RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/during_the_busy_lunar_new_year_an_aggressive_coronavirus_is_on_the_move.html

A growing viral threat in China reminds us that there’s a very thin line between civilization and disaster. Moreover, it tells us that our government should be focusing on disease preventing and not on whether boys should be using girls’ bathrooms. But first, a little history to put things in perspective.

The world’s biggest die-off in recorded history – known as the Black Death, the Great Morality, the Pestilence, or the Great Plague – got its start thanks to a period of global cooling following the life-giving force of the Medieval Warming Period (950-1100 A.D.). During the warming period, land became more productive, and the population grew and expanded into formerly barren lands. (Greenland was once actually green.) When the climate began to cool, though, crops diminished, leading to starvation and weakened immune systems. War was normative.

The plague started in China, as rodents fled areas that were drying out in the cooling world. In 1347, Genoese traders were in the port city of Kaffa on the Crimea (now in Ukraine), when the Mongol hordes, who were looking for greener pastures, laid siege to the city. The plague-ridden Mongol army engaged in biological warfare by catapulting corpses into the city. The Genoese traders who escaped carried the plague to Sicily, and from there it spread to the rest of Europe. Best guesses are that 75 to 200 million people died.

Now that the stage is properly set, here’s the news from China today, and it’s way better than the news from China in the 14th Century:

An outbreak of a never-before-seen coronavirus in the Chinese city of Wuhan dramatically worsened over the last few days—the case count has more than tripled, cases have appeared in new cities, and authorities have confirmed that the virus is spreading person to person.

The World Health Organization announced Monday that it will convene an emergency meeting on Wednesday, January 22, to assess the outbreak and how best to manage it

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15466/iran-nuclear-deal-what-next

“It’s unlikely that the parties will be able to reach a serious resolution, and the EU knows it….” — Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner, January 17, 2020.

“Trump has distinguished himself from his predecessor. The world’s most famous dealmaker appears not to be angling for a deal, and for good reason — there’s no deal to be had because there’s nothing left to negotiate. [Former U.S. President Barack] Obama set it up that way.” — Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine, January 13, 2020.

“The JCPOA guaranteed that the Iranians would all but have a bomb within 10 years — or by the end of the second term of Obama’s successor…. The point of the deal was not to stop Iran from ever building a bomb but to prevent the Iranians from doing so until Obama left office.” — Lee Smith, Tablet Magazine, January 13, 2020.

“The nuclear deal with Iran is over — it failed. You cannot and must not continue to negotiate with the Islamic regime, you cannot trust it. Such talks are useless. Governments should stop defending the regime through such talks, keeping it alive.” — Mina Ahadi, Chairwoman of the Central Council of Ex-Muslims in Germany, Bild, January 14, 2020.

Britain, France and Germany, the three European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), have activated the agreement’s dispute mechanism in an effort to force Tehran into compliance with its commitment to curb its nuclear program.

The three European countries — also known as the E3 — triggered the so-called Dispute Resolution Mechanism (DRM) on January 14, a week after Iranian authorities announced that they would no longer be bound by any of the agreement’s restrictions in terms of the numbers or type of centrifuges that they can operate or the level of uranium enrichment that they can pursue.

The DRM (Paragraphs 36 and 37 of the JCPOA) starts the clock on a process that could result in the return of international sanctions on Iran. The deal’s signatories now have up to 30 days to resolve their differences, although that time period can be extended by consensus. If the dispute cannot be solved, the matter could be brought before the UN Security Council and could result in the re-imposition of sanctions that had been lifted under the deal. That effort, however, could also easily be blocked by a Chinese or Russian veto.

Iranian authorities said that they were justified in violating the deal because the United States broke the July 2015 agreement by withdrawing in May 2018. In a statement, the E3 foreign ministers rejected Tehran’s argument:

“We do not accept the argument that Iran is entitled to reduce compliance with the JCPOA. Contrary to its statements, Iran has never triggered the JCPOA Dispute Resolution Mechanism and has no legal grounds to cease implementing the provisions of the agreement.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15465/turkey-christians-kidnapped

Since January 11, an elderly Assyrian Christian couple, Hurmuz Diril (71) and his wife Şimoni (65), have been missing from the Assyrian village of Mehr, Kovankaya in the province of Şırnak, in Turkey’s southeast.
If the kidnapping of the Diril couple were to terrorize the remaining Assyrian community in Turkey into fleeing the country, it would mark the complete annihilation of yet another native community in the region. Such a tragedy should not be allowed to happen.
Western governments should help to find this elderly couple and see to it that those responsible are held to account.

Since January 11, an elderly Assyrian Christian couple, Hurmuz Diril (71) and his wife Şimoni (65), have been missing from the Assyrian village of Mehr, Kovankaya in the province of Sirnak, in Turkey’s southeast. In wintry, sub-zero conditions, their children, followed by military special units, have been searching for them.

“We found out that my parents were missing when I and my relatives… went to our village on January 12. My father’s uncle last saw them in the morning of January 11…. And my brother last spoke to them on January 7,” the couple’s son, Father Adday Remzi Diril told the newspaper Cumhuriyet.

Father Diril is an Assyrian-Chaldean priest in Istanbul and well known for his life of service to more than 7,000 Iraqi Christian refugees displaced throughout Turkey.

“A neighbor of ours in the village initially did not tell us my parents were kidnapped because he was scared,” Diril told the Mesopotamia News Agency, “but later said they had been kidnapped by armed men.”

An investigation concerning the missing couple is underway; the prosecutor’s office in Sirnak has issued a gag order regarding the matter. The Turkish authorities, Diril said, are in touch with the family. The weather conditions, though, have been treacherous and the search so far unsuccessful.