The science behind the sixth seal: Revelation 6:12

The science behind the earthquake that shook Southern New England

Did you feel it? At 9:10 am EST Sunday morning, a Magnitude 3.6 earthquake struck just south of Bliss Corner, Massachusetts, which is a census-designated place in Dartmouth. If you felt it, report it!

While minor earthquakes do happen from time to time in New England, tremors that are felt by a large number of people and that cause damage are rare.

Earthquake Report

The earthquake was originally measured as a magnitude 4.2 on the Richter scale by the United States Geological Surgey (USGS) before changing to a 3.6.

Earthquakes in New England and most places east of the Rocky Mountains are much different than the ones that occur along well-known fault lines in California and along the West Coast.

Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts fall nearly in the center of the North American Plate, one of 15 (seven primary, eight secondary) that cover the Earth.

Earth’s tectonic plates

Tectonic plates move ever-so-slowly, and as they either push into each other, pull apart, or slide side-by-side, earthquakes are possible within the bedrock, usually miles deep.

Most of New England’s and Long Island’s bedrock was assembled as continents collided to form a supercontinent 500-300 million years ago, raising the northern Appalachian Mountains.

Plate tectonics (Courtesy: Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Fault lines left over from the creation of the Appalachian Mountains can still lead to earthquakes locally, and many faults remain undetected. According to the USGS, few, if any, earthquakes in New England can be linked to named faults.

While earthquakes in New England are generally much weaker compared to those on defined fault lines, their reach is still impressive. Sunday’s 3.6 was felt in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Hampshire.

USGS Community Internet Intensity Map

While M 3.6 earthquakes rarely cause damage, some minor cracks were reported on social media from the shaking.

According to the USGS, moderately damaging earthquakes strike somewhere in the region every few decades, and smaller earthquakes are felt roughly twice a year.

The largest known New England earthquakes occurred in 1638 (magnitude 6.5) in Vermont or New Hampshire, and in 1755 (magnitude 5.8) offshore from Cape Ann northeast of Boston.

The most recent New England earthquake to cause moderate damage occurred in 1940 (magnitude 5.6) in central New Hampshire.

Dangerous Escalation Outside the Temple Walls: Revelation 11

‘Dangerous escalation’: Hamas threatens, Arabs riot over Lapid visit to Old City

 April 4, 2022

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (C), Chief of Police Kobi Shabtai (L) and Head of Jerusalem police district Doron Turgeman (R) visit at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 3, 2022. (Flash90/Arie Leib Abrams)

Hamas terror group says foreign minister’s presence in Israel’s capital was inherently provocative, vows to “protect Jerusalem” by “all available means.”

By World Israel News Staff

The Hamas terror group threatened escalation and at least 10 Arabs were arrested for rioting, after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid visited the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem on Sunday, accompanied by a phalanx of security officers.

Social media and Hebrew-language news footage from the scene hours after Lapid’s visit depicted Arabs violently clashing with police, engaging in fistfights and using iron rods to beat officers.

Muhammad Hamadeh, Hamas spokesman for Jerusalem affairs, framed the senior government official’s presence in the neighborhood ias “a dangerous escalation and a provocation to the feelings of our people and our nation in this glorified month,” referring to the ongoing Islamic holiday of Ramadan.

Notably, while Lapid simply walked around the area for a few minutes, Hamadeh said that the “Zionist enemy” lawmaker had “stormed” Damascus Gate.

He charged that the visit “and the subsequent shooting of our people in occupied Jerusalem by the occupation army, is blatant evidence of the occupation’s insistence on implementing its malicious plans against Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The “shooting” Hamadeh was likely referring to was the use of rubber bullets on violent protesters who threw glass bottles, stones, and other projectiles at Israeli police officers.

“We and our people have taken the pledge to protect Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa with strength and by all available means,” he stated, strongly insinuating that a violent escalation is an option on the table.

The Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning Lapid for visiting, saying it was inherently provocative.

“This is incitement against the Palestinians and an ugly expression of Israeli apartheid in which the occupier protects the Jews and ignores the Muslim and Christian holidays,” the Ministry said.

