Just 17000 Reasons The End Is Near

MAP: All 17,000 Of The World’s Nukes
AMANDA MACIAS, SKYE GOULD, MICHAEL B KELLEY TODAY AT 7:50 PM

17000 World Nuclear Bombs

The U.S., Russia, U.K. France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea possess approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons, according to the latest assessment from The Center For Arms Control And Non-Proliferation.

And given that there are several ways nuclear warfare could still happen, it’s good to keep an account of the world’s most devastating weapons. Furthermore, the nuclear arsenals of these countries serve of as powerful deterrents against aggressive military action.

The following graphic illustrates how many estimated nuclear warheads each of these nine nations have in their respective weapons inventories, as well as the first known date of nuclear weapon testing for each country.

Note: Since nuclear weapons programs are shrouded in secrecy, the following totals listed should be considered estimates. And the graphic does not reflect differences in a state’s type of nuclear warheads or the accuracy of its delivery systems.

Here are some key findings from the report and other relevant details:

• Israel has never revealed any details of its nuclear program or even acknowledged that it has a nuclear arsenal. However, U.S. intelligence believes that Israel possesses an estimated stockpile of 80 nuclear warheads. Israel obtained much of its weapons-grade uranium from an American company.

• Iran is widely believed to be running a clandestine research program to build a bomb, led by shadowy military figure Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

• All five legally recognised nuclear weapon states — China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA — are either deploying new nuclear weapon delivery systems or have announced programs to do so, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

• Even though under the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START), Russia and the United States have reduced their inventories but still account for more than 93% of all operational nuclear warheads.

• It is believed that the U.S. military has retired all remaining W80-0 Tomahawk cruise missiles and their warheads, according to research from the Federation of American Scientists.

• The United States and Russia still keep many of their weapons on launch-ready alert which means the warheads are capable of being launched within minutes of approval. Reportedly, China and Pakistan store all of their weapons separate from launching vehicles.

Sorry White House, the Antichrist Is Here (Revelation 13:11)

The return of Muqtada al-Sadr?

Antichrist Calls Upon His Men

For more What in the World watch Sundays at 10 a.m. & 1 p.m. ET on CNN
By Global Public Square staff

It seems that everyone – President Obama, John Kerry, NATO, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, even the Iranian government – has the same advice for the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki: Form a broad-based, inclusive government that reaches out to the Sunnis. That would take away some of the sense of grievance that fuels their support for radical Sunni groups like ISIS that are threatening Iraq’s existence as a nation.

So why in the world is al-Maliki flatly refusing to do this?

Partly it’s because he’s a hard line Shiite politician himself whose party draws its support from the Shiites, who are not particularly well disposed to the notion of being nice to the Sunnis, their former overlords.

But it’s probably at least as much because al-Maliki needs to worry about radical Shiites as much as radical Sunnis. You see, he has his own Tea Party. And this one has an army of its own.

Last month, members of the group (formerly called the “Mahdi Army,” now called the “Peace Brigades”) paraded through the streets of Baghdad by the tens of thousands, displaying their readiness to supposedly protect holy sites and shrines. The group’s name might be new, but its leader is a well-known figure in Iraq and dominated the U.S. media during the American occupation.

Remember the name Muqtada al-Sadr? He’s the radical Shiite cleric who fiercely opposed the U.S. occupation of Iraq.Back then the Mahdi Army was responsible for some of the deadliest days of the war.

Then he overplayed his hand.

The U.S. got other Shiite leaders to turn on him, issue an arrest warrant, and in 2007 he fled to Iran, where he sought exile and supposedly studied theology. But when he returned in 2011, his followers remained loyal to him, and he wields real political power in Iraq.

Al-Maliki got to keep his job as prime minister after an inconclusive election in 2010 largely because Muqtada al-Sadr helped him to build a coalition, thereby ending months of political deadlock.Since then, al-Sadr has called al-Maliki a “dictator” and – in a very surprising twist – recently added pressure on him to step down by calling for the creation of a new emergency government, right after Maliki rejected the idea.

