RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-nuclear-weapons-program/

 Samples recently collected by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors at two Iranian sites showed traces of radioactivity. Tehran had not reported any nuclear activity at these sites and denied IAEA inspectors access to them until just a few months ago. The findings suggest that Iran, in violation of the JCPOA nuclear agreement it signed in July 2015, has continued to conduct activities related to nuclear military development.

Samples collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showed traces of radioactivity at two Iranian sites where Tehran has not reported any nuclear activity. Although the IAEA refrained from naming the sites in its quarterly report of June 5, 2020, they were identified last year by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. The identification of the sites was based on information extracted from the Iranian nuclear archive smuggled out of Tehran and into Israel in January 2018.

The first site visited by IAEA inspectors in August 2020 was a pilot plant for uranium conversion with an emphasis on the production of UF6 (uranium hexafluoride, a uranium compound which, in its gas phase, enables the enrichment of uranium by centrifuges). This site, located about 75 km southeast of Tehran, operated under the aegis of the Amad military nuclear program. In documents from the Iranian nuclear archive, this location is referred to as the “Tehran Site.” The facility was dismantled in 2004.

The other site was Marivan, located near the town of Abadeh in central Iran. This facility, also part of the Amad program, was designed to conduct “cold tests” of nuclear weapons (that is, to simulate activation of a nuclear explosive device using natural uranium rather than nuclear weapons grade uranium). This included operating a multipoint explosive system for the activation of a nuclear weapon as well as the development of its neutron initiator.

According to satellite imagery published by the Institute for Science and International Security, the Iranian authorities razed part of the Marivan facility in July 2019, more than a year before they allowed IAEA inspectors access to the facility. It is likely that this was done to prevent exposure of nuclear activities that had taken place there in the past. (This was not the first time the Islamic regime had razed nuclear sites: it did so at the Lavizan-Shian facility in Tehran in 2004 and the Parchin facility in 2012.) It is possible that the traces of radioactive materials found in samples taken by IAEA inspectors in August 2020 indicate renewed efforts to develop a neutron initiator for nuclear weapons previously conducted at the Marivan site.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17009/turkey-ravages-cyprus

Six years after Turkey invaded Cyprus, another military coup d’état, in 1980 in Turkey, would destroy whatever crumbs of freedoms remained. According to US secret diplomatic documents, at least 650,000 people were detained. Many were tortured and hundreds died in custody.

“There is a rule in the [Turkish] Special Warfare: To increase the strength of the people, some of their values must be sabotaged as if [the sabotage were conducted] by the enemy. [For example], a mosque can be burned. We burned a mosque in Cyprus.” — Turkish General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, Habertürk, September 23, 2010.

In addition to Greek Cypriots, Armenian, Maronite, and other non-Muslim Cypriots were also forcibly displaced. The result was that Turkey effectively crushed the Christian population.

Today Turkey still calls the atrocities it committed in Cyprus in 1974 “a peace operation.”

The international community may be unaware of it, but Europe includes a ghost town located in the Republic of Cyprus. Since 1974, it has been under Turkish occupation, which has looted and ethnically cleansed its indigenous population.

Designated a military zone by the Turkish army 46 years ago, when Greek Cypriots were forced to flee invading Turkish forces, a part of the Cypriot district of Famagusta has remained deserted.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared in October 2020:

“[T]he two main streets and the coast in the ‘Maraş region’ [Famagusta in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus], which were closed since the 1974 peace operation, have recently been opened to the use of the Cypriot people….. The closed Maraş region belongs to the Turkish Cypriots; it should be known this way…

“I call out to our fellow Turks in northern Cyprus, to my Turkish brothers. This land is yours. You have to lay claim to these lands. You also need to protect the political will that lays claim to these lands. If we can put this out fully, I believe that the future in Cyprus will be very different.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17088/iran-mediation

First, he must persuade Tehran to treat Iraq as an independent nation-state, not a glacis for the Islamic Republic in its campaign to “export revolution.”

Revival of the 1977 trade accord could help end the current chaos and enable Tehran and Baghdad to secure income from tariffs and taxation. Setting mutually accepted rules on charities could also help both curb money laundering and tax evasion through fake religious charities linked to crime syndicates and security services.

The big enchilada in al-Hakim’s imaginary mediation would be the reopening of Shatt al-Arab, the border waterway closed and clogged during the war. Re-opened, the Shatt could ensure the revival of Basra in Iraq and Khorramshahr in Iran which were the region’s largest ports for centuries. Dredging and remodeling the waterway could cost some $20 billion, worth considering if both sides created a joint navigation management agency.

