.
That doesn’t sound good.
So what is up with the discrepancy in the numbers? The New York Times explains…
The discrepancy is due mainly to differing views of the risk posed by the banks’ vast holdings of derivative contracts used for hedging and speculation. The Fed, in keeping with American accounting rules and central bank accords, assumes that gains and losses onderivatives generally net out. As a result, most derivatives do not show up as assets on banks’ balance sheets, an omission that bolsters the ratio of capital to assets.Mr. Hoenig uses stricter international accounting rules to value the derivatives. Those rules do not assume that gains and losses reliably net out. As a result, large derivative holdings are shown as assets on the balance sheet, an addition that reduces the ratio of capital to assets to the low levels reported in Mr. Hoenig’s analysis.
Derivatives, eh?
Very interesting.
And you know what?
The guys running these big banks can see what is coming.
Just consider the words that JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon wrote to his shareholders not too long ago…
Some things never change — there will be another crisis, and its impact will be felt by the financial market.The trigger to the next crisis will not be the same as the trigger to the last one – but there will be another crisis. Triggering events could be geopolitical (the 1973 Middle East crisis), a recession where the Fed rapidly increases interest rates (the 1980-1982 recession), a commodities price collapse (oil in the late 1980s), the commercial real estate crisis (in the early 1990s), the Asian crisis (in 1997), so-called “bubbles” (the 2000 Internet bubble and the 2008 mortgage/housing bubble), etc. While the past crises had different roots (you could spend a lot of time arguing the degree to which geopolitical, economic or purely financial factors caused each crisis), they generally had a strong effect across the financial markets
In the same letter, Dimon mentioned “derivatives moved by enormous players and rapid computerized trades” as part of the reason why our system is so vulnerable to another crisis.
If this is what he truly believes, why is his firm being so incredibly reckless?
Perhaps someone should ask him that.
Interestingly, Dimon also discussed the possibility of a Greek exit from the eurozone…
“We must be prepared for a potential exit,” J. P. Morgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said. in his annual letter to shareholders. “We continually stress test our company for possible repercussions resulting from such an event.”
This is something that I have been warning about for a long time.
And of course Dimon is not the only prominent banker warning of big problems ahead. German banking giant Deutsche Bank is also sounding the alarm…
With a U.S. profit recession expected in the first half of 2015 and investors unlikely to pay up for stocks, the risk of a stock market drop of 5% to 10% is rising, Deutsche Bank says.That’s the warning Deutsche Bank market strategist David Bianco zapped out to clients today before the opening bell on Wall Street.Bianco expects earnings for the broad Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index to contract in the first half of 2015 — the first time that’s happened since 2009 during the financial crisis. And the combination of soft earnings and his belief that investors won’t pay top dollar for stocks in a market that is already trading at above-average valuations is a recipe for a short-term pullback on Wall Street.
The truth is that we are in the midst of a historic stock market bubble, and we are witnessing all sorts of patterns in the financial markets which also emerged back in 2008 right before the financial crash in the fall of that year.
When some of the most prominent bankers at some of the biggest banks on the entire planet start issuing ominous warnings, that is a clear sign that time is running out. The period of relative stability that we have been enjoying has been fun, and hopefully it will last just a little while longer. But at some point it will end, and then the pain will begin.
Credit to Economic Collapse
California´s significant water shortfall,,,,,The solution sewage water
Like many other towns in California, Santa Barbara is projecting a significant water shortfall in 2017.
The solutions, being proposed for now, are extreme water conservancy, desalination plants, and sewage recycling following Jerry Brown's diktat that "as Californians, we have to pull together and save water in every way we can." However, others insist that conserving water will not be enough, "I don't think we can really conserve our way out of this problem, this problem being a combination of drought and of incredibly high water demand by a growing population and climate change," warns NASA scientist Jay Famiglietti and environmentalists exclaim "we don't even know how much we need because we waste so much; we live in a total artificial world of water use and water supply." As we noted before, this is just beginning.
