Month: October 2016

The Pakistani Nuclear Triad (Daniel 8:8)

Pakistan Is Getting Eight Submarines From China

October 31, 2016
The port of Karachi.
The port of Karachi.
And in 12 years the nuclear-armed state could have a formidable deterrent under the Indian Ocean. This is how long it will take for the present arrangement, where four diesel-electric submarines are assembled in China and an additional four are built at a Karachi shipyard, to join the Pakistan Navy as commissioned vessels. Their arrival marks a huge leap forward for both the Pakistan Navy, whose own abilities are rather modest, and Islamabad’s cozy relationship with Beijing–its armorer of choice for the past 30 years.
On October 16, 2016, Chinese media outlet People.cn confirmed the deal by citing the chief executive of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC). People.cn did mention two crucial details. The first was the ballpark figure for how much eight submarines are going to cost. This was put “between 4 billion to 5 billion USD.” The second is citing a Reuters story from April 2015 that first broke the news.
What People.cn didn’t report was the designation of the “attack submarines.” It was a photo of a scale model above the article labeled “S-20” that suggested what the Pakistan Navy has its sights on: China’s latest diesel-electric attack submarine.
For Pakistan to seek out Chinese submarines isn’t as groundbreaking as it sounds. Since the 2000s Pakistan’s navy has been turning into a collection of Made in China warships. Its largest surface combatants for example, the Zulfiqar-class frigates, are Chinese designed anti-submarine warfare platforms.
Long-reliant on French, German, Turkish, and American suppliers, the large order of Chinese submarines comes at a time when the Pakistan Navy’s current fleet is both aging and nearly obsolete. With just five submarines alongside a collection of littoral “fast attack craft,” having quiet diesel electrics at its disposal would better prepare the branch for a serious confrontation with India.
A multi-billion dollar deal of this magnitude adds perspective to the Pakistan Navy’s years of false leads and negotiations with European navies for surplus vessels.
When reports first broke about Pakistan’s quest for diesel-electric submarines in mid-2015 it was immediately known these were a batch of S-20 or Yuan-class, a.k.a. Type 41, vessels. Very little is known about the Yuan-class except its reputation as an analog of the Russian Kilo-class or Project 636 submarine.
What is certain among various analysis of the Yuan-class is its conventional Air-Independent Propulsion (AIP) system allows it to travel undetected in shallow waters for longer periods. Normally, most diesel-electrics divide their time between running on batteries and then switching to diesel propulsion. There are some, however, who have claimed the AIP for these exported Yuan-class submarines won’t be included.
AIP or not, what Pakistan gains with its Yuan-class submarines is a boost for its local shipyards and a medium-term ability to maraud neighboring coastlines

Russian Nuclear Submarines Approach Aleppo

EXCLUSIVE: Russian submarines spotted off BRITISH COAST in latest Putin offensive
RUSSIA is sending three powerful submarines capable of bombing the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.

By Marco Giannangeli, Exclusive
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Oct 30, 2016 | UPDATED: 21:21, Sun, Oct 30, 2016
Russian submarine and Syrian city, Aleppo
Russian submarines have been spotted on their way to join action against rebels in Aleppo
While the world condemns the flotilla of Russian surface battleships on its way to the east Mediterranean, it is the submarines that will unleash deadly metal rain on Syria’s last rebel stronghold, experts warn.
The news comes as tensions between London and Moscow escalate following Britain’s decision to deploy tanks, fighter aircraft and up to 800 troops to Baltic war games.
A Royal Navy nuclear submarine was last night tracking two of the boats in the Irish Sea.
They are expected to join the task force, headed by Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, on Monday.
It is not the first time Russia has used its silent weapons of destruction to attack Syrian soil.
In December last year its Military Maritime Fleet successfully trialled the first firing of cruise missiles from a submarine, when the Kilo-class ‘Rostov-on-Don’ launched four Kalibr missiles, with a 4,000 km range, on ISIS targets.
It is not ISIS, however, that is expected to be the target of this newest deployment, but rather Aleppo, where 270,000 civilians remain trapped with no hope of escape.
Sources revealed that two Akula-class attack submarines, armed with the same Kalibr land attack cruise missile system, were “pinged” by a Royal Navy Trafalgar-class submarine as they sailed through the Irish Sea.
The boats, made famous by the blockbuster “Hunt for Red October” starring Sean Connery, are usually based at Severmorsk, near Murmansk.
They sail as part of the Northern Fleet, formerly known as the “Red Banner” fleet after an honour it was bestowed during the height of the Cold War in 1965.
Syrian city, Aleppo
Submarines are passing through the Irish Sea to reach the Syrian city of Aleppo
A third, a Kilo-class submarine from the same fleet, crept through the English Channel after being spotted by a Norwegian P3 Maritime Patrol aircraft while it surfaced.
While slower than their nuclear-powered counterparts , Russia’s Kilo class submarines are said to be the quietest diesel-electric submarines in the world, and are primarily designed for anti-submarine warfare.
All three have been shadowed off the South West approaches by the Royal Navy submarine, which boasts Russian-speaking technicians in its crew and tracked them in a six-hour contact.