Ah, we dropped the word “normalization”…. If the Islamic Republic can’t normalize relations even with Iraq, how could it normalize with the American “Great Satan”?

If wise al-Hakim wants to mediate, let him start with his two homelands.

With Donald Trump out of the White House, wannabe do-gooders have thrown their hats, or turbans, into the ring as mediators between Tehran and Washington.

First, French President Emmanuel Macron said he was ready to seize the opportunity of Joe Biden’s victory to build a bridge with Iran. Then it was the turn of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to don the mantle of honest broker. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has also made musings about mediation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17080/biden-afghanistan-taliban

Under the terms of that agreement with the US, the Taliban agreed to negotiate a peaceful resolution of this benighted country’s long-running civil war in return for Washington agreeing to withdraw all its remaining forces. In addition, they agreed to cut their ties with Islamist terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda.

While Mr Trump kept his side of the bargain, reducing US forces from around 13,000 at the time the deal was signed last February to just 2,500 when he left office, there has been little evidence of the Taliban fulfilling their commitments under the terms of the agreement.

Consequently, Afghanistan finds itself in the midst of a major security crisis, with militants concentrating their attacks on a broad cross-section of Afghan society, with judges, activists, journalists, moderate clerics, students and other professionals all being targeted.

Afghan officials believe the Taliban never had any intention of fulfilling their side of the deal, and just drew out the negotiations with the Trump administration so that they could secure the release of the estimated 5,000 militants being held by Afghan security forces, who were eventually released by the Afghan authorities last autumn.

“The only thing the Taliban have taken out of this agreement is to get their prisoners, then launch an offensive against the Afghan forces and government. That was, it seems, their plan from the beginning.” — Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor, The Times, February 17, 2021.

Of major concern is the prospect that, if the Taliban are allowed to seize control of the country they governed prior to the September 11 attacks, they will once again allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, which will then use the country as a base to launch devastating attacks against the West.

Thus, in making his decision about the future of American forces in Afghanistan, Mr Biden needs to take care that he is not responsible for causing a new wave of terror attacks against the US and its allies.

With former US President Donald J. Trump no longer able to dictate US policy on Afghanistan, the Taliban are exploiting the opportunity to increase their efforts to seize control of the country in spite of the peace accord they signed with the Trump administration last year.

Under the terms of that agreement with the US, the Taliban agreed to negotiate a peaceful resolution of this benighted country’s long-running civil war in return for Washington agreeing to withdraw all its remaining forces. In addition, they agreed to cut their ties with Islamist terrorist organisations such as Al-Qaeda.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/formerly-happy-brits-now-sit-alone-their-cars-katie-hopkins/

My mother looked a bit flustered as I walked through her front door.

Do you know, a lady my age just stabbed her husband to death in their kitchen? They were a lovely couple, according to the neighbors. Always together, always working in their garden, always on holidays. Well, she stabbed him to death. Four times! In the kitchen!

Ok I told her I did not know that. Though, I assumed she stabbed him four times and not that he died in quadruple. I was also caught off guard by my mother’s repeated insistence that this had all happened IN THE KITCHEN as if that was some sacred place in the home where these things never happen. Unlike the study or the bedroom, for example, where Cluedo has taught us all sorts of maleficence can occur.

My mother was not done yet.

Well, quite frankly, I quite understand how she must have been feeling. Your father is doing my head in.

My mother is not alone in how she feels. Not that every married wife of 50-year standing is poised in their kitchens, bread knife in hand, ready to end their beloved in a row over an iPad charger. But endless lockdown in the UK is making Brits who were perfectly happy before, question the point of going on.

“On my drive to work, I seriously thought about driving my car into a wall” comments one follower on my Instagram feed. “I sat alone in my car from 5-6.30pm yesterday, just to have some time on my own away from my family. This is not life.” This, shared openly, by another.

We just aren’t supposed to be trapped indoors with other people for this long. I know marriage is about sharing your life, but part of that is that you are sharing the most mundane bits of you that others don’t get to see — amongst all the noise and chaos of others.

Turned off from all external stimuli, the mundane stuff we are recycling at home feels terminal, like an air-conditioning unit returning polluted air. We are all set on repeat, scratching about for something interesting to think, or some different way to feel.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/china-betrays-its-deal-with-the-vatican/

Having secured the papacy’s help in weakening the Chinese Catholic underground, Xi Jinping’s regime is reneging on the commitments it made in return.

