This is The Prophecy. The Prophecy is much more than seeing into the future. For The Prophecy sees without the limits of time. For The Prophecy sees what is, what was, and what always shall be.
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.
“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.”
Christine Ahnfounder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ and campaign coordinator for Korea Peace Now!
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden pledged to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years. Alongside South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, Biden also pledged to involve officials from Seoul in nuclear planning operations targeting North Korea. The visit between the two leaders comes as the U.S. and South Korea mark 70 years of military alliance under 1953’s Mutual Defense Treaty, signed at the close of active conflict in the Korean War. No peace treaty was ever signed by the North and South Korean governments, meaning the two countries are still technically at war. We discuss continued tensions on the Korean Peninsula with Christine Ahn, founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, and the coordinator of the campaign Korea Peace Now! Ahn says the Korean War marked the dawn of the military-industrial complex and that ever-more militarization of the peninsula is not the answer. “There is momentum now to transform this state of war into a permanent peace,” she says.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we end today’s show looking at the crisis on the Korean Peninsula. On Thursday, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress and warned nuclear threat posed by North Korea. On Wednesday, Joe Biden pledged to deploy nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in 40 years and to establish a new bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group, where the United States would involve officials from South Korea in nuclear planning operations targeting North Korea. On Wednesday, President Biden issued a stark warning to North Korea.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: A nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies or partisans — or, partners — is unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action.
AMY GOODMAN: President Biden was speaking in the Rose Garden at a news conference with the South Korean president.
To talk more about his visit to Washington and tension on the Korean Peninsula, we’re joined now by Christine Ahn, founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War. Christine is also the coordinator of the campaign Korea Peace Now!, speaking to us from Hawaii.
And we thank you for being up in the middle of the night for this conversation, Christine. Talk about the significance of the meeting at the White House between the U.S. and South Korean presidents and what President Biden has promised.
CHRISTINE AHN: Hi, Amy. Thanks for having me on.
The announcement that the U.S. would send nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea is a very provocative and dangerous move. It’s the first time that U.S. nuclear weapons have been on or around the Korean Peninsula in 40 years. In fact, most Americans have no idea that the nuclear crisis actually began with the U.S. bringing nuclear weapons in South Korea from 1956, three years after the signing of the ceasefire, and had them there up until George Bush Sr. So, that is not only a provocative act directed at North Korea, but also at China.
And this is actually throwing fuel into already a — into a fire that has been increasingly dangerous. There have been massive military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea this spring, all last year. Last year, I think North Korea conducted 90 missile tests. And the situation is just getting even more dangerous. There is a three-star general, Dan Leaf, who says of all the conflicts currently taking place right now, whether it’s between U.S. and China over Taiwan or the Russia-Ukraine war, that the Korean Peninsula is perhaps the one that may be the closest to a nuclear war. So, it is a very dangerous moment.
And the fact that the U.S. will be sending U.S. nuclear submarines to the Korean Peninsula, and for Biden to make such a statement, that is akin to Trump’s “fire and fury” era, where he threatened to totally destroy North Korea, this is a wake-up call, I think, for the American people and, obviously, for South Koreans, who feel that Yoon is basically drawing the Korean Peninsula on the frontline of the U.S. war against China.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Christine Ahn, this actually is being billed as a compromise. As part of the agreement, President Yoon renewed a pledge not to pursue the development of a South Korean nuclear arsenal. Your response?
CHRISTINE AHN: Well, it is, in the sense that there is growing concern in South Korea for its own domestic nuclear weapons program in light of the tactical nuclear weapons coming from North Korea or the program in North Korea.
But I think the problem is, is it’s not addressing the underlying issue, which is that the Korean Peninsula is continuingly at a state of war. This is actually the 70th anniversary of the ceasefire. This July 27th marks 70 years that the U.S. commander, the North Korean commander and the Chinese representative from the Voluntary People’s Army signed the armistice agreement, where they committed to halting the war, but they never actually followed up with their commitment, which was to return within 90 days to negotiate a peace settlement.
So, what we’re facing is this continual militarization. South Korea now is the sixth-largest military spender in the world. The U.S., we know, is the world’s largest, our budget approaching a trillion dollars, more than next nine countries combined. And it is an unsustainable crisis. And I think the way that the narrative of deterrence is as if there isn’t violence, as if they are preparing to prevent violence in the future, when in fact we know violence is taking place right now, whether it’s the division of families, whether it’s the suffering of the North Korean people, whether it’s the ongoing investment in militarization that should be otherwise invested in things that make us secure. I mean, I think about — I’m here in Hawaii, and we’re facing the Red Hill crisis, where, you know, this militarization means we are polluting Oahu’s aquifer. And this is the jet fuel that will basically fuel the ships or the bombers that will go and wage wars in Asia.
