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
America’s Next Big QuakeDoug Fabrizio The devastation wrought in Mexico City by a recent massive earthquake may have rattled more than a few nerves along the Wasatch Front. Salt Lake City is, of course, overdue for a significant seismic event. So are other places in the United States, such as Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest, even New York City. In a new book, science writer Kathryn Miles tours the country in search of the latest research on America’s next big earthquake and what’s being done to address the threat. She joins us Wednesday to talk about it. Kathryn Miles is the author of several books, including her newest, Quakeland: On the Road to America’s Next Devastating Earthquake [Independent bookstores|Amazon|Audible]. Learn more about predicting earthquakes in Utah and how well the state’s buildings could stand-up to a great shake from KUER’s news team.
Russian President Vladimir Putin greets Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy chief Wang Yi during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023.
Even as the U.S. and its allies celebrated this week that Russia has been thwarted thus far in its attempt to take over Ukraine, certain developments could have repercussions far beyond whether Kyiv stays standing.
If the last remaining arms treaty between the world’s two largest nuclear powers collapses, there will be no limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces for the first time since the 1970s. The risks of a nuclear launch – intentional or otherwise – would rise.
And if China turns its economic and diplomatic support for Russia into full-blown military assistance, it would be a major change in how China has approached foreign policy, supercharging the already high tensions between the U.S. and China and making the world more dangerous.
“It would also return us to…the kind of things we saw in the Cold War where you have all these major countries interfering in conflicts and proxy wars,” said Brian Hart, who studies the evolving nature of Chinese power at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Here’s what you need to know:
What did Russia do?
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday he is suspending Moscow’s participation in New START, the last remaining nuclear arms reduction deal between the U.S. and Russia. It limits the number of long-range nuclear warheads Russia and the U.S. can have, including those that can reach the U.S. in about 30 minutes.
What’s the concern?
Without arms control, the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals could double in size, according to the Federation of American Scientists. Each nation could dramatically and quickly increase the number of nuclear weapons ready to launch on short notice, said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the federation’s Nuclear Information Project.
“Such an increase would be extraordinarily destabilizing and dangerous, especially with a full-scale war raging in Europe and Russia buckling under the strain of unprecedented sanctions,” Kristensen wrote last year.
In this Tuesday, May 9, 2017 file photo, Russian Topol M intercontinental ballistic missile launcher rolls along Red Square during the Victory Day military parade to celebrate 72 years since the end of WWII.
Is it time to panic?
No. Putin hasn’t yet pulled the plug on the treaty.
He’s said Russia won’t participate in the inspections and other mechanisms to enforce the limits on nuclear weapons. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow would respect the treaty’s weapons caps. And there’s no sign that Putin will suddenly produce new weapons, according to Joe Cirincione, an arms control expert and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Cirincione thinks Putin is raising the nuclear specter to scare away Ukraine’s allies.
“He understands that he’s losing this war,” Cirincione said on MSNBC. “He has to convince Western publics that they risk nuclear war by continuing to aid Ukraine.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual state of the nation address at the Gostiny Dvor conference centre in central Moscow on February 21, 2023.
Hasn’t Putin done this before
Yes. Putin ordered Russian nuclear forces on high combat alert shorty after invading Ukraine last February. In December, he said Russia would continue maintaining and improving the combat readiness of nuclear weapons that can be fired from land, air and sea.
“Russian president Vladimir Putin has come to rely on nuclear weapons for coercion and bullying and will continue to make nuclear threats,” Heather Williams, and arms control expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote in a recent analysis. “The West may not be able to stop Putin from threatening to use nuclear weapons, but countries can work to prevent him from following through on those threats.”
Even if Putin’s latest move is a gambit, said Ben Rhodes, who was a top national security adviser to President Barack Obama, “it does just point to the fact that we’re in this kind of period of escalation with Russia where we don’t quite know where it’s going to end.”
What’s going on with China?
Since the invasion, China has helped Russia economically by buying its oil and gas. China has also sold Russia drones, microchips and other technologies that have both commercial and military applications. But Beijing hasn’t allowed Russia to buy ammunition, artillery, armed drones and other weapons.
That could change. Top Biden administration officials warned this week they have intelligence suggesting China is considering providing lethal support to Russia.
But while the White House hasn’t made its evidence public, the warnings are reminiscent of the administration’s pre-invasion intelligence of Putin’s plans.
What could make China directly aid Russia?
The war in Ukraine has in many ways been good for China, said Hart of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It’s made Russia more reliant on China and has distracted the U.S. – China’s main rival. But China doesn’t want Russia, its most powerful partner on the global stage, to be severely weekend by the war.
