Expert: North Korea Prepping EMP Attack On “Defenseless” U.S.

North Korea is preparing to launch a satellite capable of detonating a nuclear weapon more than 100 miles over the United States, creating an electromagnetic pulse that could destroy America’s electrical grid system, a former director of the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative said in a new report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. Former Ambassador Henry Cooper – who was President Ronald Reagan’s chief representative in the “Star Wars” initiative negotiations with the Soviet Union and SDI director under President George H.W. Bush – said North Korea is preparing its Sohae satellite complex for a launch on a southern trajectory, which is said to be a test. Cooper told G2 Bulletin the United States lacks sufficient anti-ballistic missile defenses in the southern part of the U.S., especially if the satellite turns out to be a nuclear device that could orbit above the U.S. and explode at a high altitude, affecting the lives of all Americans.

Credit to skywatchtv.com

http://skywatchtv.com/2016/02/07/expert-north-korea-prepping-emp-attack-on-defenseless-u-s/

ISIS Plot To Shoot Up A Detroit Megachurch Revealed As ‘Christianophobia’ Spreads Across America

If you are a Christian, you better brace yourself for great persecution. It has gotten very little attention from the mainstream media, but federal authorities have uncovered an ISIS plot to “shoot up” a Detroit megachurch. 21-year-old Khalil Abu-Rayyan of Dearborn Heights, Michigan told authorities that he actually intended to take a gun into a very large church in Detroit that can seat up to 6,000 people and start killing Christians. He has been charged with supporting the Islamic States and with “illegally having a firearm while using a controlled substance”. Abu-Rayyan actually admitted that since he can’t be part of the jihad in the Middle East, that he would “do my jihad over here”.  As I have warned so many times before, ISIS terrorists are already here, and what we have seen so far is just the beginning.

I can’t understand why this story is not headlines news all over America. If Khalil Abu-Rayyan had succeeded in conducting the megachurch attack that he was planning, hundreds of Christians could have potentially been killed. The people that go to that church might not ever know just how close they actually came to being slaughtered…

“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan is quoted as saying in court records. “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s close to my job. It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. Ya, I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with it. I practiced reloading and unloading. But my dad searched my car one day, and he found everything. He found the gun and the bullets and a mask I was going to wear.”

Investigators didn’t name the church Abu-Rayyan allegedly eyed, but claim the property covers about two blocks less than half a mile from his work and can accommodate up to 6,000 members. He allegedly purchased a gun and told an undercover FBI employee that attacking a church would be “easy.”

“A lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church,” the affidavit quotes him as saying. “Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. (If I) can’t go do jihad at the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”

These comments show us precisely what these terrorists want.

They want to create fear, and they want to get as much media attention as possible.

Terrorists like Khalil Abu-Rayyan do not fear death, because they have been promised that they will go to a wonderful paradise where they will be showered with attention by virgins when they die. In fact, many of them seem quite eager to receive a one-way ticket to their sex-fueled religious fantasy.

Unfortunately, mainstream media outlets in both the United States and Europe purposely downplay the hatred that these Islamic radicals have for ordinary Christians, because they don’t want to make Muslim immigrants look bad. That is why the mainstream media almost entirely ignored the fact that the main target of the San Bernardino shootings was a Messianic Christian, and that is why the mainstream media is burying this current story about Khalil Abu-Rayyan.

If a Christian baker refuses to bake a cake for a gay wedding, that is front page news, but if a Muslim admits to planning to shoot up a church of several thousand people that is a non-event according to the media.

This anti-Christian bias is growing stronger with each passing year, and it has now become institutionalized in our society in so many ways. A recent article by Selwyn Duke highlighted some examples of this phenomenon that we have recently witnessed…

A student is punished for refusing to “stomp on Jesus,” a Christian baker faces a year in jail for refusing to cater faux marriages, two men are arrested for reading the Bible aloud near a government building, a school “purges” Christian works from its library. Critics asserting the existence of an institutional anti-Christian bias, and a resultant war on the faith, have often been labeled paranoid. But now two University of North Texas sociologists have produced research showing that just such an agenda exists — among America’s most powerful people.

The two sociologists that he was referring to are Professor George Yancey and Professor David Williamson, and they shared their research in a newly published book entitled “So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States?” The Christian Post interviewed Yancey about this new book and the following is an excerpt from that interview…

In the minds of many of the respondents Christians are ignorant, intolerant and stupid individuals who are unable to think for themselves. The general image they have of Christians is that they are a backward, non-critical thinking, child-like people who do not like science and want to interfere with the lives of everyone else.

