RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/06/01/irans-stock-of-enriched-uranium-16-times-higher-than-limit-set-out-in-jcpa/

Iran has also failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency shows, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks currently underway in Vienna.

Iran holds a quantity of low enriched uranium nearly 16 times higher than the limit authorized in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, according to a report Monday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

After Washington pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018 under former US President Donald Trump and re-imposed crippling economic sanctions against Tehran, Iran began breaching the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear activities as of 2019.

One of its more recent breaches, enriching uranium to 60%, a big step towards weapons-grade from the 20% it had previously reached and the deal’s 3.67% limit, continued. The IAEA estimated that Iran had produced 2.4 kg of uranium enriched to that level and 62.8 kg of uranium enriched to up to 20%.

Iran’s production of experimental quantities of uranium metal, which is prohibited under the deal and has prompted protests by Western powers because of its potential use in the core of nuclear weapons, also continued. Iran produced 2.42 kg, the IAEA reported, up from 3.6 grams three months ago.

Iran has also failed to explain traces of uranium found at several undeclared sites, the report by the UN nuclear watchdog showed, possibly setting up a fresh diplomatic clash between Tehran and the West that could derail wider nuclear talks that are currently underway in Vienna.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17420/eu-china-investment-treaty

The lopsided agreement, which ostensibly aims to level the economic and financial playing field by providing European companies with improved access to the Chinese market, actually allows China to continue to restrict investment opportunities for European companies in many strategic sectors. The deal also lacks meaningful enforcement mechanisms for issues that the EU claims to care about, such as climate change and human rights, including forced labor.

“China has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to use its economic power as a strategic weapon. By deepening their economic reliance on China — without coordinating their policy with fellow democracies — European nations are increasing their vulnerability to pressure from Beijing. That is a remarkably shortsighted decision to make.” — Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, January 4, 2021.

China contends that its sanctions are tit for tat — morally equivalent retaliation — in response to those imposed by Western countries. In fact, the European sanctions are for crimes against humanity, whereas the Chinese sanctions seek to silence European critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

“China cannot and will not be tamed. It will not adhere to the rule of law. It will not give up on its uncouth wolf warriors. It will not change its debt trap diplomacy. It will not end the weaponization of political systems, in this case the fault lines of democracies, to smother democracies. If it is counter sanctions today, it will be intellectual property theft tomorrow, and 5G data surveillance of free citizens next. Under Xi Jinping, China has become a hydra-headed monster.” — Gautam Chikermane, Indian foreign affairs expert, Observer Research Foundation, May 21, 2021.

“While halting the ratification of CAI is good, scrapping CAI altogether would be better.” — Andreas Fulda, German China scholar, May 20, 2021.

The European Parliament has halted ratification of a controversial investment treaty with China until Beijing lifts sanctions on European lawmakers, academics and think tanks. The move, a rare display of fortitude by an institution notorious for vacillation, reflects a hardening stance in Europe toward the Chinese Communist Party.

The ratification freeze, backed by all of the major groupings in the European Parliament, is significant for several reasons: it represents a turning point in EU-China relations, in that Beijing no longer calls the shots; it marks a shift in the balance of power in favor of the European Parliament at the expense of the European Commission; and it signifies the beginning of the end of Merkelism, and ideology which, among other things, consistently prioritized commercial interests over human rights concerns, whether in China, Russia or Iran.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17349/france-antisemitic-murder

The murderer, under the influence of an illicit substance, was immediately sent to a mental institution, not to prison. Who decided that? Usually, a person arrested after a crime and found to be “under the influence” is arrested, placed in a cell to sober up, then charged by a judge. Why was this case not treated the same way?

Judge Ihouelou repeatedly violated the most basic rules of her profession by behaving in a strikingly biased way. First, she refused to allow any reconstruction of the crime. She ruled that reconstructing the crime would be “traumatic” for the criminal. She also refused to meet the lawyers of the victim’s sister and children to hear what they had to say.

How could a Court of Appeal validate an investigation in which a reconstruction of the crime never took place; in which the lawyers for the family were never heard, and at the end of which, the decision was rendered solely on the basis of a psychiatric report written months after the facts; based mainly on the statements of a murderer, and contradicted by another psychiatric report?

“[T]his affair… is also the illustration for those who might still need it, of the vital utility of Israel so that justice is done to the Jews all over the world…. due to the failure of French justice”. — Raphaël Nisand French radio commentator, Tribune Juive, April 25, 2021.

A verdict based on an “acute delirium” leading to no longer being responsible for one’s actions is medically unacceptable, because cannabis does not induce delirium, but only suspends inhibitions. “The murderer,” he wrote, “clearly discerned the reference text which could guide his action, and far from creating confusion in him, cannabis only helped to lift ordinary inhibitions. The poison did not alter his behavior and his judgment, it magnified them”. — Charles Melman, renowned French psychiatrist and founder of the International Freudian Association, Tribune Juive, May 5, 2021.

Paris, April 4, 2017. 4:00 am. A man breaks into the home of Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old retired Jewish physician and educator. He beats and tortures her for over an hour while reciting verses from the Quran and repeatedly shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” [Allah is the greatest!”]. He uses anti-Semitic slurs and calls her “Sheitan” (Satan). He throws her from the balcony of her apartment and she falls to the ground, three floors below, dead. The police arrest him.

What happened was an unspeakable antisemitic murder. It was also the start of a process that brought to light once again the many serious and shameful dysfunctions that mark today’s France.

The murderer, Kobili Traore, an immigrant from Mali who became a French citizen, is a recidivist criminal who had already been arrested and sentenced by the courts 20 times for violent assaults. He was nonetheless free. His only known professional activity is, in two words: drug dealer. He told the officers who arrested him that he is a drug addict and had smoked marijuana in the hours before the murder.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17399/turkey-damage-jews

The loss of 232 Muslim lives in Afghanistan did not make even a single column inch of news in the Turkish media.

Once again, it is wartime for Palestinian terrorists, a wake-up call for the usual Turkish hostility, and hard times for the few thousand Turkish Jews squashed in between the bitter truth and their fear of a potentially dangerous autocrat.

In a 2015 study, the Anti-Defamation League found that 35 million out of an adult population of 49 million Turks, or 71%, harbored antisemitic attitudes, compared to an average 49% in the entire Muslim world. Statistically speaking, a 22 percentage point difference from the average is a significant deviation. In Turkey’s case, the deviation is also empirically visible.

In this year’s Middle East clashes, as in the past several years, Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey globally championed the Palestinian cause. A jogger could be fined for breach of lockdown rules but the police welcomed thousands of protesters in front of Israeli diplomatic missions in Istanbul and Ankara. A couple set their car on fire in front of the Israeli Consulate building in Istanbul “in the name of our Muslim brothers who are tortured in Gaza.” This was said despite that it was actually Hamas — a terrorist group that, since 2007, has held the Palestinians hostage as human shields, both to protect its weapons and to show dead babies to the television cameras — that began firing 4,300 rockets into a country the size of New Jersey: Israel. The Israelis were not returning fire at the Palestinians, they were returning fire at the terrorist groups shooting at them: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. “Why,” as the magazine Spiked asked, “won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?”

Erdoğan, referring to Jewish people, said on May 17: “It is in their disposition that they are only satisfied by sucking blood” — a comment that triggered a duel of words between Ankara and Washington.