Too Late To Prevent The Spill: The Sixth Seal

WATCH: ‘The beginning of the end of NY’s nuclear power?’

By Paul Gallay on December 15, 2014

 

Has the endgame begun for Indian Point? Sure looks that way.

Riverkeeper is fighting on every legal front to stop this dangerous, aging plant from operating, and there’s no doubt we are closing in.

Riverkeeper has raised awareness about the hazards posed by this plant – including the 2,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste that are stored onsite, on the banks of the Hudson River, with no solution in sight. Our commissioning of reports by Synapse Energy Economics helped document the availability of replacement power once the facility is decommissioned. And our attorneys wrapped up arguments that will deny Entergy, the plant’s owner, a means to renew the licenses it needs to continue operating.

Even Entergy seems to have gotten the memo. The plant’s owners are saying openly that it’s time to reach a deal with New York State about the the plant’s closure: An industry publication quotes CEO Leo Denault that Entergy “would be willing to strike a ‘constructive’ agreement with New York officials on early closure of the controversial Indian Point nuclear plant, provided that Entergy received ‘certainty’ and proper compensation for near-term operation … to meet grid reliability and environmental needs while the state pursues a major revamp of its electricity system.”

The state has already signaled its confidence that New York can do without Indian Point’s power. The state Public Service Commission ruled in November 2013 that New York can count on other sources of safe, reliable, affordable energy.

The transformation is already happening, with energy supplies and transmission lines that are in some cases built, in other cases breaking ground. The future is arriving sooner, perhaps, than Entergy thought it would.

– See more at: http://www.riverkeeper.org/blog/watchdog/watch-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-nys-nuclear-power/#sthash.fJtko3g0.dpuf

Antichrist Wants American Blood (Rev 13:18)

Moqtada al Sadr and his followers in Iraq are ‘thirsty for Americans’ blood’

Andrew Tilghman, Military Times 5:02 a.m. EDT July 30, 2016

(Photo: Hadi Mizban/AP)

For the first time in years, the Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr and his militia are unleashing fiery anti-American rhetoric and threatening to attack U.S. troops.

But top U.S. military officials have downplayed his remarks, saying that for now there’s no cause for concern.

Sadr rose to prominence when his Mahdi Army battled U.S. troops after the 2003 invasion. He has quietly tolerated the comparatively small U.S. military force there now supporting the war on Islamic State extremists. But the powerful cleric became confrontational again after Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced plans on July 11 to send an additional 560 U.S. troops to Iraq, bringing the total to more than 4,600.

Size of force in Iraq may grow as U.S. helps rebuild airfield

“They are a target for us,” Sadr said in a post on his official website on July 17.

A few days later, an official spokesman for Sadr’s militia, Alaa Abboud, echoed the threat.
“We are thirsty for Americans’ blood,” Abboud told a prominent Iraqi television news channel.
Any attacks by Sadr’s militia would fundamentally change the Pentagon’s view of its mission to defeat the Sunni-led Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. If U.S. forces were faced with a violent enemy inside Shiite-controlled territory, where many American troops are based, the heightened risk could prompt senior commanders to rethink their strategy or bring some troops home.

China And The Pakistani Nuclear Horn (Daniel 8:8)

 

China will next bolster Pakistan Navy: Expert

Suhasini Haidar

China’s military cooperation with Pakistan will involve bolstering the Pakistani navy next, an expert on China-Pakistan relations said on Friday, pointing to Pakistan’s planned acquisition of eight submarines from China as one of the “biggest and most significant” markers of their relationship.

“China will continue to bolster Pakistan’s military, and the navy is clearly the next phase of this,” Andrew Small, author of the “China-Pakistan axis: Asia’s new geopolitics” told The Hindu, adding the move would be driven by China’s increasing commitment to the economic corridor running from Xinjiang to Pakistan’s Gwadar port.

In October 2015, Pakistan had announced its decision to acquire eight Type 41 Yuan-class diesel-electric submarines, half of which may be built in Pakistan while the other half would be made in China and transferred.

According to Mr. Small, who visited Delhi recently, China’s $40 billion investment in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will make a larger naval presence in the Gwadar port a necessity. However, he added there were “benefits for India” if the CPEC resulted in an “economically stable Pakistan”. “One mustn’t discount the benefits to the region too, if China is able to restrain Pakistan’s activities in Afghanistan.” Mr. Small pointed to Pakistan’s statement of support to China over the South China Sea verdict as another significant marker of the relationship, but added that concerns in India about China’s forays in the Indian Ocean were “premature.”

In stronger position

“Asia Pacific peace weighs more heavily for the Chinese leadership, intrinsically, at the moment. You have the pattern of submarines in Sri Lanka, Maldives, and in Pakistan and I think they expect to be able to expand their presence in the Indian Ocean, but they are substantially weaker there. The Indians and the Americans are in a substantially stronger position there,” Mr. Small said.

Ties between India and China have been under a strain for several reasons, including the economic corridor that India has objected to as it traverses through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. On China’s opposition to India’s Nuclear Suppliers Group membership, Mr. Small believes Beijing will continue to stick to its stand that India’s membership was contingent on a “process”. However, he added that if a process would allow India to become a member later this year and would open a door for Pakistan, it would be a “harder call” for China to hold out.

The Problems With Obama’s Iran Deal (Ezekiel 17)

 

The problems with the Iran nuclear deal

28 July 2016

By INU Staff

INU – A prominent European politician has criticised the Iran nuclear deal for numerous flaws and say that the West must not allow the mullah’s regime to flout the terms of the deal.

Struan Stevenson, the President of the European Iraqi Freedom Association (EIFA), wrote an op-ed piece for The Diplomat in which he asked whether the deal would collapse under mounting tension regarding uncovered flaws.

The Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed in July 2015 and was celebrated as a foreign policy breakthrough by Western governments but a lot of the terms and conditions were secret; only now being revealed.

The Associated Press published a leaked document which showed that Iran would be able to enrich uranium again in 2026, rather than 2030 as previously reported. The regime reacted angrily claiming that the leak violated the deal and the President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Dr. Ali Akbar Salehi said that this leak will permit Iran to enrich uranium at a higher capacity than before the agreement was made.

Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, said: “The hostile measures against the nuclear deal have reached a point where Iran was left with no choice but to confront.”

Stevenson, a former Member of the European Parliament for Scotland, wrote: “It has now become clear that the deal was quite one-sided, containing page after page of clauses relating to the lifting of sanctions, in return for which we got very little, apart from a few scant paragraphs detailing Iranian cooperation in slowing down its nuclear enrichment process for a period of up to 15 years, which we now know in fact to be much less. As far as scrutiny of the nuclear program is concerned, regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are limited to the Natanz site in Isfahan Province, the country’s main underground nuclear facility with over 19,000 operational centrifuges.”

He pointed out the Natanz was only revealed to the West by the opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI); Iran had been keeping it secret. If they kept Natanz secret, how can we trust that they aren’t keeping another site secret?

Stevenson, who was also President of the Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Iraq and the Chair of Friends of a Free Iran Intergroup until 2014, stated: “It should be remembered that Iran entered into nuclear negotiations because, following the whistleblowing of the Iranian resistance, sanctions had crippled the Iranian economy. Nevertheless, to capitulate to almost every Iranian demand exposed a level of weakness that has been eagerly exploited by the mullahs ever since. The lifting of sanctions released an estimated $150 billion in frozen assets, providing a windfall for a regime whose biggest export is terror; a regime which funds Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the brutal Shi’ite militias in Iraq.”

Iran’s excessive call for retaliation against the West cannot be overlooked; Russia has delivered S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to them and North Korean missile experts have visited them.
Despite drawing criticism from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launching nuclear tests in violation of the deal, Iran has not stopped. In fact, Iran threatened to tear up the nuclear pact.
Stevenson recommended that the US monitor the situation closely and adopt tough measures where necessary.

