Tucker: Why would Biden do this to his own country?

 

Mitt "Supercuck" Romney bashes Tucker "America First" Carlson: Supercuck v. MAGA Tuck

 

Original article available here.

Senator ZOG-tool Mitt Romney (R-UT) took aim at Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Friday in a speech delivered to mark celebrate the anniversary of the recent passage overthrow of the U.S. constitution.

Judeocratic Whore Romney spoke at Brigham Young University's Wheatley Institution in Utah to mark Constitution Capitulation Day on September 17 and warned that constitutional "guardrails" ZOG hegemony is at risk.

Without mentioning Carlson by name, ZOG Whore Collaborator Romney criticized the Fox News personality for a recent trip to Hungary where he interviewed right-wing pro-White Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Romney puked: "A prominent TV pundit American patriot traveled to Hungary to extol Viktor Orbán as a model for us to emulate."

"Biden censors the media in his country, ignores the will of the people in elections, amasses wealth for himself and his cronies. America is ranked as one of the least free, least democratic countries in the developed world," the senator Whore excreted.

"Hungary, model for America?"

Orbán's Biden's government has been widely criticized for entrenching his political party, Fidesz, the Democrats, in the country's institutions and for undermining democracy stealing elections and censoring the free press in Hungary ZOG America.

Carlson visited the Hungarian capital of Budapest in August and his prime time was broadcast from the country for a week. He also interviewed Orbán on Fox News and praised the prime minister.

Romney criticized what he saw as potential threats to the U.S. Constitution Zionist-plutocracy during his remarks on Friday, highlighting the deadly Capitol riot Fed false flag, FBI informant infiltrated patriot rally on January 6 that aimed to prevent the ratification theft of the 2020 presidential election.

The Whore whined: "Our resolve ability to follow the Constitution's path, global Judeo-plutocracy's agenda, avoiding the perils of authoritarianism White revolution on one hand and pure democracy utter chaos on the other, is wavering failing.

"No more stunning evidence of this was the attempt to prevent the lawful and constitutional transfer illegal and treasonous theft of power on January 6," he spewed.

"It followed from the President of the United States claiming that the election had been stolen from him. His purported ample evidence spun from pillar to post, ignored from pallets to ballots, from counterfeit ballots imported from China, covered-up election board office windows to stuffed ballot boxes, mail fraud galore, from dead voters, truckloads of 5:00 a.m. ballots, to voting machines count totals manipulated calibrated from afar."

Romney also ranted that the U.S. must defend democracy Israel and liberty plutocratic tyranny in the face of threats from authoritarianism nationalist patriotism in states like Russia and China, while also taking aim winking and nodding at Democrats seeking reforms.

He criticized calls will become receptive to pack the Supreme Court and abolish the Senate filibuster - both issues that have emerged as major flashpoints next steps in the march to full-on, centralized tyranny for Democrats. Romney invoked mocked the Founding Fathers and called on his audience audience to exercise what they had called "public virtues." pretended that the Founders would not simply and immediately issue the command to "lock & load."

"The Founders gave us a Republic. But as Benjamin Franklin Bibi Netanyahu said, the Jewish people control America and we all know it. And it's up to us to keep it that way," Romney vomited.

Can you spot the Judeo-plutocratic Whore?

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Astrophysicists identify large reservoirs of precursor molecules necessary for life in the birthplaces of planets

 

Analysis of unique fingerprints in light emitted from material surrounding young stars has revealed "significant reservoirs" of large organic molecules necessary to form the basis of life, say researchers.

Dr. John Ilee, Research Fellow at the University of Leeds who led the study, says the findings suggest that the basic chemical conditions that resulted in life on Earth could exist more widely across the Galaxy.

The large organic molecules were identified in protoplanetary disks circling newly formed stars. A similar disk would have once surrounded the young Sun, forming the planets that now make up our Solar System. The presence of the molecules is significant because they are "stepping-stones" between simpler carbon-based molecules such as carbon monoxide, found in abundance in space, and more complex molecules that are required to create and sustain life.