Columbia University Warns Of Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)

New-York-Destroyed-300x224
A study by a group of prominent seismologists suggests that a pattern of subtle but active faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed. Among other things, they say that the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones. The paper appears in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.
Many faults and a few mostly modest quakes have long been known around New York City, but the research casts them in a new light. The scientists say the insight comes from sophisticated analysis of past quakes, plus 34 years of new data on tremors, most of them perceptible only by modern seismic instruments. The evidence charts unseen but potentially powerful structures whose layout and dynamics are only now coming clearer, say the scientists. All are based at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which runs the network of seismometers that monitors most of the northeastern United States.
Lead author Lynn R. Sykes said the data show that large quakes are infrequent around New York compared to more active areas like California and Japan, but that the risk is high, because of the overwhelming concentration of people and infrastructure. “The research raises the perception both of how common these events are, and, specifically, where they may occur,” he said. “It’s an extremely populated area with very large assets.” Sykes, who has studied the region for four decades, is known for his early role in establishing the global theory of plate tectonics.
The authors compiled a catalog of all 383 known earthquakes from 1677 to 2007 in a 15,000-square-mile area around New York City. Coauthor John Armbruster estimated sizes and locations of dozens of events before 1930 by combing newspaper accounts and other records. The researchers say magnitude 5 quakes—strong enough to cause damage–occurred in 1737, 1783 and 1884. There was little settlement around to be hurt by the first two quakes, whose locations are vague due to a lack of good accounts; but the last, thought to be centered under the seabed somewhere between Brooklyn and Sandy Hook, toppled chimneys across the city and New Jersey, and panicked bathers at Coney Island. Based on this, the researchers say such quakes should be routinely expected, on average, about every 100 years. “Today, with so many more buildings and people, a magnitude 5 centered below the city would be extremely attention-getting,” said Armbruster. “We’d see billions in damage, with some brick buildings falling. People would probably be killed.”
Starting in the early 1970s Lamont began collecting data on quakes from dozens of newly deployed seismometers; these have revealed further potential, including distinct zones where earthquakes concentrate, and where larger ones could come. The Lamont network, now led by coauthor Won-Young Kim, has located hundreds of small events, including a magnitude 3 every few years, which can be felt by people at the surface, but is unlikely to cause damage. These small quakes tend to cluster along a series of small, old faults in harder rocks across the region. Many of the faults were discovered decades ago when subways, water tunnels and other excavations intersected them, but conventional wisdom said they were inactive remnants of continental collisions and rifting hundreds of millions of years ago. The results clearly show that they are active, and quite capable of generating damaging quakes, said Sykes.
One major previously known feature, the Ramapo Seismic Zone, runs from eastern Pennsylvania to the mid-Hudson Valley, passing within a mile or two northwest of Indian Point. The researchers found that this system is not so much a single fracture as a braid of smaller ones, where quakes emanate from a set of still ill-defined faults. East and south of the Ramapo zone—and possibly more significant in terms of hazard–is a set of nearly parallel northwest-southeast faults. These include Manhattan’s 125th Street fault, which seems to have generated two small 1981 quakes, and could have been the source of the big 1737 quake; the Dyckman Street fault, which carried a magnitude 2 in 1989; the Mosholu Parkway fault; and the Dobbs Ferry fault in suburban Westchester, which generated the largest recent shock, a surprising magnitude 4.1, in 1985. Fortunately, it did no damage. Given the pattern, Sykes says the big 1884 quake may have hit on a yet-undetected member of this parallel family further south.
The researchers say that frequent small quakes occur in predictable ratios to larger ones, and so can be used to project a rough time scale for damaging events. Based on the lengths of the faults, the detected tremors, and calculations of how stresses build in the crust, the researchers say that magnitude 6 quakes, or even 7—respectively 10 and 100 times bigger than magnitude 5–are quite possible on the active faults they describe. They calculate that magnitude 6 quakes take place in the area about every 670 years, and sevens, every 3,400 years. The corresponding probabilities of occurrence in any 50-year period would be 7% and 1.5%. After less specific hints of these possibilities appeared in previous research, a 2003 analysis by The New York City Area Consortium for Earthquake Loss Mitigation put the cost of quakes this size in the metro New York area at $39 billion to $197 billion. A separate 2001 analysis for northern New Jersey’s Bergen County estimates that a magnitude 7 would destroy 14,000 buildings and damage 180,000 in that area alone. The researchers point out that no one knows when the last such events occurred, and say no one can predict when they next might come.
“We need to step backward from the simple old model, where you worry about one large, obvious fault, like they do in California,” said coauthor Leonardo Seeber. “The problem here comes from many subtle faults. 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. We need to take a very close look.” Seeber says that because the faults are mostly invisible at the surface and move infrequently, a big quake could easily hit one not yet identified. “The probability is not zero, and the damage could be great,” he said. “It could be like something out of a Greek myth.”