He said: “The West must not be passive when dealing with Iran’s continuous violations of the nuclear agreement and its aggressive regional interventions, terrorism, and human rights violations. It was hard-hitting sanctions that forced the mullahs to sit down to negotiate and thus we should take a tough line by imposing new sanctions for any further violations.”

New York Not Destroyed By Nuke, But By The Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)

At a news conference at the end of Nuclear Security Summit at The Hague on March 25, President Obama sought to put in perspective any threat to U.S. national security that Russia’s annexation of Crimea might pose.

“I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan.”

In a new book titled Overcoming Pakistan’s Nuclear Dangers (IISS Adelphi), Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London maintains that, as reported by Agence France-Press, that “the risk of a much-discussed scenario in which Islamic extremists seize nuclear weapons was exaggerated, and that the larger danger was that Pakistan-linked militants would launch a new attack inside India and trigger a devastating nuclear war.”

Even if confined to South and Central Asia, a nuclear war would have devastating consequences to the world. But, when it comes to a nuclear attack on New York, the source is much less unlikely (or marginally more likely) to be Islamist extremists than Russia.

Thus when President Obama states that he’s more concerned with a nuclear strike on Manhattan, he’s actually speaking about a Russian attack without necessarily realizing it. In the same vein, if President Putin voiced similar concerns about Moscow, the source of a nuclear attack is much less likely to be Islamist extremists than the United States. In other words, nuclear war remains the domain of the superpowers.

Russ Wellen edits the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points for the Institute of Policy Studies. A student of the metaphysics of nuclear weapons, he has written about disarmament for a variety of publications such as AlterNet, Asia Times Online, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Psychohistory, and Truthout. Originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

The Shia Horns of Prophecy (Daniel 8:3)

Militant Clergy—the Future of Shia Islam?

Published on July 28th, 2016 | by Guest
by Saeid Golkar

Mohammad Aqamiri might be the first-ever Shia cleric from Iran who martyred himself in Syria after the Syrian uprising. While studying and teaching at Qom Seminary in 2013, Aqamiri enlisted in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and died defending the holy shrine in Syria.

He is not alone. Some 400 Iranians have been killed so far in Syria fighting for Bashar al-Assad and against the Islamic State (ISIS or IS). Iran has identified 18 of these as Shia clergymen. These clerics have a dual identity, claiming the status of religious leaders yet at the same time participating in and even leading a violent, religious struggle. Their militarization is a new development that threatens to further radicalize Shia Islam.

Shia Islam was once a religion of quietism. Historically, Shia clergy disagreed with coupling politics and religion. However, in 1970 Shia Islam started to become more involved in politics under the influence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty. After the Iranian revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, clergy also became involved in the state’s bureaucratic affairs and some began to join military and security apparatuses.

In 1988, Iran’s supreme leader died, and Ali Khamenei became the new supreme leader. He was middle-ranked clergy and did not enjoy too much legitimacy among the higher-ranking clerical establishment. To compensate for this lack of legitimacy, he tried to control the seminary school system (howzeh). Shia seminary schools were traditionally independent from the state, but Khamenei tried to bureaucratize the schools and bring them under state control. He expanded the presence of clergy in the military and security establishment, mainly drawing from the younger generation of clergy. This younger generation in the seminaries is the social base of Ayatollah Khamenei, who controls the clergy and the military at the same time.

After reformists took power in 1997, Ayatollah Khamenei relied more on this group to block reform and consolidate his power and authority when challenged. Since hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took power in 2005, the power of this clergy militia has expanded, particularly among the political elite. These clergy militants are notable for their loyalty to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and their numbers have skyrocketed since 1988. About 4,000 serve with Iran’s armed forces; no fewer than 2,000 work for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These officers have studied at Iranian seminaries. They are known to wear clerical clothes on duty but work in security and the military. They work mainly for the armed forces’ ideological political bureaus and counter-intelligence branches to indoctrinate and oversee military personnel. Their position of influence and power can, in essence, be compared to a Communist political commissar.

Not only are these new militant clergy joining the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, another 140,000 of the 400,000 clergy and seminary students in Iran are members of the Basij, a branch of the state militia. Although a majority is lower ranked, some have advanced military and security training. The clerical Basij is mainly responsible for controlling seminary schools, but many have also become involved in military combat units set up to help the Islamic Republic suppress social or political riots and defend the regime in a possible civil war.

Since the beginning of the uprising against Assad, some of these new clerical militia have been deployed to Syria and Iraq and have joined in fighting the Salafi groups, or Sunni radicals. The phenomenon has even spread outside Iran, ensnaring some international students studying at Iranian seminaries to become clergy, particularly in the Qom and Mashad seminaries. These seminary students comprise the core of Shia militia groups in the Middle East. The examples are numerous:
Several members of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an Afghan Shia militia allied with Assad, are Afghan seminary graduates of Al-Mustafa International University in Qom. As a clergy militia, this group has a connection with the masses and can recruit Afghan immigrants in Iran to be deployed to Syria to fight with the Assad regime. These include Ali Reza Tavassoli, also known as Abu Hamed, the late former commander of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, and his deputy, the late Reza Bakhshi, also known as Faateh. Mohammad Rezai, another Afghan member of Fatemiyoun, later killed in Syria, studied at a branch of Al-Mustafa University in Mashhad.

The Zeynabiyoun Brigade has recruited Pakistani Shia seminary students who are studying in Iran. Some have been killed inSyria and buried in Qom. At least three of seven Pakistanis killed in Syria and buried in Qom in April 2015 were students from the Al-Mustafa International University. Most of these students were native to Pakistan’s Parachinar region, a Shia area in Pakistan known for the close ties between its seminaries and Iranian seminaries and an increasing source of both male and female seminary students in Iran.

In Iraq, the Heydarian Brigade, made up of Iraqi Shia militias, includes several militant clergy members. Such clergy also belongs to other militia groups, such as the Popular Mobilization Forces, formed under Hash’d al-Sha’bi, a militia umbrella organization. Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of Saraya al-Salam and the former head of the Mahdi Army, who currently lives in Qom, is a former student of a Qom seminary school. And Qais al-Khazali, an Iraqi who is predominantly known for his departure from the Mahdi Army to form Asaib Ahl al-Haq, studied in Qom as well.

In brief, while traditional Shia clergy have stayed out of government, the militant Shia clergy have become a tool for the Islamic Republic to implement its domestic and regional policies. Due to their military and religious authority, these clerical militia are becoming more powerful and influential in seminaries than their traditional and non-political counterparts, who are more supportive of the traditional separation of Islam and politics. By undermining traditional clergy, this new wave of militant Shia clergy has the power to radicalize future followers of Shia Islam, snowballing the growth of militarized Shia clerics and perhaps even triggering a counter-militarization of Sunni clerics in response.

Saeid Golkar is a lecturer for the Middle East and North African Studies Program at Northwestern University, a visiting senior fellow for Iran policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

North Korea Declares War On US

N. Korea: US has crossed red line, relations on war footing

In this May 10, 2016, photo, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un watches a parade from a balcony at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang. © (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) In this May 10, 2016, photo, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un watches a parade from a balcony at the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang.

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.

Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing.

The United States and South Korea regularly conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation.

Han said North Korea believes the nature of the maneuvers has become openly aggressive because they reportedly now include training designed to prepare troops for the invasion of the North’s capital and “decapitation strikes” aimed at killing its top leadership.

Han says designating Kim himself for sanctions was the final straw.

“The Obama administration went so far to have the impudence to challenge the supreme dignity of the DPRK in order to get rid of its unfavorable position during the political and military showdown with the DPRK,” Han said, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The United States has crossed the red line in our showdown,” he said. “We regard this thrice-cursed crime as a declaration of war.”

Although North Korea had already been heavily sanctioned internationally for its nuclear weapons and long-range missile development programs, Washington’s announcement on July 6 was the first time Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned.

Less than a week later, Pyongyang cut off its final official means of communications with Washington — known as the New York channel. Han said Pyongyang has made it clear that everything between the two must now be dealt with under “war law.”