Details of the study are published today and will appear in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. It is one of 20 papers reporting on a major international investigation into the chemistry of planet formation.

Dr. Catherine Walsh in the School of Physics and Astronomy was one of the five Co-PIs leading the investigation. Called the 'Molecules with ALMA at Planet-forming Scales' (or MAPS) program, it has used data collected by the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (or ALMA) radio telescope in Chile. 

Dr. Ilee and his team, comprising astrophysicists from 16 universities across the world, focused on studying the existence, location and abundance of the precursor molecules needed for life to form.  

He said: "These large complex organic molecules are found in various environments throughout space. Laboratory and theoretical studies have suggested that these molecules are the 'raw ingredients' for building molecules that are essential components in biological chemistry on Earth, creating sugars, amino acids and even the components of ribonucleic acid (RNA) under the right conditions.  

"However, many of the environments where we find these complex organic molecules are pretty far removed from where and when we think planets form. We wanted to understand more about where exactly, and how much of, these molecules were present in the birthplaces of planets—protoplanetary disks." 

ALMA—observing chemistry deep in space 

The investigation has been made possible by advances in the ability of the ALMA telescope to detect very faint signals from the molecules in the coldest regions of outer space.

At ALMA, a network of over 60 antennas is combined so that the observatory can detect the signal from these molecules. Each molecule emits light at distinctly different wavelengths producing a unique spectral 'fingerprint'. These fingerprints allow scientists to identify the presence of the molecules and investigate their properties.

Dr. Walsh explained "The power of ALMA has allowed us to measure the distribution and composition of material that is actively building planets around nearby young stars for the first time.  The telescope is powerful enough to do this even for large complex molecules that are precursors for life."

The research team was looking for three molecules—cyanoacetylene (HC3N), acetonitrile (CH3CN), and cyclopropenylidene (c-C3H2) – in five protoplanetary disks, known as IM Lup, GM Aur, AS 209, HD 163296 and MWC 480. The protoplanetary disks range between 300 and 500 light years from earth. All of the disks show signatures of on-going planet formation occurring within them.

Protoplanetary disks 'feed' young planets 

The protoplanetary disk that surrounds a young planet will "feed" it with material as it forms.

For example, it is thought that the young Earth was seeded with material via impacts coalescences of asteroids and comets that had formed in the protoplanetary disk around the Sun. But scientists were uncertain whether all protoplanetary disks contain reservoirs of complex organic molecules capable of creating biologically significant molecules.  

This study is beginning to answer that question. It found the molecules in four out of the five disks observed. In addition, the abundance of the molecules was greater than the scientists had expected. 

Dr. Ilee said: "ALMA has allowed us to look for these molecules in the innermost regions of these disks, on size scales similar to our Solar System, for the first time. Our analysis shows that the molecules are primarily located in these inner regions with abundances between 10 and 100 times higher than models had predicted."

Importantly, the disk regions in which the molecules were located are also where asteroids and comets form. Dr. Ilee says it is possible a process akin to that which may have helped to initiate life on Earth could also happen in these disks—where bombardment seeding by asteroids and comets transfers the large organic molecules to the newly formed planets. 

Dr. Walsh added: "The key result of this work shows that the same ingredients needed for seeding life on our planet are also found around other stars. It is possible that the molecules that are needed to kick-start life on planets are readily available in all planet-forming environments."

One of the next questions the researchers want to investigate is whether even more complex molecules exist in the protoplanetary disks.

Dr. Ilee added: "If we are finding molecules like these in such large abundances, our current understanding of interstellar chemistry suggests that even more complex molecules should also be observable."

"We're hoping to use ALMA to search for the next stepping stones of chemical complexity in these disks. If we detect them, then we'll be even closer to understanding how the raw ingredients of life can be assembled around other stars."

