Earthquakes are occurring more frequently in parts of the U.S. where they have historically been rare, and quake hazard is rising for people not used to thinking about or preparing for it.
The rising risk was underlined Wednesday by the release by the U.S. Geological Survey of an update to the U.S. National Seismic Hazard Maps, noting hazard in the central U.S. and on the East Coast higher than previously thought. Among the highest risk states: Missouri and Illinois.
According to the USGS, the frequency of earthquakes in the central and eastern U.S. has quintupled, to an average of 100 a year during the 2011-2013 period, up from only 20 per year during the 30-year period to 2000.
Most of these quakes were minor, but research published by the USGS earlier this year demonstrated that a relatively minor magnitude 5.0 quake caused by wastewater injection after conventional oil drilling triggered a much bigger, 5.7 magnitude quake in Prague, Okla.
“We know the hazard has increased for small and moderate size earthquakes. We don’t know as well how much the hazard has increased for large earthquakes. Our suspicion is it has but we are working on understanding this,” said William Ellsworth, a scientist with the USGS.
Insurers are alarmed about higher quake risk. “I worry that we will wake up one morning and see earthquake damage in our country that is as bad as that has occurred in some developing nations that have experienced large earthquakes,” said Carl Hedde, head of risk accumulation at Munich Re America. “Beyond building collapse, a large amount of our infrastructure could be immediately damaged. Our roads, bridges and energy transmission systems can be severely impacted.”
Walmart Stores Inc., with its huge network of stores and facilities, has also taken note. ”We are seeing increased earthquake activity in the central U.S. That is an area we are focusing on even more,” said Mark Cooper, senior director of emergency management at Walmart, in an interview. He explained that Walmart takes an “all-hazard” approach to emergency preparedness, but focuses on specific risks in areas of the country where those risks are particularly relevant, such as hurricanes in Louisiana. “A few weeks ago, we participated in an exercise to prepare for an earthquake on the New Madrid fault line,” he said.
The New Madrid seismic zone was the site of massive earthquakes in 1811-1812 that rerouted the Mississippi River. Mark Petersen, project chief for the National Seismic Hazard Project of the U.S. Geological Survey, told Risk & Compliance Journal that a recent report concluded that recent seismic activity there is signaling a new hazard. “Earthquakes are quite rare in many places but when they happen they cause very intense damage because people have not prepared,” he said.
Yet officials say it’s difficult to convince businesses and residents to take the risk seriously in places such as Ohio, where minor earthquakes have occurred in connection with re-injection of wastewater into the ground after fracking. ”We aren’t California, where it’s part of their everyday living, the way snowstorms are part of our everyday living,” said Tamara McBride, spokesperson for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
Brian Blake, program manager for the Central U.S. Earthquake Consortium, a non-profit organization of public and private sector entities, noted that there is a 25% chance of a magnitude 6 or greater quake in the New Madrid zone in a 50-year period, and the last one occurred in 1895. “That size earthquake happens every 100 years or so,” he said.
But 100 years gives people plenty of time to forget. “Obviously the building codes throughout the central U.S. do not generally take earthquake risk or the risk of a large earthquake into account,” said Elizabeth Cochran, a seismologist with the USGS.
A Christian college in Massachusetts requested the freedom to live out its ideals, and since some powerful people don’t share those ideals they’re set to destroy Gordon College—unless it agrees to retreat to the closet.
In June, Gordon’s president added his name to a public letter asking President Obama to not force religious organizations into hypocrisy. Obama signed an executive order Monday that is the equivalent to many organizations of forcing Human Rights organizations to hire adherents of Westboro Baptist Church. It will force anyone who receives federal funds to hire people based on their sexual conduct.
Gordon, like every other observant religious institution in the world, does not want to be forced to hire people that represent the opposite of what it stands for. For that, it’s been pilloried in the press and persecuted by apparently every local public official who gets morally high from judging Gordon’s beliefs.