“Overall, Beijing’s alignment with Russia is first and foremost fueled by collective concerns about the United States and competing with the United Sates. The more you have direct competition between Beijing and Washington, the more you’re going to see a willingness for Beijing to strengthen ties with Moscow,” he said. “That’s the triangle that their facing.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin pose for a photo prior to their talks in Beijing, China, Feb. 4, 2022.
How would the U.S. react?
The Biden administration has warned of “severe consequences” if China helps Russia replenish its military supplies.
China’s economy is already struggling. But major sanctions against China – which is a much bigger economic player than Russia – would also have blowback effects on the U.S. and other nations.
What would it mean for the geopolitical order?
China’s direct involvement would mark a huge shift in its approach to foreign policy, one so shocking that China expert Oriana Skylar Mastro said she would “have to rethink everything I know about China.”
China has looked at the U.S.’s foreign military interventions as expensive endeavors that haven’t made the U.S. more powerful. They’ve taken a different approach.
“I would be much less concerned about what it means for Ukraine and much more concerned about what it means for the world if we’re dealing with a China now that engages in intervention and foreign conflicts, which is a key thing that they have argued for decades and decades is the reason for the U.S. decline, is a stupid thing to do, something that they would never do,” she said.
But if China does make that radical shift said Mastro, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at Stanford University, it would “absolutely” make the world a more dangerous place.
While China makes it harder for the U.S. to coerce autocrats by not, for example, joining in sanctions, she said, “that’s very different from them actively providing support.”
In this file photo taken on July 8, 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
A new Cold War?
Tensions have been rising with China, which the U.S. considers its biggest strategic and economic competitor. Even before the Biden administration shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina this month, the nations have clashed over Taiwan, technology, human rights, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other issues.
The Biden administration has been trying to stabilize the relationship, building what it’s called “guardrails” as it normalizes interaction. But that may become increasingly difficult.
“We have to make sure that the competition that we’re clearly engaged in does not veer into conflict, into a new Cold War,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” when discussing the new threat. “It’s not in our interest. I won’t speak to theirs, but it’s not in ours.”
President Joe Biden (r) and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (AP)
The Biden administration, if it actually cares about peace in the region, would do well to listen to the warnings of the many U.S. military leaders and Congressmen.
Why would any administration in its right mind permit an official state sponsor of terrorism, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to have nuclear weapons, as well as billions of dollars that will assuredly not be used for a “GI Bill for returning members of the Revolutionary Guard”?
Just this week, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan called Iran, a “sponsor of terrorism.”
Calls and warnings against reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, however, seem to be falling on deaf ears, as the Biden administration appears determined to reach a deal that would enable a state that has been trying to take over the entire Middle East for decades — and already controls Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq — to have nuclear weapons, the ballistic missiles to deliver them, and billions of dollars to further its well-documented terrorism.
Last week, 45 retired U.S. Generals and Admirals sent an entreaty, titled “Open Letter from U.S. Military Leaders Opposing Iran Nuclear Deal”, to the Biden administration, warning against reviving of the nuclear deal. They wrote:
“In Ukraine, we are bearing witness to the horrors of a country ruthlessly attacking its neighbor and, by brandishing its nuclear weapons, forcing the rest of the world largely to stand on the sidelines.
“The new Iran deal currently being negotiated, which Russia has played a central role in crafting, will enable the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism to cast its own nuclear shadow over the Middle East.
“As retired American military leaders who devoted their lives to the defense of our nation, we oppose this emerging deal that is poised to instantly fuel explosive Iranian aggression and pave Iran’s path to become a nuclear power, threatening the American homeland and the very existence of America’s regional allies.”
Empowering Iran, alienating US allies
While the Biden administration is indefatigably trying to appease the ruling mullahs by lifting sanctions against the Iranian regime, the Islamic Republic has been ratcheting up its threats and attacks against the U.S. bases and its allies, presumably as a nudge.
In addition, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, recently commended “Palestinian martyrs” and threatened Israel as well:
“We are in the middle of the battlefield. The Islamic Republic of Iran is at the forefront of the scene against global arrogance and international Zionism, and we will continue on the path of their honor and greatness, thanks to the martyrs.”
Qaani also boasted about the Houthis’ access to weapons:
“Today, the heroes of Yemen and the new sons of the revolution are building the major weapons they use inside their country… they build missiles with a range of over 1,000 kilometers and drones with a range of over 1,500 kilometers, and all of these operations are carried out using tools and facilities in tunnels and basements, under enemy bombardment…”
The Biden administration is not only empowering the ruling mullahs of Iran and its militia groups but grievously alienating U.S. allies in the region. As the retired American U.S. Generals and Admirals accurately stated in their letter:
“America’s closest regional partners, attacked regularly by Iran, already strongly oppose the proposed deal. If we will not help protect them against Iran, we cannot expect their help addressing threats like Russia and China. We instead support diplomacy that would genuinely end the threat posed by Iran’s military nuclear program and counter Iran’s regional aggression, backed up by credibly drawn and enforced redlines against Iranian nuclear and regional escalation.”