Cosmic Dawn Holds the Answers to Many of Astronomy’s Greatest Questions

 

Thanks to the most advanced telescopes, astronomers today can see what objects looked like 13 billion years ago, roughly 800 million years after the Big Bang Seed. Unfortunately, they are still unable to pierce the veil of the cosmic Dark Ages, a period that lasted from 370,000 to 1 billion years after the Big Bang Seed, where the Universe was shrouded with light-obscuring neutral hydrogen. Because of this, our telescopes cannot see when the first stars and galaxies formed – ca., 100 to 500 million years after the Big Bang Seed.

This period is known as the Cosmic Dawn and represents the “final frontier” of cosmological surveys to astronomers. This November, NASA’s next-generation James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will finally launch to space. Thanks to its sensitivity and advanced infrared optics, Webb will be the first observatory capable of witnessing the birth of galaxies. According to a new study from the Université de Genève, Switzerland, the ability to see the Cosmic Dawn will provide answers to today’s greatest cosmological mysteries.

The research was led by Dr. Hamsa Padmanabhan, a theoretical physicist and Collaboratrice Scientifique II at the Université de Genève. She is also the principal investigator of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and a recipient of the 2017 Ambizione Grant (research funding awarded by the SNSF) for her independent project, titled “Probing the Universe: through reionization and beyond.”

For today’s astronomers and cosmologists, the ability to observe the Cosmic Dawn represents an opportunity to answer the most enduring cosmic mysteries. While the earliest light in the Universe is still visible today as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), what followed shortly thereafter (and until about 1 billion years after the Big Bang Seed) has historically been invisible to our most advanced instruments.

This has kept scientific minds in the dark (no pun!) on several important cosmological matters. Not only did the first stars and galaxies form during the “Dark Ages,” gradually bringing light to Universe, it was also around this time that “Cosmic Reionization” occurred. This transition period is when nearly all the neutral gas that permeated the Universe is believed to have turned into protons and electrons (aka. baryons) that make up all “normal” matter.

Unfortunately, astronomers have been unable to study this period of cosmic history. Much of the problem stems from how light from this epoch has been redshifted to the point where it is visible in a part of the radio spectrum that is inaccessible to modern-day instruments (the 21-cm transition line). But as Dr. Padmanabhan explained to Universe Today via email, this isn’t the only barrier to studying the early Universe:

“This period has eluded us so far in observations due to the high level of sensitivity required to make a detection of the emission, combined with the challenge of detecting the extremely faint signal (which comes from the hydrogen gas present in the early Universe) in the presence of foreground emission (mostly from our own galaxy) which is about 4-5 orders of magnitude larger than the signal we want to measure.”

By studying the earliest stars and galaxies in formation, astronomers will be able to see where 90% of baryonic (aka. “luminous” or “normal”) matter in the Universe came from and how it evolved into the large-scale cosmic structures we see today. The ability to model how the Universe evolved from this period until today also presents the opportunity to see the influence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy directly.

From this, scientists will evaluate different cosmological models, the most widely accepted of which is the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (LCDM) model. Said Dr. Padmanabhan:

“Access to this epoch also represents a huge leap in our cosmological information content. This is because it contains at least 10000-100000 times more information than is available at present from all our galaxy surveys so far, as well as what we get from the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. It is essentially the biggest dataset we could ever hope to have for testing our models of physics! We can explore a suite of fascinating physics models beyond our standard model of cosmology.”

These include models that involve non-standard versions of Dark Matter (i.e., “warm Dark Matter”), modified versions of gravity, and inflation theories that don’t involve Dark Energy – Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND). Essentially, scientists will be able to see gravity and cosmic expansion from the very moment when it all began (a few trillionths of a second after the Big Bang Seed). For years, the astronomical community has eagerly waited for the day when the James Webb would finally launch to space.