Kim and 10 others were put on the list of sanctioned individuals in connection with alleged human rights abuses, documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, that include a network of political prisons and harsh treatment of any kind of political dissent in the authoritarian state. U.S. State Department officials said the sanctions were intended in part to highlight those responsible for the abuses and to pressure lower-ranking officials to think twice before carrying them out.

Pyongyang denies abuse claims and says the U.N. report was based on fabrications gleaned from disgruntled defectors. Pointing to such things as police shootings of black Americans and poverty in even the richest democracies, it says the West has no moral high ground from which to criticize the North’s domestic political situation. It also says U.S. allies with questionable human-rights records receive less criticism.

Han took strong issue with the claim that it not the U.S. but Pyongyang’s continued development of nuclear weapons and missiles that is provoking tensions.

“Day by day, the U.S. military blackmail against the DPRK and the isolation and pressure is becoming more open,” Han said. “It is not us, it is the United States that first developed nuclear weapons, who first deployed them and who first used them against humankind. And on the issue of missiles and rockets, which are to deliver nuclear warheads and conventional weapons warheads, it is none other than the United States who first developed it and who first used it.”

He noted that U.S.-South Korea military exercises conducted this spring were unprecedented in scale, and that the U.S. has deployed the USS Mississippi and USS Ohio nuclear-powered submarines to South Korean ports, deployed the B-52 strategic bomber around South Korea and is planning to set up the world’s most advanced missile defense system, known by its acronym THAAD, in the South, a move that has also angered China.

Echoing earlier state-media reports, Han ridiculed Mark Lippert, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, for a flight on a U.S. Air Force F-16 based in South Korea that he said was an action “unfit for a diplomat.”

“We regard that as the act of a villain, who is a crazy person,” Han said of the July 12 flight. “All these facts show that the United States is intentionally aggravating the tensions in the Korean Peninsula.”

Han warned that Pyongyang is viewing next month’s planned U.S.-South Korea exercises in this new context and will respond if they are carried out as planned.

“Nobody can predict what kind of influence this kind of vicious confrontation between the DPRK and the United States will have upon the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” he said. “By doing these kinds of vicious and hostile acts toward the DPRK, the U.S. has already declared war against the DPRK. So it is our self-defensive right and justifiable action to respond in a very hard way.

“We are all prepared for war, and we are all prepared for peace,” he said. “If the United States forces those kinds of large-scale exercises in August, then the situation caused by that will be the responsibility of the United States.”

Last year’s Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises involved 30,000 American and 50,000 South Korean troops and followed a period of heightened animosity between the rival Koreas sparked by land mine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers. In the end, the exercises escalated tensions and rhetoric, but concluded with no major incidents.

Han dismissed calls for Pyongyang to defuse tensions by agreeing to abandon its nuclear program.
“In the view of cause and effect, it is the U.S. that provided the cause of our possession of nuclear forces,” he said. “We never hide the fact, and we are very proud of the fact, that we have very strong nuclear deterrent forces not only to cope with the United States’ nuclear blackmail but also to neutralize the nuclear blackmail of the United States.”

Hillary the Scarlet Hawk Woman (Revelation 17)

Hillary the Hawk: A History

From Haiti to Syria, the Democratic candidate’s long record suggests she’s looking forward to being a war president on day one.

BY MICAH ZENKO JULY 27, 2016

Whoever is elected on Nov. 8 will be a war president on day one, with the power and autonomy to undertake destabilizing shows of force, drone strikes, special operations raids and ever-deepening military interventions. Today, combat troop deployments are routinely made by executive branch spokespeople, decisions to back open-ended air wars in places like Yemen by “partners” like Saudi Arabia are announced via press release, and congressional oversight hearings largely boil down to legislators pleading with commanders to ask for more troops and looser rules of engagement.And much of this probably suits Hillary Clinton just fine.

Unlike Donald Trump, who has wildly shifting positions and alleged “secret” plans to defeat the Islamic State, Clinton has an extensive track record upon which one can evaluate her likely positions. By any reasonable measure, Clinton qualifies as a hawk, if a nuanced one. Though she has opposed uses of force that she believed were a bad idea, she has consistently endorsed starting new wars and expanding others.Consider seven prominent situations in which she has had to decide whether to support the use of American military force:Haiti: In 1994, Clinton opposed intervening in Haiti to reinstate the Jean-Bertrand Aristide government. As historian Taylor Branch recounted in his diary of interviews with Bill Clinton: “I asked him what Hillary thought. He said the pell-mell rush to invade was crazy to her. Reacting against the pressure, the lack of options, and his sense of being trapped, she said he was badly served by his foreign policy staff.” This was an astute judgment by the then-first lady, as the options developed by the U.S. Southern Command and Joint Chiefs were poorly conceived and often logistically impossible to carry out. Fortunately, a 25,000 U.S. troop invasion was avoided after Jimmy Carter brokered a last-minute agreement with Raoul Cédras that assured he would step down from power.

Iraq: In 2002, as a senator for New York, Clinton voted for the authorization for the use of military force in Iraq. In her accompanying floor statement, she claimed it was to ensure President George W. Bush was “in the strongest possible position to lead our country in the United Nations or in war” and to show Saddam Hussein that the country was united. After initially defending the vote, she later adjusted, variously declaring she “thought it was a vote to put inspectors back in,” it was “based on the facts and assurances that I had at the time,” and ultimately “it was a mistake to trust Bush.” Clinton also justified the 2002 vote as simply one for compelling compliance, proclaiming, “I believe in coercive diplomacy,” in a January 2008 presidential debate. Regardless of the reasons or excuses behind her vote, the Iraq War was a foreign-policy and geopolitical disaster.Pakistan: In 2007 and 2008, Clinton strongly disagreed with then-Sen. Barack Obama about striking al Qaeda targets inside of Pakistan. Obama called such attacks “just common sense” if there were “actionable intelligence.” Clinton referred to the 1998 cruise missile strikes in Afghanistan that failed to kill Osama bin Laden and warned that “we have to be very conscious of all the consequences,” particularly anything that would destabilize Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Obama would go on to authorize 407 drone strikes in Pakistan, killing 3,089 people. Nearly 300 of these occurred while Clinton was secretary of state, during which time U.S. diplomats opposed only one or two of the strikes. Whatever hesitation Clinton once had in attacking militants in Pakistan vanished upon being confirmed as secretary of state.

Afghanistan: In 2009, Clinton supported three-quarters of the Afghanistan surge. When Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, requested four brigades of additional U.S. troops in the summer of 2009, Clinton endorsed deploying three of them (equaling roughly 30,000 troops). Reportedly, “Clinton usually favored sending even more [troops] than [Secretary of Defense Robert] Gates did.” Obama eventually deployed 33,000 extra troops. It is hard to identify any enduring political or security gains in Afghanistan that have resulted from the surge. Moreover, more than

Libya: In 2011, Clinton was a strong proponent of regime change in Libya (as was Trump). It is forgotten today that a primary justification she offered for the U.S. military role in Libya was to pay back allies for Afghanistan. As she stated in late March 2011: “We asked our allies, our NATO allies, to go into Afghanistan with us 10 years ago. They have been there, and a lot of them have been there despite the fact they were not attacked.… When it comes to Libya, we started hearing from the U.K., France, Italy, other of our NATO allies. This was in their vital national interest.” Academic research shows that great powers enjoy freedom of action to avoid becoming dragged into wars involving allies, but the Libya regime change intervention was, unfortunately, one that the Obama administration chose to fully support, despite misleading the American people at the time that it was not the goal. Obama correctly labeled not planning for the postwar scenario his “worst mistake” and correctly described Libya as a “mess.”

