RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-korea-fires-ballistic-missiles-into-waters-between-japan-and-korean-peninsula_3998321.html

North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into waters off its eastern coast on Wednesday, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) has confirmed.

JCS said the missiles were launched from central North Korea and that South Korea, along with U.S. intelligence authorities, is currently analyzing more details about the launches.

Japan’s coast guard said it believes the two missiles were launched five minutes apart, at 12:38 p.m. and 12:43 p.m. local time (11:38 p.m. and 11:43 p.m. ET) and that they landed outside its exclusive economic zone in the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, CNN reports.

Coast guards confirmed that no ships or aircraft were damaged by the missiles.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga called the firings “absolutely outrageous” and said they “threaten the peace and safety of Japan and the region.”

“The government of Japan is determined to further step up our vigilance and surveillance to be prepared for any contingencies,” Suga said.

The firings come just two days after North Korea claimed to have tested a newly developed missile, the first time it has resumed weapons tests in six months. In a multi-day operation, North Korea tested a long-range cruise missile capable of hitting targets 930 miles away, according to state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Officials and scientists of the Academy of National Defense Science, who took part in the testing of the cruise missiles launched Sept. 11 and Sept. 12, declared the operation a “success,” reported KCNA.

The missile, dubbed “a strategic weapon of great significance,” had been in development for two years.

U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions have barred North Korea from testing ballistic missiles, and the country has been heavily sanctioned over its missile and nuclear weapons programs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/the-taliban-cut-off-the-heads-of-two-boys-who-were-nine-and-ten/

A veteran desperately trying to get Afghan allies out of the country shares hellacious accounts.

I n normal times, Jean Marie Thrower would be running Supplier Development Systems, her Birmingham, Ala.–based automotive consulting firm. But since the fall of Kabul, and the Taliban’s conquest of Afghanistan, Thrower, who served in the U.S. Army’s 82 Airborne Division as a transportation officer with support of operations in Haiti and Bosnia, has put the rest of her life on hold, working with the Afghan Rescue Crew. The ARC describes itself as a private group of U.S. veterans and civilians volunteering to save as many vetted at-risk Americans and Afghan allies left behind in Afghanistan as possible.

ARC is one of several private groups attempting to get Americans, green-card holders, and Afghan allies out of the country; others include No One Left Behind, Digital Dunkirk, Allied Airlift 21, Hearts and Homes for Refugees, Samaritan’s Purse, the “Pineapple Express,” and more.

The good news for ARC is that they have so far rescued “hundreds” and transported them to third countries safely. The bad news is that the organization says that it has a list of thousands of at-risk Afghan allies still in its system. Thrower disputes the U.S. State Department’s characterization of about 100 Americans being left on the ground; she said that as of a few days ago, the figure her group had was closer to 1,000 — although she noted that every group making a rescue effort has its own list, potentially leading to overlap with one another in certain cases. The 1,000 figure may include U.S. green-card holders, too, which the State Department is putting in a separate category.

Thrower describes herself as immensely frustrated and angered by the U.S. government’s actions, or lack thereof, so far — but said that ARC remains open to working with any U.S. government efforts to get desperate Americans and Afghans out. She said that she doesn’t care who gets the credit, as long as those at risk figure out a way to escape Afghanistan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-dangerous-nuclear-dance-international-atomic-energy-agency-biden-deal-11631555612?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

We’re not sure Iran could do anything to make President Biden give up his pursuit of reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, and Iran is acting as if it agrees. This could explain Tehran’s escalations in response to U.S. concessions.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced Sunday that Iran would allow its inspectors to service surveillance cameras monitoring Iranian nuclear sites. This is no great breakthrough. In February the regime began blocking the agency from inspecting several nuclear facilities in person, though it cut a deal to keep some monitoring equipment. The latest agreement won’t guarantee access to this data, which could be deleted at any time, but a joint Iran-IAEA statement still noted their “spirit of cooperation and mutual trust.”

The 2015 deal’s apologists will say that this is proof Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi may be ready to return to the negotiating table, but this move is really about keeping his options open. Iran offered the token concession over the weekend to avoid an IAEA board censure, which theoretically could lead to United Nations sanctions. The U.S., Germany, France and the U.K. had been considering a rebuke over the inspection intransigence, but don’t hold your breath.

