The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For the Prophecy sees without the element of time. For the Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be. 11:11 LLC
It was the fourth earthquake to hit the state in the last 12 months
Published June 9, 2021 • Updated on June 9, 2021 at 10:08 am
You may not have noticed it, but there was an actual earthquake in New Jersey on Wednesday morning,
A magnitude 2.4 quake struck just south of Tuckerton at 7:52 a.m., the U.S. Geological Surveysaid.
The quake was relatively shallow, at a depth of just over 3 miles, and nearly two dozen people noted feeling it in the USGS’s reporting system. The shaking was categorized as “moderate,” with the expectation of only very light damage.
Earthquakes are not necessarily unusual in the state; Wednesday’s temblor was the fourth in the last 12 months, per government data.
According to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection, New Jersey is actually considered overdue for a moderate earthquake, much like the magnitude 5.5 quake that hit in 1884.Copyright NBC New York
Seoul says the conventionally armed missile is designed to help counter any attack by North Korea. Analysts say the unusual weapon also checks many other boxes, including reducing South Korea’s reliance on the United States and providing a foundation if it ever decided to pursue a nuclear arsenal.
South Korea’s ministry of defence declined to confirm the tests, but said it is pursuing upgraded missile systems to counter North Korea.
South Korea’s sub-launched missile, believed to be a variant of the country’s ground-based Hyunmoo-2B ballistic missile, with a flight range of about 500 kilometres (311 miles), is smaller than the nuclear-tipped SLBMs developed by the North.
H.I. Sutton, a specialist in military submarines, said the South’s technology is more advanced, however, and called the combination of an SLBM with the submarine’s quiet Air Independent Propulsion system a potential “game changer.”
“In these respects it is the most potent conventionally powered and armed submarine in the world,” he wrote in a report for Naval News.
South Korea’s SLBM is one of a wide range of conventional missiles that the country is developing to augment its “Overwhelming Response” doctrine, said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The doctrine is an operational plan for strikes to pre-empt a North Korean attack or incapacitate its leadership in a major conflict.
“The SLBM is nominally justified in these terms, granting South Korean planners a highly survivable conventional second strike option in the face of North Korean attack; these missile systems would punish North Korea’s leadership in the case of an attack on the south,” he said.
Although submarine-launched ballistic missiles are usually associated with nuclear weapons, that does not mean South Korea has them or is pursuing them, he said.
“However, should the alliance with the United States fray in the future or South Korea’s national defences needs drastically shift, these SLBMs would provide an immediately available foundation for a limited, survivable nuclear force,” he added.
A POLITICAL ISSUE
For now it is just an academic debate, but one that has made its way into the current South Korean presidential campaign, with some conservative candidates arguing that the country should seek a nuclear deterrent either on its own or by hosting American weapons, as some NATO allies do.
The United States removed its battlefield nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991, but has continued to protect its ally under a “nuclear umbrella.”
But recent years were tumultuous for the U.S.-South Korea alliance, with then-U.S. President Donald Trump pressing Seoul to pay more for the American military presence there, and even suggesting that countries, including South Korea and Japan, may need to develop their own nuclear weapons.
“It is unrealistic to prevent us from our own nuclear armament when North Korea has not given up its nuclear weapons yet,” presidential candidate Yoo Seung-min said last month.
The SLBM programme doesn’t appear to be part of elaborate plan to hedge toward nuclear weapons, said Joshua Pollack, a researcher at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies who co-wrote a report last year warning that advances in conventional missiles in both Koreas have helped create a new pathway for a crisis.
In July 2019 North Korean state media showed leader Kim Jong Un inspecting a large, newly built submarine. While North Korea did not describe the submarine’s weapons, analysts said the apparent size of the vessel indicated it was designed to carry ballistic missiles.
One Western diplomatic source said it was likely that other countries would follow South Korea’s lead.
So far the test launch has not elicited public responses from officials in North Korea, Japan, China or other nearby countries, but South Korea’s neighbours are bound to ask tough questions, Pollack said.