Putin’s next ‘Ukraine’?
Worse, the Biden administration’s new deal with the Iranian regime is much weaker than Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal. With Biden’s deal, restrictions on the regime’s nuclear program would be lifted only two years after the agreement is signed, permitting the regime to enrich uranium at any level it desires and spin as many uranium enrichment centrifuges as it wants.
The new deal will not force the Iranian regime to reveal its past nuclear activities, which had military dimensions.
Astonishingly, Russia will be trusted to be the country that stores Iran’s enriched uranium, and Moscow will get paid for this mission. More uranium for Russia? How nifty: maybe Putin can use it for his next “Ukraine” — in Poland, Sweden or France?
The new deal will not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, meaning that the Tehran regime will continue attacking other nations with its ballistic missiles, provide missiles to its proxy militias in other countries, and advance the range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles to reach the U.S. territories. Iran could even use shorter-range ballistic missiles to reach the U.S., perhaps launched from Venezuela or Cuba, where Iran is already deeply entrenched.
Does the Biden administration care?
To meet the Iranian leaders’ demands, the new deal will most likely include removal from the terrorist list of the IRGC, which has killed countless Americans, both on American soil and off.
The Islamic Republic of Iran began murdering Americans in Beirut in 1983, and also had a hand in the 9/11 attacks.
Last but not least, economic sanctions will be lifted against the Iranian regime and will facilitate the flow of billions of dollars to the ruling mullahs. This will further assist the terrorist regime of Iran to destabilize the region, target and attack U.S. allies, and continue arming, funding and sponsoring its militia and terror groups across the world.
The Biden administration, if it actually cares about peace in the region — a subject that seems open to question — would do well to listen to the warnings of these many U.S. military leaders and Congressmen, and refuse to revive the disastrous nuclear deal.
It will only make even more dangerous a country that the U.S. State Department itself has called “the world’s worst sponsor of state terrorism,” as well as frankly creating an unnecessary security threat in the region, Europe and the U.S.
In this Dec. 14, 2008 file photo, Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, throws a shoe at U.S. President George W. Bush during a news conference with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad, Iraq.Evan Vucci/AP
Two decades after the U.S. led the invasion of Iraq, one of the most memorable moments for many in the region remains the 2008 news conference in Baghdad when an Iraqi journalist stood up and hurled his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush. As the U.S. leader spoke alongside Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, he was forced to duck the flying shoes as the journalist shouted: “This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!”
The man was quickly pounced on by security forces and removed from the room, and says he was subsequently jailed and beaten for his actions.
“The only regret I have is that I only had two shoes,” Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who expressed the feelings of many Iraqis at the time, told CBS News on Monday, exactly 20 years after the beginning of the U.S.’s campaign of “shock and awe.”
Then-President Bush’s administration justified its decision to attack the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein with assertions that the dictator was hiding chemical or biological “weapons of mass destruction,” but no such weapons were ever found.
Al-Zaidi says he didn’t throw his shoes in a moment of uncontrolled anger, but that he had actually been waiting for just such an opportunity since the beginning of the U.S.-led invasion. He said Bush had suggested that the Iraqi people would welcome U.S. forces with flowers, which left him looking for an adequate reply.
“I was looking for the opposite and equal reaction to say that Iraqis don’t receive occupiers with flowers,” the journalist told CBS News, adding that he staged his protest to oppose “this arrogant killer, and out of loyalty to the Iraqi martyrs killed by American occupation soldiers.”
Sentenced to three years in prison, al-Zaidi was seen by many Iraqis as a national hero, and he served only nine months of his sentence.
He says he was beaten and tortured for three days following his arrest by Iraqi officers, who he claims sent photos of himself blindfolded to the Americans. He says three months of his jail term were spent in solitary confinement as he suffered medical problems.
“Back then, in the midst of being tortured for three days, there was a rumor that I had apologized. I told the investigator I did not apologize, and if time was rewound I would do it all over again,” he told CBS News. “Even knowing what I would go through, still I would stand up and throw my shoes at him.”
Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist famous for throwing a shoe at former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2008, attends a rally in Baghdad, May 4, 2018 for the “Marching Towards Reform” alliance between Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr and the communist party, ahead of parliamentary elections.AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty
Al-Zaidi said the anxious wait for the expected invasion before March 20, 2003, left Iraqis on edge, with stockpiling food and others fleeing major cites for smaller towns far from Baghdad, fearing American bombs.