It has already lost a contract with a local town to manage its historic town hall, and its accreditation will soon be under review—all for merely signing a letter. Gordon is only the vanguard. There is far more of this ahead, for every religious school, charity, parachurch organization, and even churches. So it’s time to pay attention to the tenderhooks of tyranny.
Don’t Take Federal Money, Even Though It’s Yours
Gordon is at federal mercy, first, because it takes federal money. Nearly every college receives federal funds, because the federal government is the nation’s largest sponsor of subprime higher education—meaning, of course, it is by far the largest provider of student loans, made freely available without discrimination upon the basis of academic merit or likelihood of college completion.
This would be only an economic problem, not an individual liberty problem (besides the tax extortion), if the feds ever sent people’s tax dollars back to them with no control measures attached. But they don’t. Control is half the point of getting it in the first place. It’s a fishing expedition, and you’re the catch.
Although a few other colleges realized some time ago that federal money inherently threatens freedom, most are so hooked they would now have to dissolve if they did not accept it. Liberty University, for example, of Virginia and Jerry Falwell fame, regularly makes news for being among the top consumers of federal Pell Grants. It got a cool $81 million from the feds in 2010-11.
This isn’t just a college problem. It’s a charity problem, and parachurch problem, as our own Mollie Hemingway made very clear when discussing the World Vision debacle. It’s even a private K-12 school problem, since private schools can take federal lunch money (and its accompanying, idiotic regulations), have their teachers trained by their public school competitors, and more.
Accreditation May Be Worse
The danger to Gordon’s accreditation, however, may be worse, because it’s a far less visible instrument of control. Without accreditation, it’s difficult for an education institution to function, because accreditation gives the school a license to hand out real diplomas, and for its course credits to transfer to other institutions. As one might expect, that’s really important to schools’ customers.
In K-12, states regulate private school curriculum and teacher preparation (aka everything a child learns and how he learns it) through accreditation. So far accreditors have been content to demand low academics, Progressive curriculum, and fuzzy teaching methods, but in the current climate it’s no stretch to think not just the feds but also some state and private accreditors will demand that private schools condone gay sex.
In higher education, accreditation is also a hoop schools have to jump through to get federal funds, but even worse, the feds are directly involved in determining what hoops a school has to jump through to get accredited. So even if a school did not receive federal funds, it could be pressured on myriad fronts by the federal government or anyone else with power and an agenda through its accreditation agency. Such are the dangers of centralizing power, and allowing the government to do what private individuals and coalitions can manage much better themselves. It hands tyrants tools for oppression.
President Obama is clearly aware of the federal power over accreditation—he’s proposed changes to the accreditation process that involve more intimate data-collection on students, among other things. Since government-regulated accreditation does essentially nothing to improve school quality and is therefore a giant exercise in providing sustenance for the mosquito-like bureaucracy, and now a tool for potential religious discrimination, it’s time to abolish it.
Back to Gordon College, however. It is now excruciatingly clear we live in a time where some people who have political power are on a crusade against people who, in their view, commit moral thought crime. A religious college loses all reason for existence if it must conform to a diametrically opposite moral code.
It makes no sense for a school to hire teachers to teach children, among other things, that sex belongs in marriage between a man an woman, if that very teacher’s actions negate his or her words. Such a teacher must either lie to children, or the school must. (Perhaps the entire goal is to expose children to such forced hypocrisy.) If a religious school cannot act as a religious school, it logically cannot exist. It can only shift its morality to match that of its oppressors, or dissolve. That may be the point.
Below Doug Batchelor gives another terrific analysis of Papal and charismatic (word of faith) current events
Below are excellent videos on the Malaysian passenger jet false flag and cover up:
| tunnel in Gaza |
Israeli troops
entering Gaza last week have so faruncovered 18
tunnels used by Hamas to send armed terrorists into Israel and built using an
estimated 800,000 tons of concrete.