The researchers found concrete evidence for one significant previously unknown structure: an active seismic zone running at least 25 miles from Stamford, Conn., to the Hudson Valley town of Peekskill, N.Y., where it passes less than a mile north of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The Stamford-Peekskill line stands out sharply on the researchers’ earthquake map, with small events clustered along its length, and to its immediate southwest. Just to the north, there are no quakes, indicating that it represents some kind of underground boundary. It is parallel to the other faults beginning at 125th Street, so the researchers believe it is a fault in the same family. Like the others, they say it is probably capable of producing at least a magnitude 6 quake. Furthermore, a mile or so on, it intersects the Ramapo seismic zone.
Sykes said the existence of the Stamford-Peekskill line had been suggested before, because the Hudson takes a sudden unexplained bend just ot the north of Indian Point, and definite traces of an old fault can be along the north side of the bend. The seismic evidence confirms it, he said. “Indian Point is situated at the intersection of the two most striking linear features marking the seismicity and also in the midst of a large population that is at risk in case of an accident,” says the paper. “This is clearly one of the least favorable sites in our study area from an earthquake hazard and risk perspective.”
The findings comes at a time when Entergy, the owner of Indian Point, is trying to relicense the two operating plants for an additional 20 years—a move being fought by surrounding communities and the New York State Attorney General. Last fall the attorney general, alerted to the then-unpublished Lamont data, told a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel in a filing: “New data developed in the last 20 years disclose a substantially higher likelihood of significant earthquake activity in the vicinity of [Indian Point] that could exceed the earthquake design for the facility.” The state alleges that Entergy has not presented new data on earthquakes past 1979. However, in a little-noticed decision this July 31, the panel rejected the argument on procedural grounds. A source at the attorney general’s office said the state is considering its options.
The characteristics of New York’s geology and human footprint may increase the problem. Unlike in California, many New York quakes occur near the surface—in the upper mile or so—and they occur not in the broken-up, more malleable formations common where quakes are frequent, but rather in the extremely hard, rigid rocks underlying Manhattan and much of the lower Hudson Valley. Such rocks can build large stresses, then suddenly and efficiently transmit energy over long distances. “It’s like putting a hard rock in a vise,” said Seeber. “Nothing happens for a while. Then it goes with a bang.” Earthquake-resistant building codes were not introduced to New York City until 1995, and are not in effect at all in many other communities. Sinuous skyscrapers and bridges might get by with minimal damage, said Sykes, but many older, unreinforced three- to six-story brick buildings could crumble.
Art Lerner-Lam, associate director of Lamont for seismology, geology and tectonophysics, pointed out that the region’s major highways including the New York State Thruway, commuter and long-distance rail lines, and the main gas, oil and power transmission lines all cross the parallel active faults, making them particularly vulnerable to being cut. Lerner-Lam, who was not involved in the research, said that the identification of the seismic line near Indian Point “is a major substantiation of a feature that bears on the long-term earthquake risk of the northeastern United States.” He called for policymakers to develop more information on the region’s vulnerability, to take a closer look at land use and development, and to make investments to strengthen critical infrastructure.
“This is a landmark study in many ways,” said Lerner-Lam. “It gives us the best possible evidence that we have an earthquake hazard here that should be a factor in any planning decision. It crystallizes the argument that this hazard is not random. There is a structure to the location and timing of the earthquakes. This enables us to contemplate risk in an entirely different way. And since we are able to do that, we should be required to do that.”
New York Earthquake Briefs and Quotes:
Existing U.S. Geological Survey seismic hazard maps show New York City as facing more hazard than many other eastern U.S. areas. Three areas are somewhat more active—northernmost New York State, New Hampshire and South Carolina—but they have much lower populations and fewer structures. The wider forces at work include pressure exerted from continuing expansion of the mid-Atlantic Ridge thousands of miles to the east; slow westward migration of the North American continent; and the area’s intricate labyrinth of old faults, sutures and zones of weakness caused by past collisions and rifting.
Due to New York’s past history, population density and fragile, interdependent infrastructure, a 2001 analysis by the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranks it the 11th most at-risk U.S. city for earthquake damage. Among those ahead: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. Behind: Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Anchorage.
New York’s first seismic station was set up at Fordham University in the 1920s. Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in Palisades, N.Y., has operated stations since 1949, and now coordinates a network of about 40.
Dozens of small quakes have been felt in the New York area. A Jan. 17, 2001 magnitude 2.4, centered in the Upper East Side—the first ever detected in Manhattan itself–may have originated on the 125th Street fault. Some people thought it was an explosion, but no one was harmed.
The most recent felt quake, a magnitude 2.1 on July 28, 2008, was centered near Milford, N.J. Houses shook and a woman at St. Edward’s Church said she felt the building rise up under her feet—but no damage was done.
Questions about the seismic safety of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which lies amid a metropolitan area of more than 20 million people, were raised in previous scientific papers in 1978 and 1985.
Because the hard rocks under much of New York can build up a lot strain before breaking, researchers believe that modest faults as short as 1 to 10 kilometers can cause magnitude 5 or 6 quakes.
In general, magnitude 3 quakes occur about 10 times more often than magnitude fours; 100 times more than magnitude fives; and so on. This principle is called the Gutenberg-Richter relationship.