Al-Sadr urged the Iraqi government to incorporate “moderate Sunnis, who have been marginalized” in order to quell the bloodshed. Now, al-Sadr appears to be trying to become the new power broker of Iraq, condemning ISIS and the Sunni terrorist groups, but also appealing to moderate Sunnis. Whether or not he succeeds, we are probably witnessing splits in the Shiite coalition, and that can only mean more chaos in an already chaotic situation.

A piece in Foreign Affairs points out that recent events are the re-ignition of the 2006-2007 Iraqi Civil War and that they fit a pattern. Over a third of all ethnic civil wars, the authors say, flair up again within five years. What’s more, approximately one third of all power sharing arrangements born out of those conflicts also fail within that time period. It’s true of Angola, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka in history.

And, now it’s true of Iraq.

The End Race

The endless race

The End Race

 

Rizwan Asghar
Tuesday, July 01, 2014

Since the advent of the nuclear age in South Asia, the region faces the terrifying prospect of a future nuclear holocaust resulting from a full-scale war between Pakistan and India.

The international community, led by the United States, remains on edge over the possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear war between the two de facto nuclear-armed neighbours. The current approach of the Indian nuclear establishment aimed at asserting its regional leadership role is likely to trigger a mad nuclear arms race in the region.

India’s gradual departure from its stated policy of ‘credible minimum deterrence’ has upped the nuclear ante, posing significant challenges to Pakistan’s security. According to a recent report published by a US-based military intelligence think tank, India’s all-powerful nuclear establishment is rapidly expanding its ability to produce fissile material to support an unnecessarily larger nuclear arsenal.

The report echoes Pakistan’s justified fears that India is pursuing ‘runaway’ expansion of its nuclear arsenal. The Modi government has plans to develop a covert uranium enrichment plant, which would substantially expand India’s nuclear submarine fleet in addition to the proposed development of thermonuclear weapons.

India, the first country to bring nuclear proliferation and the terrible threat of nuclear war in South Asia, already holds around 90 to 110 nuclear weapons. Now, because of the continuous expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal, Pakistan’s nuclear establishment also feels compelled to produce more bombs in order to offset India’s overwhelming superiority in both conventional and nuclear warfare. Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is of the view that, “Whether or not India uses the plant mainly for fuel for reactors and naval vessels as is sometimes surmised, it adds to India’s already far greater advantage over Pakistan in terms of nuclear weapons production potential.”

Given that India’s nuclear weapons programme was originally motivated more by the prestige factor than as a necessary means to meet real security threats, this new development has been viewed as worrisome. Although Indian officials have denied reports regarding the extension of any such covert nuclear facility, many western experts are still apprehensive about India’s development of more uranium enrichment plants being aimed to bring it closer to matching China’s nuclear capabilities, raising risks of nuclear war in the region.

Because of its geopolitical weight, New Delhi’s choices will have disastrous implications both for deterrence stability in the region and the future of the evolving global nuclear order. Some experts believe India is planning to build about 400 nuclear warheads, at least four times what Pakistan currently possesses. Emboldened by US support for its nuclear ambitions, India has embarked on a ‘ready nuclear arsenal policy’.

The claim that India is enhancing its nuclear capabilities as a deterrent against China is preposterous because the probability of China and India going to war against each other is very low. India’s nuclear posture can only be framed keeping in view its primary deterrent adversary – Pakistan – against whom they initially wanted to build a credible minimum deterrent. But prevailing attitudes towards nuclear weaponry among Indian nuclear security managers betray an over-obsession with China. Such attitudes will achieve nothing and start an unending nuclear arms race in South Asia.

India’s conventional superiority could easily deter Pakistan from initiating any attack, so India’s nuclear capability never had a ‘strategic’ justification but was a desire for ‘prestige’.