But even worse, they see ordinary Christians as having been manipulated by evil Christian leaders and will vote in whatever way those leaders want. They believe that those leaders are trying to set up a theocracy to force everybody to accept their Christian beliefs. So, for some with Christianophobia, this is a struggle for our society and our ability to move toward a progressive society. Christians are often seen as the great evil force that blocks our society from achieving this progressive paradise.

If you are a “liberal”, it is quite likely that this is how you view Christians.

Many non-religious liberals consider evangelical Christianity to be the biggest “problem” that America is facing today, and some of the potential solutions that liberal activists are advocating for this “problem” are quite chilling.

During their research, Yancey and Williamson personally interviewed a number of “cultural progressive activists”, and the following are a few examples of what some of them said should be done to “the Christian right”…

“I want them all to die in a fire.” (Male, aged 26-35 with Doctorate).

“They should be eradicated without hesitation or remorse. Their only purpose is to damage and inflict their fundamentalist virus onto everyone they come in contact with.” (Female, aged 66-75 with Master’s degree).

“They make me a believer in eugenics…. They pollute good air…. I would be in favor of establishing a state for them…. If not, then sterilize them so they can’t breed more.” (Male, aged 46-55 with Master’s degree).

So what makes a liberal activist that wants to “eradicate” Christians that much different from an Islamic terrorist that wants to achieve the same goal?

Of course radical Islamic terrorists are probably more likely to use violent means to achieve their goal right now, but what would happen if our government became dominated by people that think like the liberal activists quoted above?

And don’t think that it can’t happen. When radical leftists took power in the Soviet Union, they killed countless numbers of Christians.  When radical leftists took power in China, they killed countless numbers of Christians.  And when radical leftists took power in Nazi Germany, they intended to completely eradicate Biblical Christianity.

On December 15th, 1941 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt made the following statement: “To Hitler, the church…is a monstrosity to be destroyed by every means.”

Most Christians today don’t realize just how much Hitler hated our faith. But if you do the deep research, you will find some absolutely incredible things. In a previous article, I included the following information which was originally uncovered by author Bruce Walker, the author of “The Swastika Against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity“…

The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would: “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party. The priests will die out. They have estranged the youth from the Volk. Into their places will step the leaders. Not deputies of God. But anyway the best Germans. And how shall we train our children? Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”

We like to think that we are so much better than Nazi Germany, but the truth is that the exact same spirit is at work today.

Americans have been trained to want a society that has completely sanitized all references to the Bible and to the Christian faith from the public arena.

Our children are being raised in public schools that are specifically modeled after the German system. If you doubt this, just look it up. Prayer has been banned, and if you try to read a Bible during school hours it can get you suspended.

We may not call ourselves Nazis, but in so many ways we are just like them.

And the hatred toward Christianity in this country just continues to grow every time a comedian makes jokes about our faith and every time Christians are portrayed as stupid, evil or crazy in our movies and television shows.

Christians over in the Middle East are being crucified and are having their heads cut off, and of course the persecution of Christians in the western world is not even worth comparing to that at this point.

But all over the world hatred for Biblical Christianity is on the rise, and great persecution is coming.

The half-hearted, lukewarm religion that passes for Christianity in so many of our churches today has got to go, because that kind of faith is simply not going to cut it during the times that we are moving into.

It has already got to be settled in our hearts that we are willing to lay down our lives for what we believe, because someday that is precisely the choice that many of us may be forced to make.

Credit to End of the America Dream

Bank Of America Admits The U.S. May Already Be In A Recession

Almost one year ago, in March 2015, we explained how "The Fed's Artificial Steepening Of The Yield Curve" has resulted in many unexpected consequences, the most important of which has been the erroneous interpretation of the yield curve as a leading recessionary signal. As said back then, "the artificially steep yield curve is a reflection of policy intent not economic reality.... Where the yield curve in the all-important belly of the 5s10s might have deeply inverted in the past just prior to recession, there is no justification to expect the same attainment of absolute levels where artificial monetary intrusion has pushed the curve much, much steeper."

One week ago, it was as if a light bulb went off over Wall Street's head, when first Deutsche Bank's Dominic Konstam realized the significance of the above excerpt, and admitted that far from the 4% recession odds that the Fed's hopeless FRB/US DSGE computer model spews out when looking at the "normal" yield curve, when normalizing for the Fed's intervention odds of a recession in the next 12 months soar to 50%!