So we have to break down this mythology that this is actually what is making us secure, when in fact what we need to do is negotiate a peace agreement. And that is gaining traction among people, from the military to nuclear scientists to, you know, people like President Carter. We have to normalize relations with North Korea to achieve the things that we want.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about this mobilization to end the Korean War scheduled for the end of July? And also talk about China’s response to all of this.
CHRISTINE AHN: Well, first, just since we’re short on time, I wanted to make sure that we are mobilizing hundreds to come to Washington, D.C. I hope, Amy, you will be there, or somebody from Democracy Now! But July 27th marks the 70th anniversary of the armistice. And we are saying it’s time to end this war, this war that inaugurated the military-industrial complex for the United States. It set forth the U.S. to become the world’s police. And it has been the war that has maintained this constant threat on the Korean Peninsula. So, we are gathering multiple organizations, faith-based, Vets for Peace, and Korean American Coalition. So, we are gathering — the website is KoreaPeaceAction.org. And we’ll be having a congressional briefing with our peace champions.
We want to also raise awareness that there is the first-ever Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act. It was reintroduced by Brad Sherman in the last Congress. We had nearly 50 co-sponsors of that bill. And so, we need —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds, Christine.
CHRISTINE AHN: Yeah. What I’m saying is, Amy, there is momentum now to transform the state of war into a permanent peace. And that’s where we need Americans to recognize, this is America’s oldest war. It’s on our responsibility to bring closure to this war.
AMY GOODMAN: Christine Ahn, founder and executive director of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mobilizing to end the Korean War, also the coordinator of the campaign Korea Peace Now!
That does it for our show. On Saturday, Democracy Now! co-host Juan González will be speaking at 10 a.m. at American University in Washington on an all-day conference titled “In Search of a New U.S. Policy for a New Latin America: Burying 200 Years of the Monroe Doctrine.” Check democracynow.org for details. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.
Iranian navy commandos board US-bound oil tanker Advantage Sweet off the coast of Oman after it was involved in what Tehran says was a collision with one of its vessels
Dubai – A US-bound oil tanker seized by Iranian commandos had 24 Indian crew on board, its operator told AFP on Friday, adding it was working to secure their release.
Footage aired by Iranian state television showed navy commandos dropping down from a helicopter onto the deck of the Advantage Sweet which Tehran said it seized Thursday after an alleged collision with one of its vessels off the coast of Oman.
The Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was being taken to port by Iran’s navy because of an “international dispute”, the operator said in a statement.
“Similar experiences show that crew members of vessels taken under such circumstances are in no danger,” it said, adding that the company was “in close touch with all the appropriate authorities to obtain the release of the crew and vessel”.
Iran said the tanker had crashed into one of its vessels, leaving two Iranian crew members missing and injuring several others.
It said it tried to make contact with the tanker to ask it to stop but it did not respond, prompting the seizure.
The US Navy demanded the ship’s immediate release, slamming Iran’s “continued harassment” in Gulf waters.
The vessel had picked up oil from Kuwait and was chartered by Chevron Corp, an Advantage Tankers spokesperson said. It was bound for Houston, Texas, according to the MarineTraffic tracking website.
Thursday’s seizure was the latest incident in the sensitive waters of the Gulf, which carry about a third of the world’s seaborne oil.
Such incidents have grown more frequent since 2018 when the US withdrew from a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and major powers and reimposed crippling sanctions. Marathon efforts to restore the deal have stalled.
The latest seizure came only days after Western governments toughened sanctions on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Moscow’s nuclear saber-rattling is troublesome for the West, but Ukrainians remain unfrazzled.
Terrell Jermaine StarrDate: April 28th, 2023
Will Russia use nuclear weapons against Ukraine?
It’s a question that’s often come up since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 — the second time in eight years. After it was clear that Russia’s conventional forces would not capture Kyiv, fears of nuclear use soon followed.
When I asked some of my colleagues in Ukraine for possible answers, they told me that all of this essentially boils down to political blackmail that is targeting the West, not Ukraine.
“He’s not talking about using tactical nukes. He’s just talking about deployment of them in Belarus, which is different from using them,” Polina Sinovets, head of the Odesa Center for Non-Proliferation, told me recently. “This is not the threat of using weapons. It’s just the step for increasing the coercive power of Russian worth because nobody really pays attention to Russia’s nuclear hints. That is why they decided to do something practical… that they’re not only speaking.”