Osama bin Laden: In 2011, she endorsed the Navy SEAL raid into Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden, even while recognizing that it would likely poison diplomatic relations with Pakistan for a short time. According to Vice President Joe Biden — who opposed it — every other official (including Clinton) was “51-49” in supporting the raid. Before the news broke, Obama called Bill Clinton (who, as president, signed three covert findings authorizing bin Laden’s killing) to let him know the al Qaeda leader was finally dead. “I assume Hillary’s already told you,” Obama said to an unaware Clinton. As Hillary Clinton later wrote in her memoir: “They told me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t tell anyone. Bill later joked with me, ‘No one will ever doubt you can keep a secret!’”
Syria: In 2012, she reportedly proposed to the White House — along with CIA Director David Petraeus — a covert program (apparently larger than the one later authorized) to provide arms to vetted Syrian rebel groups fighting Bashar al-Assad’s government. Obama opposed this proposal on the grounds that there could be no guarantees of where the weapons would ultimately end up and that CIA analysts determined they would not have “materially” hastened the removal of Assad from power. It is difficult to assess the CIA-led train-and-equip program’s effectiveness, compared to larger Defense Department-led efforts, but there remains no collection of U.S.-backed rebel groups that has threatened the existence of the Assad government, which is now backed by indiscriminate Russian air power.Outside of specific interventions, Clinton also supported muscular shows of force as secretary of state. New York Times reporter Mark Landler describes a July 2010 White House debate about rerouting the USS George Washington aircraft carrier from its normal cruise into the Yellow Sea. Adm. Robert Willard, the head of U.S. Pacific Command; Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Secretary of Defense Gates all agreed on this aggressive maneuver. “Clinton strongly seconded it. ‘We’ve got to run it up the gut!’ she had said to her aides a few days earlier,” Landler writes. But Obama refused the request, declaring, “I don’t call audibles with aircraft carriers.” It bears noting that determining the aggressiveness by which the United States conducts freedom of navigation operations in maritime waters claimed by China will be a consequential call for the next president.Finally, Clinton has had an unusual exposure to the military from multiple civilian positions, which may make her far better prepared to serve as commander in chief than her husband was in 1993, when he had a notoriously difficult start leading the military.
As first lady, Clinton was routinely exposed to military intervention debates among senior officials, including over Haiti, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, and later served six years on the Senate Armed Services Committee and four as secretary of state. She also has developed close relations with retired military officers like Gen. Jack Keane, who has rarely seen a country that cannot be improved with U.S. ground troops and airstrikes. As Bob Woodward wrote of a 2009 meeting between the two to discuss the Afghan surge: “Clinton greeted Keane with a bear hug, astonishing [U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard] Holbrooke because—and he should know—Hillary rarely bear-hugged anyone.”I have spoken about Clinton with a handful of military officers, then stationed in Islamabad and Kabul, who were routinely involved in video teleconferences with her as secretary of state. They all described her as being, by far, the best-prepared senior participant in meetings and having read all the memos or briefing books that were sent as preparatory material. They relayed that Clinton has an intimate understanding of military doctrine, Pentagon acronyms, and military planning principles and was not afraid to press senior commanders to clarify the “courses of action” and the intended “end state” of any given military intervention.

Should Hillary Clinton win the White House, the United States, already at war for 15 years, would be led by a president deeply aware and comfortable with the military. It’s impossible to know which national security crises she would be forced to confront, of course. But those who vote for her should know that she will approach such crises with a long track record of being generally supportive of initiating U.S. military interventions and expanding them.Photo credit: JILL M. DOUGHERTY/Getty Images

Obama Hands The Scarlet Woman The Baton

Embracing Clinton, Obama says she’ll ‘finish the job’

Gregory Korte | USA TODAY11 minutes ago

PHILADELPHIA — President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton as the woman to finish the job he started eight years ago, calling on Americans to “reject cynicism” and elect Clinton to “show the world we still believe in the promise of this great nation.”

Embracing his former rival to thunderous applause from the convention hall, Obama thus passed the Democratic party’s baton to the first woman ever nominated for president by a major American political party.

President Obama and Hillary Clinton on stage during the 2016 Democratic National Convention at Wells Fargo Center.

“I’m here to tell you that yes, we still have more work to do,” Obama told delegates at the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, implicitly arguing for a third term for his policies by citing unfinished work on the economy, public safety and civil rights. “My time in this office hasn’t fixed everything; as much as we’ve done, there’s still so much I want to do.”

Of that unfinished work, nothing is more important than national security. And there, he argued that no candidate was more prepared than his former secretary of state and first lady to President Bill Clinton. “No one. Not me, not Bill, not nobody,” he said.

“I know Hillary won’t relent until ISIL is destroyed. She’ll finish the job – and she’ll do it without resorting to torture, or banning entire religions from entering our country. She is fit to be the next commander in chief,” Obama said.

Touting Clinton’s experience and judgment, Obama’s speech was a direct rebuttal to one Trump’s most incisive attacks at last week’s Republican convention in Cleveland. Trump said Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was marked by “death, destruction and weakness.”

“You know, nothing truly prepares you for the demands of the Oval Office. Until you’ve sat at that desk, you don’t know what it’s like to manage a global crisis or send young people to war,” Obama said. “But Hillary’s been in the room. She’s been part of those decisions.”

Acknowledging that the two were once bitter rivals for the 2008 Democratic nomination, Obama said he came to admire Clinton’s tenacity. “No matter how daunting the odds; no matter how much people try to knock her down, she never, ever quits.”

Obama’s enthusiastic endorsement anchored a Wednesday night lineup that also featured Vice President Biden and his would-be successor, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. Echoing a theme throughout the convention, they all spoke of the Clinton they know personally — as opposed to the cartoon version she’s portrayed as by her Republican critics.

“She’s been caricatured by the right and by some folks on the left; accused of everything you can imagine – and some things you can’t,” Obama said. “But she knows that’s what happens when you’re under a microscope for 40 years. She knows she’s made mistakes, just like I have; just like we all do.”

“Even in the middle of crisis, she listens to people, and keeps her cool, and treats everybody with respect,” Obama said. “That’s the Hillary I know. That’s the Hillary I’ve come to admire. And that’s why I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

“Everybody knows she’s smart. Everybody knows she’s tough,” Biden said. “But I know what she’s passionate about. I know Hillary.”

After walking out on the Philadelphia stage to the theme from the movie Rocky, Biden urged the crowd not to boo or cheer while he delivered an indictment of Donald Trump. He said the GOP nominee’s “cynicism is unbounded” and his commitment to the middle class was “malarkey.” The crowd cheered anyway. When Biden said the billionaire Trump didn’t have a clue about the middle class, the crowd chanted, “Not a clue!”

Obama’s prime-time speech in Philadelphia capped a 12-year career in national politics as he attempts to pass the baton to the former first lady and senator from New York. Twelve years ago to the day, a then-unknown state senator from Illinois took to the convention stage in Boston to declare a “politics of hope,” laying the groundwork for his own 2008 election to the White House.

“I was so young that first time in Boston, maybe a little nervous addressing such a big crowd,” he said. “But I was filled with faith — faith in America,the generous, bighearted, hopeful country that made my story – that made all of our stories – possible.”

Obama continued that hopeful tone as he returns to the Democratic National Convention podium for the fourth time, but infused it with the themes of some of his most important speeches of his career. He spoke of building “a more perfect union” and the “audacity of hope,” and urged on the crowd as it chanted “Yes, we can!”
“The America I know is full of courage, and optimism, and ingenuity. The America I know is decent and generous,” he said.

He even quoted Ronald Reagan, calling America “a shining city on a hill,” and contrasted it with Trump’s pessimism.

But Obama also acknowledged that Americans have “real anxieties” about jobs and security. “We get frustrated with political gridlock, worry about racial divisions; are shocked and saddened by the madness of Orlando or Nice,” he said. “There are pockets of America that never recovered from factory closures; men who took pride in hard work and providing for their families who now feel forgotten.”

Trump is not the answer to those anxieties, Obama said. “He’s not really a plans guy. Not really a facts guy, either. He calls himself a business guy, which is true, but I have to say, I know plenty of businessmen and women who’ve achieved success without leaving a trail of lawsuits, and unpaid workers, and people feeling like they got cheated.”