There is no gainsaying the fact that India’s nuclear establishment is going down this potentially dangerous path due to the overriding influence of nuclear scientists and technical bureaucracies. Like Pakistan, the civilian political leadership, due to complications of domestic politics, is not in a position to exercise authority over India’s vast nuclear establishment.

The Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), the main organ responsible for determining India’s emerging nuclear posture, continues to waste money on risky adventures, touting them as ‘world class capabilities’. DRDO officials publicly concede that most of these projects do not have clearance from the top political authorities in the country. For instance, the development of Agni VI, capable of carrying four to six warheads, in February 2013 had no sanction from the Union government of India.

The security of Pakistan’s nuclear programme has always received attention in the international media due to domestic political instability and growing internal militant threats. In contrast the security of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has been breached many times but there is little public discussion about threats to the security of India’s huge civilian and military nuclear infrastructure. Instead, an overriding assumption exists that relevant agencies in India provide enough security to nuclear infrastructure.

The fact is that no nuclear state in the world is totally immune to security threats to its nuclear assets, or to the simple risk of safety-related accidents. Given the rapid growth of India’s nuclear arsenal over the past few years, different home-grown insurgents and militants have the potential to compromise India’s nuclear security.

The current changes in India’s strategic posture and deployment patterns and the rapid development of its nuclear capabilities, whether politically sanctioned or not, could force China and Pakistan to respond in ways that could prove detrimental to Indian and global security. Despite global attention focused on Pakistan, irresponsible expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal may convert the country into a potential source of nuclear terrorism.

Email: rizwanasghar7@hotmail.com

A Troubling Connection To The Antichrist

For Iraq, Potential Leader With a Tarnished Past

Moqtada al-Sadr and Chalabi

By ROD NORDLANDJUNE 30, 2014

BAGHDAD — He took millions of dollars from the C.I.A., founded and was accused of defrauding the second-biggest bank in Jordan and sold the Bush administration a bill of goods on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

At first championed by the Bush administration’s neoconservatives as a potential leader of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi ended up persona non grata, effectively barred from the wartime American Embassy here. Now, in an improbable twist of fate, Mr. Chalabi is being talked about as a serious candidate for prime minister. He has also been back to the embassy.

With Sunni insurgents rampaging across the country and sectarian killings on the rise, everything old seems new again in Iraq — including, apparently, Mr. Chalabi.

And on Monday, Obama administration officials said that about 200 more troops had been sent to protect the American Embassy in Baghdad and the Baghdad airport. The additional troops, who arrived on Sunday, will operate helicopters and drones to “bolster airfield and route security,” Rear Adm. John F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement.

Iraqi politicians have begun to position themselves as possible replacements for the embattled Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. These are the four contenders.

In addition to those forces, another 100 troops who the Pentagon had previously said would be sent to Iraq are headed to Baghdad to help with security and logistics. The moves will raise the total number of American troops deployed to Iraq for security and advisory missions to about 750.

As Iraq’s political parties held round-the-clock meetings the past three days to try to agree on the shape of a new government in time to convene Parliament on Tuesday and begin choosing new leaders, Mr. Chalabi’s name was one of two being prominently mentioned to replace the incumbent prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

Mr. Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress has only one seat in the Parliament, his own, and it is a measure of his skills as a political operator that he is even under consideration.

It is also a measure of the desperate state of the effort to forge a new government amid severe sectarian strains and demands from both American and Iranian allies that Sunnis and Kurds be included — all while the country is under severe threat from Sunni-based Islamic extremists.

“Our candidates for prime minister are Adel Abdul Mahdi or Ahmad Chalabi,” said Hakim al-Zamili, a prominent leader in the parliamentary bloc of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, which in turn is part of the National Alliance, a coalition of all Shiite groups.

The alliance is trying to persuade the State of Law party of Mr. Maliki, also a Shiite, to stand aside for another Shiite. “If State of Law refuses to accept any other candidate, we will ally with the Kurds and the Sunnis to form a government,” said Mr. Zamili, who was accused of organizing death squads when he served as Iraq’s deputy health minister.