“His tour, accompanied by many police forces, is conclusive proof that he is an occupier of occupied land.”

Israel Police Jerusalem district commander Arieh Amit also slammed Lapid, telling Radio 103FM that it was a glorified publicity stunt that could worsen tensions in the region.

“All the visits of politicians to sites like these [happen so that] they can be seen on TV and heard on the radio,” Amit said. “It never helps. Many times, it just stirs things up.”

Babylon the Great Weakens: Daniel 7

Biden administration to scrap nuclear cruise missile program

Officials determined new weapon not needed to maintain nuclear deterrence

The Biden administration is returning to the position of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, who called for a “world without nuclear weapons.”   © Reuters

RYO NAKAMURA, Nikkei staff writerApril 4, 2022 17:50 JST

WASHINGTON — The U.S. has decided to discontinue development of a new nuclear cruise missile, Nikkei has learned.

The administration of former President Donald Trump had laid out plans to develop the new weapon to enhance U.S. nuclear capabilities.

The Biden administration, however, determined that the U.S. not only maintained sufficient capability to deter Russia and China without the new missile, but also could add momentum to the flagging nuclear disarmament movement by scrapping the cruise missile project.

A senior defense official told Nikkei that plans for the new missile had been withdrawn. The U.S. Defense Department will release its full “Nuclear Posture Review,” a set of guidelines for nuclear weapons policy, perhaps as early as the end of this month.

The focus of the review has been how the U.S. would handle development of sea-launched nuclear cruise missiles and low-yield nuclear warheads with less explosive power. Both were pursued by the Trump administration to deter Russia and China and are intended to be installed primarily on submarines. The weapons are intended for use in limited attacks on enemy military bases or critical facilities, rather than major strikes on urban centers.

The senior official said the U.S. maintains a diverse nuclear force to deter the limited use of nuclear weapons by its adversaries. “The U.S. government considered a variety of regional deterrence contingencies as part of the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review. As part of the analysis, the review affirmed the need to deter limited nuclear use by adversaries. The United States applies tailored deterrence strategies, and maintains a variety of nuclear capabilities to address this need,” the official said.

However, the U.S. will continue to deploy low-yield nuclear warheads to deter China and Russia, according to another person with knowledge of the Nuclear Posture Review. The U.S. Navy has fielded low-yield nuclear weapons on submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) by early 2020.

The senior Pentagon official said nuclear cruise missile development will be suspended, partly because a low-yield nuclear warhead equipped with SLBM provides sufficient deterrence. “Given the deterrence contribution of the W76-2 SLBM warhead [a low-yield warhead] and other capabilities, and its estimated cost in light of other nuclear modernization and defense priorities, the SLCM-N [a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile] program was canceled,” the official added.

The statement indicated the Biden administration believes that if it continues to deploy a low-yield nuclear warhead to SLBM, it can maintain adequate deterrence without developing new nuclear cruise missiles.

In freezing development of the weapon, the Biden administration is showing its aspiration to return to the ideals of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, who called for a “world without nuclear weapons.” Obama announced in 2010 that he would scrap the nuclear cruise missile to provide leadership in global nuclear disarmament. Trump, a Republican, declared in 2018 that the government would resume development of the missile, aiming to deploy it by around 2030.

The path to a nuclear-free world has become increasingly fraught in recent years. China is enhancing its nuclear capabilities, and Russia has not ruled out the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The U.S. administration has also prioritized maintaining deterrence, foregoing the idea of a “sole purpose” policy regarding nuclear weapons, which would limit the use of nuclear weapon to retaliation against nuclear attacks.

MESSY FIGHT AMONG RUSSIA, CHINA, US: BOWLS OF WRATH ARE COMING

MESSY FIGHT AMONG RUSSIA, CHINA, US RAMPS UP NUCLEAR WAR CHANCES

RakeshApril 3, 2022

One evening in early March, a few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, I emailed Vladislav Surkov to see whether he might be interested in telling me Vladimir Putin’s side of the story.