The Islamic Republic has already done plenty to earn a censure. Much of the media attention has focused on Iran’s expanding its nuclear deal violations such as activating advanced centrifuges and enriching uranium at higher concentrations.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17761/taliban-international-legitimacy

European plans to forge closer ties with Kabul are, though, being severely undermined by the conduct of the new Taliban regime which, rather than living up to its promise to mend its ways, instead appears to be reverting to its old, uncompromising approach.

Recent reports claim that at least four elite Afghan counterterrorism agents have been hunted down and killed by the Taliban during the past three weeks, in one case pulling out all the victim’s fingernails before shooting him.

“We have to stop pretending that the Taliban have changed,” warned Mr McMaster . “Our self-delusion has led many to embrace an Orwellian reversal of morality in which they view jihadist terrorists as a partner…. The Taliban are determined to impose a brutal form of sharia on the Afghan people and are intertwined with terrorists determined to continue their jihad…” — HR McMaster, former US National Security Advisor, The Sunday Times, September 12, 2021.

Naïve attempts by a number of leading Western powers to foster relations with the newly-installed Taliban regime in Kabul are being undermined by the uncompromising attitude the new Islamist regime.

Following the Taliban’s dramatic seizure of control of Afghanistan last month, a number of prominent Western leaders have indicated their willingness to work with the new Afghan regime, following claims by some Taliban leaders that they want to establish a more moderate form of government than the former Taliban regime that terrorised the country in the late 1990s.

In the aftermath of the Islamist movement’s takeover of the country, Taliban leaders were at pains to stress their plans to establish a more moderate approach. In their first press conference after seizing control of the country, the movement’s leaders promised to protect women’s rights, guarantee media freedom, and offered a nationwide amnesty for government officials and military personnel in the former government of President Ashraf Ghani, which collapsed in disarray following US President Joe Biden’s decision to end US military support.

Zabihullah Mujahid, the armed group’s spokesman, also said the Taliban wished for peaceful relations with other countries, and that no group will be allowed to use Afghan territory for attacks against any nation.

“I would like to assure the international community, including the United States, that nobody will be harmed,” Mujahid said. “We don’t want any internal or external enemies.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17760/gifting-afghanistan-to-fundamentalists

The Taliban, by trying to introduce themselves as “moderate,” also appear to be playing “good cop, bad cop” regarding the IS, presumably to get international support and recognition. The West should be skeptical. As long as the Taliban and other terror groups, whether Shi’ite or Sunni, have not changed ideologically, they will remain a significant threat to the US and the Free World.

Although the Taliban pledged to protect future US economic interests on Afghan soil by vowing that it would not allow other groups to form and organize terrorist attacks against the US and its allies, this promise will probably last only as long as the US keeps complying with the Taliban’s blackmail demands regarding the US hostages and co-workers Biden abandoned.

The newly formed government consists of acting interior minister, Sirajuddin Haqqani, who has a $10 million bounty on his head , is on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and whose family are longtime supporters of al-Qaeda; and four of the senior commanders are terrorists whom former President Barack Obama released from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for US Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl.

Reports have also begun questioning if Biden’s surrender of Afghanistan with not a trace of resistance – including the great Bagram airbase and nearly as much military aid as the US has provided to Israel since 1948 — might have been deliberate in view of China’s “investment” of $1.5 billion in Biden’s son, Hunter, when Biden was vice-president, as well as for possible future returns.

A few key questions remain unanswered: Has America, in seeking coordination with a terror group against which it fought for years, ended its own supremacy? Is America about to cap the horror by officially recognizing a state run by known terrorists, armed to the teeth with America’s finest military equipment, and who seem to have every intention of establishing a terrorist state?

Another question is the geostrategic factor, if any, of the West’s position in the future of Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Free World?

So far, the main losers in Afghanistan disaster, apart from the US and the Free World, are the people of Afghanistan, especially those who helped the US and found themselves betrayed, and the women who for 20 years, thanks to the US and its allies, had for the first time known freedom.