The Nuclear Psychosis of the Scarlet Woman (Rev 17)

Turns out the Clintons have been right all along: Lying really does work.
Poring through all these purloined emails, you get the sense that these people spend every breathing second of their day either lying, plotting to tell lies or lying about lies they told in the past.
And each batch of stolen emails is worse than the last.
Hillary Clinton is a liar. She has terrible instincts. She doesn’t believe in anything. Her head is broken. She doesn’t know why she should be president. She is pathological. And she is psychotic.
Just ask everybody who works for her. Just ask campaign chairman John Podesta. Just ask the people working the hardest to get her elected president.
I mean, in her most rabid streak of attacks on Donald Trump’s alleged unfitness for office, Mrs. Clinton doesn’t call him “psychotic.”
Psychotic! That is what her campaign chairman called her.
Remember back when President Bill Clinton got into all that trouble molesting the young intern in his Oral Office? Remember the first thing the lying, conniving, dissembling commander-in-cheek did?
Take a poll. And he found out that he could skate by on even this — even this! But first — the poll told him — he had to stall for time. He had to lie about it for as long as he possibly could before coming clean.
And that was exactly what he did. And he survived.
And good thing he survived so he could go on to haunt America another 15 years later.
In the latest batch of leaked emails, one top Democratic operative is still grappling with “WJC Issues.”
“How is what Bill Clinton did different from what Bill Cosby did?” Ron Klain asks in a list of questions worth posing to Mrs. Clinton.
“You said every woman should be believed. Why not the women who accused him?”
And, perhaps the best: “Will you apologize to the women who were wrongly smeared by your husband and his allies?”
Answer: Not likely.
Never apologize. Never admit. And always keep lying.
Lie about emails. Lie about servers. Lie about national security. Lie about who knew what when. Lie about spilling classified secrets. Lie about dead soldiers.
Exhaust the people with lies. And then, very flippantly, after months or years of lying, say whatever you have to say to make the press go away.
“I am sorry you were confused.”
“I have already said I wish I had done it differently.”
“What difference, at this point, does it make?”
It is all so shameless and dirty and befuddling that it would make Niccolo Machiavelli blush.
• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.

Approaching The Nuclear Prelude (Revelation 8)

SAAGAR ENJETI
1:52 PM 10/29/2016
India and Pakistan each expelled a high-ranking opposing diplomat Thursday amid increasing tensions over the disputed northern territory of Kashmir.
India expelled the Pakistani diplomat on charges of “espionage activities” on India’s security capabilities on the Kashmiri border. Pakistan angrily responded that the charges were “false and unsubstantiated” before itself expelling a member of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
Tensions between the two countries skyrocketed after India suppressed a civilian uprising in Kashmir, culminating in the Indian killing of Kashmiri militant leader Burhan Wani. Wani was a major agitator against Indian administration of Kashmir, and frequently posted social media videos calling for violent uprising. His death sparked widespread protests across Kashmir, and was strongly condemned by the Pakistani government.
As angry rhetoric about terrorist sponsorship increased on both sides, a border clash between the two security forces erupted Sept. 17. Islamist militants stormed into an Indian Army base and gunned down 17 Indian soldiers, which the Indian government immediately blamed on Pakistan. “I am deeply disappointed with Pakistan’s continued and direct support to terrorism and terrorist groups,” India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Twitter after the attack.
The Indian government claimed two weeks later Oct. 3 to have conducted “surgical strikes” by special forces across the Pakistani line of control in Kashmir. Indian incursion into Pakistan without prior notice again inflamed tensions to higher levels. The Pakistani government denies any such raid took place.
Experts say Pakistan’s government insists the strikes did not took place, because if they did so they would be forced to respond. “The Pakistani military would be forced to retaliate in the event of a more prominent strike,” retired Indian Army Col. Ajai Shukla wrote in a New Delhi paper.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi even pulled out of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation scheduled for November. Modi then went so far as to denounce Pakistan as the “mothership of terrorism” at a Oct. 26 meeting with Russian, Chinese and Brazilian heads of state. Modi’s escalation rhetoric is meant to put pressure on Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to crackdown on terrorist militant groups operating inside his borders.
The problem is Sharif has a limited amount of authority over the Pakistani Army, which is seen as the main sponsor of the militant groups. “Prime Minister Sharif knows better than most that there are limits to how far he can push the army without the army pushing him out the door,” he elaborated. Sharif was ousted in a 1999 coup d’état by Pakistani Army Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
The tensions even extend to the cultural realm. Nationalist fervor is sweeping India in the wake of the September attacks, as prominent Indian film directors came out pledging not to hire Pakistani actors, or screen films with Pakistani cast members. Pakistan angrily responded by banning all Indian radio and television shows from the country, despite their widespread popularity.
While nationalist fervor and strong rhetoric is good for Modi domestically, it is amplifying support for the army in Pakistan, according to Myra MacDonald’s, author of “Defeat Is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War.”
“When we get to the next terror attack, which is probably only a matter of time, the prime minister has boxed himself in, and he can’t take the route his predecessors did and choose to use solely diplomatic alternatives without some loss of face,” Brookings Institution fellow Bruce Riedel told The New York Times Oct. 23.