Surkov’s name, while not well known in the West, is a notorious one in Moscow. Known as the Kremlin’s “gray cardinal,” Surkov was by Putin’s side for more than 20 years. One poll of Russia’s elite had him as the country’s second most powerful man — right behind Putin, and ahead of the prime minister. This was a man who could recite beat poetry in English and wrote lacerating, whimsical fiction. Before leaving the Kremlin in 2020, he’d kept pictures of Barack Obama and Tupac Shakur on display in his office. Who from Putin’s inner circle was more capable of explaining Putin’s mindset to an American audience?

The email address I got for Surkov was provided by his American publisher. It took Surkov less than a day to reply:

“Your interest is appreciated. Such dedication is even admirable now when the position of reality appears to be most occluded by optical barricades and firewalls. Yet it is precisely in these moments that the contradictions of ever-churning narratives, like celestial bodies in collision, produces such massive friction as to allow truth to form itself in the plasmic heat of conflict.”

I was baffled, but I could see what he was getting at. It was “admirable,” in his view, that I had reached out to him in the midst of the “ever-churning narratives.” And the “truth,” as he sees it, was going to emerge from the invasion — “the plasmic heat of conflict.” He continued:

“People, including those I once called friends, have termed what I do public relations or perception management, but really I am a pyromancer, a keeper of this flame from which new realities are born. Is there anything truer than a blank slate? You may send along your inquiries.”

And so I did. I asked Surkov why Putin invaded. I asked him whether mistakes had been made, in hindsight, in either the invasion’s genesis or its execution. I asked him what it was like to have been the target of US sanctions. Surkov, after all, was the one who had engineered Putin’s incursions into Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. He has been unable to travel to or do business in the United States since then.

Too many nukes, too little rational behavior: this is Prophecy

A man watches a TV screen showing a news program reporting about North Korea’s ICBM at a train station in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, March 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) (Lee Jin-man/AP)

Too many nukes, too little rational behavior | READER COMMENTARY

For The Baltimore Sun

Apr 03, 2022 at 3:36 pm

War is a game of chicken, and the NATO powers are rightly refusing to push Mr. Putin into a situation where he will consider the nuclear option as the only one left on the table to win his war against Ukraine (“Nuclear nonproliferation: another casualty of war between Ukraine and Russia,” March 25). If they declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine, they don’t know whether Mr. Putin will lose his head and do the unimaginable, drop a nuclear bomb on Ukraine, risking lives in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe by radiation fallout.

Right now, the United Nations seems to have little power over Russia to bring this unnecessary and unprovoked war to a settlement. Russia, with an economy smaller than that of the state of Texas, is a member of the elite United Nations Security Council. All the members of the Security Council are nuclear states. Smaller powers see this special status the nuclear states have awarded themselves, and, of course, they’re jealous and they want nuclear weapons themselves, to rival with those of the bigger powers. Proof positive of this is Kim Jong Un’s North Korea, which has been testing intercontinental ballistic missiles when global eyes are off its activities. The U.S. is considered to be within the range of its latest tested missile called Hwasong-17, and it has the capacity to carry nuclear warheads. Mr. Putin’s Russia not only sold oil and gas to the world before the sanctions, it also sold nuclear proliferation technologies to rogue states like Iran.

The U.S. will spend $634 billion to modernize its nuclear arsenal over the next 10 years. It is in rivalry with China and Russia, which are said to be modernizing their nuclear arsenal at a fast clip. Nuclear non-proliferation is not only out of reach because of smaller powers that aspire to nuclear weapons but because current nuclear powers like India and Pakistan and Israel are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and because bigger nuclear powers like the U.S. are busy polishing up their intercontinental ballistic missiles and their submarine launched ballistic missiles, production systems and warheads. There seems to be no end in sight for this destructive inanity.

Usha Nellore, Bel Air

Now Poland Wants to Nuke UP

Poland ‘open’ to nukes stationed in country amid Russia-Ukraine war – party head

Ruling Polish party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski noted that Poland would also welcome a 50% increase in the number of US troops in Europe.

By REUTERS

Published: APRIL 3, 2022 11:45

The flag of Poland (illustrative).

(photo credit: PIXABAY)

Poland would be open to having nuclear weapons stationed in the country, though this is not something currently under consideration, ruling Polish party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said in comments published Sunday as Warsaw calls for tougher action against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.