You’d think that with all of the media attention the subject generates on network television in the West, local Ukrainian language media would be covering the subject with equal intensity. Yet, it hardly registers.
Sinovets has a point. Putin has not said that he would use nuclear weapons outright. He has simply suggested that he would. This was pointed out by Reuters in a brief fact-check of Putin’s speeches, which found his remarks pretty ambiguous.
You’d think that with all of the media attention the subject generates on network television in the West, local Ukrainian language media would be covering the subject with equal intensity. Yet, it hardly registers, Nika Melkozerova, a reporter with POLITICO who covers Ukraine, told me. It is true, she said, that people were rattled at first and began buying iodine pills and made sure they knew where the nearest bunker was, but nothing beyond that.
“I think that this was the top topic in the fall,” she said. “That’s when there was serious concern about it. But the media is covering it as more threats and provocation for the West to stop aiding Ukraine. Because nobody actually believes now that the Kremlin is going to use nukes. I think it’s more like a scary story for the West.”
But Putin is a stubborn old Soviet fossil who refuses to understand that abusing your neighbors to submission isn’t a good way to win them over. And clearly, bombing Ukraine has had the opposite effect. Not only is Ukraine resisting, but Ukrainian forces have managed to liberate occupied territories as well.
Putin’s failure to defeat Ukraine outright via conventional means has caused a number of domestic and international issues for Putin. For one, he has been bombing Ukraine from afar, but his ground forces aren’t faring well at all. His recent summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping did not leave him with the support he had hoped for. Then you have Russia’s ethnic minorities — who have disproportionately suffered the brunt of Russian conscription — protesting in the streets. Hundreds of thousands of Russian men eligible to fight in Ukraine have hightailed it to the very nations Moscow colonized during its imperial and Soviet eras.
Sinovets told me that Russia doesn’t need to make such a move to hit Ukraine. For one, the missiles that Russia has shot at Ukraine since the start of the war are dual-capable, meaning they can carry nuclear warheads. Given that these types of missiles have been fired into every part of Ukraine from Russian territory, the Kremlin’s recent deployment to Belarus doesn’t make sense for Ukraine.
“But it probably makes sense mostly for the West because it’s closer to Estonia, Latvia, and the Baltic states,” Sinovets said. “It shows that the main target audience is NATO and Europe to show, ‘Look what at we’re doing. You should think about supplying (essential military aid) to Ukraine because we can be really frightful for you.’”
“I would say that the coverage in the West on this nuclear threat is something serious,” Melkozerova told me. “It was harmful for Ukraine because it means that your governments will not be sending weapons to Ukraine as fast as needed because they don’t want to provoke retaliation from Russia. Each day that we’re not getting good weapons, long-range missiles, tanks means more Ukrainian men are dying on the war front. So far, this strategy of scaring the West with nuclear weapons works pretty well and I think that the Kremlin doesn’t even need to use them.”
ATTEMPTS TO CONTROL “LITTLE BROTHER”
The Kremlin’s renewed desire to use nuclear blackmail doesn’t come by accident.
Russia’s ground forces have been exposed as incompetent and unable to sustain the type of occupation it is attempting in Ukraine. Soon after Russia called for sham referendums on occupied territories in September 2022, Putin made implicit threats to defend the territories. Wording such as “all available means” and referencing that the United States is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons are among his go-to references, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Indeed, Putin is stress testing how far Western governments will go in defending Ukraine against his colonial conquest, and threatening nuclear use is one of his instruments for doing so.
But implicit is not the same as explicit, and that is what we need to really pay attention to here. If Putin can shift the Western publics’ support for their government’s supply of weapons to Ukraine by threatening nuclear attack, it would make his implicit threats worth it. Keep in mind that, unlike in Western nations, Putin doesn’t need to govern by consensus or respect the will of the voting population. He’s an autocrat. He can simply falsify votes and kill and jail opposition leaders to maintain power.
But, as the polls I cited earlier reveal, his messaging isn’t discouraging public support for Ukraine in the West. Ukrainian scholars Mariia Zolkina and Petro Burkovskyi, however, wrote in The Kyiv Independent that nuclear blackmail is influencing decision-making at the government level.
Indeed, Putin is stress testing how far Western governments will go in defending Ukraine against his colonial conquest, and threatening nuclear use is one of his instruments for doing so. Ukraine, at least emotionally and strategically, means much more to him than it does to the West — especially Crimea. Putin and Russian leaders before him have long seen Ukraine as an oblast of Russia and that these wily Ukrainians are a bunch of breakaway rebels who threaten not only Russian identity but Russian sovereignty. Ukraine was never an independent nation in the Kremlin’s eyes, always seen dismissively as “little brother.”
