The Hypocrisy of the Australian Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7)

Australia Stands in the Way of Nuclear Weapons Ban

Published 21 August 2016 (11 hours 7 minutes ago)

Australia has remained steadfast in its opposition to an international ban on nuclear weapons at a UN meeting on nuclear disarmament by forcing and unexpected vote on a report seeking to start disarmament negotiations.

The report recommended that negotiations for banning nuclear weapons start in 2017. The report was thought to be passed unanimously at the conference on disarmament on Friday in Geneva. But Australian representatives who demanded a vote which eventually went against their favor; approved by 69 nations, opposed by 22, with 13 abstaining.

The recommendations in the report support “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. Formal negotiations will take place at an international conference, after the proposal is tabled at the UN General Assembly.

Australian officials told Friday’s conference that it was a blanket ban on nuclear arms would not practically facilitate disarmament efforts. Australia’s attempt to disrupt disarmament efforts was “shameful and outrageous,” Tim Wright from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, was quoted by the Guardian.

“Australia is resisting the tide of history. A majority of nations believe that nuclear weapons are unacceptable and must be prohibited” Wright said.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has previously stated that they oppose nuclear disarmament because of threats from North Korea and Iran, citing their reliance on deterrence from US nuclear arms.

The Hypocrisy of the Antichrist

Support for Iraqi rejection of anti-LGBT attacks
Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch has endorsed Iraqi Shiite clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr’s call for an end to violence against sexual minorities, reported last month on this blog. HRW issued this press release:
(Beirut, August 18, 2016) – State and non-state actors in Iraq should heed the prominent Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s July 2016 statement banning violence against those who do not conform to gender norms, Human Rights Watch said today.

Since early 2009, Human Rights Watch has documented kidnappings, executions, and torture by militia groups, including al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, of gay men and men perceived to be gay. The killings have continued unabated.

“Finally, the head of one of the groups whose members have carried out serious abuses against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Iraq is condemning these heinous attacks,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “We hope this will change behavior in successors to the Mahdi Army and other ranks, and spur the government to hold accountable those who commit these crimes.”

A Human Rights Watch report found that in early 2009, Iraqi militia members began a wide-reaching campaign of extrajudicial executions, kidnappings, and torture of men suspected of homosexual conduct, or of not conforming to masculine gender norms, and that Iraq authorities did nothing to stop the killings. The killings began in the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, a Mahdi Army stronghold, and were then replicated by members of militia groups in many cities across Iraq. Mahdi Army spokesmen promoted fear about the “third sex” and the “feminization” of Iraqi men, as well as suggesting that militia action was the remedy.

In 2012, militia members opened a second wave of attacks on people categorized as part of the “emo” subculture, styles that critics associated with heavy metal music, and rap. In early February 2012, signs and fliers appeared in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Sadr City, Hayy al-Habibiyya, and Hayy al-‘Amil that threatened people by name with “the wrath of god” unless they cut their hair short, concealed their tattoos, maintained “complete manhood,” and stopped wearing so-called “satanic clothing.” Similar posters appeared in other neighborhoods, also listing names.

In the following weeks, Human Rights Watch received reports of several dozen youths killed as part of the campaign. While it was unclear who was behind the campaign, at the time al-Sadr called the targets of the campaign “crazy fools” and a “lesion on the Muslim community” in an online statement, but also maintained that they should be dealt with “within the law.”

In a 2015 report, the Iraqi group Iraqueer and the US-based organization OutRight Action International (formerly the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission) documented the kidnapping and murders of gay men by members of Iraqi militia groups, including the Brigades of Wrath (Saraya al-Ghadhab) and League of the Righteous (Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq) between 2009 and 2015. The groups condemned the Iraqi government for “stand[ing] by and allow[ing] murderous hate violence to occur, fully aware of what is happening.”

The government responded by establishing an LGBT committee in late 2012 to address abuses against the LGBT community. However, LGBT activists in Baghdad have told Human Rights Watch that this committee has taken few tangible steps to protect LGBT people. In addition, a member of the committee said, two of the original nine members vanished in 2015 in what he believed was related to their role on the committee. The committee has had no news of them since. Other members have left the committee without explanation, he said, leaving only four remaining.

With the rise of the extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, gay men, transgender women, and gender non-conforming people are at even greater risk. The group has executed a number of people accused of sodomy or perceived to be gay.

While Iraq’s Penal Code does not directly criminalize same-sex intimacy, article 394 criminalizes extra-marital sexual relations. That provision effectively criminalizes all same-sex relations, since the law does not provide for same-sex marriage.

Al-Sadr’s July 7 2016, statement expresses his view that same-sex relationships and cross-dressing are not acceptable, but that gender non-conforming people – whom al-Sadr claims are suffering from “psychological problems” – nevertheless deserve the right to live. “[You] must disassociate from them [but] not attack them, as it increases their aversion and you must guide them using acceptable and rational means,” the statement read.

Despite the lack of full tolerance in al-Sadr’s statement, his call to end violence against LGBT people is an important step, Human Rights Watch said. He should ensure that those in the ranks of the militia under his command, the Peace Brigades (Saraya al–Salam), obey the order and should hold accountable commanders who do not.

Iraq’s government should take its own measures to ensure that attacks on LGBT people are punished, and the LGBT committee should actively monitor and report on human rights abuses against LGBT people and advise the government on concrete steps to protect LGBT people from violence and discrimination. Iraq’s legislature should quickly decriminalize extra-marital sexual relations.
“While al-Sadr is still a long way from fully embracing human rights for LGBT people, his statement shows that he understands the importance of stopping abuses against them,” Stork said. “The statement represents an important change in the right direction, and should be followed by concrete actions to protect LGBT people from violence.”