Santa Barbara is projecting a significant water shortfall in 2017.Haggmark says the city hopes to be able to buy water to make up the shortfall — but with other thirsty buyers in the region, finding an affordable source could be a problem.
Last week, Governor Jerry Brown made water conservation mandatory in the drought-stricken state of California. "As Californians, we have to pull together and save water in every way we can," he said. But if the four-year drought continues, conservation alone — at least what's required by the governor's plan — won't fix the problem.As NPR reports,
Conservation is one suggested solution...
To cope with the drought, Santa Barbara's city councilbanned watering lawns and hired water police to enforce restrictions. Some residents painted their brown lawns green."In the meanwhile," Lodge recalls, "we had to do something to find other water supplies."
Or Desalination...
Santa Barbara is reopening its desalination facilityand Joshua Haggmark, the city's water resources manager, is in charge of getting it back online. Much work lies ahead.Entering the control room and seeing its big computers with tiny memories — and floppy disk drives — feels like stepping back in time to 1992. This is "about as sophisticated as it gets for this old facility," says Haggmark.The intake, where ocean water first enters the desalination system, is about half a mile off the beach. Once it gets to the plant, the water flows through gravel and sand filters and finally, when all the debris is gone, into the reverse osmosis membranes — salt removers.Two gallons of ocean water go in; one gallon of drinking water comes out. The leftover gallon contains super-salty brine. This doubly salty water is mixed with the city's wastewater and then piped back out to sea and spread around, about 30 miles offshore.That briny waste is one of many concerns raised by environmentalists and other critics of desalination plants like this one and others that are being planned and built along the California coast. "The biggest concern about desalination is that it is expensive, it's energy-intensive and it has a lot of side effects — a lot of unintended consequences to marine life both from the intake and the discharge," says Marco Gonzalez, the executive director of the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation.Right now, the sources of electricity available to run desalination plants are not environmentally friendly."Really, it's going to require us to find alternative energy sources to power these plants. So as we put more renewables online, it will become more environmentally friendly and more cost-effective," says Gonzalez.Cost effectiveness is important, because desalination is expensive. To get the Santa Barbara plant back online, the estimated cost of water for the average resident will increase by about $20 each month starting this July, even though the plant won't open until 2016.Gonzalez says that before money goes into desalination projects that may hurt the environment, water conservation needs to become a bigger priority. "The first thing I say to someone who says that we need to do desal[ination] now is, 'Turn off your sprinklers.' We don't even know how much we need because we waste so much; we live in a total artificial world of water use and water supply."
But others insist that conserving water will not be enough. The drought is too severe, they say, and the state has been using too much water for too long.
"I don't think we can really conserve our way out of this problem, this problem being a combination of drought and of incredibly high water demand by a growing population and climate change," says Jay Famiglietti, the senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
Almost everyone agrees: for a drought this severe, you need a multifaceted approach.
"Desal[ination] is part of it and sewage recycling is part of it," Famiglietti says. "More efficient irrigation, better water pricing, better crop choices — there's all sorts of things we need to include in our portfolio to bridge that gap between supply and demand."
But here's what scares a lot of people: Even an all-of-the-above strategy isn't going to be enough.
Credit to Zero Hedge
Monday, April 13, 2015
Nanoparticle liquid-metal ink allows standard inkjet printers to create flexible circuits
Using a standard inkjet-printer, researchers claim to be able to produce flexible electronic circuits that could advance bendable electronics for clothing, soft robotics, and wearable devices (Image: Alex Bottiglio/Purdue University)
Researchers at Purdue University have shown how standard inkjet-printers can be employed to produce flexible electronic circuits from liquid-metal nanoparticle inks. This simple printing solution promises faster, cheaper, and easier production of stretchable, bendable electronics for clothing, soft robotics, and wearable devices.