Since the Biden administration assumed office, the nuclear talks with Iran have gone nowhere. Six rounds of negotiations have been concluded with no results. In contrast, two other issues have gone too far: the Biden administration’s appeasement policies towards the Iranian regime, and the advancement of the mullahs’ nuclear program.When the Biden administration took office, it announced that it would curb Iran’s nuclear program by returning to the 2015 nuclear deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which by the way Iran never signed — and by subsequently lifting sanctions against the Iranian government.Advertisement Apparently desperate to revive the nuclear pact, the Biden administration at once began appeasing the ruling clerics of Iran. The first concession was delivered when the administration changed the previous administration’s policy of maximum pressure toward Iran’s proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as the evidence — including a report by the United Nations — showed that the Iranian regime was delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, the Biden administration suspended some of the sanctions against terrorism that the previous administration had imposed on the Houthis.Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group. In addition, in June 2021, the Biden administration lifted sanctions on three former Iranian officials and several energy companies. Then, in a blow to the Iranian people and advocates of democracy and human rights — a few days after the Iranian regime handpicked a mass murderer to be its next president — the Biden administration announced that it was also considering lifting sanctions against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.From the perspective of Iran’s mullahs, Biden’s desperate efforts to resurrect the nuclear deal manifested his weak leadership and therefore a delectable opportunity for Tehran to buy time, get more concessions, advance its nuclear program and become a nuclear state.Notwithstanding all these policies of incentives and appeasements, Iran’s mullahs continued to make excuses seemingly to drag out the nuclear talks. One of the latest overtures was that the world powers ought to wait until Iran’s newly elected president, Ebrahim Raisi, took office before resuming the nuclear talks.By now, Raisi has been president of Iran for more than a month but there has not been the slightest effort by the Islamic Republic to restart any talks; in fact, all the while, the regime appears to have accelerated its enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade. This escalation has even caused concerns among some European leaders and has, surprisingly, led the EU to pressure Tehran immediately to return to the negotiating table. “We vehemently ask Iran to return to the negotiating table constructively and as soon as possible. We are ready to do so, but the time window won’t be open indefinitely” a ministry spokesperson from Germany warned.After stating that they would resume talks when Raisi assumed office, Iran’s leaders are now saying that they are not likely to restart the nuclear negotiations for another 2-3 months. “the… government considers a real negotiation is a negotiation that produces palpable results allowing the rights of the Iranian nation to be guaranteed,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said during an interview broadcast by Iran’s state television. He added that the nuclear talks are “one of the questions on the foreign policy and government agenda… the other party knows full well that a process of two to three months is required for the new government to establish itself and to start taking decisions.”As Iran’s nuclear policy, however, is not set by the president or its foreign minister, this declaration sounded like just another excuse by the regime to buy time and advance enrichment. It is, of course, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who enjoys the final say in Iran’s nuclear and foreign policy issues.At the moment, the Iranian regime is reportedly 8-10 weeks away from obtaining the weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon. “Iran has violated all of the guidelines set in the JCPOA and is only around 10 weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade materials necessary for a nuclear weapon,” Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz told ambassadors from countries on the United Nations Security Council during a briefing at the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem on August 4, 2021. “Now is the time for deeds – words are not enough. It is time for diplomatic, economic and even military deeds, otherwise the attacks will continue.”Once again it seems that the mullahs of Iran are masterfully playing the Biden administration and the EU by stalling the nuclear talks, buying time to get more concessions, and accelerating their enrichment of uranium and nuclear program to reach a weapons-grade nuclear breakout.{Reposted from the Gatestone Institutewebsite}
Ballot is expected to take place on October 10 as government says it will uphold promise to public
Iraq’s elections will be held as planned on October 10 despite attempts to sabotage the vote, officials and experts told The National.
Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi, who took office in May 2020, promised early elections under pressure from anti-government protesters who took their anger and frustration to the streets in late-2019.
But he said his government had recently thwarted several attempts to fix the parliamentary election.
The government is also fighting attempts to delay the poll from some factions in parliament.
Iraq’s powerful populist cleric Moqtada Al Sadr recently pedalled back on a call to boycott the elections and said his movement would take part to help “end corruption”.
Mr Al Sadr commands millions of followers in Iraq, leading the parliamentary bloc with the biggest number of seats. He portrays himself as a nationalist fighting for the benefit of his country.
His change of heart was not enough to contain calls to delay the election. A flurry of meetings have been held between different political parties in recent weeks to consider a delay, said Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow and project director of the Iraq Initiative at London’s Chatham House think tank.
However, a “decision has been made for the elections to be held on time, and although it’s not 100 per cent officially confirmed, those initial attempts to delay have been put away,” he told The National.