“People were like, semi-dead, like zombies, walking as if they were in a different world,” al-Zaidi recalled. “Then the zero-hour came. Most if not all Iraqis were woken up by the sound of explosions.”
The journalist says some of Iraq’s infrastructure still hasn’t been repaired, and he blames the invasion for “political and financial corruption” and the current political gridlock in his country, where “every political party has its own armed faction or militia that kills and terrifies people, kills their opposition and assassinates protesters.”
Al-Zaidi returned to Iraq after living and working outside the country for years, and he’s among the thousands of people who have joined protests since 2011 against Iraq’s Western backed government.
“We are trying to tell the world that the Iraqi people are being killed and ripped off,” he said. “We are suffering and we will continue to suffer, but the future of Iraq is in our hands and we want to remove this authority that ruled Iraq for the past 20 years.”
An Israeli man shot by a Palestinian militant in a Tel Aviv attack earlier this month has died of his wounds, the hospital treating him said Monday.
He is the latest victim in worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence which has now claimed 101 lives this year.
Ichilov hospital announced “the death of Or Eshkar, who was critically wounded in the attack on Dizengoff Street,” a statement from the hospital said.
Eshkar, 32, was one of three Israelis shot by Mutaz Khawaja, 23, a member of the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, who opened fire outside a restaurant in the centre of Tel Aviv on March 9.
Security forces shot Khawaja dead at the scene.
One of the other Israeli men wounded in the attack remains hospitalised at Ichilov in serious condition, while the other has been released to his home, an Ichilov spokesman told AFP.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 86 Palestinian adults and children this year, including militants and civilians.
Fourteen Israeli adults and children, including members of the security forces and civilians, and one Ukrainian civilian have been killed over the same period, according to an AFP tally based on official sources from both sides
On 20 March 2003, US and allied forces invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime.
The US said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to international peace, but most countries refused to support military action against it.
Why did the US want to invade Iraq?
In the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the US had led a multinational coalition which forced invading Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Afterwards, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 687 ordering Iraq to destroy all its weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) – a term used to describe nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and long-range ballistic missiles.
After al-Qaeda’s 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, President George W Bush’s administration started making plans to invade Iraq.
President Bush claimed Saddam was continuing to stockpile and manufacture WMDs and that Iraq was part of an international “axis of evil”, along with Iran and North Korea.
In October 2002, the US Congress authorised the use of military force against Iraq.
“Many people in Washington believed that there was significant evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that it posed a genuine threat,” says Dr Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the US and Americas Programme at Chatham House, a foreign affairs think tank in London.
However, he did not persuade the Council. Most of its members wanted weapons inspectors from the UN and International Energy Authority – who had gone to Iraq in 2002 – to carry out more work there to find evidence of WMDs.
Of the 30 countries in the coalition, the UK, Australia and Poland participated in the invasion.
The UK sent 45,000 troops, Australia sent 2,000 troops and Poland sent 194 special forces members.
Kuwait allowed the invasion to be launched from its territory.
Spain and Italy gave diplomatic support to the US-led coalition, along with several east European nations in the “Vilnius Group”, who said they believed that Iraq had a WMD programme and was violating UN resolutions.
What allegations did the US and UK make against Iraq?
The UK’s then-Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said it was “beyond doubt” that Saddam Hussein was continuing to produce WMD.
The two countries relied heavily on the claims of two Iraqi defectors – a chemical engineer called Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi and an intelligence officer called Maj Muhammad Harith – who said they had first-hand knowledge of Iraq’s WMD programme.
Both men later said they had fabricated their evidence because they wanted the allies to invade and oust Saddam.
Who refused to support the war?
Two neighbours of the US, Canada and Mexico, refused to support it.
Germany and France, two key US allies in Europe, also refused support.
39 km (24 mi) NNW of Perth Amboy (New Jersey) (pop: 52,700) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 39 km (24 mi) NW of Staten Island (New York) (pop: 468,700) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 39 km (24 mi) WNW of New York (pop: 8,175,100) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 46 km (29 mi) WNW of Brooklyn (New York) (pop: 2,300,700) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 48 km (30 mi) WNW of Gravesend (New York) (pop: 112,200) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 55 km (34 mi) NNW of Municipio de Middletown (New Jersey) (pop: 65,500) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 59 km (37 mi) NNW of Marlborough (New Jersey) (pop: 40,200) | Show on map | Quakes nearby 308 km (191 mi) NE of Washington (District of Columbia) (pop: 601,700) | Show on map | Quakes nearby
The Prophecy Blog 