The Russian colonization of the region dates back hundreds of years, especially during the reign of Catherine the Great. Much of the Russian migration to the eastern steppe in Donbas began under her reign to exploit the vast mineral resources and rich agricultural fields of the region. Then you have the annexation of Crimea in 1783 after the Russian imperial army defeated the Crimean Khanate and offenses from the Ottoman Empire. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred the administrative jurisdiction of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. By this time, much of the Indigenous Crimean population was banished from the peninsula and continues to be prosecuted under Russian occupation to this day.
If Ukrainian forces were to make a successful push for Crimea, some believe Putin would order the use of a tactical nuke on the battlefield. Though, Olexander Scherba, an Ambassador-at-Large for Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says it would not stop Ukraine’s push for Crimea.
“It’s a possibility that he would be insane enough to do this irrational step,” Scherba told me. “Like this whole war is an extremely irrational step. We are absolutely aware of this possibility. Yet, nobody in Ukraine is even remotely considering stopping the fight or somehow ceding land or people. First of all, when we speak about ceding land, we speak about ceding people and sacrificing people, feeding people to this crocodile. And it’s not something that we are considering at this point.”
MAKING SENSE OF THE CRAZY
From the start of the war in 2022, Putin has repeatedly threatened Ukrainian statehood and national identity. He has often said that Ukraine does not exist and refers to leadership in Kyiv as Nazis — a curious claim given that the president of Ukraine is Jewish. As I understand my Ukrainian friends and colleagues who actively pay attention to Russian nuclear threats out of Moscow, if Russia wins this war, it is the end of their existence as a people anyway. It doesn’t matter if Putin nukes them or not. Russia calling the shots in Kyiv is akin to wiping Ukrainian identity off the planet. To a Western mind that doesn’t understand Russian history or a Moscow-centric scholar who doesn’t get Ukrainian culture, the comparison may sound ridiculous.
But to Ukrainians, it is pretty accurate. So no matter how much you hear the media and experts in the West talk about the very real use of nuclear weapons, just know people in Ukraine aren’t as bothered about it as we are. Or, as Scherna explained to me, this round of nuclear saber-rattling is just another type of crazy they have grown used to and won’t lose sleep over.
“If you grow up with someone from your childhood and this someone becomes grossly insane in his later years and tries to kill you in his later years, you’re still more familiar with this someone than people in the West who just didn’t know Russia very closely,” he said. “You have less fear because you know the soft spots of this someone. You know this someone is very loud and tries to scare everybody around him. But when it comes to doing things, he talks the talk, but he doesn’t walk the walk in most of the cases. You know this country from inside because we come from the same melting pot of the Soviet Union. That’s maybe also one of the reasons why we are less scared of Putin doing even crazier things than he has been doing so far.”
China denounced the United States’ plan to send a nuclear ballistic missile submarine to South Korea as Washington and Seoul strengthen their alliance to counter pressure from Pyongyang.
“The United States has put regional security at risk and intentionally used the issue of the [Korean] peninsula as an excuse to create tension,” she said in Beijing.
“What the US does is full of Cold War thinking, provoking bloc confrontation, undermining the nuclear non-proliferation system, damaging the strategic interests of other countries, exacerbating tensions on the Korean peninsula, undermining regional peace and stability, and running counter to the goal of the denuclearisation of the peninsula.“
Mao’s comments came after Yoon’s visit to Washington concluded with a declaration that reaffirmed a “nuclear umbrella” to protect South Korea from threats from the North. According to the declaration, US strategic assets – such as bombers and aircraft carriers – will be deployed to the Korean peninsula more regularly.
In particular, a US nuclear ballistic missile submarine will “visit” South Korea, which has not happened since the early 1980s. Biden said no nuclear weapons would be permanently based there.
“We’re not going to be stationing nuclear weapons on the peninsula,” he said in a joint press conference with Yoon at the White House. “But we will have visits to ports, visits of nuclear submarines and things like that.”
The two sides will establish a Nato-style nuclear consultative group to share information on nuclear assets and intelligence, as well as jointly plan exercises, drills and implementation plans, according to Yoon.
However, Mao’s criticism was focused on the US and did not mention South Korea’s role. She also did not say whether China would take any retaliatory measures.
In 2016, Seoul’s decision to deploy the US-supplied Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system against North Korean missiles was seen as a threat to China’s national security and sparked economic sanctions against South Korea.
‘Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa are part of racist plans,’ Hamas official says
Member of the Hamas political bureau Maher Salah has said that the Israeli settler’s plan to break into the Al-Aqsa mosque guarded by dozens of Israeli occupation soldiers is a new crime added to the continued violations against the Palestinian people.