The History Of New York Earthquakes: Before The Sixth Seal (Rev 6:12)

 
The Historic Earthquakes
Near New York City, New York
1884 08 10 19:07 UTC
Magnitude 5.5
Intensity VII
USGS.gov
This severe earthquake affected an area roughly extending along the Atlantic Coast from southern Maine to central Virginia and westward to Cleveland, Ohio. Chimneys were knocked down and walls were cracked in several States, including Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. Many towns from Hartford, Connecticut, to West Chester,Pennsylvania.
Property damage was severe at Amityville and Jamaica, New York, where several chimneys were “overturned” and large cracks formed in walls. Two chimneys were thrown down and bricks were shaken from other chimneys at Stratford (Fairfield County), Conn.; water in the Housatonic River was agitated violently. At Bloomfield, N.J., and Chester, Pa., several chimneys were downed and crockery was broken. Chimneys also were damaged at Mount Vernon, N.Y., and Allentown, Easton, and Philadelphia, Pa. Three shocks occurred, the second of which was most violent. This earthquake also was reported felt in Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Several slight aftershocks were reported on August 11.

The Camadian Nuclear Horn (Daniel 7)

BY DAVID PUGLIESE, OTTAWA CITIZEN
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: OCT 28, 2016O
Thursday at the United Nations there was a vote on establishing negotiations for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. 123 nations voted in favour of the resolution.
But those nations with nuclear weapons, including the U.S., Russia, China, North Korea, France and others voted against it, Bloomberg news service noted in its article. Canada also voted against the resolution (38 nations, including many NATO nations, opposed the effort to ban nuclear weapons….16 others abstained).Co-sponsored by 57 nations, the resolution calls for a conference next year “to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination.”
“Opposing its call for a nuclear-free world is awkward for world leaders, and none more so than U.S. President Barack Obama,” Bloomberg news service noted in its article. “He’s preparing to leave office seven years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in large part for what the award panel called his ‘vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.’ ”
Peggy Mason, Former Canadian Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN, now President of the Rideau Institute released the following statement after Canada’s UN vote today against Resolution L.41:
“The First Committee on Disarmament and International Security of the UN General Assembly today passed an historic resolution, mandating the launch in 2017 of negotiations for a legally binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons. Such a ban would reinforce customary international law against the threat or use of nuclear weapons and pave the way for further negotiations on their verifiable destruction and ultimate elimination.
Tensions between Russia and the USA are dangerously high. Massive nuclear weapons modernization programmes are underway. The negotiation to be launched by this resolution is the best hope the international community has to move away from the nuclear brink.
Canada’s vote against this resolution puts this country, quite simply, on the wrong side of history. Canada was one of only a handful of countries to vote NO. In so doing we joined with most other NATO member states, in blatant contradiction of our legal obligation under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) Article VI to enter into good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. This is the exact opposite of what Canada should be doing. We should be working as hard as we can to reduce NATO’s unconscionable and unnecessary reliance on nuclear weapons, not using that reliance as a reason for opposing nuclear disarmament negotiations at the UN. In that regard, we note that fellow NATO member, Netherlands, withstood American pressure and abstained rather than voting no.
Canada has another opportunity to put this right when the General Assembly votes on this resolution in early December. We call on Canada to change its vote ideally to a YES but, at a minimum, to an abstention and at the same time to signal its intent to contribute constructively to the negotiation, once launched. These actions would be worthy of a country seeking to be elected to the UN Security Council in 2021.”