History Says Expect The Sixth Seal In New York (Revelation 6:12)

History Says New York Is Earthquake Prone

Fault Lines In New York City

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If the past is any indication, New York can be hit by an earthquake, claims John Armbruster, a seismologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Based on historical precedent, Armbruster says the New York City metro area is susceptible to an earthquake of at least a magnitude of 5.0 once a century.

According to the New York Daily News, Lynn Skyes, lead author of a recent study by seismologists at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory adds that a magnitude-6 quake hits the area about every 670 years, and magnitude-7 every 3,400 years.

A 5.2-magnitude quake shook New York City in 1737 and another of the same severity hit in 1884.
Tremors were felt from Maine to Virginia.

There are several fault lines in the metro area, including one along Manhattan’s 125th St. – which may have generated two small tremors in 1981 and may have been the source of the major 1737 earthquake, says Armbruster.

There’s another fault line on Dyckman St. and one in Dobbs Ferry in nearby Westchester County.
“The problem here comes from many subtle faults,” explained Skyes after the study was published.
He adds: “We now see there is earthquake activity on them. Each one is small, but when you add them up, they are probably more dangerous than we thought.”

“Considering population density and the condition of the region’s infrastructure and building stock, it is clear that even a moderate earthquake would have considerable consequences in terms of public safety and economic impact,” says the New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation on its website.

Armbruster says a 5.0-magnitude earthquake today likely would result in casualties and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

“I would expect some people to be killed,” he notes.

The scope and scale of damage would multiply exponentially with each additional tick on the Richter scale. (ANI)

Obama Increases The Arms Race With Russia And China

United States’ first ‘smart’ nuclear bomb signals new arms race with China and Russia: analysts

MINNIE CHAN
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 18 August, 2016, 11:23am
UPDATED : Thursday, 18 August, 2016, 11:22pm

Washington’s green light for a new generation of steerable and smart tactical nuclear weapons may signal the start of a new US nuclear arms race with China and Russia, military analysts say.

Russia and China are believed to have been developing similar weapons for decades, but Chinese experts are apparently keen to learn the lessons of the former Soviet Union’s failed attempt to keep up with the United States in the cold war.

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Tactical nuclear weapons, known as non-strategic nuclear weapons, are designed to support naval, land and air forces in areas close to friendly forces and perhaps even on contested friendly territory.
The new US weapon, the B61-12, is America’s first guided, or “smart” nuclear bomb. It weighs 350kg and can penetrate fortified structures several metres underground.

Unlike banned weapons of mass destruction, the B61-12 is designed to be carried by high-speed stealth fighter jets to hit targets precisely with limited damage to structures and lives nearby.
Song Zhongping, a retired instructor for the People’s Liberation Army’s former strategic missile force, said one of China’s main challenges was the carrier vehicle.

“Like many other nuclear powers, China started developing similar tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) many years ago. It has had nuclear technology for decades,” Song said.

“The main difficulties China’s TNW development faces now are how to increase precision and what kinds of carriers the mini-weapons will use.”

Song said China’s technology lagged the US and Russia, but he declined to give details of the types Beijing was developing.

The US Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced early this month that the B61-12 had completed a four-year development and testing phase and was in production engineering. Full-scale production was expected to get under way in 2020.

US President Barack Obama announced that 180 of the weapons would be deployed in five European countries, despite appeals last month from 10 senators urging restraint on nuclear weapons spending.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on the reports that the US was getting ready to produce the B61-12, except that the Kremlin was still assessing its threat.

But Senator Viktor Ozerov, of the Russian Federation Council’s Defence and Security Committee, warned that the country’s nuclear specialists would “carefully study the level of threat and take measures to minimise it, if needed”, Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Professor Jonathan Holslag, head of research at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said the B61-12 “increased America’s options to carry out strikes against potential adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran”.

“The B61-12 has to be seen in this context … to have more escalation possibilities in between a conventional war and a nuclear Armageddon,” Holslag said.

“We are already in a nuclear arms race, not of the magnitude of the cold war … Contrary to the cold war, it is not the size of the weapon stocks that matter, but its survivability and accuracy.”

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Shanghai-based military expert Ni Lexiong said America’s announcement to develop the controversial bomb suggested the Pentagon was preparing for potential regional conflicts, such on the Korean peninsula with North Korea, or even in the South China Sea with China.

“It’s rare for the US to announce the deployment of such a controversial weapon. It’s possible the US is going to use the B61-12 in case there is a regional conflict,” Ni said.

“But I don’t exclude the possibility that the US wants to increase its nuclear deterrence by announcing such a shocking project. It’s such a costly project.”

Both Ni and Song said they believed China would not follow in Moscow’s footsteps in keeping up with the US in the arms race as Beijing still remembered the lessons learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union collapsed after engaging in a costly and destructive arms race with the United States while its military worked to suppress anti-communist elements and extend its power in eastern Europe.

“Beijing still sticks to the rule left by Mao Zedong that ‘China should develop and own nuclear weapons, but no need to keep so many… [just] enough to cause deterrence,” Ni said.

The B61-12 weapon has been dubbed the most expensive US nuclear bomb, costing about US$11 billion for 400 bombs. It is at the heart of an ongoing modernisation of America’s nuclear arms, projected to cost US$1 trillion over the next 30 years.

Holslag said the production of the super bomb would be limited by the huge cost.