Making circuits elastic means that many rigid platforms could be made pliable, opening up a range of potential new applications for electronic devices. To make this possible, however, new manufacturing techniques are required. Nanoparticle ink-jet printed ductile circuits may well solve this problem.
"We want to create stretchable electronics that might be compatible with soft machines, such as robots that need to squeeze through small spaces, or wearable technologies that aren't restrictive of motion," says Rebecca Kramer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. "Conductors made from liquid metal can stretch and deform without breaking. This process now allows us to print flexible and stretchable conductors onto anything, including elastic materials and fabrics."
To create the flexible metal ink, liquid metal is distributed evenly through a non-metallic solvent by using ultrasonic energy to fracture the liquid metal into nanoparticles. This nanoparticle suspension is then usable in an ink-jet printer, as if it was ordinary ink.
"Liquid metal in its native form is not inkjet-able," adds Kramer. "So what we do is create liquid metal nanoparticles that are small enough to pass through an inkjet nozzle. Sonicating liquid metal in a carrier solvent, such as ethanol, both creates the nanoparticles and disperses them in the solvent. Then we can print the ink onto any substrate. The ethanol evaporates away so we are just left with liquid metal nanoparticles on a surface."
The oxidized gallium (Ga2O3) "skin" originally applied to the liquid-metal nanoparticles to keep them electrically inert during processing needs to be removed once printing has finished, allowing the nanoparticles to recombine and the material to become conductive.
"But it's a fragile skin, so when you apply pressure it breaks the skin and everything coalesces into one uniform film," said professor Kramer. "We can do this either by stamping or by dragging something across the surface, such as the sharp edge of a silicon tip."
Being able to activate various sections of a device individually makes the technique extremely versatile. It may one day be conceivable to produce a generic blank nanoparticle film that could be easily customized to suit a large range of possible applications.
"We selectively activate what electronics we want to turn on by applying pressure to just those areas," says professor Kramer.
One major advantage of this circuit activation process, unlike similar graphene printing techniques, is that the resultant printed material does not need to be heated to exceptionally high temperatures to activate it. This makes the Purdue technique more readily accessible to ordinary circuit designers.
This isn't the first application of nanoparticle conductive liquid in an ink-jet printer – back in 2013 Gizmag reported on a system developed at Georgia Tech that prints conductive circuits on PET film and photographic paper. However the Purdue University technique is the first claimed to be able to print on stretchable materials and retain its integrity when stretched or flexed.
Kramer says that the team plans to investigate various properties of the new ink and how it interacts with the surface being printed on.
"For example, how do the nanoparticles orient themselves on hydrophobic versus hydrophilic surfaces? How can we formulate the ink and exploit its interaction with a surface to enable self-assembly of the particles?”
The results of the research will be published in the journal Advanced Materials on April 18.
Source: Purdue University
Credit to http://www.gizmag.com
IS WORLD WAR III COMING SOON?
A growing list of commentators, politicians and religious leaders appear to sense something big, something ominous, is hiding around the corner.
Is this just foolish speculation, or are they onto something?
Carl Gallups, a longtime Baptist pastor and radio host, has taken a serious look at the issue in his new book, “Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation.” The book is getting lots of play on Amazon, cracking its top 100 bestseller list, which may say something about the amount of interest in this topic.
Gallups posits that the first five trumpet blasts of Revelation may have already occurred. If that is the case, the sixth trumpet, a world war that kills millions, could be knocking at the door.
Gallups said he did not write the book to scare people, nor does he claim any inside knowledge of God’s prophetic timetable.
Rather, his intent was to stimulate discussion and awaken the sleeping Christian church to the possibility that the return of Jesus Christ may be near. Because if it is, there are myriad scriptures that warn the brethren to be prepared, not to let the oil in their lamps run low like the parable Jesus told about the “foolish virgins.”
“Millions of people, including theologians and preachers, around the world see the same things I believe I am seeing,” Gallups told WND. “Current geopolitical events appear to be in the process of lining up with specific biblical prophecies, and especially those prophecies that contain key word definitions.”