“You know, there is a saying in Arabic that when you have seen death, you don’t mind a high fever,” said one aide to Mr. Maliki who is among a growing number of Mr. Maliki’s own supporters hoping that he will bow out. The aide’s point was that almost anything was possible in the contorted state of Iraqi politics.

The normally garrulous Mr. Chalabi did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this article.
On the face of it, Mr. Chalabi as prime minister seems, at best, highly unlikely. His exile-based, C.I.A.-financed Iraqi National Congress never built much of a grass-roots following in Iraq, and he suffered from the Americans’ growing unpopularity as the war dragged on. His role in promoting what many now view as concocted evidence of weapons of mass destruction under Saddam Hussein badly tarnished him.

Only a year after the invasion, American special forces raided his home in the upper class Mansour neighborhood, apparently in a vain attempt to prove him a spy for Iran. Unlike many returning exiles, Mr. Chalabi stayed in Iraq through all the bad years, and not without risk; one suicide bomber narrowly missed him, killing six of his bodyguards.

Spurned by the Americans, he became an ally of Mr. Sadr, the radical Shiite leader, a friend to Iran and a regular visitor to the Shiite ayatollahs in Najaf.

Mr. Chalabi, 69, put skills honed during long years of exile in Washington as a communicator and back-room operator to good use, though, forging alliances with the Sadrists and their Iranian patrons, and also with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the Shiites’ supreme religious leader.

Some argue that Mr. Chalabi is at best a long-shot candidate, but so is every Maliki opponent at this point. Mr. Maliki’s State of Law party gained the biggest number of seats in the April 30 election, and now claims 95, well short of the 165 needed to make a majority in the 328-seat Parliament. But Mr. Maliki has lost support from the powerful Shiite clerics who, like the Americans, have politely but clearly signaled they would prefer he step down.

Replacing Mr. Maliki is one of the few things nearly all other politicians agree on — the other Shiite parties, as well as the Sunnis and Kurds and a host of tiny parties, which together could theoretically control as many as 233 seats in the Parliament.

Mr. Maliki’s State of Law supporters say the arithmetic is all on the incumbent’s side, however, and scoff at suggestions any other candidate could replace him. “Even if other parties don’t attend the first session, the State of Law with other small parties joining it will have enough seats to form a government,” said a party leader, Alia Nussif.

Nevertheless, at least four State of Law political leaders have said they want to see Mr. Maliki leave for someone whom all Shiites could coalesce around and other groups would find acceptable. That could either be some other figure in his party or, more likely, someone from one of the other major Shiite parties, most likely the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

That is where Mr. Chalabi’s chance comes into play. In the recent elections, he ran as an independent with the Islamic Supreme Council alliance, whose leading candidate was Bayan Jabr. Mr. Jabr, however, was the interior minister during some of the worst days of sectarian violence, when police and security forces were deeply implicated in the killings of Sunnis.

Mr. Chalabi, a secular Shiite, would not have that problem, although he was in charge of the de-Baathification commission that stripped Sunni officials of their positions. Lately, he has called for de-Baathification to be ended in the interest of healing differences between sects.

Mr. Chalabi also has the support of the followers of Mr. Sadr, whose Mahdi Army battled the Americans in the streets until he made peace and joined the political process. Mr. Sadr’s allies control 34 seats in the new Parliament, even more than the Islamic Supreme Council, once the biggest Shiite party, with 29.

The other candidate some of the Sadrists are talking about is Adel Abdul Mahdi, a former vice president and stalwart of the Islamic Supreme Council. Mr. Abdul Mahdi is tarnished by the years that he spent in government, however, and reputedly does not enjoy the level of Iranian support that Mr. Chalabi and the Sadrists have.

