New York Quake Overdue (The Sixth Seal) (Rev 6:12)

New York City Is Overdue For Large Earthquake: Seismologist

New York Earthquake Overdue

New York City could start shaking any minute now.

Won-Young Kim, who runs the seismographic network for the Northeast at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said the city is well overdue for a big earthquake.

From Metro New York:

The last big quake to hit New York City was a 5.3-magnitude tremor in 1884 that happened at sea in between Brooklyn and Sandy Hook. While no one was killed, buildings were damaged.

Kim said the city is likely to experience a big earthquake every 100 years or so.

“It can happen anytime soon,” Kim said. “We can expect it any minute, we just don’t know when and where.”

New York has never experienced a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake, which are the most dangerous. But magnitude 5 quakes could topple brick buildings and chimneys.

Seismologist John Armbruster said a magnitude 5 quake that happened now would be more devastating than the one that happened in 1884.

“Today, with so many more buildings and people … we’d see billions in damage,” Armbruster said. “People would probably be killed.”

Politics as usual from Obama (Ezekiel 17)

White House says it can’t confirm N. Korea nuclear test

Updated: Jan 6, 2016 – 1:00 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says it can’t confirm a North Korean nuclear test, but said the U.S. would condemn any violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

North Korea said it has conducted a hydrogen bomb test — a move that would put the country a step closer to improving its still-limited nuclear arsenal.

National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said late Tuesday that the U.S. is monitoring the situation “in close coordination with our regional partners.”

“While we cannot confirm these claims at this time, we condemn any violation of UN Security Council resolutions and again call on North Korea to abide by its international obligations and commitments,” he said,

Price said the U.S. is “aware of seismic activity on the Korean Peninsula in the vicinity of a known North Korean nuclear test site and have seen Pyongyang’s claims of a nuclear test.”

North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and, until today has done so twice since, Price said, “but we have consistently made clear that we will not accept it as a nuclear state.”

“We will continue to protect and defend our allies in the region, including the Republic of Korea,” he said, “and will respond appropriately to any and all North Korean provocations.”

ISIS Digs In For Just A While (Daniel 8:8)

Iraqi forces work to secure an area near the Grand Mosque in central Ramadi on 8 January (AFP) Suadad al-Salhy

IS digging in for long fight in Iraq despite retreat from Ramadi

Military official tells MEE that ‘liberated’ capital of Anbar province not yet fully under government control as IS looks to regroup in Fallujah
Monday 11 January 2016 15:24 UTC

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Islamic State group is digging in hard in parts of Iraq, launching a string of large-scale suicide attacks,and prompting fears of many more months of heavy fighting even as the government in Baghdad celebrates the reported liberation of Ramadi.

The fighting has been concentrated around Fallujah and the surrounding desert, but it has also embroiled towns and villages along the road west to Samarra, the site of one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites, towards the strategic oil refinery town of Baiji.

After months of fighting, the Iraqi government announced last month that its security forces had liberated Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar which had been occupied by IS since May 2015.

With Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi prime minister, attending a ceremony on 29 December to raise the Iraqi flag, the city’s recapture was hailed as a morale boost for the Iraqi people and proof of the ability of a range of Iraqi armed groups including government security forces and Shia-dominated militias to work together to push IS back.

But IS is refusing to give up, with one military commander telling Middle East Eye that even the centre of Ramadi was not yet completely under government control.

Since the city was announced liberated, Iraqi troops and supporting groups have faced a relentless tirade of car bombs, suicide bombers and mortar attacks.

“We have almost finished the liberation of central Ramadi,” Major General Sami al-A’aridhi, the commander of an Iraqi counter-terrorism unit, told MEE by phone.

“We still have just two goals which we believe are almost in our hands, and then we can definitely say the centre is totally under our control.”

According to A’aridhi, the last-ditch IS drive on the town has a two-pronged objective of throwing a lifeline to its fighters left in the town, while also engaging the Iraqi forces ranged against them for long enough to allow it to regroup in Fallujah, 50km to the east.

A’aridhi said that Iraqi commanders were aware that IS fighters were withdrawing to Fallujah, but said no units would be redeployed from Ramadi until it was secure.

Fallujah, which is about halfway along the main highway connecting Ramadi to Baghdad, was the first major Iraqi town to fall to IS two years ago.

