In The News:

Earthquakes:

Strong 6.8m Quake Shakes Northern Japan

A strong earthquake shook northern Japan on Wednesday evening, causing a small tsunami but no damage or injury was reported.

Wednesday's tremor was centered about 146 miles (235 kilometers) south of Kushiro, Japan, on Hokkaido island. It was a relatively shallow 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the sea surface.

Earthquakes List March 14

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Volcano On Scenic Greek Island Getting Restless

The volcanic caldera on the picturesque tourist island of Santorini is showing signs of unrest.

The Greek island was the site of one of the most massive volcanic eruptions in history 3,600 years ago. That eruption, which created tsunamis 40 feet (12 meters) tall, may have spawned the legend of the lost city of Atlantis. The volcano last erupted in 1950, albeit on a much smaller scale.

Global positioning system (GPS) sensors placed on the caldera have detected renewed movement after decades of peace. The earth around the caldera (a depression at the top of a volcano) is deforming, or expanding outward, researchers report in an upcoming article in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. GPS instruments on the northern part of Santorini have moved between 1.9 and 3.5 inches (5 to 9 centimeters) since January 2011

"What we're seeing now is the first significant deformation and the first deformation that has any significant earthquake activity associated with it," Newman told LiveScience.

Middle East:

"U.S. Warns Iran: Accede Or Be Attacked

The United States asked Russia to send Iran a message that the upcoming round of nuclear talks is its last chance to avoid a military confrontation this year, Russian newspaperKommersant reported Wednesday according to a diplomatic source.

The unusually stark warning by the US was passed on by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, after the two met in New York on Monday, the diplomatic source told the Russian newspape

"The invasion will happen before the year's end," the source told Kommersant. "The Israelis are, in effect, blackmailing Obama: either he supports the war, or he risks losing the support [of the Jewish lobby]" the year of US presidential elections.

Israel Develops Its Own Bunker Buster

MPR-500 made by Israel's Military Industries

Israel has developed an improved precision, bunker-burrowing weapon which Israeli Military Industries (IMI) unveiled on March 6. The 500-pound MPR-500 is an electro-optical (laser-guided) bomb that can penetrate double-reinforced concrete walls or floors without breaking apart.

The bomb was shown in action penetrating four reinforced concrete walls with fragmentation from the explosion limited to a radius of less than three meters.

The new weapon is designed as an upgrade for the US Mk82 in Israel Air Force stocks. “The lethality, precision… and relatively low weight of the new weapon,” say its manufacturers, “enable its use against multiple targets in a single pass.”

After blowing the first hole in the targeted underground site, the next bombs continue to extend and deepen it.

Israeli officials have consistently challenged the claims of some experts that the lack the military capacity for a successful strike against Iran’s nuclear facilties.

Report: U.S. Asked Russia To Warn Iran

The United States has asked Russia to deliver an ultimatum to Iran, warning the Islamic Republic that it has one last chance for talks before a military strike, the Kommersant daily quoted Russian diplomats as saying on Wednesday.

The report in Kommersant did not give further details regarding the kind of military action the U.S. was threatening, but quoted Russian diplomats at the UN as saying they believe that it is a "matter of when, not if" Israel would strike Iran's nuclear facilities.

Israel To Be Backstabbed Again?

After getting the Jewish vote that gave him Florida and the 2008 election a different Obama emerged.

In 2009 the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs reported that Obama had imposed a virtual arms embargo on Israel. Obama blocked all major Israeli weapons requests, including key projects and upgrades, linking arms sales to progress in the peace process. At the same time, Obama approved $10 billion in arms sales to Arab states, including fighters, missiles, helicopters, and fast attack craft. Israel did not protest, despite reports that its qualitative military edge was being eroded.

Since then. as Caroline Glick wrote in 2011,

...he has abandoned the US's quiet defense of Israel's purported nuclear arsenal. He has continuously threatened to abandon US support for Israel at the UN. Not only has Obama adopted the Palestinians' increasingly hostile policies towards Israel. He has led them to those policies. It was Obama, not Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas, who first demanded that Israel cease respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by the end of 2011. It was Obama, not Abbas, who first stipulated that future "peace" negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians must be predicated on Israel's prior acceptance of the indefensible 1949 armistice lines as a starting point for talks.

Now Obama is back in the campaign mode again and making the same promises he made in 2008. If he wins in 2012 there will be no need for the US Jewish vote. Then the Obama's ship of state, unhampered by the need for the Jewish vote, will fly its true colors.

Egypt To Halt Gas Exports To Israel And Expel Envoy

The lower house of the Egyptian parliament has unanimously approved a text declaring that Israel is the number one enemy of Egypt and calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and a halt to gas exports to Israel.

“Revolutionary Egypt will never be a friend, partner or ally of the Zionist entity, which we consider to be the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation,” the report declared, adding, “It will deal with that entity as an enemy, and the Egyptian government is hereby called upon to review all its relations and accords with that enemy.”

Also in the news:

PA Declares Church In Bethlehem To Be Unlawful

The Palestinian Authority declared a Baptist Church in Bethlehem to be unlawful and said that it will no longer receive rights as a religious institution, Algemeiner reported.

Pastor Reverend Naim Khoury noted, however, that animosity towards the Christian minority in areas controlled by the PA continues to get increasingly worse.

“People are always telling [Christians], ‘Convert to Islam. Convert to Islam. It’s the true and right religion,’” Khoury said.

Energy Policy And Biking To The Grocery Store

Our economy is starved for energy because this administration has blocked the development of domestic sources of energy in order to promote its expensive and bankrupt green energy in the name of environmental and social justice that the left is pushing so vehemently.

A barrage of unnecessary and costly regulations has driven up gas prices to more than double since Obama became President. The Keystone XL pipeline would have removed the uncertainty of future supplies that affect energy prices. Sadly, Canadian oil will not be flowing to the United States via the Keystone XL pipeline, but to the port of Vancouver, to be shipped via oil tankers to China.

Candidate Obama promised that under his presidency gas prices would skyrocket and anyone who would build a coal-fired plant would go bankrupt. His supporters were too busy with “hope and change” to pay attention when he promised to “fundamentally transform” this nation.

As this administration states publicly that it is “boosting domestic production onshore,” new leasing on federal lands is down 44 percent, and the number of new oil wells drilled is down 39 percent. The President says that new offshore areas are opening, but his latest plan keeps 87 percent of these areas off limits. Claims that oil and gas activity in the Gulf of Mexico is back to normal are contradicted by a forecasted drop in production this year of nearly 21 percent from 2010 levels. (Speaker Boehner’s Office)

“Environmentalists and those who cannot afford to drive end up making it easier for other customers to shop by automobile.” It boils down again to social justice, the haves and have-nots. The author must not have or feed a family of four. How much groceries can one carry daily on a bicycle? Then again, logic is not the strong suit of progressives. Extreme environmentalism looks good on paper, not so much in practice.

Most Americans care for their environment and do not wish to destroy it. Regressing humanity and de-grow developed nations economically to primitive life styles in order to satisfy the goals of the Sierra Club crowd or other like-minded environmentalists is not the majority’s idea of living.

No matter what we do, the lack of a sane energy policy and constant class warfare from the left are going to bring about conflict between outlandish environmentalists and average Americans who wish to live in a free country with choices offered by the free market and not choices dictated by the omnipotent few who want to control the entire population under the false premise of protecting the planet.


Stunner: Balanced CBS Report On Arpaio Probe