The Hamas official noted that the Israeli crimes at the Al-Aqsa mosque are part of racist plans led by the Israeli minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir, who continues incites against the Palestinian people and encourages Israeli settlers to perpetrate crimes against Palestinians.
Salah explained that the continued Israeli settlers’ crimes require all Palestinians to mobilise efforts to defend the holy compound.
Congress is readying a bevy of bills that would effectively kill any hope the Biden administration has of inking a revamped nuclear deal with Iran, according to sources briefed on the matter.
House Republicans on Friday will begin rolling out a series of six bills designed to expand sanctions on Iran and curtail the White House’s ability to waive sanctions in future deals, according to copies of the legislation exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The bills, sponsored by members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, target Iran’s military, government leaders, and financial sector.
The legislative blitz comes as the Biden administration works to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Though the Biden administration publicly claims negotiations with Iran are on standby, lawmakers close to the issue maintain that the White House is still working behind the scenes to secure a new nuclear deal. These talks may have inspired Tehran to step up its military activity and attacks on the United States, the Free Beacon reported this month.
Study Committee chairman Kevin Hern (R., Okla.) said the legislative blitz is a warning to the White House that Republicans have “not forgotten about the Biden administration’s continuing attempts to re-enter the Iran deal.”
Winning approval in the Democrat-controlled Senate could pose a challenge, given Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s hesitance to interfere in the White House’s diplomacy with Iran. But the study committee’s national security task force, led by Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), will “play an integral role” in selling the bills to Democrats and Republicans in both chambers, Hern said. The Republican lobbying campaign will include an “extremely aggressive” push to get the bills included in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, the yearly spending bill that is jointly authored with the Senate, according to several Republican aides.
The study committee’s package would prevent the Biden administration from using executive authority to unilaterally lift sanctions on Tehran—just as the Obama administration did when it skirted Congress to ink the original accord. One of the primary vehicles to stop a new deal is a bill spearheaded by Rep. John James (R., Mich.) that would deem any agreement with Iran as a formal treaty that requires congressional approval. With a split Senate, the Biden administration would likely fail to attract the two-thirds necessary for a treaty to be enacted. This bill alone would neuter diplomacy, stopping the White House from making good on any promises to Tehran.
James’s bill would also expand sanctions on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the country’s paramilitary fighting force that has killed hundreds of Americans. Though the IRGC was designated as a terror outfit in 2019, its vast network of affiliates still remains in the clear. The bill would broaden sanctions by targeting “individuals and entities that provide significant financial or material support” to the IRGC, according to a copy of the measure. Any financial institution that does business with an IRGC front company would also be subject to sanctions under the bill.
“Despite having bipartisan opposition in Congress and no support from our Israeli and Arab allies and partners, President Biden has not fully shut the door on negotiating a flawed Iran nuclear deal,” James said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “My legislation returns congressional accountability to the Iran nuclear negotiations and forces the administration to work with us to find a resolution to address Iran’s nuclear and malign activity.”
A related measure set to be introduced by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.) would further widen IRGC sanctions to include the thousands of companies and smaller cells run by the terror organization. This IRGC’s vast network, which extends into Latin America and Europe, remains immune to most American sanctions currently on the books.
A third measure, backed by Rep. Bryan Steil (R., Wis.), would block the Biden administration from lifting terrorism sanctions unless it can prove the individual or entity has ceased engaging in these activities. Given Tehran’s vast regional terrorism enterprise, Iran would be unable to clear this threshold.
Congressional sources familiar with the bill said it is a direct response to the Obama administration’s contested decision to unilaterally skirt terrorism sanctions on Iran via a series of executive licenses.
The fourth bill, authored by Rep. Cory Mills (R., Fla.), would prohibit the Biden administration from lifting existing sanctions on Mahan Air, an Iranian fleet that ferries weapons and militant fighters across the region. Iranian officials are pushing for these sanctions to be lifted as part of any new deal with the United States.
Two other bills, from Wilson and Texas Rep. Pat Fallon (R.), would further isolate the IRGC by cutting off its access to international financial institutions.
Fallon’s bill would make it difficult for Iran’s banking sector to work with global financial institutions, while Wilson’s bill sanctions Iranian government leaders and others involved in the country’s vast security state.
“The Iranian regime continues enriching uranium, oppressing the Iranian people, and exporting missiles and terrorism,” Wilson told the Free Beacon. “Now that the Republicans are in the House majority, we will pass legislation to continue to pressure this brutal regime.”
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