The team that assisted former President Barack Obama to destabilize the Middle East in Syria, Libya and Yemen, the instability of Egypt, the surrender of Iraq to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the annexation of Crimea to Russia, apparently wishes to go the same route in Central Asia by gifting this strategic region to Shi’ite and Sunni Islamic fundamentalists.

The election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris may be giving onlookers around the world a sinking feeling that we could see the same collapse happen again in Afghanistan and, as the Kabul airport suicide attack signalled, that Afghanistan has again become a center for narcotics, violence, terror and hostage-taking

https://pjmedia.com/columns/janice-fiamengo/2021/09/12/why-justin-trudeau-does-not-deserve-to-lead-canada-n1477885

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been a preening, spendthrift, and fundamentally unserious leader throughout his time in office. Recently, however, his calculated vilification of the unvaccinated and his divisive stoking of fear and rage reveal a profound malice that threatens us all.

For most of his political career, the Bollywood-jiving, “Because it’s 2015” feminist was too busy burnishing his progressive image to worry about such dull political matters as ethical conduct (two ethics violations and a major charity scandal); energy policy (plans to “phase out” the western petroleum industry); or the federal debt (with highest debt to GDP ratio in Canadian history). Trudeau has never shown much interest in those who do not qualify for, or desire, the largesse-with-strings his government has doled out to academics, journalists, Quebec francophones, feminist organizations, labor unions, and a multitude of other special interest groups.

But his inadequacy might not have been deadly if his “sunny ways” mask had not slipped so decisively in recent weeks. True, some observers were alarmed when, even before being elected PM, he expressed admiration for Communist China’s ability to “turn their economy around on a dime,” but the statement seemed to express less a dictatorial yearning than a youthfully idealistic zeal (Trudeau has always seemed younger than his actual age, an advantage he has assiduously cultivated). When he paraded his family around India in traditional dress, hands clasped in the Hindu Namaste tradition, the burlesque performance was written off as forgivable over-enthusiasm, and drew attention away from the presence at Liberal events of a convicted Sikh terrorist. Even multitudinous gaffes don’t necessarily signal a politician’s end—at least, not immediately—if their purveyor can maintain public good will.

Recently, though, Trudeau hasn’t even tried to seem to care for all Canadians, and his expressed contempt (or worse) for the minority who object to his policy of mandated Covid injections has at last revealed his true bullying, authoritarian nature. During the election campaign, Trudeau has been unabashedly coercive, threatening “consequences” for federal workers who choose not to be injected and characterizing opponents as rabidly unhinged. After a campaign stop in London, Ontario, where he faced one of many angry crowds, Trudeau described the protesters as “a mob” who were “practically foaming at the mouth.” On other occasions, he referred to the “far right, anti-vaxx fringe” and said, with almost laughable predictability, that they were “lashing out with racist, misogynistic attacks.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/taliban-inaugurates-al-qaeda-911-frontpagemagcom/
This new Glazov Gang episode features Jeff Crouere, author of America’s Last Chance.

Jeff focuses on Taliban to Inaugurate Al-Qaeda on 9/11, revealing how it is all brought to you by Joe Biden. [The show is credited to Daniel Greenfield’s article HERE.]

Don’t miss it!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-drone-attack-10-dead-kabul-investigation-11631477201?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Did the Biden Administration mistakenly kill 10 innocents, including seven children, as it rushed to the Afghanistan exits last month? That is what a growing body of evidence seems to show, and Congress ought to look for the truth.

On Aug. 29 a U.S. missile blew up a car the Pentagon had been following for hours, as the U.S. evacuation was nearing its end. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called it a “righteous strike” and President Biden mentioned drone strikes as evidence the U.S. was hitting back against ISIS-K for the suicide bomber who killed 13 Americans.

But reporting by the New York Times and Washington Post suggests the attack on the white Toyota Corolla may have been a terrible mistake. It killed Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime employee of the U.S. nonprofit Nutrition and Education International, who had wanted to emigrate to the U.S.