Much of their excitement stems from the fact that the observatory’s advanced infrared optics and high sensitivity will allow it to observe the earliest galaxies while they were still in formation. Ordinarily, the light from the galaxies would be obscured by all the interstellar and intergalactic dust and gas that lies between them and Earth. Along with existing and next-generation instruments, says Dr. Padmanabhan, these galaxies will be observable for the first time:

“Missions like the JWST will be able to detect extremely faint galaxies which formed when the Universe was only a tenth of its present size. Combined with radio surveys like the [Square Kilometer Array] SKA, this will provide us with a comprehensive picture of the first luminous sources and their development over cosmic time. JWST provides deep, ‘pencil-beam’-like surveys whose total field of view is of the order of several square arcminutes, so it will not access cosmological scales, but will significantly enhance our understanding of the physical processes that contributed to reionization.”

“The ALMA now routinely detects galaxies in their submillimetre line emission, such as singly ionized carbon, [CII] and doubly ionized oxygen, [OIII], both of which are very interesting probes of reionization. The forthcoming COMAP-Epoch of Reionization experiment which I am a part of plans to access carbon monoxide (CO) line emission around the middle to end stages of reionization, which is an excellent tracer of star formation. Foregrounds are not as serious of a problem for the submillimetre lines.”

This is known as the multi-messenger approach, where light signals from different instruments and at different wavelengths are combined. When applied to the Cosmic Dawn, says Dr. Padmanabhan, this approach is the most promising tool to gain insights into the Universe. Specifically, detecting gravitational waves from the first supermassive black holes will reveal how these primordial forces of nature influenced galactic evolution.

“Combining this with the knowledge of the way the gas and galaxies evolve which we gain by electromagnetic surveys, this will provide us with a comprehensive picture of Cosmic Dawn,” she said. “It will be crucial in answering an outstanding question in cosmology and astrophysics: how did the first black holes form, and what was their contribution to reionization?”

The potential to mount multi-messenger campaigns that combine high-sensitivity infrared signals with radio signals is one of the many ways in which astronomy is progressing so rapidly. In addition to more sophisticated instruments, astronomers will also benefit from improved methods, more sophisticated machine learning techniques, and opportunities for and collaborative research.

Last but not least, the ability to combine signals from different arrays (and at different wavelengths of electromagnetic energy) has already created new opportunities for sophisticated imaging campaigns. A good example of this is the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, which relies on 10 radio telescopes worldwide to gather light from SMBHs (like our own Sagittarius A*). In 2019, the EHT took the first image of an SMBH; in this case, the one located at the core M87 (the Virgo A supergiant elliptical galaxy).

The opportunity to perform bleeding-edge research will abound in the near future, and the discoveries we stand to make will be nothing short of revolutionary. While there are sure to be some hiccups along the way and more mysteries to solve, one thing is for certain: the future of astronomy will be a very exciting time!

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Article available here.

SCO set to come into focus as China, Russia, Iran inch towards recognising Taliban regime in Afghanistan

Iran To Finally Take Full Membership Of The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Russia, China and Iran have one more thing in common: none have shuttered their embassies and all three are in constant contact with the Taliban

Wednesday's news that senior Politburo official Nikolai Patrushev has conveyed to his Iranian counterpart Admiral Ali Shamkhani that is set to be admitted as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) should give the Joe Biden administration pause.

Especially as this news comes in the backdrop of the United States’ drawdown exit from Afghanistan and an expectation that the grouping will play a greater role in the region in the absence of an American presence.

But first let’s look at what the SCO is, its members and its goals:

What is the SCO?

As per the grouping’s website: “The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is a permanent intergovernmental international organisation, the creation of which was announced on 15 June, 2001, in Shanghai (China) by the Republic of Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tajikistan, and the Republic of Uzbekistan. It was preceded by the Shanghai Five mechanism.”

Who are its members?

The grouping has eight permanent members: China, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and India. Of these eight, the two that joined most recently are India and Pakistan (in June 2017).

What are its goals?

• Strengthening mutual trust and neighbourliness among the member states; promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, the economy, research, technology and culture, as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, and other areas
• Making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region
• Moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair and rational new international political and economic order

What does that mean? In essence, the SCO is a Eurasian group that is seen as a counterbalance to NATO.