Beijing has quietly indicated that it will soon abrogate its “breakthrough” 2018 agreement with the Vatican, which was meant to settle a decades-long dispute over the appointment of bishops in China.

In November, shortly after exchanging diplomatic notes verbales with Rome to renew the deal for another two years, China thoroughly negated it in a dry public posting by the state bureaucracy. Order No. 15, on new administrative rules for religious affairs, includes an article on establishing a process for the selection of Catholic bishops in China after May 1. The document makes no provision for any papal role in the process, not even a papal right to approve or veto episcopal appointments in China, which was supposed to be the single substantive concession to the Vatican in the agreement. It’s as if the deal never happened.

Reneging on a deal with Pope Francis may not be as consequential as overturning the “one country, two systems” agreement that was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy after the city’s return from the United Kingdom to China, but it does reveal the peril of international partnerships with Beijing.

In October, when the two-year renewal of the deal was announced, the Vatican reported that the “results achieved” until then under the agreement were the appointments of two new bishops who had papal approval. Its press statement praised the appointments as “a good start.” “Thanks to the implementation of the Agreement, there will be no illegitimate ordinations,” the statement said, before expressing joy that the Chinese Church would experience “unity” once again. Order No. 15 now casts serious doubt on these claims.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/edition/china-insider-7-2_3694788/3690286

As the Chinese regime continues to intimidate Taiwan by repeatedly breaching the island’s airspace and escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait, it is developing an advanced fighter jet aircraft in secret.

The Epoch Times recently obtained a military document from a trusted source which unveiled details of a concept fighter jet project, driven by China’s “military-civil fusion” strategy. It also reveals that the Chinese military is developing the new generation fighter jets for attacking Taiwan and competing with the United States.

Several countries around the world are developing a “sixth-generation fighter” aircraft that is more advanced than the fifth-generation fighter aircraft currently in service, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, India, Japan, Taiwan, and Russia.

The Chinese regime is also developing its own version of a sixth-generation fighter. The Epoch Times recently obtained a document issued by China’s Ministry of National Defense in 2017, in accordance with Beijing’s 13th Five-Year Plan. The document revealed the CCP’s pre-research plan for sixth-generation fighter aircrafts, with a focus on developing an unmanned combat system.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadas-covid-vaccine-failure-11613772230?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

If you’re impatient with the pace of Covid-19 vaccine distribution in the U.S., count your blessings. At least you don’t live in Canada. As of Wednesday, my country had administered only 3.52 vaccine doses per 100 people, according to the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data website. The U.S., at 17.00, was doing almost five times as well. The figures were 80.07 in Israel, 25.04 in the U.K. and 5.40 in the European Union.

Why is Canada such a laggard among developed nations? The government of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t negotiate contracts with established drug companies. Rather, it quietly approved a working relationship between Canadian researchers and a Chinese vaccine maker, CanSino Biologics Inc. CanSino abandoned its project in August after multiple failures. Ottawa then had to rush through agreements with Pfizer, Moderna and other companies. “I would not have put all our eggs in the basket of China,” Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole told reporters.

When Canada and other countries experienced a significant spike in Covid-19 cases last month (which has now subsided), Pfizer reduced its shipment to my country by more than two-thirds for several weeks. Moderna announced that only three-quarters of its vaccines would arrive in Canada during early February.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/02/16/accidental-blast-bomb-making-class-kills-

At least 30 Taliban members died after an explosive device detonated during a bomb-making tutorial in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province over the weekend, the Defense Post reported on Tuesday.

A group of Taliban jihadists gathered at a mosque in the village of Qultaq on February 13 to receive training on how to assemble bombs and improvised explosive devices (IED). An explosive device accidentally detonated, killing at least “30 Taliban fighters including six foreign nationals who were expert mine makers,” according to the Afghan Army’s 209th Shaheen Corps, which confirmed the deadly blast in a statement released Saturday. The bodies of the six Taliban-affiliated foreign nationals were rendered unidentifiable by the blast, according to the statement.

The Taliban has not commented on the incident. Such accidental explosions are fairly common in war-torn Afghanistan. A similar blast occurred at a mosque in Balkh’s Chahabar Bolak district in August.

“A group of eight Taliban IED experts were busy manufacturing a bomb inside a mosque in Sikandar Khel Village [when a] … premature explosion caused by [the] IED killed four Taliban militants and wounded at least four others,” Afghanistan’s Khaama Press reported at the time, citing a statement by Afghanistan’s Shaheen Corps.