What else might
that much concrete build? Erecting Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest
tower, required 110,000 tons of concrete. Hamas, then, could’ve treated itself
to seven such monstrosities and still had a few tens of thousands of tons to
spare. If it wanted to build kindergartens equipped with bomb shelters, like Israel
has built for the besieged citizens of Sderot, for example—after all, noted
military strategists like Jon Stewart have spent last week proclaiming that
Gaza’s citizens had nowhere to hide from Israel’s artillery—Hamas could have
used its leftovers to whip up about two that were each as big as Giants
Stadium. And that’s just 18 tunnels. Egypt, on its end, recently claimed to
have destroyed an additional 1,370. That’s a lot of concrete.
You may find such calculations callous.
They certainly pale in comparison to heart-wrenching photos of dead children on
the beach. But they matter a whole lot: If you’ve ever read Robert Caro’s The
Power Broker, or played Sim City, or just
looked out your window and paid attention to your city’s changing skyline, you
know that urban leaders are measured not by what they say but what they
build. And Hamas, almost exclusively, chose to build tunnels, bunkers, and
launching pads for missiles.
Now, from purely military point of view,
there is something brilliant about transforming a strip of coastal farmland
into a giant concrete aircraft carrier that’s impossible for your enemy to
sink. But the idea that Hamas’ tunnels are intended to promote the welfare of
Gaza’s 1.8 million civilians, who are forced to live on deck as rockets are
fired, is bunk. If the tunnels were truly lifelines for Gazans, as Western
apologists occasionally argue, one might expect any reasonably responsible
leadership to avoid firing barrages of rockets at civilians inside Israel.
The intention behind Hamas’ tunnels is
clear from where the exits are located: inside Israel. The terror organization
packed its subterranean networks of tunnels and bunkers with explosives,
weapons, and murderers, some disguised as IDF soldiers. Their gallant plan was
to send the killers through the tunnels, so they could emerge from the ground
in the middle of Israeli kibbutzim and start throwing grenades and shooting
indiscriminately, with the goal of killing as many Israelis as possible. That’s
not very neighborly.
So, where did Hamas get all that concrete?
Most of it came from you and your government. Hamas got its hands on the
supplies it needed to build the tunnels after it pleaded with the international
community last year to help redeem Gaza from the throes of a humanitarian
crisis, caused by the fact that both Israel and Egypt closed their borders to
Gaza, because both countries grew tired of having their soldiers and citizens
murdered by terrorists. Needless to say, Israel’s concerns about how the
concrete would be used were universally derided in the West as inflicting cruel
and needless suffering on the people of Gaza—who, needless to say, didn’t
receive any of the concrete for their own use. The priorities of Ismail
Haniyeh’s government were crystal clear—to use all resources at their disposal
to launch another war with Israel.
And if you are among the tens of thousands
of political idiots who spent last weekend demonstrating in support of
Hamas—now that the Khmer Rouge isn’t fashionable—it may also be useful for you
to know that while Gazans languish in in poverty, Hamas’ bosses are living large; Haniyeh, for example,
bought 27,000 square feet of beach-side property a few years ago for $4
million, pays for his children to study in Europe, and sends his family members
to hospitals inside Israel—all good choices, which he ensures are not available
to anyone in Gaza who isn’t a high-level member of his fundamentalist political
cult.
What all this adds up to is that Hamas is
not seriously interested in governing Gaza, which is why all the honorable
attempts at resolving this current round of bloodletting will fall flat. New
elections won’t help. Giving Hamas more concrete won’t help either.
Earlier this
month, Israel’s former chief of staff and Minister of Defense Shaul Mofazproposed a
dollars-for-demilitarization deal; it called for a ceasefire, followed by a
payment of a whopping $50 billion designated for welfare and infrastructure in
return for a promise to cleanse Gaza of rockets and to destroy the tunnels.
It’s an interesting idea, which rests on the assumption that the cash will make
its way to Gaza’s tired, poor, and huddled masses. It won’t.