In a special report published earlier this week, we noted that today’s near-zero interest rate regime does not allow the yield curve to freely invert or even flatten too much because of certain structural limits. For example, liabilities-driven investors who in the past could receive long rates below the fed funds rate can no longer do so once rates are floored at zero. Investment fund managers are also restricted by mandates from buying negative yielding assets that lead to mark-to-market losses on their portfolios. Pension investors, who must target returns based on liability assumptions, have been driven into high yielding non-core rate assets as their discount rates are stubbornly and unrealistically high compared to Treasury yields. These factors keep the curve artificially steep even though both short and long rates have been clearly trending downward over the years. 

An "artificially steep yield curve" - almost as if that's exactly the phrase we used before. What DB did then is the logical next step: to adjust the artificial yield curve and exclude the Fed's intervention.  

To address the artificial steepness of the curve we corrected the 3m10y spread for the level of the rates. Specifically we regressed the spread against the short rate, leaving the residual which by definition removes for the bias of the rate level and is centered at zero. Using this new curve as model input, we found the probability of a recession in the next 12 months is 46 percent, considerably higher than the original Fed model has predicted.

But wait, there's more, because while the short-end remains anchored, with every 25 bps tightening in the 10Y yield, recession odds rise by another 6%.

As it may be useful for investors, we attempt to handicap the relationship between the yield curve and future recessions captured in our model. Holding the 3m rate constant, every 25 bps rally in 10s (implying an equal flattening in 3m10y) raises the recession probability by 6 percent. If 10yr yields rally to 1.50%, our model predicts a 59 percent chance of recession in the next 12 months; at 1.00% 10s, the probability is 71 percent.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Gold Hits $1,200 as Financials Get Hit

We’re all going to suffer

Back in the 1970’s as recession gripped the world for a decade, stocks stagnated and commodities crashed, investor Jim Rogers made a fortune. His understanding of markets, capital flows and timing is legendary.

As crisis struck in late 2008, he did it again, often recommending gold and silver to those looking for wealth preservation strategies – move that would have paid of multi-fold when precious metals hit all time highs in 2011. He warned that the crash would lead to massive job losses, dependence on government bailouts, and unprecedented central bank printing on a global scale.

Now, Rogers says that investors around the world are realizing that the jig is up. Stocks are over bloated and central banks will have little choice but to take action again. But this time, says Rogers in his latest interview with CrushTheStreet.com, there will be no stopping it and people all over the world are going to feel the pain, including in China and the United States.

We’re all going to suffer… I can think of very few places that won’t suffer. But most people are going to suffer the next time around.

Central banks will panic. They will do whatever they can to save the markets.

It’s artificial… it won’t work… there comes a time when no matter how much money you have, the market has more money.

…

I don’t know if they’ll even call it QE (Quantitative Easing) in the future… who knows what they’ll call it to disguise it… they’re going to try whatever they can… printing more money or lowering interest rates or buying more assets… but unfortunately, no matter how much P.R. or whitewashing they use, the market knows this is over and we’re not going to play this game anymore.

The entire world is about to get hammered and the average person on the street is the one who will pay the price, as is usually the case.

We can expect more losses in markets, more losses in jobs and more losses to freedom as governments and central banks point the finger at everyone but themselves.

Credit to Zero Hedge

Dot-Com Bubble 2.0 Is Bursting: Tech Stocks Are Already Down Half A Trillion Dollars Since Mid-2015

Do you remember how much stocks went down when the first dot-com bubble burst?  Well, it is happening again, and tech stocks are already down more than half a trillion dollars since the middle of 2015.  On Friday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped to its lowest level in more than 15 months, and it has now fallen more than 16 percent from the peak of the market.  But of course some of the biggest names have fallen much more than that.  Netflix is down 37 percent, Yahoo is down 39 percent, LinkedIn is down 60 percent, and Twitter is down more than 70 percent.  If you go back through my previous articles, you will find that I specifically warned about Twitter again and again.  Irrational financial bubbles like this always burst eventually, and many investors that got in at the very top are now losing extraordinary amounts of money.

On Friday, tech stocks got absolutely slammed as the bursting of dot-com bubble 2.0 accelerated once again.  The following is how CNBC summarized the carnage…

The Nasdaq composite fell 3.25 percent, as Apple and the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB) dropped 2.67 percent and 3.19 percent, respectively.