“It was the Sadrists who didn’t want to participate and wanted to delay the elections. However, Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani’s office and international actors were pushing for elections to be held on time,” Mr Mansour said.
Fanar Haddad, a former senior adviser to Mr Al Kadhimi, told The National “there is enough buy-in from most major political actors and enough momentum to make another delay very unlikely.”
“Election campaigns have begun and money is being spent,” he said.
Diplomats also expressed hope the elections would go ahead.
“I do think elections will be held on time. All the key political parties are now on board and there is no reason to delay,” a Western diplomat told The National.
“As the UN Special Representative to the Secretary General [Jeanine Antoinette Plasschaert] had said, the political parties themselves have a role to ensure the process goes well,” the diplomat said.
Low voter turnout due to voter apathy
Experts are predicting low turnout in October due to distrust of the country’s electoral system and believe that it will not deliver the much needed changes they were promised since 2003.
“The new generation of youth, who are less part of the social basis of political parties, don’t really see the point in voting,” Mr Mansour said.
“They don’t believe those political parties represent their interests or basic needs,” he said.
Many Iraqis have lost faith in the ability of elections to deliver change
Fanar Haddad
There is a sense of dissolution in the Iraqi capital with the political process and voting.
To the Iraqi youth this election symbolises the vote for the “same cast of characters and political parties that for almost 20 years have not been able to deliver on basic governance and accountability,” he said.
Mr Haddad said voter apathy remains a significant problem in Iraq.
“This will be post-2003 Iraq’s sixth election. Many Iraqis have lost faith in the ability of elections to deliver change,” Mr Haddad said.
“Low turnout will of course create a self-fulfilling prophecy in that it benefits the existing political elite and ensures the continuation of the status quo,” he said.
However, improvements have been seen in the voting process that includes a new election law and active engagement by the electoral commission, said the Western diplomat.
“This is a more robust and improved process but people need to be persuaded of that if they are to turn out and vote,” he said.
As night falls on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian protesters approach the border fence with Israel, carrying homemade stun grenades and Molotov cocktails to hurl toward the enemy soldiers.
One of the protesters, 19-year-old Farid, said he studies engineering at Gaza University by day, and then joins the night-time rallies demanding an end to the 15-year-old Israeli blockade.
The young man had brought a homemade stun grenade, which he hurled toward the border fence, heavily guarded by the Israeli army, about 200 metres (219 yards) away.
A flash of light burst through the darkness, followed by a blast that, for a brief moment, drowned out the martial music playing from a huge portable sound system.
“We’ll drive them crazy,” Farid said enthusiastically.
“As long as we can’t sleep in safety, we won’t allow the soldiers, the occupation, to sleep!”
Street vendors nearby sold cold drinks, and buses waited to take the protesters back to Gaza City at the end of the evening.
All this could have created an almost festival-like atmosphere — were it not for the regular casualties that result from these protests.
Three Palestinians — including a member of the armed wing of Hamas — and an Israeli sniper have lost their lives since mid-August in these demonstrations.
The recent deaths are a reminder of the fragility of the truce between Israel and Hamas, which fought their last full-scale war in May, the fourth since 2008.
In that bloody escalation, Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 260 Palestinians, including fighters, between May 10 to 21, according to local authorities.
In Israel, rocket fire from the Palestinian territory killed 13 people, including a soldier, according to the police and army.
Since the Egypt-brokered ceasefire, Hamas has fired only one rocket, instead re-focussing on its disruption operations.
These include activists sending incendiary balloons floating through the sky and into Israel, where they start fires in grasslands and on farms.
The Israeli air force often responds with strikes, most recently targeting Hamas infrastructure on Monday night.
The Hamas strategy is one of “limited and carefully calculated” escalation, said Mukhaimer Abu Saada, a political science professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.
The aim is to protest Israeli restrictions on the impoverished enclave of two million people, but without spiralling into another full-scale conflict.
Since the last war, Israel has eased restrictions on the entry of goods into Gaza, widened the permitted fishing zone and approved a new system for distributing Qatari aid via the UN, which Doha has said would begin soon.
Hamas, which dismisses these steps as nowhere near enough, has resumed its campaign to “irritate” Israel while avoiding “an open armed confrontation”, said Mukhaimer Abu Saada, who labelled it a risky strategy.
– ‘Level of violence’ –
“Hamas prefers to use disruption units along the fence because the Israeli deterrence towards Hamas works in a way,” said researcher Kobi Michael, a former Israeli strategic affairs ministry official in charge of Palestinian issues.