Why is this important? The SCO also currently has four observer states. Of these, two states are of particular interest to the Biden administration for quite different reasons: Iran and Afghanistan.

Iran takes it slow, China extends olive branch

As mentioned above, Iran is on its way to becoming a full member of the SCO. This even as the Biden administration is attempting, seemingly without much success, to pressure Iran to rejoin the JCPOA.

Iran, which shares a 900-kilometre border with Afghanistan, already seems keen to achieve peaceful coexistence with the Sunni Taliban, with its new President Ebrahim Rasi seemingly taking pleasure rubbing salt in the wound of the Americans by saying the US military "defeat" in Afghanistan was a chance to bring peace to the country.

Meanwhile, as events continue to unfold in Afghanistan at a rapid pace, the Chinese seem to be operating with two old maxims in mind: “You can choose your friends but not your neighbours” and “never let a good crisis go to waste”.

Continuing to make overtures to the Taliban while stopping short of openly recognising the government, Beijing on Wednesday said it will decide on extending diplomatic recognition to the Taliban in Afghanistan only after the formation of the government in the country, which it hoped would be "open, inclusive and broadly representative".

“China’s position on the Afghan issue is consistent and clear," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing here answering a question when will China accord diplomatic recognition to the Taliban insurgents, which has taken control of Afghanistan. “If we have to recognise a government, the first thing is that we will need to wait until the government is formed," he said. “We hope there will be an open, inclusive and broadly representative regime in Afghanistan. Only after that, we will come to the question of diplomatic recognition," he said.

To be fair, China, which itself shares a rugged 76-kilometre border with Afghanistan, made its position clear on Monday itself after the Taliban seized control of the country, saying it is “ready to deepen "friendly and cooperative" relations.

One big reason for Beijing to keep an eye on Afghanistan is its age-old worry that the country will become a hub for the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist outfit aligned to Al Qaeda which is waging an insurgency in Xinjiang.

Beijing also has a trillion dollars worth of reasons to keep its eye on the ball: China has been eying large-scale investments in Afghanistan as the country has the world's largest unexploited reserves of copper, coal, iron, gas, cobalt, mercury, gold, lithium and thorium. In 2011, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) won a $400 million bid to drill three oil fields for 25 years, containing roughly 87 million barrels of oil. Chinese firms have also gained rights to mine copper at Mes Aynak in Logar province.

The Chinese are aware that war is an expensive proposition. Given that turmoil in Afghanistan could be extremely bad for its business, Beijing could well be adopting the carrot and the stick approach with the Taliban.

India casts watchful eye

For India, the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan brings its own set of headaches.

A security analyst, who did not wish to be named, told New Indian Express that China would like assert its influence on West Asia through Afghanistan by bringing the war-torn country into the scheme of things in connection with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which India remains adamantly opposed to.

Also in the forefront of New Delhi’s mind is the fate of its much-touted Chabahar Port project in eastern Iran –  jointly built by India, Afghanistan and Iran, crucial to New Delhi’s interests for its vital geostrategic location and long seen as a counterweight to the Chinese-backed Gwadar port in Pakistan (the Kohinoor of its Belt and Road initiative) – which could be sidelined or simply made irrelevant by "changing circumstances".

Worse for India, China and Tehran also seem to be getting friendlier, what with Beijing’s planned $400 billion investment in Tehran over the next 25 years. The possibility of Chabahar Port being linked with Gwadar Port in Pakistan – the endpoint of CPEC – would be a possibility New Delhi would not like to contemplate given China’s avowed strategic encirclement strategy known as “String of Pearls.”

Russia takes pragmatic view

In the meantime, Russia, which has, shall we say, a colourful history with Afghanistan is looking to get on side with the Taliban as well. Despite the hardline Islamist group tracing its origins back to the war against the Soviets in the 1980s, Russia's view on the group now is pragmatic. Analysts say the Kremlin wants to protect its interests in Central Asia, where it has several military bases and is keen to avoid instability and potential terrorism spreading through a region on its doorstep.