The media accounts are compelling in their detail that Ahmadi wasn’t collecting explosives that day. He had loaded water into the car to bring home because water to his neighborhood had stopped since the Taliban takeover. He stopped during the day at the nonprofit’s office, not an ISIS safe house. The missile that killed him exploded in a crowded neighborhood and the dead included children who approached the car when it backed into a courtyard.

Targeting terrorists is a fraught endeavor, and mistakes are inevitable. But the timing and details of this attack are troubling because the Biden Administration was looking to show it was taking action to protect Americans after the 13 airport deaths.

https://www.wsj.com/news/opinion?mod=nav_top_section

The Taliban finally let more than 100 Americans, Canadians, Brits, U.S. permanent residents, and others fly out of Afghanistan Thursday and Friday. The State Department said it expects more departures, but the Biden Administration still isn’t doing nearly enough to save thousands of Afghans who earned the right to emigrate to the U.S.

Americans, U.S. residents and endangered Afghans are still scattered throughout the country. The Taliban have effectively taken hundreds hostage at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Some Americans have been told to travel to Kabul, but no one knows how many can do so safely.

“The United States has pulled every lever available to us to facilitate the departure of these charter flights from Mazar,” a State Department spokesman said Thursday, adding that “we were very clear” they should be allowed to leave. This helplessness is humiliating, and across Afghanistan a massive tragedy is unfolding.

The Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program offers a path to U.S. citizenship for Afghans who worked with the American government for at least a year during the war. The process can take years, and hundreds of applicants and family members have been killed over time. A State Department official acknowledged that “the majority” of SIV applicants remained after U.S. forces departed. This is one of the worst wartime betrayals in U.S. history.

“There are about 18,000 so-called principal applicants in the system. Of the 18,000, half are at the very early stages,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June. “Then there is another 9,000 who are much further along.” Mr. Blinken played down the risk of a quick Afghan government collapse, and Foggy Bottom did little to avert the nightmare now unfolding for thousands of SIV applicants.

James Miervaldis of the nonprofit No One Left Behind says that his organization is aware of some 200 approved SIV applicants and their families hiding throughout the country. Fully vetted with paperwork in hand, they were told by the State Department to remain in place during the chaotic evacuation. Then the last American planes left.

Organizations like No One Left Behind have the financial wherewithal to pay for their flights out of the country, but they’re at the mercy of the Taliban to allow safe passage. Remember these families whenever the White House brags about the scale of the August airlift.

The thousands more still in the 14-step application process should have been evacuated to a secure location months ago. Politicoreports that only 705 SIV applicants left during the evacuation. Some U.S. officials have denied that number but declined to provide their own. Mr. Blinken is testifying before the House and Senate this week, and Congress should demand exact numbers.

The Taliban said last week that it will let only foreign passport- or visa-holders leave the country. Are the thousands of endangered Afghans supposed to wait for the process to play out from Washington? And if they survive long enough to get a visa, who expects the Taliban to grant safe passage? The new government’s security forces are run by a leader of the terrorist Haqqani Network wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17751/britain-uae

No world leader is better equipped to help us understand and contain this rising threat to Britain and our international interests than Mohamed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and the greatest foe of radical Islamism in the Arab world.

He helped stem the escalating regional challenge of the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt; his forces combatted Al Shabab in Somalia, supported the Libyan National Army against its Islamist opponents and fought against Islamic State in Syria and Iran-sponsored Houthi insurgents, Al Qaida and the Islamic State in Yemen.

Lord Trimble, former First Minister of Northern Ireland and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, nominated Mohamed bin Zayed for the same award in recognition of his “historic achievements in advancing peace in the Middle East”.

[W]e should be looking to the UAE’s leadership to further strengthen and broaden them. Britain should stand with them. As with the UAE, we are a close and historic ally of Israel, with significant influence across the Middle East. Freed by Brexit from our stifling dependency on the EU, we should now be ready to play a leading role alongside Abu Dhabi in this strategically important process, both in our own interests and in the interests of peace in the region.

Here in Britain there has been great concern about ruptures to the UK-US special relationship following the catastrophic unilateral US withdrawal from Afghanistan and US President Joe Biden’s intransigence over the emergency evacuation from Kabul.