When the crowd booed, he repeated a line that’s become a staple of his stump speeches. “Don’t boo. Vote,” he said.

Baghdad Protests Are From The Antichrist

Protests in Baghdad Not Showing Will of All Iraqis: Envoy

راجح صابر عبود الموسوی
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iraq’s Ambassador to Tehran Rajeh Saber Abboud al-Mousavi slammed recent protests held in Baghdad calling for economic and political reforms, and said they do not represent the will of all Iraqi people.

“The demonstrations taking place (in Baghdad) do not indicate the will of all (Iraqi) people,”
Mousavi said in an interview with the Tasnim News Agency, referring to rallies held in Baghdad and Basra.

The Iraqi diplomat went on to say that if anyone is seeking a change in the government, they should do this through elections.

On Friday, hundreds of people staged a rally in central Baghdad, demanding formation of a technocrat government and prosecution of corrupt officials, according to media reports.

Also in Basra, some 550 km to the south, dozens of protesters held a protest outside the Provincial Council building, demanding abolition of the sectarian quota system and a major campaign against corruption.

They also demanded that seven ministers who resigned recently under pressure are held accountable for the decisions they made during their terms in office.

R1016170/P42410

Don’t Forget About the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12)

Don’t forget about earthquakes, feds tell city

Although New York’s modern skyscrapers are less likely to be damaged in an earthquake than shorter structures, a new study suggests the East Coast is more vulnerable than previously thought. The new findings will help alter building codes.

By Mark Fahey
July 18, 2014 10:03 a.m.

New York Earthquake Hazard

The U.S. Geological Survey had good and bad news for New Yorkers on Thursday. In releasing its latest set of seismic maps the agency said earthquakes are a slightly lower hazard for New York City’s skyscrapers than previously thought, but on the other hand noted that the East Coast may be able to produce larger, more dangerous earthquakes than previous assessments have indicated. The 2014 maps were created with input from hundreds of experts from across the country and are based on much stronger data than the 2008 maps, said Mark Petersen, chief of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project. The bottom line for the nation’s largest city is that the area is at a slightly lower risk for the types of slow-shaking earthquakes that are especially damaging to tall spires of which New York has more than most places, but the city is still at high risk due to its population density and aging structures, said Mr. Petersen.

“Many of the overall patterns are the same in this map as in previous maps,” said Mr. Petersen. “There are large uncertainties in seismic hazards in the eastern United States. [New York City] has a lot of exposure and some vulnerability, but people forget about earthquakes because you don’t see damage from ground shaking happening very often.”

Just because they’re infrequent doesn’t mean that large and potentially disastrous earthquakes can’t occur in the area. The new maps put the largest expected magnitude at 8, significantly higher than the 2008 peak of 7.7 on a logarithmic scale. The scientific understanding of East Coast earthquakes has expanded in recent years thanks to a magnitude 5.8 earthquake in Virginia in 2011 that was felt by tens of millions of people across the eastern U.S. New data compiled by the nuclear power industry has also helped experts understand quakes.

“The update shows New York at an intermediate level,” said Arthur Lerner-Lam, deputy director of Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “You have to combine that with the exposure of buildings and people and the fragility of buildings and people. In terms of safety and economics, New York has a substantial risk.”

Oddly enough, it’s not the modern tall towers that are most at risk. Those buildings become like inverted pendulums in the high frequency shakes that are more common on the East Coast than in the West. But the city’s old eight- and 10-story masonry structures could suffer in a large quake, said Mr. Lerner-Lam. Engineers use maps like those released on Thursday to evaluate the minimum structural requirements at building sites, he said. The risk of an earthquake has to be determined over the building’s life span, not year-to-year.

“If a structure is going to exist for 100 years, frankly, it’s more than likely it’s going to see an earthquake over that time,” said Mr. Lerner-Lam. “You have to design for that event.”

The new USGS maps will feed into the city’s building-code review process, said a spokesman for the New York City Department of Buildings. Design provisions based on the maps are incorporated into a standard by the American Society of Civil Engineers, which is then adopted by the International Building Code and local jurisdictions like New York City. New York’s current provisions are based on the 2010 standards, but a new edition based on the just-released 2014 maps is due around 2016, he said.

“The standards for seismic safety in building codes are directly based upon USGS assessments of potential ground shaking from earthquakes, and have been for years,” said Jim Harris, a member and former chair of the Provisions Update Committee of the Building Seismic Safety Council, in a statement.

The seismic hazard model also feeds into risk assessment and insurance policies, according to Nilesh Shome, senior director of Risk Management Solutions, the largest insurance modeler in the industry. The new maps will help the insurance industry as a whole price earthquake insurance and manage catastrophic risk, said Mr. Shome. The industry collects more than $2.5 billion in premiums for earthquake insurance each year and underwrites more than $10 trillion in building risk, he said.
“People forget about history, that earthquakes have occurred in these regions in the past, and that they will occur in the future,” said Mr. Petersen. “They don’t occur very often, but the consequences and the costs can be high.”

The Justification For Nuclear War (Revelation 15)

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The Guardian: Apologist for nuclear war
By Laura Tiernan
27 July 2016

Last week, Britain’s parliament voted 472-117 to renew the Trident nuclear submarine programme.
Amid jeering and abuse heaped by members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) on their leader Jeremy Corbyn, 140 Labour MPs voted with the Conservatives in defence of Britain’s “nuclear deterrent.” The Trident vote revealed that there is a single party of war, cutting across party lines.
The media campaign surrounding the vote exposed the central aim of the attempted coup against Corbyn. Its aim is to install the Blairite forces who will ensure Labour continues to serve as the direct and pliant instrument of British imperialism.

As with every aspect of this campaign, the Guardian has played a key role.

On the eve of the vote, it provided a platform for Labour MPs demanding support for Trident, as well as those calling for an abstention—reserving its vitriol for Corbyn’s anti-nuclear stance.

The first of these sorties was launched by Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson. He spoke for the vast majority of PLP members in a July 17 article headlined, “Economically and militarily, we must renew Trident.”

Emphasising Labour’s history as a party of war, Watson declared, “[N]ow is not the time to step away from our historic role as a nuclear power. When [Labour Prime Minister Clement] Attlee built Britain’s bomb, he did so because he knew our role in the world would be shaped by our capacity to defend ourselves and our allies; the logic of that Labour party position holds even truer today.”

He made clear the predatory interests behind the Trident debate, calling on Britain to step up its involvement in the NATO build-up against Russia: “I am pleased that the UK is committed to deploying our troops as part of NATO’s Baltic forces. Putin’s Russia looms, a mafia state built on chauvinism. Britain must play its part in holding it at bay.”

Labour MPs Clive Lewis and Emily Thornberry, who are nominally Corbyn supporters, contributed their own article, “This Trident vote is a contemptible trick. That’s why we are abstaining.”

Justifying their refusal to oppose the government motion, the pair wrote that Monday’s debate would be nothing more than “a political game … There is nothing new in this debate—a vote in principle was agreed in 2007. It is being held simply to sow further divisions inside the Labour party.”

To portray the vote on Britain’s nuclear program as merely a cynical political manoeuvre by the Tories is politically criminal. Both MPs are well aware of the context in which the Trident vote is being held—a growing arms race by all the major imperialist powers that threatens a third world war. Thornberry is heading up Labour’s Defence Review, while Lewis, a graduate from Sandhurst military academy who served in Afghanistan, is currently Labour’s shadow defence minister. Both are privy to high-level military briefings, especially in relation to the current NATO build-up against Russia.
While claiming to offer a third way between outright rejection and acceptance of the government’s motion, they made clear that any concerns they have over the Trident programme are of a militarist character. Budget outlays on Trident “will matter if our already highly stretched conventional defence capabilities must be cut to pay for it,” Lewis and Thornberry wrote. “If we choose to retain a nuclear capability, there are many cheaper alternatives than building the full complement of replacement submarines.”
The next day, just hours before the Trident debate, Guardian commissioning editor Archie Bland weighed in with an extraordinary opinion piece: “Banging on about Trident—it’s Corbynism to a T.”
Bland’s objective was to portray Corbyn’s planned opposition to Trident as irrelevant, because the issue lacked “salience” with the broader public.
“Do you prefer your potatoes mashed or roasted?” he asked his readers. “Which are better, cats or dogs? Is it reasonable for your aunt’s next-door neighbours to play loud music after 11pm? If pressed, you will have a view about all of these things. … But a view isn’t usually the same thing as a deep concern. Political scientists call this salience: the idea that, as well as what you think about something, it is worth asking whether you think about it.”
According to Bland, the attitude of millions of people to the danger of nuclear war is on par with the minor inconvenience of rowdy neighbours.