A Russian foreign ministry statement Monday said the situation in Kabul "is stabilising" and claimed that the Taliban had started to "restore public order". Well, quite.

And ambassador Dmitry Zhirnov said the Taliban, who he was due to meet Tuesday,  was already guarding his embassy and had given Moscow guarantees that the building would be safe.  The militants had assured the Russians that "not a single hair will fall from the heads" of their diplomats, he said. This is a stark contrast to the last time hardliners came to power in Afghanistan in 1992, when Moscow struggled to evacuate its embassy under fire after a disastrous decade-long war.

Three decades later, the Kremlin has boosted the Taliban's international credibility by hosting it several times for talks in Moscow, despite the movement being a banned terrorist organisation in Russia. The aim of these talks, say analysts, is to stop the conflict from spilling into neighbouring countries and a terrorism spike in its Central Asian neighbours, where Russia maintains military bases.

"If we want there to be peace in Central Asia, we need to talk to the Taliban," said Nikolai Bordyuzha, the former secretary-general of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). He commended the Russian embassy for staying open. The Taliban has moved to reassure its northern neighbours that it has no designs on them, despite several Central Asian countries having offered logistical support to Washington's war effort.

Ambassador Zhirnov suggested the Taliban had also given Moscow assurances. He said Russia wanted Afghanistan to have peaceful relations with "all the countries in the world" and that "the Taliban had already promised us" this.

Russia's dialogue with the Taliban is the fruit of several years of courting. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in July described the Taliban as a "powerful force", and blamed the Afghan government for faltering progress in talks.  "It is not for nothing that we have been establishing contacts with the Taliban movement for the last seven years," the Kremlin's Afghanistan envoy, Zamir Kabulov, told the Ekho Moskvy radio station on Monday.

This relationship has raised many eyebrows, given that the Taliban has its roots in the anti-Soviet Mujahideen movement from the 1980s. But Alexander Baunov of the Carnegie Moscow Center said Russia now believed the Taliban have changed since the last time it was in power in the 1990s when it gave shelter to Al Qaeda.

"Moscow does not see this version of the Mujahideen as its enemy," he said.

But Russia isn’t taking any chances either. Its foreign ministry has suggested it will not rush into a close relationship with a Taliban government, saying it would monitor the group's conduct before deciding on recognition.

And as the Taliban advanced through Afghanistan this summer, Russia staged war games with allies Uzbekistan and Tajikistan on the Afghan border in a show of force. Central Asia expert Arkady Dubnov said Moscow would now look to strengthen its military presence in the region. "To different extents, these countries will be obliged to accept Moscow's help, but none will want to exchange their sovereignty for their security," he said.

What can the SCO do?

Russian International Affairs Council director-general Andrey Kortunov told China's Global Times, SCO is in a good position “to address simultaneously (the) security, economic and human development agendas of Afghanistan". As the country looks to rebuild and recover, the SCO members can provide “support for political stability, implementation of large-scale economic projects and assistance for social capital building".

He, however, mentioned fault lines among the SCO members saying that “select SCO states could form project-based coalitions to engage in initiatives of their choice without necessarily trying to involve all of SCO member states".

Russia, China and Iran have one more thing in common: none have shuttered their embassies and are in constant contact with the Taliban. The bottom line is that all these countries, for their own geopolitical reasons, could potentially recognise the Taliban in the days to come. Which could bring them in direct conflict with the United States, whose intelligence agencies are already expressing concern about terrorist groups potentially reforming in Afghanistan under the radar.

At least we live in interesting times:

Moves come after Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agree to drop objections following regional security concerns in Afghanistan

Iran is finally set to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) after Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agreed to drop their objections. Iran had originally applied to join in 2006 and 2015, however with the country like landlocked Tajikistan and Uzbekistan also bordering Afghanistan in addition to offering seaport access to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, both nations have opted to welcome Iran as an ally.