Russians Ready For Nuclear War (Revelation 15)

By CYRUS ENGINEER
08:16, Fri, Oct 28, 2016 |
In recent weeks Vladimir Putin’s armed forces have made a series of bold statements and announcements – including showing off new advanced weaponry and carrying out large military exercises.
Jens Stoltenberg told the Today programme on Radio 4: “Russia is stronger than Russia was some years ago.
“And Russia is a power which is willing to use military force against neighbours.
Tensions with Russia and Nato are at a high level
A nuclear power which is using nuclear rhetoric to intimidate other European nations
“We have seen substantial use of military force and add to that Russia is a nuclear power. A nuclear power which is using nuclear rhetoric to intimidate other European nations.
“We take this seriously and that is why Nato is adapting and responding in a measured defensive way.”
He continued: “We don’t seek confrontation with Russia, we don’t want a new Cold War.
“We will continue to strive for a more cooperative and constructive relationship with Russia.

Doctors Too Late For The Scarlet Woman

This 2014 file photo shows an inert Minuteman 3 missile in a training launch tube at Minot Air Force Base, N.D. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
Our presidential candidates each claim, to borrow a phrase, “the best temperament.” What do they mean? Well, simple: I am less likely than my opponent to end life on Earth.
We know this because the competing boasts about temperament arise in the context of whose fingers should or should not be allowed near our planet-threatening nuclear arsenal.
Presidents George W. Bush and Obama have warned that keeping nuclear missiles on hair-trigger alert is reckless. There have been multiple near-misses and near-launches — cases where confusion or computer glitches forced leaders to make decisions in just a few sweaty, terrifying minutes about whether to Release the Kraken. And yet, in a failure of imagination and leadership, nothing has been done.
Control of this God-like power will soon be transferred to a new president. But do we really want to trust anyone with this situation? Not just with the power to order a nuclear strike — but the responsibility of deciding whether to do so in just minutes, on the basis of sketchy, preliminary information?
There’s been scant comment this political season on why it’s still like this. But that is finally starting to change, and as we move past the November election, the end of nuclear weapons could be the next big thing.
Back in the 1960s, a handful of doctors in Boston formed Physicians for Social Responsibility, and started putting the word out — in part via medical school symposia — that the risks of nuclear war were high, the concept itself an immoral catastrophe. By the 1980s, they had linked with doctors in the Soviet Union to found International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The two groups shared the Nobel Peace Prize for 1985.
Thirty years later, concerned doctors again find themselves sounding the alarm, at a time when the dangers of nuclear war are as great as ever. Physicians for Social Responsibility revived the symposia of the 1980s earlier this month in Boston, with a meeting unique for having been sponsored by every medical and public health school in the city, including Harvard, Tufts and Boston universities and UMass.
This renewed push by doctors, scientists and concerned citizens is happening around the world. The Chicago-based Doomsday Clock, which conveys “how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making,” is now at three minutes to midnight — midnight meaning apocalypse. The last time the scientists and Nobel laureates who set the clock’s hands put us this close to midnight was in the Cold War 1980s.
Yet just as in the 1980s, there is also a groundswell anti-nuclear movement again building, and the banning and elimination of nuclear weapons is suddenly a surprising short-term possibility.
Moves To Ban, To ‘De-Alert’
“There’s no reason why you’d think, from living in the U.S., that there is any kind of big international movement to deal with nuclear weapons. But there is,” John Loretz, program director for International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said at the recent Boston symposium.