The politician noted that Poland would also welcome a 50% increase in the number of US troops in Europe.

The invasion of Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “special military operation” to demilitarize its neighbor, has fueled security fears in states on NATO’s eastern flank.

Village leader and family found buried in shallow grave outside Ukrainian capital

The alliance has responded by increasing its presence in the region, announcing four more multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia last month.

“Poland would be pleased if the Americans increased their presence in Europe from the current 100,000 soldiers up to 150,000 in the future due to Russia’s increasing aggressiveness,” Kaczynski told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

US soldiers walk near a rocket launcher missile at Basmaya military base in Baghdad (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED AMEEN)

“Of these, 75,000 soldiers should be stationed on the eastern flank; ie, on the border with Russia; 50,000 soldiers in the Baltic states and Poland,” he said in the interview, which was also published on the website of Poland’s ruling party Law and Justice (PiS).

There were roughly 80,000 US troops in Europe before Russian troops moved into Ukraine.

We’ve now reached the precipice of WW III: Revelation 16

We’ve now reached the precipice of WW III

on April 2, 2022

By Eric Zuesse

On Friday, April 1st, an extremely deceptive news-report from Britain’s Reuters news agency headlined innocuously “Exclusive: U.S. cancels ICBM test due to Russia nuclear tensions”, but a more honest and attention-grabbing headline would have been “We’ve now reached the precipice of WW III.” Here is why:

Their report stated that:

The nuclear-capable Minuteman III is key part of the U.S. military’s strategic arsenal and has a range of 6,000-plus miles (9,660-plus km) and can travel at a speed of approximately 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph) [Wikipedia reports the “terminal speed” to be 17,647 m.p.h.].

Missiles are dispersed in hardened underground silos operated by launch crews.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February [on February 27th, as America’s AP reported it and blamed it on Putin] that his nation’s nuclear forces should be [ACTUALLY WERE BEING] put on high alert, raising fears that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [actually before that, AMERICA’S FEBRUARY 2014 COUP IN UKRAINE, to which, Putin has since been responding] could lead [ultimately] to nuclear war. But U.S. officials have said they have seen no reason so far to change Washington’s nuclear alert levels. [In other words: Biden is cancelling that test so as NOT to be endangering Russia enormously enough to provoke an immediate blitz nuclear attack by Russia against America.]

If America were (ultimately) to place a nuclear Minuteman III missile in Sumy, Ukraine, that would be only 353 miles from Moscow, and so its flight-time to nuke Moscow would be 353/15,000 of an hour or .0235 hour, or 1.41 minutes, which OBVIOUSLY would be far too short a time for Putin or anyone else to be able to verify that the missile was launched and to release Russia’s counter-weapons including ABM systems and retaliatory missiles.

However, the missile doesn’t actually have that same (terminal) speed throughout its flight. Reaching its “terminal (or ‘coasting’)” velocity requires about 3 minutes, when “The third-stage engine fires and falls away at about 180 seconds [into its trajectory]. Only the vessel carrying the reentry vehicle remains [and completes the journey].” So, Russia would instead actually have around five minutes, in order to recognize, and react to, America’s blitz nuclear invasion. This is the reason why Biden cancelled that test: he doesn’t want to indicate, quite so conclusively, that America is yet ready to use its nuclear weapons in order to ‘win’ a nuclear war instead of (as BOTH sides USED TO BE) in order to PREVENT a nuclear war. America isn’t YET ready to do that. It doesn’t YET have “Nuclear Primacy”. And, now, Putin is doing everything he can in order to PREVENT that from happening. Biden knows this, and doesn’t want to precipitate such an action from him.

In any military conflict, the invader has the surprise-factor weighing heavily on its side. However, the defender has the passion-factor heavily on his — and, as Putin has repeatedly said, this is an “existential” issue for the Russian people. He is treating it as such. He did not grab Ukraine — Obama did (though not by a military invasion; instead by a brutal coup and constant U.S. lies that it was a ‘democratic revolution’ which had occurred in Ukraine during February 2014). Putin (and Russia) have been responding to that, ever since. Not all the lies in the world can change that historical fact.