“They understand that if they launch rockets, the probability that the Israeli retaliation will be much more rapid and aggressive is higher.”
For more than a year from March 2018, every Friday demonstrators would amass along the fence, demanding an end to the blockade and the “right of return” for Palestinians driven into exile when Israel was created in 1948.
About 310 Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers’ fire, and eight Israelis also died during that period.
Hamas — emboldened by what it has presented as a “victory” after the latest war in May — now “feel they are able to provoke Israel… but they might be wrong,” said Michael.
Hamas thinks they can “control the level of violence”, he said, adding that this might be “a miscalculation because Israel is losing its patience.
“Israel will have no problem retaliating very aggressively if Hamas drags it into another campaign.”
Israeli forces were still scouring the country’s north and the occupied West Bank for the escapees after the biggest prison break of its kind in decades.
The strikes came in response to incendiary balloons launched by Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement into Israeli territory, the army said. The devices were a show of support for the prison break, which Hamas and other Palestinian militants hailed as a heroic victory.
For Israel, the escape — through a secret tunnel, likely with outside help — marks an embarrassing security breach. The massive manhunt through Israel’s north and the occupied West Bank continued on Tuesday as Jews celebrated Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.
The prisoners appear to have gone into hiding after crawling through a narrow tunnel leading from the floor of their cell to a hole outside the prison walls.
The escape marked an awkward moment for Israel’s new coalition government as it seeks to maintain calm after the deadly 11-day war with Hamas in May and amid a surge in coronavirus infections.
Palestinians consider prisoners held by Israel to be heroes of their national cause, and many celebrated the escape on social media. Efforts to capture the six will likely draw attention to the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination with Israel, which is deeply unpopular among Palestinians.
“Every Palestinian prisoner wants freedom, and they have the right to seek out any path to freedom,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told reporters Tuesday, without directly referring to the escape. He reiterated the PA’s longstanding demand that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners.
Israel has erected roadblocks and is conducting patrols in the area. Israel’s Army Radio said 400 prisoners are being moved as a protective measure against any additional escape attempts.
The six who escaped early Monday come from Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority wields little control in the town, where militants in recent weeks have clashed with Israeli forces.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, which represents both former and current prisoners, identified the men as ranging in age from 26 to 49 years old.
The most well-known among them is Zakaria Zubeidi, 46, who was a prominent leader in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed group affiliated with Fatah, during the second intifada from 2000-2005. He was later granted amnesty along with other Fatah-affiliated militants, but was arrested again in 2019 on what Israeli authorities said were new terror suspicions.
As a child, Zubeidi had been part of a children’s theater troupe in Jenin established by Arna Mer-Khamis, an Israeli rights activist, that was the subject of a 2004 documentary.
The other five prisoners were members of the Islamic Jihad militant group, and the prisoners’ group said four were serving life sentences.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the breakout a “grave incident” that required maximum effort by Israel’s various security branches.
The escape poses a dilemma for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who met with Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz a week ago in the first high-level meeting between the two sides in years. Abbas has said he hopes to revive the peace process after more than a decade-long hiatus under former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is deeply unpopular. He canceled the first elections in 15 years in April when it appeared his Fatah party would suffer an embarrassing defeat. The PA was largely sidelined during the Gaza war in May, and it has cracked down on a wave of protests following the death of an activist in its custody in June.
PA security forces coordinate with Israel to target Hamas and other militants that both view as a threat. But any effort to help Israel re-arrest the escaped prisoners risks further undermining the PA in the eyes of Palestinians.
Former US national security advisor John Bolton. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency
John Bolton former US National Security Adviser has recently argued on several platforms with a mere hypothetical assumption absent from a thorough, reliable and credible academic research that the fall of Kabul and the arrival of Taliban in Afghanistan after the complete US withdrawal could lay their hands on the Pakistani nuclear weapons. Sadly, Bolton has missed his analysis on what will happen to the sophisticated US military weaponsworth nearly a trillion US dollars in Afghanistan? How will these weapons be managed amidst the evolving situation of Afghanistan?
The US and its allies are silent on this evolving, but serious imperative that could potentially have deleterious implications on the peace and security of Afghanistan in general and its neighboring country Pakistan in particular. Single-handedly, Bolton’s belief system appears to be biased, aggressive, fanatic, and fictional; the existing US leadership may not necessarily follow up as a matter of policy.