Gallups explained what he meant by “key words.”
The sixth trumpet prophecy of Revelation Chapter 9 has long been viewed by many as a description of a massive war involving 200 million people occurring in the vicinity of the Euphrates River.
The war brings mass carnage, death and destruction to an area that Revelation 2:13 indicates is the seat of Satan’s earthly throne.
“The Euphrates River begins in Turkey and runs through Syria and Iraq. Those nations are major players in the Middle East upheaval of today and the main stomping grounds of ISIS,” Gallups said. “There are nearly 400 million Muslims living in the Middle East now. If a multinational war broke out in that area involving Iran, Russia, the U.S., Israel, North African nations, and possibly China – it is not hard to imagine at least 200 million people fighting a bloody war in the Middle East.”
Some of the others in the media, political and religious realms who have been talking about World War III recently include the following.
Radio host Mark Levin said, “I believe World War III has begun. And I believe we’re going to be attacked. You think we took out a building or a compound and that’s it, there is no more imminent threats against the United States? … This is why it’s immoral, it is unconscionable not to secure that southern border, and tighten it up really, really hard. And they won’t.”
“So World War III has broken out. Just remember, World War I and World War II we weren’t initially involved in those wars in any significant way, but we were pulled in. And World War III has now broken open, in my humble opinion, the lead up to it.”
Pope Francis warned in September 2014 that a type of “piecemeal World War III” may have already begun with the current spate of crimes, massacres and destruction, the BBC reported.
“Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction,” he said.
The pope went on to say the international community would be justified in using force to stop what he called “unjust aggression” by Islamic State militants, who have killed or displaced thousands of people in Iraq and Syria, including many Christians, the BBC reported.
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann told WND earlier this week that she believed the world’s nuclear pact with Iran, brokered by the Obama administration, “heralds World War III.”
Even though Obama and his supporters are hailing the deal as one that will bring a historic peace and security, Bachmann and others see it differently.
“This [deal] virtually guarantees, in my opinion, a World War III,” she said. “I think that alone would qualify Barack Obama for being the worst president that the United States has ever had to endure.”
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned that the Ukrainian crisis could evolve into World War III and, if it does, Vladimir Putin might find it “unavoidable” to launch Russian nuclear missiles.
Putin has also set the stage for a new world war by officially declaring that both NATO and the United States are the top threats to Russia.
In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Mikhail Gorbachev claimed the recent NATO expansion in response to the Ukraine crisis represented a major change in direction for Western powers.
“The expansion of the bloc in the east [of Europe] has destroyed the European security order which was written in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975,” Gorbachev claimed. “[NATO’s expansion is] a 180-degree turn drawing us away from the Paris Charter of 1990, which was made together with all European states to finally leave the Cold War in the past.”
Former Ukrainian ambassador in Washington, Yuri Shcherbak, who authored the book “The Strategic Role of Ukraine,” also recently spoke out about the Ukraine’s unique potential as a flashpoint for World War III.
“This (U.S.-Russian conflict that’s being carried out in Ukraine) is a prelude to World War II. A lot of people know this,” Shcherbak told Ukraine’s Channel 5 television on Dec. 29 as reported by Global Research.
Glenn Beck, on his Feb. 16 radio show, said World War III is coming and “Nobody will recognize it yet.”
“Just like we were at the beginning of World War II when they invaded Poland, we are entering those times. We just don’t know it yet,” Beck said. “There is going to come a time when we will have no choice.”
The king of Jordan said last month he wanted to wage “World War III” on ISIS.
Speaking to CNN, King Abdullah implored all religions to come together, adding, “This is our war.”
He made a point of referring to the fight against the Islamic State as a “Third World War” and called upon all nations to come together to help counter the threat posed by the terrorist group since they conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Noah Beck, author of “The Last Israelis,” cited in an op-ed for the Christian Post that Obama’s secret nuclear talks with Iran will lead to World War III.