There’s no negotiating with Hamas, not
because of some lofty and abstract principle—we don’t negotiate with
terrorists!—but because Hamas isn’t here to talk or build or heal the wounded
people of Gaza. The organization’s raison d’etre is killing people in order to
bring about the rule of its fundamentalist and radically intolerant brand of
Islam—they shoot Jews, and they also shoot anyone else the organizations
doesn’t like, including Egyptian soldiers, gays, and political opponents from
other Palestinian factions.
Anyone with a genuine commitment to human
rights—not to mention sympathy for the Palestinian cause—should join Israel in
its efforts to rid the world of such sheer evil and topple Hamas. To leave
Hamas in power is not a moderate solution to anything. It is to become
complicit in the agenda and the actions of a terrorist organization in
inflicting terrible and continuing pain not only on its neighbors but also on
its own people.
| The Fez symbolizes shed Christian blood |
For the first time in 1,600 years, Mass is not being said in Mosul: an ancient culture has been wiped out in a matter of weeks. It's a war crime that, strangely, no one seems to want to talk about ... Since the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rode into town, the Christian faith has been forced underground. Bells have been silenced, the hijab enforced with bullets. Tens of thousands fled after being offered an unattractive choice: convert, pay a religious tax, or be put to the sword. The levy was unaffordable. According to one local news agency, ISIS troops entered the house of a poor Christian and, when they didn’t get what they wanted, the soldiers raped the mother and daughter in front of their husband and father."
Resilience illustrates the difference between fundamentalist Islam and Christianity: the former is a religion of killers, the latter is a religion of martyrs.
Islam has been the Number One murderer of Christians in modern history; their warriors have so efficiently slaughtered Christians that, today, Northern Africa and the Middle East, are so predominately Muslim. Christians have fled for their lives. Since the Koran of Medina was implemented, 270 million Christians have been put to the sword by Islam in 1400 Years.
Do you remember the red "Fez Hat" so idolized by Freemasonry? That hat is named after Fez, Morroco, where a great slaughter of Jews and Christians occur at the hand of Islamic warriors. There is a declaration for all Muslims throughout the world to lash out to kill, torture, butcher, and humiliate Jews, Christians, and Americans wherever the individual Muslim finds him or her. This reveals of the kind of hatred that has always existed within the heart of the Muslim.
This kind of hatred has been seen in history, when victorious Muslim armies set out to slaughter Jew and Christian alike. In fact, in the city of Fez, Morocco, Muslim troops slaughtered so many Christians in such a short period of time, that the blood of the victims ran like rainwater down the street gutters. At one point, a Muslim warrior gleefully took off his white turban-type hat, dipped it into the blood flowing down the street, and the placed it back on his head. Many other Muslim soldiers followed his example, and very soon, most of the white turbans of the soldiers were dripping red.
This historic tradition is today maintained and kept alive by Freemasonry, as they proudly wear their blood-red Fez hats. This sorry spectacle is simply one more instance of how Freemasonry secretly hates the Born Again Christian in their invisible, inner circle, even as they hide this fact from the 95% of all visible Masons in the world.
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants (ISIS) is a sobering return to the days of wanton slaughter.
And, true to history, the Christians in Iraq are fleeing with no one and no government and no army coming to their defense.
| Richard Dreyfus goes to Mt. Sinai |
One
of my favorite movies is Close
Encounters of the Third Kind. You don’t need to strain too hard to find the
biblical imagery in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third
Kind. You don’t even need to see the movie. The poster alone—a mountain clouded with smoke
and bathed in heavenly light—is enough to signal that something big is about to
be revealed.
In
the movie itself, the allusions to Mount Sinai are even more direct. When we
first meet our protagonist, electrical lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss),
he’s just given his kids permission to watch Cecil B. DeMille’s The
Ten Commandments, even though it’s almost bedtime. “Roy, that
movie’s four hours long,” complains his wife, Ronnie (Teri Garr). “I said they
could watch five commandments,” he answers.
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