“Ahmad Chalabi is close to all the parties and is a good candidate,” said Nahida al-Daini, a leader with the Sunni Mutahidoon party. “But accepting him will also depend on internal and external approvals.” She apparently was referring to Iraqi religious leaders and foreign countries like Iran. Mr. Abdul Mahdi was also a possibility, she said.

Ahmed al-Sharifi, president of an Iraqi think tank called the Center for Strategic Studies, based in Karbala, in southern Iraq, said Mr. Chalabi was the most likely candidate to emerge as prime minister, at least in part because his lack of a political organization puts him in the role of an independent, and because he also enjoys support from the powerful marja, as the council of ayatollahs in Iraq, led by Mr. Sistani, is called.

“He’s a technocrat, an independent within the Shiite alliance, and he’s a man everybody can agree on among Sunnis and Kurds,” Mr. Sharifi said. Even his old C.I.A. connections are no longer a liability, he said. “Nobody cares about that stuff anymore.”

Just A Matter Of Time

Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa trying harder to acquire nuclear weapons

Bhaskar News   |  Jun 30, 2014, 12:04PM

 

Terrorist Jamaat Closer To Obtaining Nukes

 

Washington: The terrorist organizations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa are trying to get hold on some nuclear weapons apart from the air strength. They have strengthened a lot in terms of power after the Mumbai terror attack. It is alleged that they receive major help from the Pakistani army.

 

Recently released book written by an author of Pakistan support the statement that these terrorists groups are holding activities to get better day by days.

 

Author Arif Jamaal has claimed in his book, Calls for transnational Jihad, that Jamaat-ud-Dawa is aware of the fact that it can’t acquire nuclear weapon by going against Pakistan. Therefore, the group has adopted a different strategy. It is feared that it will soon get access to the most dangerous weapons present on earth.

 

He further adds that the Pakistani government doesn’t want to take any actions against the militants. The government along with the Intelligence agency ISI is in favour of terror activities against India, therefore they don’t wish to interfere in their functioning.

 

According to Jamaal, the Pakistani army is supporting the Jihadi organisations so that they can achieve their purpose in India and Afghanistan in peacetime.  Last week only, America added Jamaat-ud-Dawa in a list of ‘Foreign terrorist organisation’ which means that it can ban any activity of the group within the country. It can also seize any resources related to the group. The book has alleged that even western countries do not want Pakistan to take action against Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

 

Jamaal has written that no strict action has been taken so far against the masterminds of Mumbai attacks which shows that the country is in favour of support such activities against India.

UK One Of Ten Nuclear Horns (Daniel 7:7)

Keeping Trident nuclear weapons ‘in UK’s national interest’

UK Trident Missile

It is in the UK’s national interest to keep the Trident nuclear weapons system, a group of former ministers, diplomats and generals have argued.

Maintaining a nuclear capability could help deter threats to the UK’s security in future, their report concluded.

But they said continuous patrols could be relaxed while the UK must also show it is serious about working towards further international disarmament.

A final decision on whether to renew Trident will be taken in 2016.

The decision has been put back until after the 2015 elections following disagreements between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

While David Cameron supports the like-for-line renewal of the UK’s existing submarine-based ballistic missile system, the Lib Dems say the number of submarines could be reduced from four to three to save money.

Publishing its report, The Trident Commission said it believed that “retaining and deploying a nuclear arsenal” was necessary to protect the UK and to fulfil the country’s international responsibilities as a Nato member.

It said Trident met the “criteria of credibility, scale, survivability, reach and readiness” and alternative delivery options touted “simply on the basis of possible but speculative cost savings” should not be contemplated.

The commission’s members include former Conservative foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Labour defence secretary Lord Browne and former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell as well as former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Guthrie and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the United Nations.

Their report stated that a nuclear capability should not be justified on the grounds of it being an “insurance policy” against an uncertain future or to maintain Britain’s diplomatic standing in the world.

The rationale for keeping Trident, it added, lay in its ability to counter “credible” threats to the UK’s security.