“Obama should know by now that if he forces Israel’s hand, then Israel alone will neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, regardless of how messy the aftermath may be. Netanyahu – like any other responsible Israeli leader – would rather bring about World War III than the last Israelis.”
Many are talking about Iran or Syria triggering World War III in the Middle East. In fact, Iranian officials themselves were warning two years ago that World War III was coming, as WND reported.
“This can entail a chain of violence that may lead to World war III. A potential Israeli attack against Iran with an objective of destroying its scientific and nuclear facilities is sheer madness,” said Ali Ahani, Iran’s ambassador to France. “Its consequences are disastrous and uncontrollable.”
The rhetoric eerily matched that coming out of North Korea.
Deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, warned the U.S. that Iran would continue its nuclear program.
“We would not trade off our rights,” he said, adding that Iran would stand with North Korea in its face-off with America.
Geopolitical analyst Joel Skousen has long warned that North Korea could be the flashpoint for a global conflagration.
“There has to be a reason why North Korea has been preserved. … It can only be because the globalists know that they are the puppets of China and that they will be the trigger,” Skousen said in a February 2014 interview with Alex Jones.
Being ‘watchful, not fearful’
Gallups told WND there must be a balanced way that believers approach the current volatility in which the Middle East, Russia-Ukraine, and the Koreas all appear as powder kegs waiting to explode.
“I think it is important for Christians not to live in fear or anxiety. That kind of living is the opposite of faith and trust,” he said. “God’s got this – ultimately. I am not setting dates and times, nor have I ever been an alarmist. I am simply examining distinct biblical prophecies and watching world events unfold at the same time. I have been watching, preaching, and teaching these things for 30 years. Both Billy and Franklin Graham have recently made similar statements as mine, regarding the prophetic times in which we find ourselves.
Gallups said he’s aware Christians have differing views about the order of end-time events, particularly about the trumpet prophecies and where they might fall in relation to the “rapture.”
“I deal with all of that in my book,” he said.
But regardless of his views on the trumpet prophecies, there are certain indisputable facts.
“We must admit Israel is back in the land, Islamic nations are aligning against her this very moment, anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world, Christians are being burned alive in cages and having their heads cut off, and tens of thousands of Christians have been uprooted and have fled to the desert and wilderness areas of the Middle East,” he said. “These things should give the church in America a very real reason to do some biblical housecleaning and stiffen its spine of boldness. If ever there were a time to ratchet up the proclaiming of salvation in Jesus Christ, it is now.”
Credit WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/is-world-war-iii-coming-soon/#vr67YRxVweddqYC6.99
Gallups said he did not write the book to scare people, nor does he claim any inside knowledge of God’s prophetic timetable.
Rather, his intent was to stimulate discussion and awaken the sleeping Christian church to the possibility that the return of Jesus Christ may be near. Because if it is, there are myriad scriptures that warn the brethren to be prepared, not to let the oil in their lamps run low like the parable Jesus told about the “foolish virgins.”
“Millions of people, including theologians and preachers, around the world see the same things I believe I am seeing,” Gallups told WND. “Current geopolitical events appear to be in the process of lining up with specific biblical prophecies, and especially those prophecies that contain key word definitions.”
Gallups explained what he meant by “key words.”
The sixth trumpet prophecy of Revelation Chapter 9 has long been viewed by many as a description of a massive war involving 200 million people occurring in the vicinity of the Euphrates River.
The war brings mass carnage, death and destruction to an area that Revelation 2:13 indicates is the seat of Satan’s earthly throne.
“The Euphrates River begins in Turkey and runs through Syria and Iraq. Those nations are major players in the Middle East upheaval of today and the main stomping grounds of ISIS,” Gallups said. “There are nearly 400 million Muslims living in the Middle East now. If a multinational war broke out in that area involving Iran, Russia, the U.S., Israel, North African nations, and possibly China – it is not hard to imagine at least 200 million people fighting a bloody war in the Middle East.”