Bolton’s argument for that matter could create more confusion and complexity both in the US and amongst the comity of the South Asian region. Arguably, his assumption is potentially based on frustration out of twenty long years of the US failure in Afghanistan to which he remained a crucial part for sometimes that are currently being debated both in the US itself and abroad as to how and why the US failedin ensuring broader peace and stability in Afghanistan. In addition to many credible pieces on the US failure on Afghanistan, even the former US State Secretary and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger has recently commented in his piece in the Economist on the US failure in Afghanistan.
Bolton’s naïve argument on the fall of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in the hands of non-state actors negates not only the consistent Pakistan’s efforts in ensuring the safety and security of its nuclear weapons to the international standard required, but also the enriched existing literature on why state’s acquire nuclear weapons in the first place amongst which the state’s security remains the predominant factor due to which state aggressively strives to acquire nuclear weapon capability.
In the realist paradigm like many nuclear weapon states, Pakistan also acquired such credible capability for security reasons in reaction to India’s nuclear weapon tests in 1974 and 1998. Obviously, one may assume that Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence is India-specific. Rationally, no nuclear weapon state would desire to let its nuclear weapon fall in the wrong hands nor would it want these weapons to be proliferated to other countries. Why would any analyst for that matter Bolton expect a rational actor (Pakistan) to do such an unthinkable? This is irrational against the core values of nuclear deterrence.
While understanding the sheer value of nuclear deterrence, Pakistan has come a long way maturing not only its nuclear weapon deterrence capability against its potential adversary, but also strengthened the safety and security mechanism related to nuclear weapons and its related facilities. For example, in the wake of its nuclear tests, Pakistan immediately created National Command Authority by ensuring the creation of reliable and credible command and control mechanism, personnel reliability program, export control regimes, Pakistan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, Pakistan’s Centre of Excellence and Nuclear Security etc. to ensure that its nuclear weapon and its related facilities remain safe, secure, credible, and reliable. Many credible institutions such as the International Atomic Energy Agency have already acknowledged the untiring efforts of Pakistan’s safety and security mechanism.
It is imperative to note that some credible voices surely much higher in positions than the Bolton’s could be in the US that has already expressed high confidence in the safety mechanism of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. All including Bolton must have heard and read such voices amidst the complex time in Pakistan faced with the menace of terrorism and extremism. For example, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen described U.S. concern about the matter during a September 22, 2008, speech: “To the best of my ability to understand it—and that is with some ability—the weapons there are secure. And that even in the change of government, the controls of those weapons haven’t changed.” Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte in testimony to Congress on November 7, 2007 believed that there is “plenty of succession planning that’s going on in the Pakistani military” and that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are under “effective technical control.” Moreover, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated in a January 21, 2010, interview that the United States is “very comfortable with the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.” Similarly, James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee February 10, 2011, that “our assessment is that the nuclear weapons in Pakistan are secure.” All these responsible statements potentially negate what Bolton has recently argued. Perhaps, Bolton’s unconvincing argument does not matter much here.
That being noted, if Bolton has read these credible statements and understood the literature why Pakistan went nuclear and how Pakistan becomes geopolitically significant player for regional peace and stability as it borders with Afghanistan and Iran, then most probably he would come up with more sensible argument as to what more needs to be done for holding direct talks with Pakistan, make more friends rather than enemies, prevent undiplomatic and biased argument, and develop reasonable strategies with all the responsible and immediate stakeholders to manage the evolving situation in Afghanistan in order to prevent another perceived 9/11.
Admittedly, Pakistan’s geopolitical significance for that matter cannot simply be ignored, nor could it benefit the US to mistrust and mismanage Pakistan amid the evolving situation in Afghanistan. Ask any leading strategist, one may come with the similar conclusion that even though the US withdraws from Afghanistan, its prime interest may never doom away from the region. And where Pakistan sits in the evolving geopolitical landscape, it is for those leading strategists to carefully and correctly guide the leading security advisers like Bolton in the US on the evolving significance of Pakistan than ever before. The viable policy solutionfor the US and its allies is to hold consistent talks, develop trust, retain balancing act, and manage Pakistan timely and effectively to prevent any unforeseen and ugly strategic environment that could potentially harm all and benefit none.
*Dr Zafar Khan, The author is an Executive Director at Balochistan Think Tank Network (BTTN), at BUITEMS, Quetta
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