But concerns about IS cells infiltrating the suburbs of Baghdad, as well as the need to allow food and medical supplies to reach civilians still living in Fallujah, have allowed IS to retain control of the town, albeit loosely surrounded by Iraqi forces and supporting militias.

Fallujah back on frontline

Since the recapture of Ramadi, Fallujah has once again found itself on the frontline.

Already this month IS has hit an Iraqi army headquarters in Thirthar, 25km north of Fallujah. The attackers seized huge amounts of weapons and drove Iraqi forces westwards to Saqlawiya, raising fresh concerns about the security of the Thirthar dam, which serves as a flood control for Baghdad and which IS fighters briefly partially occupied last April.

The days-long attack was followed by similar incidents targeting Iraqi troops deployed in the sparsely populated and largely desert areas east of Ramadi and north towards Samarra which IS has long claimed as its territory.

“Daesh is fighting in a half circle around Thirthar Lake from the south [just north of Ramadi and Fallujah],” Abdulwahid Tuama, an independent Iraqi political analyst told MEE, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

“They have been attacking the Iraqi troops there to drive them away from this area and widen the gaps in Fallujah’s siege.”

Emad Bellow, a former military general and an independent military analyst, agrees.

“Fallujah is besieged and Daesh is keen to strengthen its forces there and attack the collar around it to delay the Iraqi forces from getting in and expand the areas under its control,” Bellow told MEE.

As the main water source in largely arid western Iraq, the area around Thirthar Lake has seen some of the fiercest fighting.

Supply routes

The main roads connecting IS-held Deir Ezzor and Raqqa in Syria, which pass just west of the lake, are the main supply routes to Mosul, Iraq’s second city which has been under IS control since June 2014.

Tuama said an oil pipeline linking Baiji to Baghdad also ran through the region.

“These are important ground supply routes for IS and the Iraqi army,” he said. “There are trenches and caves which militants have been using for years as command headquarters and shelters.”

Iraqi security authorities have been down playing recent IS attacks and have avoided mentioning their own casualty numbers, while also stressing that dozens of militants have been killed in recent clashes.

The US-led anti-IS military coalition, which has been backing government forces with airstrikes since 2014, claims that IS-controlled territory in Iraq has been reduced by 40 percent,although that figure is heavily contested.

Despite the ferocity and widespread nature of recent attacks and concerns that IS will continue resisting Iraqi efforts to push it back, analysts and military officials alike point out that the group is no longer making significant territorial gains.

Nonetheless, several areas from where IS was driven out last year are once again coming under pressure, with the fallout from the fall of Ramadi being felt more than 100km to the north in small towns and villages west of Samarra and as far away as Baiji.

Weak defences

Local officials have reported small attacks behind the frontlines including an attack by six suicide bombers on 3 January on a fortified military base at Spicher, in the east of the city of Tikrit, in which 15 police officers were killed and 22 injured.

Some military officials acknowledge that such attacks highlight the fragile security of supposedly liberated areas, as well-trained and equipped Shia militias are redeployed to join the fighting around Anbar.

“Daesh has exploited the weak defences of the Iraqi forces in these areas as it is a vast desert area and there are not enough troops to secure it,” a senior Iraqi military officer, talking on condition of anonymity, told MEE.

“They (IS fighters) are very skilled when it comes to fighting in open areas like the desert as they know every inch there. They belong to the area, know the trenches there, the caves and the dirt roads, while the Iraqi soldiers have none of this knowledge,” the officer said.

Shia militias have been working side by side with formal security forces to secure the road network between Baghdad and Baiji ever since the retreat of the Iraqi army towards Baghdad in the face of IS’s rapid advance through the west of the country in June 2014.

Since the start of the month, hundreds of fighters belonging to Saraya al-Salam, armed forces loyal to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Thirthar desert, bidding to regain ground lost to IS outside Fallujah.

But some fear they are not well trained enough for the task and may not get the air support they need.

“The problem is the number of troops which are supposed to secure these areas. It’s not enough, so the Iraqi security forces have been relying on the paramilitary troops to do this,” Emad Bellow, a former general and an independent military analyst, told MEE.

Bellow said that paramilitary troops including Saray al-Salam lacked the military experience to build effective defences for the terrain and deploy their forces to cover themselves effectively.