“They don’t care whether Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour party,” he continued. “They no longer care about the invasion of Iraq, which remains a shibboleth for a huge segment of Labour activists, even though it began more than a decade ago and all of the key players have departed from the stage. And they certainly don’t care about the particulars of Trident.”

The Tories would “breeze through” the vote on Trident “in a spirit of complete unity,” he concluded, while “Labour appears hopelessly divided on something that most people don’t care about.”

Bland’s article provoked hundreds of objections on the Guardian’s comment thread.

Undeterred, Guardian journalist Owen Jones took up Bland’s theme in his own column the next day, concluding: “Those of us who believe Britain could set an example by disposing of its nuclear weapons should have the humility to accept we have not convinced the majority of people in this country, including those whose jobs currently depend on Trident and who have not been persuaded about an alternative economic plan. We have to at least start from there.”

The picture painted by Bland and Jones of an apathetic populace is an outright lie. Their aim is to delegitimise opposition to Trident—and to block any challenge to the imperialist war drive.
When Bland writes that the public “no longer cares about the invasion of Iraq” he is confusing the indifference of his fellow columnists, such as Jones, who speak for the most privileged layers of the upper middle class, with the egalitarian and oppositional sentiments of millions of workers and young people.

A critical aspect of the Guardian ’s coverage is its determination to downplay the threat of nuclear war. But Prime Minister Theresa May’s unprecedented and ominous declaration, made in the Trident debate, that she would not hesitate to authorise a nuclear strike killing 100,000 innocent men, women and children, shows what is at stake.

Her chilling admission was passed over in silence by Labour MPs and the Guardian duly stepped in to cover their tracks. The result was a comment by Giles Fraser, “Theresa May is lying over Trident. At least I hope she is.”

Fraser, a former canon chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and therefore in the professional business of granting benedictions, claimed that “parliament has just committed well over £100bn on a weapons system that we won’t use, that we mustn’t use, and that even the Russians know we won’t use. They know this because the only situation in which we would think about pressing the button would be precisely the situation in which there was no longer any point in pressing the button.”
His imaginary schema was based on the premise that the British ruling class would not initiate a nuclear attack. In his entire column, the words Hiroshima and Nagasaki do not appear. But the bombs dropped on both Japanese cities in August 1945, killing over 200,000 people, were nuclear first strikes by the United States. Declassified papers made public in 2013 revealed that British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill personally endorsed these atrocities.

On February 15, 2003, more than 1 million people in the UK joined global protests to oppose the impending invasion of Iraq— the largest anti-war protests in history. This opposition has not gone away. According to a YouGov poll published last June, opposition to the Iraq War has in fact increased over the past 13 years. Polls conducted over the past decade have also consistently registered majority opposition to Trident.

The Guardian is not merely a newspaper. It is an organising centre of the nominally liberal bourgeoisie. Claiming to stand for progressive opinion, its role is to police public discourse, upholding at all times the strategic imperatives of imperialism.

The problem is not apathy, as the Guardian claims, but the absence of a revolutionary leadership, programme and perspective. The instinctive opposition of working people has been deliberately confined to the parties and institutions of capitalism—the very system responsible for war, austerity and the growing assault on democratic rights.

In 2003, the Stop the War Coalition—led by figures such as Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Tariq Ali and Jeremy Corbyn—channelled mass protests behind impotent appeals to the Labour Party, the United Nations and imperialist powers such as France and Germany, to oppose the US-led invasion of Iraq. Corbyn addressed the mass rally in London’s Hyde Park, calling on Blair to hold a parliamentary vote on the war. Blair did so four weeks later. A pro-war vote by Labour and the Tories resulted, with British military action commencing the next day.

Corbyn’s record since becoming Labour leader in September 2015 has been one of abject capitulation to the Blairite warmongers on every critical issue. In the name of “party unity” he has: (1) refused to challenge Labour policy on Trident at the party’s National Conference; (2) allowed a free vote on British military action in Syria that resulted in bombing raids; and (3) opposed war crimes charges against Tony Blair and his accomplices, helping to sweep the findings of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War under the mat.

Despite addressing rallies of thousands of supporters over the weekend, including a campaign launch in Salford on Saturday, Corbyn made no mention of Trident or the threat of war.

The Scarlet Woman Truly Is A Hawk (Revelation 17)

Fact check: Clinton’s record at State Department during Middle East chaos

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY1 hour ago

Hillary Clinton’s tenure as President Obama’s first secretary of State from 2009 through January 2013 was marked by extreme turmoil in the Middle East. It included the Arab Spring protests, Iranian nuclear brinksmanship and withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq. Republican rival Donald Trump said her tenure at State left a legacy of “death, destruction and weakness.”

Here is what Trump said, plus events before, during and after her time as secretary:
ISLAMIC STATE (ISIS or ISIL):

Trump said: “In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. … ISIS has spread across the region, and the world. ”

Before Clinton: ISIS was al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which launched a bloody campaign against Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority and U.S. troops. AQI faded into obscurity after an increase in U.S. troops in 2007 teamed up with Sunni Arab tribes to combat the group.

Clinton’s role: Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011 and the start of the Syrian civil war that same year created turmoil that allowed AQI to re-emerge. Obama rejected Clinton’s advice to take a more aggressive approach toward Syria to protect civilians and empower moderate and secular rebels to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal regime. She also saw the war as an opportunity to sever Syria’s close alliance with Iran. It’s not clear if Clinton’s approach would have prevented AQI from re-emerging and later branding itself as the Islamic State.

After Clinton: Over the next three years, ISIS took advantage of growing instability in Syria to seize territory there, but it did not gain international notoriety until it occupied portions of neighboring Iraq in June 2014, more than a year after Clinton left State. The group has since plotted or inspired followers to launch terrorist attacks around the world.

LIBYA

Trump said: “Libya was cooperating. … Libya is in ruins, and our Ambassador and his staff were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers.”

Before Clinton: Libya and its strongman leader, Moammar Gaddafi, renounced the country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and allowed the United States and Britain to destroy its nuclear weapons infrastructure. Libya earlier renounced terrorism as well, turning over terror suspects and paying compensation to the victims of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing all 259 aboard.

Clinton’s role: When the Arab Spring uprisings in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt spread to Libya in 2011, Gaddafi sought to put the revolt down by force. Clinton helped develop the NATO campaign to stop him. Libya’s rebels gained momentum and overthrew Gaddafi. The ensuing power vacuum gave rise to militias, including al-Qaeda, which launched a terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. In the following days, Clinton and the White House wrongly blamed the attack on a protest over an anti-Islam video, and only later acknowledged there was no protest and it was a planned terrorist attack. Obama and Clinton had a plan for stabilizing Libya after Gaddafi’s fall, but Libya’s transitional government rejected any role for foreign troops.

After Clinton: Multiple investigations by Clinton’s State Department and congressional panels found that State did not provide enough security at the diplomatic post in Benghazi, but little more could have been done to protect the Americans once the attack began. Libya’s warring factions formed a government this year, opening the door to U.S. assistance to defeat the Islamic State, which took advantage of the chaos to grab territory in parts of the country.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Jan. 23, 2013.

EGYPT

Trump said: “Egypt was peaceful. … Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control.”