Some of the others in the media, political and religious realms who have been talking about World War III recently include the following.
Radio host Mark Levin said, “I believe World War III has begun. And I believe we’re going to be attacked. You think we took out a building or a compound and that’s it, there is no more imminent threats against the United States? … This is why it’s immoral, it is unconscionable not to secure that southern border, and tighten it up really, really hard. And they won’t.”
“So World War III has broken out. Just remember, World War I and World War II we weren’t initially involved in those wars in any significant way, but we were pulled in. And World War III has now broken open, in my humble opinion, the lead up to it.”
Pope Francis warned in September 2014 that a type of “piecemeal World War III” may have already begun with the current spate of crimes, massacres and destruction, the BBC reported.
“Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction,” he said.
The pope went on to say the international community would be justified in using force to stop what he called “unjust aggression” by Islamic State militants, who have killed or displaced thousands of people in Iraq and Syria, including many Christians, the BBC reported.
Former Rep. Michele Bachmann told WND earlier this week that she believed the world’s nuclear pact with Iran, brokered by the Obama administration, “heralds World War III.”
Even though Obama and his supporters are hailing the deal as one that will bring a historic peace and security, Bachmann and others see it differently.
“This [deal] virtually guarantees, in my opinion, a World War III,” she said. “I think that alone would qualify Barack Obama for being the worst president that the United States has ever had to endure.”
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned that the Ukrainian crisis could evolve into World War III and, if it does, Vladimir Putin might find it “unavoidable” to launch Russian nuclear missiles.
Putin has also set the stage for a new world war by officially declaring that both NATO and the United States are the top threats to Russia.
In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Mikhail Gorbachev claimed the recent NATO expansion in response to the Ukraine crisis represented a major change in direction for Western powers.
“The expansion of the bloc in the east [of Europe] has destroyed the European security order which was written in the Helsinki Final Act of 1975,” Gorbachev claimed. “[NATO’s expansion is] a 180-degree turn drawing us away from the Paris Charter of 1990, which was made together with all European states to finally leave the Cold War in the past.”
Former Ukrainian ambassador in Washington, Yuri Shcherbak, who authored the book “The Strategic Role of Ukraine,” also recently spoke out about the Ukraine’s unique potential as a flashpoint for World War III.
“This (U.S.-Russian conflict that’s being carried out in Ukraine) is a prelude to World War II. A lot of people know this,” Shcherbak told Ukraine’s Channel 5 television on Dec. 29 as reported by Global Research.
Glenn Beck, on his Feb. 16 radio show, said World War III is coming and “Nobody will recognize it yet.”
“Just like we were at the beginning of World War II when they invaded Poland, we are entering those times. We just don’t know it yet,” Beck said. “There is going to come a time when we will have no choice.”
The king of Jordan said last month he wanted to wage “World War III” on ISIS.
Speaking to CNN, King Abdullah implored all religions to come together, adding, “This is our war.”
He made a point of referring to the fight against the Islamic State as a “Third World War” and called upon all nations to come together to help counter the threat posed by the terrorist group since they conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
Noah Beck, author of “The Last Israelis,” cited in an op-ed for the Christian Post that Obama’s secret nuclear talks with Iran will lead to World War III.
“Obama should know by now that if he forces Israel’s hand, then Israel alone will neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, regardless of how messy the aftermath may be. Netanyahu – like any other responsible Israeli leader – would rather bring about World War III than the last Israelis.”
Many are talking about Iran or Syria triggering World War III in the Middle East. In fact, Iranian officials themselves were warning two years ago that World War III was coming, as WND reported.
“This can entail a chain of violence that may lead to World war III. A potential Israeli attack against Iran with an objective of destroying its scientific and nuclear facilities is sheer madness,” said Ali Ahani, Iran’s ambassador to France. “Its consequences are disastrous and uncontrollable.”
The rhetoric eerily matched that coming out of North Korea.
Deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, warned the U.S. that Iran would continue its nuclear program.
“We would not trade off our rights,” he said, adding that Iran would stand with North Korea in its face-off with America.
Geopolitical analyst Joel Skousen has long warned that North Korea could be the flashpoint for a global conflagration.
“There has to be a reason why North Korea has been preserved. … It can only be because the globalists know that they are the puppets of China and that they will be the trigger,” Skousen said in a February 2014 interview with Alex Jones.
Being ‘watchful, not fearful’
Gallups told WND there must be a balanced way that believers approach the current volatility in which the Middle East, Russia-Ukraine, and the Koreas all appear as powder kegs waiting to explode.
“I think it is important for Christians not to live in fear or anxiety. That kind of living is the opposite of faith and trust,” he said. “God’s got this – ultimately. I am not setting dates and times, nor have I ever been an alarmist. I am simply examining distinct biblical prophecies and watching world events unfold at the same time. I have been watching, preaching, and teaching these things for 30 years. Both Billy and Franklin Graham have recently made similar statements as mine, regarding the prophetic times in which we find ourselves.
Gallups said he’s aware Christians have differing views about the order of end-time events, particularly about the trumpet prophecies and where they might fall in relation to the “rapture.”
“I deal with all of that in my book,” he said.
But regardless of his views on the trumpet prophecies, there are certain indisputable facts.
“We must admit Israel is back in the land, Islamic nations are aligning against her this very moment, anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world, Christians are being burned alive in cages and having their heads cut off, and tens of thousands of Christians have been uprooted and have fled to the desert and wilderness areas of the Middle East,” he said. “These things should give the church in America a very real reason to do some biblical housecleaning and stiffen its spine of boldness. If ever there were a time to ratchet up the proclaiming of salvation in Jesus Christ, it is now.”
Credit WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/is-world-war-iii-coming-soon/#vr67YRxVweddqYC6.99
Britain is one of the least religious countries in the world
Britain is one of the least religious countries in the world, coming sixth from bottom in a global study of belief carried out across 65 countries.
Win/Gallup International polling suggested that over 50 percent of Britons did not believe in any religion, 13 percent were committed atheists and that the rest were unsure how to define their beliefs.
Only 30 percent said they were religious.
Thailand was found to be the most religious country, with 94 percent of those asked claiming to belong to a religious group.
In Armenia and Morocco, 93 percent of those asked said they were religious.
In continental terms, Western Europe and Oceania were less religious than Africa and the Americas.
China was one of the most atheist countries, with only 6 percent of people adhering to a religion and 61 percent stating their commitment to atheism. Only 13 percent of Japanese people said that they subscribed to a religion.
Despite religious belief taking a knock in some countries, the study found that far from being on the wane, there are nearly twice as many believers as non-believers in the nations surveyed.
Win/Gallup International president Jean-Marc Leger told the Guardian: “Religion continues to dominate our everyday lives and we see that the total number of people who consider themselves to be religious is actually relatively high.”
The study broadly corroborates the findings of a poll by the Times newspaper, published in February, which suggested that religiosity in Britain is dying as almost one in five British people now identifies themselves as atheist.
The poll, made in conjunction with YouGov, surveyed 1,550 adults.
It found that 19 percent identify themselves as atheists, 7 percent as “agnostic” and 3 percent as “humanist.”
In contrast, 49 percent identified themselves as Christian, while 42 percent said they had “no religion” they directly identified with.
Additionally, the poll found David Cameron’s Anglican faith made little to no impact on the way voters viewed him, with only 12 percent of identifying Christians claiming the prime minister’s faith improved their opinion of him.
The global WIN/Gallup investigation also identified a number of compelling global trends, finding that religious beliefs were more common among people who were younger, poorer and less educated.
Housewives were found to be one of the most intensely religious groups, arguably lending some weight to the famous description of religion by socialist revolutionary Karl Marx: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Credit to RT
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