“Daesh is looking to cut off the supply routes of the Iraqi army in these areas and maintain its routes, so they carry out these attacks and promote them as a victory,” said Bellow.

“They (IS fighters) are targeting the irregular troops because they know how to play it with them and take advantage of their mistakes.”

New developments with the Korean nuclear horn

A look at developments surrounding North Korea’s nuclear test
By Paul Elliott Jan 11, 2016
Tri-County Sun Times

Secretary of State John Kerry has told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that the U.S. has decided China’s North Korea strategy is a failure and that they must abandon “business as usual” after this week’s apparent nuclear test. “But today in my conversation with the Chinese I made it very clear that that has not worked and we can not continue business as usual”. North Korea said it had detonated a hydrogen bomb, a vastly more powerful weapon than the nuclear devices it has tested three times before, but experts were extremely skeptical of that claim. South Korea’s initial retaliation to the North’s latest nuclear test was a mix of K-pop, scathing commentary on its nuclear programme and derision of the ruling family’s penchant for costly clothes and luxury handbags. North Korea is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs and has spent decades trying to ideal a multistage, long-range missile to carry smaller versions of those bombs. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency session and pledged to swiftly pursue new sanctions against North Korea, saying its test was a “clear violation” of previous U.N. resolutions. “Our military is at a state of full readiness, and if North Korea wages provocation, there will be firm punishment”. North Korean government officials told CNN’s Will Ripley, who is in Pyongyang, that they are not afraid of more sanctions; they said that they’ve lived for years with the crippling measures levied against them and are prepared to tighten their belts even more. “We urge South Korea to exercise restraint”, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said during a visit to Japan, after the South resumed the broadcasts. Japan is considering reinstating some of its own sanctions against North Korea while working with the United States for an global response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test. North Korea’s declaration that it had tested a hydrogen bomb fo… Kerry rejected a reporter’s suggestion that the Obama administration had neglected the North Korean threat as it focused on curbing Iran’s nuclear program. He adds that North Korea seems to look down on the South “because we are always in a defensive position”. South Korean companies – mostly small- and medium-sized – make products such as watches and fashion goods with cheap labor from North Korea. South Korean officials cranked up banks of loudspeakers near the demilitarized zone with North Korea, blaring pop music, news reports and other information into the isolated country. Officials refused to elaborate, but the assets likely are B-52 bombers, F-22 stealth fighters and nuclear-powered submarines. “Broadcasts from South Korea can reach deep and far into North Korea’s society, imbuing the minds of its people with the images of a free nation and hurting the oppressive personality cult”. The United States is highly unlikely to restore the tactical nuclear missiles it removed from South Korea in 1991, experts said. It can not have escaped the notice of North Korea that after Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program was ended after the first Gulf War and Muammar Ghadafi voluntarily gave up his nuclear weapons program, one wound up dead in a hole in the ground and the other in a sewer pipe. The North’s 2013 test produced an estimated yield of 6-7 kilotons of explosives, according to South Korean officials. Obama also discussed options with President Park Geun-hye of South Korea. Tri-County Sun Times

The Ten Nuclear Horns of Prophecy (Daniel 7:7)

No Danger of Nuclear War? The Pentagon’s Plan to Blow up the Planet

Theme: Militarization and WMD, US NATO War Agenda

In-depth Report: Nuclear War

 

More than 2000 nuclear explosions have occurred since 1945 as part of nuclear weapons’ testing.
Officially only two nuclear bombs (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 6 and 9, August 1945) have been used in an act of war.

The media consensus is that a nuclear holocaust is an impossibility.
Should we be concerned? 
Publicly available military documents confirm that nuclear war is still on the drawing board of the Pentagon.

Compared to the 1950s, however, today’s nuclear weapons are far more advanced. The delivery system is more precise. In addition to China and Russia, Iran, Syria and North Korea are targets for a first strike pre-emptive nuclear attack.

Let us be under no illusions, the Pentagon’s plan to blow up the planet using advanced nuclear weapons is still on the books.

War is Good for Business: Spearheaded by the “defense contractors” (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, British Aerospace  et al), the Obama administration has proposed a one trillion dollar plan over a 30 year period to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, bombers, submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) largely directed at Russia and China.