Even as he spoke, in New York a breakthrough resolution sponsored by dozens of countries, including Ireland, Mexico and Austria, was wending its way through the United Nations. This week, resolution L.41 was approved by a U.N. committee and now goes to a full General Assembly vote some time in December. If it ultimately passes as expected, it will lead to negotiations in early 2017 for a legally binding treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
Nukes would join chemical weapons, biological weapons and landmines as illegal under international law. That won’t make them go away — countries, including ours, can ignore the law. But to quote the Austrian foreign minister, “Experience shows that the first step to eliminate weapons of mass destruction is to prohibit them through legally binding norms.”
This might also encourage our next U.S. president to de-alert nuclear weapons — meaning, take them off of hair-trigger status. Presidents ranging ideologically from Bush to Obama initially favored a de-alert, but then backed down while in office. And yet the process could be as simple as a presidential order declaring that even if we suspect we are under attack, we will not order a nuclear strike of any kind without a mandatory waiting period. Obviously, we would invite the Russians to do the same.
Remember, both nations have nuclear-armed submarines. So if you believe in deterrence, there’s no credibility lost by insisting on a 24-hour waiting period before blazing away. Florida has a three-day waiting period to buy a handgun. Why can’t the U.S. have a similar waiting period before buying an extinction-level event?
‘Before Your Luck Runs Out’
It would be hard to overstate the urgency of this work. There’s a whole rest of the world out there, with its own simmering conflicts and fanatical ideas. India and Pakistan, for example, have recently seen their worst violence over Kashmir in decades.
These nations fought wars in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999, with 47,000 deaths. The last war came as both had just tested their first nuclear devices. Now they collectively have about 230 nuclear weapons. Climate disruption is increasing tensions between them, as they bicker over control of limited water supplies.
“Among all the pairings of nuclear weapons states, [India and Pakistan] are the ones that actually have an established history of going to war with each other over and over and over again,” said Zia Mian, a physicist and the director of Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security.
All September, “hysterical TV presenters” in India and Pakistan were demanding massive military responses, including nuclear strikes, Mian told the Boston symposium. By October, things had calmed, he said, but “there are only so many times that you can go through this before your luck runs out.”
Dr. Ira Helfand, who heads the Boston chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, followed up with a scientific forecast of the outcome if India and Pakistan were to exchange half of their nuclear weapons: 20 million lives lost immediately, catastrophic global cooling in a week, crop failures from America’s corn to China’s rice, famine deaths for up to 2 billion people.
The same would go for any exchange of 100 of the world’s 15,000-plus nuclear weapons.
‘Banned Once And For All’
The growing drive to ban nuclear weapons has support from around the world: health authorities, the Red Cross, mayors of more than 7,000 cities, former Cold Warriors like George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense William Perry. Pope Francis wants nuclear weapons “banned once and for all.”
Last week, U.N. resolution L.41 was endorsed by 15 Nobel Peace Prize winners, including Tibet’s Dalai Lama and South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu. On Thursday, the European Union Parliament became the latest entity to endorse the idea.
A trillion dollars! That’s the largest public expenditure scheduled for the coming decades — and it’s been conspicuously absent from the national discussion. Instead, our presidential candidates trade boasts over who is backed by more generals or admirals.
By all means, vote for your candidate of choice, but keep the big picture in mind. We need imaginative, far-reaching leadership to rapidly scale down to zero the world’s nuclear arsenals.
Dr. Matt Bivens, an emergency department physician at St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford and at Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston, is on the steering committee of Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Sixth Seal: New York City (Revelation 6:12)