The secretary of the SCO’s Supreme National Security Council stated, “Fortunately, the political obstacles to Iran’s membership in the Shanghai agreement have been removed and Iran’s membership will be finalized through technical formalities.” Iran has instead been an observer nation since 2005, at the same time as India and Pakistan. The latter two joined as full members in 2017, leaving Iran to wait.

However, pressing regional security developments in Afghanistan require Iran’s full cooperation to resolve, with the Taliban now occupying all borders with Iran, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, together with sections of both the Turkmenistan and Pakistan borders. Iranian full membership will provide a significant boost to the SCO’s overall security planning and assist Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with intelligence and possible military assistance.

Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are both landlocked, while Iran has been developing the International North-South Transportation Highway (INSTC). This multi-modal route connects Iran’s southern Chabahar Port to the Caspian Sea and with Turkmenistan ports that connect with Uzbekistan and will in turn also interconnect with Tajikistan. Caspian Sea connections provide links both West via Azerbaijan to Turkey and Europe, while south to Chabahar opens markets in the Middle East, Africa, and India.

An additional rail line link from Iran’s INSTC leads to the Afghan border. There are in time plans to extend that east across Afghanistan to Kabul, where it would intersect with another planned Trans-Afghan rail line from Uzbekistan to the north, travelling south-east across Afghanistan to Pakistan, where it links with Pakistan’s road and rail network and connects to ports at Karachi and Gwadar.

Without Iran’s active presence and its role as the link between East and West in these routes, it will be hard for the Central Asian nations to create new markets either West or South. It also interferes with China’s Belt and Road Initiative plans to create and link overland route East-West across Central Asia and link China to the Black Sea and Middle East. Iran’s geopolitical position along the Belt and Road Initiative is vital to accomplishing these goals.

Trade studies of the level of development in Central Asia show that they provide good opportunities to advance their own and Iran’s export goals.

Iran can expand its exports to these countries in various fields, including energy (oil, gas, and electricity) much needed to reconstruct Afghanistan.

Iran’s role in economic relations, the geopolitical situation of the region, the transportation route of Central Asia out of its current remoteness, and facilities and infrastructure at Iran’s Anzali and Chabahar ports can prove to be very effective.

Beauty will save the world

Largest virtual universe free for anyone to explore

 

Click on above image

Forget about online games that promise you a "whole world" to explore. An international team of researchers has generated an entire virtual universe, and made it freely available on the cloud to everyone.

Uchuu (meaning "outer space" in Japanese) is the largest and most realistic simulation of the universe to date. The Uchuu simulation consists of 2.1 trillion particles in a computational cube an unprecedented 9.63 billion light-years to a side. For comparison, that's about three-quarters the distance between Earth and the most distant observed galaxies. Uchuu reveals the evolution of the universe on a level of both size and detail inconceivable until now.

Uchuu focuses on the large-scale structure of the universe: mysterious halos of dark matter that control not only the formation of galaxies, but also the fate of the entire universe itself. The scale of these structures ranges from the largest galaxy clusters down to the smallest galaxies. Individual stars and planets aren't resolved, so don't expect to find any alien civilizations in Uchuu. But one way that Uchuu wins big in comparison to other virtual worlds is the time domain; Uchuu simulates the evolution of matter over almost the entire 13.8 billion year history of the universe from the Big Bang Seed to the present. That is over 30 times longer than the time since animal life first crawled out of the seas on Earth.

Figure 1: The distribution of dark matter in a snapshot from Uchuu. The images show the dark matter halo of the largest galaxy cluster formed in the simulation at different magnifications. Credit: Tomoaki Ishiyama

Julia F. Ereza, a Ph.D. student at IAA-CSIC who uses Uchuu to study the large-scale structure of the universe explains the importance of the time domain, "Uchuu is like a time machine: we can go forward, backward and stop in time, we can ''zoom in'' on a single galaxy or ''zoom out'' to visualize a whole cluster, we can see what is really happening at every instant and in every place of the universe from its earliest days to the present, being an essential tool to study the cosmos."