A new arms race is unfolding. Russia has in turn responded to US threats through a major modernization of its strategic nuclear weapons arsenal.

Political Insanity

The use of nuclear weapons is casually endorsed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who believes that nuclear weapons are instruments of peace-making. Her election campaign is financed by the US military industrial complex which produces the WMDs.
Meanwhile, scientists on contract to the Pentagon have endorsed the use of tactical nuclear weapons, which are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground.” The tactical nukes are bona fide thermonuclear weapons, with an explosive capacity between one third and six times a Hiroshima bomb. They have been cleared for battlefield use (in the conventional war theater) by the US Senate and their use does not require the approval by the Commander in Chief.
The people at the highest levels of government who make decisions regarding the use of nuclear weapons haven’t  the foggiest idea as to the implications of their actions.

Cold War versus Post Cold War Nuclear Doctrine 

A recently released classified Pentagon document (1959) confirms that during the Cold War, 1200 cities extending from Eastern Europe to the Far East were targeted for systemic destruction.

Source: National Security Archive

According to 1956 Plan, H-Bombs were to be Used Against Priority “Air Power” Targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe.
Major Cities in Soviet Bloc, Including East Berlin, Were High Priorities in “Systematic Destruction” for Atomic Bombings.  (William Burr, U.S. Cold War Nuclear Attack Target List of 1200 Soviet Bloc Cities “From East Germany to China”, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 538, December 2015

Excerpt of list of 1200 cities targeted for nuclear attack in alphabetical order. National Security Archive

Today’s List of Targeted Cities 

This policy of nuclear bombing of targeted cities is still on the drawing board of the Pentagon. While today’s list of targets remains classified, cities in Russia, China, the Middle East, North Korea are on the target list. An Associated Press report quoting Pentagon sources (June 4, 2015) confirms that:

The Pentagon has been actively considering the use of nuclear missiles against military targets inside Russia, …  Three options being considered by the Pentagon are the placement of anti-missile defenses in Europe aimed at shooting Russian missiles out of the sky; a “counterforce” option that would involve pre-emptive non-nuclear strikes on Russia military sites; and finally, “countervailing strike capabilities,” involving the pre-emptive deployment of nuclear missiles against targets inside Russia.
The AP states: “The options go so far as one implied—but not stated explicitly—that would improve the ability of US nuclear weapons to destroy military targets on Russian territory.” In other words, the US is actively preparing nuclear war against Russia.
Robert Scher, one of Carter’s nuclear policy aides, told Congress in April that the deployment of “counterforce” measures would mean “we could go about and actually attack that missile where it is in Russia.” According to other Pentagon officials, this option would entail the deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles throughout Europe.
The criminality and recklessness of the foreign policy of Washington and its NATO allies is staggering. A pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russian forces, many of them near populated areas, could claim millions of lives in seconds and lead to a nuclear war that would obliterate humanity.
Even assuming that the US officials threatening Russia do not actually want such an outcome, however, and that they are only trying to intimidate Moscow, there is a sinister objective logic to such threats.” (Niles Williamson, Military Madness: US Officials Consider Nuclear Strikes against Russia, World Socialist Website, June 5, 2015, emphasis added)

 Nuclear Tests Worldwide

Over 2000 Nuclear Tests have been conducted since 1945. Scroll down for video

Source: Wikipedia, click to enlarge

Undeclared Nuclear States under NNPT: India, Pakistan, Israel, DPRK

Source Wikipedia

The Deployment of Nuclear Weapons by Nine Nuclear States

Source: www.Sipri.org

Nuclear Sites in the US 

“Map of major U.S. nuclear weapons infrastructure sites during the Cold War and into the present. Places with grayed-out names are no longer functioning and are in various stages of environmental remediation.” (Wikipedia). Scroll down for Google Map.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Google Maps and Daily Mail 

‘The map was produced from data suppled by the Defense Department and nuclear watchdog groups.
It shows where the warheads are (in red on the map), where the civilian nuclear power plants can be found (in green) and the location of labs and nuclear weapons plants (in blue). Daily Mail 

Five “Non-Nuclear States” (Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Turkey)
Possess and Deploy Nuclear Weapons

Five non-nuclear states (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Turkey) have deployed the B61 tactical (thermonuclear) against targets in the Middle East and the Russian Federation.. The latest and more advanced version is the B61-12, which is contemplated to replace the older B61 version.