Before Clinton: Egypt had been ruled for almost 30 years by President Hosni Mubarak, a former general who crushed opponents but cooperated with the United States and its ally Israel on counterterrorism and other regional issues.

Clinton’s role: When the Arab Spring spread to Egypt in 2011, Mubarak was ousted by his military. Clinton said in her memoir, Hard Choices, that she counseled Obama to proceed with caution toward Egypt, but he was swayed by idealism to support the democratic movement that unseated Mubarak. Under her leadership, the State Department sought to work with various post-Mubarak political parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood, a previously outlawed group that tried to impose hard-line Islamic rule in a country used to a secular government. In 2012, the first democratic elections brought to power a political party that represented the Muslim Brotherhood.
After Clinton: In July 2013, five months after Clinton’s departure, the Egyptian military, backed by millions of demonstrators and the political opposition, overthrew the government of Mohamed Morsi and installed a new general who was later elected president in voting that international monitors considered rigged.

IRAQ

Trump said: “Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence. … Iraq is in chaos.”

Before Clinton: Four years after President George W. Bush ordered the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the presence of 145,000 U.S. troops finally reduced violence from an anti-U.S. insurgency. Obama pledged during his 2008 presidential campaign to bring the troops home, and he did in 2011.
Clinton’s role: Clinton sought unsuccessfully to mediate between the Baghdad government and opposition groups to head off sectarian divisions. The State Department also failed to reach an agreement with Iraq’s government on a law that would provide legal protection for a small contingent of U.S. forces that would remain to help keep the peace. Violence flared again, as Iraq’s elected government, dominated by the country’s Shiite majority, pursued policies that alienated the country’s Sunni Arab and Kurdish minorities.

After Clinton: As a result, Sunni tribes that had helped the U.S. military defeat al-Qaeda welcomed the Islamic State fighters when the fellow Sunnis swept into Iraq from neighboring Syria in 2014.
Obama then agree to send military trainers and advisers back to Iraq. More than 4,000 are there now.

IRAN

Trump said: “Iran was being choked by sanctions. … (Now) Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons.”
Before Clinton: Iran was selling oil at a relatively steady rate and pursuing a nuclear weapons research program during the George W. Bush presidency, according to the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency.

Clinton’s role: Obama and Clinton pursued a dual-track policy of strengthening international sanctions against Iran, while secretly pursuing a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear threat. New U.S. sanctions imposed by Congress and European sanctions urged by Clinton created severe economic hardship in Iran. China and Russia joined the international sanctions, removing huge markets for Iranian petroleum. Iran expanded its nuclear program during this time, but its crude exports dropped in 2012 to their lowest level since 1986.

After Clinton: Secret and overt overtures by Obama and Clinton began soon after Obama became president. Formal negotiations under Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, led to a final agreement between Iran and six world powers in July 2015. It called for limits on Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions. Implementation began in January, and Iran has kept its nuclear program peaceful — so far, according to the U.N.

Sanctions relief has made tens of billions of dollars available to fund the political agenda of Iran’s anti-U.S. leaders, but Iran has yet to enjoy the economic relief it had hoped for because many U.S. sanctions remain in place, and international businesses remain wary of doing business with Iran.

SYRIA

Trump said: “Syria was under control. … Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West.”

Before Clinton: Syria was a brutal dictatorship led by Assad, the president belonging to a minority Shiite sect and a close ally of Iran.

Clinton’s role: The Arab Spring uprising in Syria led to civil war in 2011 after Assad’s military opened fire on unarmed democracy demonstrators. Clinton saw the uprising as an opportunity to disconnect Syria from the destabilizing influence of Iran. The U.S. ambassador to Syria encouraged democracy protesters. Clinton and other top advisers urged Obama to increase U.S. support to moderate, secular Syrian rebel groups and to impose a no-fly zone in Syria to prevent Assad’s air force from targeting civilians. But Obama rejected the advice. The precursor to the Islamic State first formed as a militant army that took control of areas in Syria vacated by retreating Assad troops.
After Clinton: The Islamic State grew exponentially after Obama failed to follow through on his 2012 “red line” warning to Assad not to use chemical weapons. Assad used them against rebels in 2013, but the United States did not retaliate, a signal to the rebels that the U.S. would not come to their aid. After Clinton left office, Obama agreed to help train Syrian rebel groups to fight the Islamic State but not Assad.

The civil war continues, with 250,000 to more than 400,000 people dead so far, according to varying estimates, most at the hands of Assad and his allies. About half of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million fled to neighboring countries, and hundreds of thousands entered Europe, creating a migrant crisis along with fears that a wave of Islamic State-inspired terrorism in Europe could worsen.

The Ramapo Fault Of The Sixth Seal (Rev 6:12)

Earthquake activity in the New York City area

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although the eastern United States is not as seismically active as regions near plate boundaries, large and damaging earthquakes do occur there. Furthermore, when these rare eastern U.S. earthquakes occur, the areas affected by them are much larger than for western U.S. earthquakes of the same magnitude.^[1] Thus, earthquakes represent at least a moderate hazard to East Coast cities, including New York City and adjacent areas of very high population density.

As can be seen in the maps of earthquake activity in this region, seismicity is scattered throughout most of the New York City area, with some hint of a concentration of earthquakes in the area surrounding Manhattan Island. The largest known earthquake in this region occurred in 1884 and had a magnitude of approximately 5. For this earthquake, observations of fallen bricks and cracked plaster were reported from eastern Pennsylvania to central Connecticut, and the maximum intensity reported was at two sites in western Long Island (Jamaica, New York and Amityville, New York). Two other earthquakes of approximately magnitude 5 occurred in this region in 1737 and 1783.^[2][3][4] The figure on the right shows maps of the distribution of earthquakes of magnitude 3 and greater that occurred in this region from 1924 to 2010, along with locations of the larger earthquakes that occurred in 1737, 1783 and 1884.

Background

The NYC area is part of the geologically complex structure of the Northern Appalachian Mountains. This complex structure was formed during the past half billion years when the Earth’s crust underlying the Northern Appalachians was the site of two major geological episodes, each of which has left its imprint on the NYC area bedrock.^[5][6] Between about 450 million years ago and about 250 million years ago, the Northern Appalachian region was affected by a continental collision, in which the ancient African continent collided with the ancient North American continent to form the supercontinent Pangaea. Beginning about 200 million years ago, the present-day Atlantic ocean began to form as plate tectonic forces began to rift apart the continent of Pangaea. The last major episode of geological activity to affect the bedrock in the New York area occurred about 100 million years ago, during the Mesozoic era, when continental rifting that led to the opening of the present-day Atlantic ocean formed the Hartford and Newark Mesozoic rift basins.

Earthquake rates in the northeastern United States are about 50 to 200 times lower than in California, but the earthquakes that do occur in the northeastern U.S. are typically felt over a much broader region than earthquakes of the same magnitude in the western U.S.^[1] This means the area of damage from an earthquake in the northeastern U.S. could be larger than the area of damage caused by an earthquake of the same magnitude in the western U.S.^[7] The cooler rocks in the northeastern U.S. contribute to the seismic energy propagating as much as ten times further than in the warmer rocks of California. A magnitude 4.0 eastern U.S. earthquake typically can be felt as far as 100 km (60 mi) from its epicenter, but it infrequently causes damage near its source. A magnitude 5.5 eastern U.S. earthquake, although uncommon, can be felt as far as 500 km (300 mi) from its epicenter, and can cause damage as far away as 40 km (25 mi) from its epicenter. Earthquakes stronger than about magnitude 5.0 generate ground motions that are strong enough to be damaging in the epicentral area.

At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, scientists can often make observations that allow them to identify the specific fault on which an earthquake took place. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case.^[8] The NYC area is far from the boundaries of the North American plate, which are in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Caribbean Sea, and along the west coast of North America. The seismicity of the northeastern U.S. is generally considered to be due to ancient zones of weakness that are being reactivated in the present-day stress field. In this model, pre-existing faults that were formed during ancient geological episodes persist in the intraplate crust, and the earthquakes occur when the present-day stress is released along these zones of weakness. The stress that causes the earthquakes is generally considered to be derived from present-day rifting at the Mid-Atlantic ridge.