It identified three scenarios in which such threats could arise; from a long-standing nuclear state with an “aggressive posture”; from an existing or emerging nuclear state which “enters into direct strategic competition with the UK”; a “massive overwhelming” threat involving weapons of mass destruction.
“If there is more than a negligible chance that the possession of nuclear weapons might play a decisive future role in the defence of the UK and its allies in preventing nuclear blackmail, or in affecting the wider security context within which the UK sits, then they should be retained,” the report stated.

“The impact of the UK’s falling victim to ongoing strategic blackmail or nuclear attack is so significant that, even if the chances appear slim today, there is sufficient uncertainty surrounding the prospect that it would be imprudent to abandon system that have a high capacity to counter such threats.”

The commission was divided over the question of whether the current practice of always having one submarine at sea at any other time should be maintained.

Some members argued that continuous-at-sea patrolling should continue until there was an “improvement in the security environment” while others argued that without a direct threat to the UK’s interests, this could happen immediately while retaining the capacity for increased patrols at times of crisis.

But the commission was united in its call for the UK to consider what it could do to further the cause of nuclear disarmament and to discourage proliferation.

While acknowledging the steps that had been taken since the end of the Cold War, it said the UK could consider a further reduction in missile and warhead numbers, enhanced verification procedures and commitments to control or decrease stocks of fissile materials.

“The commission would recommend that the Ministry of Defence study the steps down the nuclear ladder more thoroughly to give greater confidence to the international community that we are considering such steps seriously in preparation for multilateral disarmament negotiations,” it said.

Al-Sadr Is Iraq’s Own Blood Party

Fareed Zakaria: al-Sadr’s Shiite Militia Is Like Iraq’s “Own Tea Party”

Al Sadr and the Mahdi Army

FAREED ZAKARIA: Now for our “What in the World” segment. It seems that everyone, President Obama, John Kerry, NATO, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, even the Iranian government — has the same advice for prime minister of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki. Form a broad-based inclusive government that reaches out to the Sunnis. That would take away some of the sense of grievance that fuels their support for radical Sunni groups like ISIS that are threatening Iraq’s existence as a nation.

So why in the world is Maliki flatly refusing to do this? Partly is because he’s a hard line Shiite politician himself whose party draws its support from the Shiites who are not particularly well disposed to the notion of being nice to the Sunnis, their former overlords. But it’s probably at least as much because Maliki needs to worry about radical Shiites as much as radical Sunnis. You see, he has his own tea party, and this one has an army of its own.

Last Saturday members of the group formally called the Mahdi Army now called the Peace Brigades paraded through the streets of Baghdad by the tens of thousands displaying their readiness to supposedly protect holy sites and shrines. The group’s name might be new but its leader is a well known figure in Iraq and dominated the U.S. media during the American occupation. 

Remember the name Muqtada al-Sadr? He is the radical Shiite cleric who fiercely opposed the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Back then the Mahdi Army was responsible for some of the deadliest days of the war, then he overplayed his hand. The U.S. got other Shiite leaders to turn on him, issue an arrest warrant and in 2007 he fled to Iran where he sought exile and supposedly studied theology. 

But when he returned in 2011 his followers remained loyal to him and he wields real political power in Iraq. Al-Maliki got to keep his job as prime minister after an inconclusive election in 2010 largely because Muqtada al-Sadr helped him to build a coalition thereby ending months of political deadlock. Since al-Sadr has called Nuri al-Maliki a dictator and in a very surprising twist, recently added pressure on him to step down by calling for the creation of a new emergency government right after Maliki rejected the idea.

Al-Sadr urged the Iraqi government to incorporate moderate Sunnis who have been marginalized in order to quell the bloodshed. Now al-Sadr appears to be trying to become the new power broker of Iraq condemning ISIS and the Sunni terrorist groups but also appealing to moderate Sunnis. Whether or not he succeeds we are probably witnessing serious splits in the Shiite coalition and that can only mean more chaos in an already chaotic situation.