Source: National Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Weapons in Europe , February 2005

Today’s Potential Targets for US Nuclear Attacks

Are countries in the Middle East potential targets for a nuclear attack? (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Dangerous Crossroads: Is America Considering the Use of Nuclear Weapons against Libya? Global Research, April 2011).
The tactical nuclear weapons were specifically developed for use in post Cold War “conventional conflicts with third world nations”.  In October 2001, in the immediate wake of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld envisaged the use of the B61-11 tactical nuclear bomb in Afghanistan. The targets were Al Qaeda cave bunkers in the Tora Bora mountains.
Rumsfeld stated at the time that while the “conventional” bunker buster bombs “‘are going to be able to do the job’, … he did not rule out the eventual use of nuclear weapons.” (Quoted in the Houston Chronicle, 20 October 2001, emphasis added.)
The use of the B61-11 was also contemplated during the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq as well as in the 2011 NATO bombings of Libya.
In this regard, the B61-11 was described as “a precise, earth-penetrating low-yield nuclear weapon against high-value underground targets”, which included Saddam Hussein’s underground bunkers:

 ”If Saddam was arguably the highest value target in Iraq, then a good case could be made for using a nuclear weapon like the B61-11 to assure killing him and decapitating the regime” (Defense News, December 8, 2003).

The 1996 Plan to Nuke Libya 

The B61-11 tactical nuclear weapon was slated by the Pentagon to be used in 1996 against Libya: “Five months after [Assistant Defense Secretary] Harold Smith called for an acceleration of the B61-11 production schedule, he went public with an assertion that the Air Force would use the B61-11 [nuclear weapon] against Libya… “(http://www.nukestrat.com/us/afn/B61-11.htm,)

“Senior Pentagon officials ignited controversy last April [1996] by suggesting that the earth-penetrating [nuclear] weapon would soon be available for possible use against a suspected underground chemical factory being built by Libya at Tarhunah.  (David Muller, Penetrator N-Bombs, International Action Center, 1997)

Tarbunah has a population of more than 200,000 people, men, women and children. It is about 60 km East of Tripoli. Had this “humanitarian bomb” (with a ”yield” or explosive capacity of two-thirds of a Hiroshima bomb) been launched on this “suspected” WMD facility, it would have resulted in tens of thousands of deaths, not to mention the nuclear fallout…  The man behind this diabolical project to nuke Libya was Assistant Secretary of Defense Harold Palmer Smith Junior. “Even before the B61 came on line, Libya was identified as a potential target”. (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – September/ October 1997, p. 27 )

Concluding Remarks

Nuclear war –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.
What we are dealing with is the criminalization of the State, whereby officials in high office are complicit in fostering the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. The media has camouflaged the implications of America’s post Cold war nuclear doctrine, which was formulated in a secret meeting at US Strategic Command Headquarters on Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2003.

On August 6, 2003, on Hiroshima Day, commemorating when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (August 6 1945), a secret meeting was held behind closed doors at Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Senior executives from the nuclear industry and the military industrial complex were in attendance. This mingling of defense contractors, scientists and policy-makers was not intended to commemorate Hiroshima. The meeting was intended to set the stage for the development of a new generation of “smaller”, “safer” and “more usable” nuclear weapons, to be used in the “in-theater nuclear wars” of the 21st Century.
In a cruel irony, the participants to this secret meeting, which excluded members of Congress, arrived on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing (August 6) and departed on the anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki (August 9). (Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2012)

The Hiroshima Day 2003 meetings had set the stage for the “privatization of nuclear war”. Corporations not only reap multibillion-dollar profits from the production of nuclear bombs, they also have a direct voice in setting the agenda regarding the use and deployment of nuclear weapons.
All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped. “Offensive” military actions using nuclear warheads are now described as acts of “self-defense”. During the Cold War, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) prevailed, namely that the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union would result in “the destruction of both the attacker and the defender”.
In the post Cold war era, US nuclear doctrine was redefined. There is no sanity in what is euphemistically called US foreign policy. At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable…
Stay informed, spread the word far and wide. To reverse the tide of war, the broader public must be informed. Post on Facebook/Twitter.
Confront the war criminals in high office.
What we really need is real “Regime Change in America”.