Also weighing on the index were Amazon and Facebook, which closed down 6.36 percent and 5.81 percent, respectively.

LinkedIn shares also tanked 43.63 percent after posting weak guidance on their quarterly results.

Overall, LinkedIn is now down a total of 60 percent from the peak of the market.  But they are far from the only ones that have already seen their bubble burst.

Many of the biggest names in the tech world have gotten mercilessly hammered over the past six months of so.  Just look at some of the famous brands that have already lost between 20 and 40 percent of their market caps…

Yahoo (YHOO) shares are off 39%, and Netflix (NFLX), the best-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year, is now off by 37% from its 52-week high.

Likewise, Priceline.com (PCLN) is off 31% and eBay (EBAY), 22%.

But there are other very big tech companies that have seen stock collapses that completely dwarf those numbers.  Here are some more absolutely stunning statistics from USA Today…

Twitter and Groupon are the biggest dogs of this boom, both off 70% from 52-week highs and well below their IPO prices.

FitBit shares have collapsed 70%, while Yelp’s valuation has shrunk by two-thirds.

Box, which has the distinction of posting quarterly net losses in excess of revenue, is down by half.

Match.com, the holding company for dating sites owned by parent Interactive Corp. that went public late last year, is down 39% from its high.

When your stock loses 70 percent of its value, that is a complete and utter collapse.

In the past, I have specifically singled out Twitter, Yelp and LinkedIn as tech stocks that were irrationally priced.

Hopefully people listened to those warnings and got out while the getting was good.

At the top of this article, I mentioned that tech stocks have already fallen in value by more than 500 billion dollars.  The financial crisis that began in the middle of last year is now greatly accelerating, and Wall Street is starting to panic.

As stocks crash, many hedge funds are being absolutely pummeled.  The following are just a few of the high profile names that are experiencing massive losses right now…

Some of the biggest names to get trounced include:

►Pershing Square Capital Management, the publicly traded investment vehicle of billionaire hedgie Bill Ackman, fell 11% last month following a 20% decline last year, data from the web site shows.

►Larry Robbins’ Glenview Capital, famous for picking stocks that could benefit from Obamacare, dropped 13.65% in January following a decline of 18% last year, according to data from HSBC’s Hedge Weekly report, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY.

►Marcato International, a well-known activist fund run by Ackman protege Mick McGuire, fell 12.1% last month following a 9% loss last year, according to HSBC.

When you lose more than 10 percent of your money in a single month, that is not good.

And if I am right, this is just the beginning of our troubles.

And of course I am far from the only one warning that big problems are on the horizon.  In fact, analysts at Citigroup just made international headlines by warning that the global economy was now trapped in a “death spiral”…

Some analysts — including those at Citi — have turned bearish on the world economy this year, following an equity rout in January and weaker economic data out of China and the U.S.

“The world appears to be trapped in a circular reference death spiral,” Citi strategists led by Jonathan Stubbs said in a report on Thursday.

“Stronger U.S. dollar, weaker oil/commodity prices, weaker world trade/petrodollar liquidity, weaker EM (and global growth)… and repeat. Ad infinitum, this would lead to Oilmageddon, a ‘significant and synchronized’ global recession and a proper modern-day equity bear market.”

Signs of a significant economic downturn are all around us, and so many of the exact same patterns that played out during the last two stock market crashes are happening again, and yet most people continue to refuse to acknowledge what is taking place.

If you are waiting for this new dot-com bubble to crash, you can stop waiting, because it has already happened.

When your stock falls by 50, 60 or 70 percent, the game is already over.

But just like 2001 and 2008, many people out there will end up being paralyzed by indecision.  Once again the mainstream media is insisting that there is no reason for panic and that everything will be just fine, and once again millions upon millions of ordinary Americans will be wiped out as the financial markets implode.

This is now the third time this has happened since the turn of the century.

How clueless have we become?  The exact same thing keeps happening to us over and over and yet we still don’t get it.

Only this time around there isn’t going to be any sort of a “recovery” afterwards.

This is essentially our “third strike”, and the years ahead are going to be extremely bitter and painful for most people.

But if you want to believe that one of these politicians is going to come along and save America, you go ahead and keep on believing that.

Most people believe what they want to believe, and the capacity that many Americans have demonstrated for self-delusion is absolutely remarkable.

Credit to Economic Collapse