Earthquakes and geologically mapped faults in the Northeastern U.S.

The northeastern U.S. has many known faults, but virtually all of the known faults have not been active for perhaps 90 million years or more. Also, the locations of the known faults are not well determined at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few (if any) earthquakes in the region can be unambiguously linked to known faults. Given the current geological and seismological data, it is difficult to determine if a known fault in this region is still active today and could produce a modern earthquake. As in most other areas east of the Rocky Mountains, the best guide to earthquake hazard in the northeastern U.S. is probably the locations of the past earthquakes themselves.^[9]

The Ramapo fault and other New York City area faults

The Ramapo Fault, which marks the western boundary of the Newark rift basin, has been argued to be a major seismically active feature of this region,^[10] but it is difficult to discern the extent to which the Ramapo fault (or any other specific mapped fault in the area) might be any more of a source of future earthquakes than any other parts of the region.^[11] The Ramapo Fault zone spans more than 185 miles (300 kilometers) in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. It is a system of faults between the northern Appalachian Mountains and Piedmont areas to the east.^[12] This fault is perhaps the best known fault zone in the Mid-Atlantic region, and some small earthquakes have been known to occur in its vicinity. Recently, public knowledge about the fault has increased – especially after the 1970s, when the fault’s proximity to the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York was noticed.
There is insufficient evidence to unequivocally demonstrate any strong correlation of earthquakes in the New York City area with specific faults or other geologic structures in this region. The damaging earthquake affecting New York City in 1884 was probably not associated with the Ramapo fault because the strongest shaking from that earthquake occurred on Long Island (quite far from the trace of the Ramapo fault). The relationship between faults and earthquakes in the New York City area is currently understood to be more complex than any simple association of a specific earthquake with a specific mapped fault.^[13]

A 2008 study argued that a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake might originate from the Ramapo fault zone,^[3] which would almost definitely spawn hundreds or even thousands of fatalities and billions of dollars in damage.^[14] Studying around 400 earthquakes over the past 300 years, the study also argued that there was an additional fault zone extending from the Ramapo Fault zone into southwestern Connecticut. As can be seen in the above figure of seismicity, earthquakes are scattered throughout this region, with no particular concentration of activity along the Ramapo fault, or along the hypothesized fault zone extending into southwestern Connecticut.^[2][11][15]

Just off the northern terminus of the Ramapo fault is the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, built between 1956 and 1960 by Consolidated Edison Company. The plant began operating in 1963, and it has been the subject of a controversy over concerns that an earthquake from the Ramapo fault will affect the power plant. Whether or not the Ramapo fault actually does pose a threat to this nuclear power plant remains an open question.^[11]

Scarlet Woman Makes HiStory (Revelation 17:4)

Historic nomination: Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman to lead a major-party ticket


LA Times

Hillary Clinton made history Tuesday night, becoming the first woman ever nominated to lead a major-party ticket into the fall campaign for president.

Cheered instead of booed, as she was Monday, Clinton officially claimed the Democratic nomination  after a suspense-less 90-minute roll call vote at the party’s national convention.

The result was preordained when Clinton’s chief rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, abandoned his candidacy and gave an enthusiastic endorsement, then followed up Tuesday by urging his backers to end their rowdy resistance.

“It is easy to boo, but it’s harder to look your kids in the face who would be living under Donald Trump,” Sanders said of the GOP nominee at a breakfast with California delegates. “Trump is the worst candidate for president in the modern history of this country.”

South Dakota’s votes delivered the prize that eluded Clinton eight years ago when she first ran for president.

But in a bit of stagecraft to promote the image of Democrats united, an announcement of the tally was delayed until Vermont — which passed on its turn in the alphabetical order — concluded the roll call by casting 22 of its 26 votes for Sanders.

He then immediately rose to his feet, took the delegation microphone and moved that the vote be made unanimous. As his wife, Jane, briefly embraced him, a sea of blue and gold Clinton signs blossomed on the convention floor and delegates, on a voice vote, roared their approval.

Several dozen Sanders delegates marched out of the hall to the media filing tents nearby, where they chanted, “This is what democracy looks like!” then sat down in silent protest.

The state-by-state balloting, traditionally a chance for local boosterism and some good-natured bragging — the birthplace of pizza, the home of tax-free shopping — briefly turned emotional when Sanders’ brother, Larry, cast his ballot as a delegate for Democrats living abroad.

A politician in Britain, Larry Sanders’ voice grew thick as he discussed his parents, their hard life and how proud they would be of “Bernard,” the candidate for president.

Bernie Sanders teared up as he watched.

Still, despite her triumph, Clinton still faces considerable remedial work.

The program for Tuesday night was devoted to a series of testimonials, being capped by former President Bill Clinton, designed to cast a more fully rounded and flattering light on the presumptive nominee, whose decades in public life have been a marriage of high achievement and serial scandal.
Opinion polling over the years has found Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator, to be one of the most admired women in the country and also, more recently, one of the most mistrusted.
A series of speakers from the worlds Clinton has inhabited — politics, women’s advocacy, child welfare, education reform — were on tap to deliver a series of flattering portraits.

The state-by-state roll call was a concession to Sanders and his supporters and an effort to help unify Democrats after they carried the fractious primary fight into the opening day of the convention.
The anger that suffused the proceedings seemed to fade some, at least inside the hall.

In contrast to Monday, when the mere mention of Clinton’s name drew a cascade of boos and jeers, Sanders supporters seemed more interested Tuesday in delivering one last hurrah for their candidate, cheering lustily when his name was formally placed into nomination. When it was their turn, Clinton supporters responded in kind.

That was due in no small part to Sanders.

Hours after delivering a wholehearted pro-Clinton speech in Monday night’s finale, he paid an unexpected breakfast call on the California delegation, a hotbed of resistance to the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“As goes California, so goes America, so I know that you know that you have an enormous responsibility,” the Vermont senator said, urging resistors to lay down their grievances and rally behind Clinton as he had.

Not everyone was convinced.

Victoria Thompson, 56, a Sanders delegate from Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento, welcomed Sanders’ visit but said she was not moved to overcome her resistance to Clinton.

“I can’t vote for her. I will not vote for her,” Thompson said. “If Bernie’s not an option, I’ll vote Green” Party.

But there were unmistakable signs that the stop-Clinton effort was in its final throes, even before the roll call formally installing her as the party’s presidential standard-bearer.

A group of delegates backing Sanders but unaffiliated with the campaign abandoned a threat to put forward a vice presidential candidate to challenge Clinton’s pick, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.

A more unified party was just one of the goals for Clinton entering the convention.

Speaking with reporters, the chairman of her campaign, John Podesta, frankly acknowledged the need to overcome voters’ deep-seated doubts about Clinton and her character by moving beyond matters such as her use of a private email server when she was secretary of State — which led to scolding from the head of the FBI — or the response to the attack on U.S diplomats in Benghazi, Libya.
“She doesn’t like hearing it, but she hears that people have issues with her,” Podesta said at a lunch hosted by the Wall Street Journal. “What we’re going to do is lay out in our convention why people can trust her to do what she’s been doing her whole life, which is to fight for women and families.”
He acknowledged the difficulty of running against a showman such as Trump, but insisted the qualities that made Trump a successful reality TV star, performing as boardroom impresario on “The Apprentice,” where not those voters seek in a president.

“Having a temperament that is quick to anger, discounts study, is impetuous, [has] probably never been thought of before as a qualification for putting your finger on the nuclear codes,” Podesta said. “While it has certain appeal for certain people who are entertained by him, I think it is quite dangerous.”

Times staff writers Evan Halper and Sarah D. Wire contributed to this report.

mark.barabak@latimes.com and chris.megerian@latimes.com