EARTHQUAKE HAZARD (Source: US Geological Survey)

NY hazard
New York State Geological Survey
Damaging earthquakes have occurred in New York and surely will again. The likelihood of a damaging earthquake in New York is small overall but the possibility is higher in the northern part of the state and in the New York City region. Significant earthquakes, both located in Rockaway and larger than magnitude 5, shook New York City in 1737 and 1884. The quakes were 147 years apart and the most recent was 122 year ago. It is likely that another earthquake of the same size will occur in that area in the next 25 to 50 years. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake in New York City would probably not cause great loss of life. However the damage to infrastructure – buildings, steam and gas lines, water mains, electric and fiber optic cable – could be extensive.
Earthquake Hazard Map of New York State
Acceleration of the ground during an earthquake is more important than total movement in causing structural damage. This map shows the two-percent probability of the occurrence of an earthquake that exceeds the acceleration of earth’s gravity by a certain percentage in the next fifty years.
If a person stands on a rug and the rug pulled slowly, the person will maintain balance and will not fall. But if the rug is jerked quickly, the person will topple. The same principle is true for building damage during an earthquake. Structural damage is caused more by the acceleration of the ground than by the distance the ground moves.
Earthquake hazard maps show the probability that the ground will move at a certain rate, measured as a percentage of earth’s gravity, during a particular time. Motion of one or two percent of gravity will rattle windows, doors, and dishes. Acceleration of ten to twenty percent of gravity will cause structural damage to buildings. It takes more than one hundred percent of gravity to throw objects into the air.