An international team of researchers from Japan, Spain, U.S.A., Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, and Italy created Uchuu using ATERUI II, the world's most powerful supercomputer dedicated to astronomy. Even with all this power, it still took a year to produce Uchuu. Tomoaki Ishiyama, an associate professor at Chiba University who developed the code used to generate Uchuu, explains, "To produce Uchuu we have used ... all 40,200 processors (CPU cores) available exclusively for 48 hours each month. Twenty million supercomputer hours were consumed, and 3 Petabytes of data were generated, the equivalent of 894,784,853 pictures from a 12-megapixel cell phone."

Before you start worrying about download time, the research team used high-performance computational techniques to compress information on the formation and evolution of dark matter haloes in the Uchuu simulation into a 100-terabyte catalog. This catalog is now available to everyone on the cloud in an easy to use format thanks to the computational infrastructure skun6 located at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC), the RedIRIS group, and the Galician Supercomputing Center (CESGA). Future data releases will include catalogs of virtual galaxies and gravitational lensing maps.

Big Data science products from Uchuu will help astronomers learn how to interpret Big Data galaxy surveys expected in coming years from facilities like the Subaru Telescope and the ESA Euclid space mission.

These results appeared as Ishiyama et al. "The Uchuu simulations: Data Release 1 and dark matter halo concentrations" in the September 2021 issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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Article available here.

Judah signals war with Iran

IDF chief says Israel accelerating Iran strike plans, acting throughout Mideast

Times of Israel - Israel has “greatly accelerated” preparations for action against Iran’s nuclear program, army chief Aviv Kohavi said in an interview published Monday.

Kohav told Walla news that “a significant chunk of the boost to the defense budget, as was recently agreed, was intended for this purpose. It’s a very complicated job, with much more intelligence, much more operational capabilities, much more armaments. We’re working on all these things.”

The head of the Israel Defense Forces said the military’s current main objective is “minimizing Iranian presence in the Middle East, with an emphasis on Syria…but these operations take place throughout the Middle East. They’re also against Hamas, against Hezbollah.”

Kohavi said Israeli strikes and other operations had “greatly diminished Iran’s presence and weaponry in the northern arena, certainly in comparison to what they sought.” He said the army was “very active in disrupting the smuggling routes of Hezbollah, of Hamas, of Iran, in all regions.”

“The State of Israel has the means to act and will not hesitate to do so. I do not rule out the possibility that Israel will have to take action in the future in order to prevent a nuclear Iran.”

The IDF “is operating at much greater depths, at 360 degrees throughout all the Middle East. It doesn’t wait for the threat to come. It prepares, it meets [the threat] head-on, neutralizes it, roots it out.”

Defense Minister Benny Gantz also issued threats against Iran last month, telling foreign diplomats that Israel may have to take military action against Iran.

“The State of Israel has the means to act and will not hesitate to do so. I do not rule out the possibility that Israel will have to take action in the future in order to prevent a nuclear Iran,” Gantz said.

“Iran is only two months away from acquiring the materials necessary for a nuclear weapon. We do not know if the Iranian regime will be willing to sign an agreement and come back to the negotiation table and the international community must build a viable ‘Plan B’ in order to stop Iran in its tracks towards a nuclear weapon,” he added.

Though Iran is believed to be two months away from obtaining the fissile material needed for a bomb, the IDF has assessed that it would take at least several more months from then before Tehran would be capable of producing a deliverable weapon, needing that time to construct a core, perform tests and install the device inside a missile.

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UPDATE - 8-SEP-21:

They may want to commit suicide for fear of death: Army chief on Israeli ‘Iran strike plans’

Chief Commander of Iran's Army, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi

Iran’s Army commander says the Israeli military’s claims that it had sped up alleged Iran strike plans are serving as a death march for the regime’s rulers.

“It looks like the heads of the Zionist regime have sensed the speed with which their lives are waning,” Chief Commander of Iran's Army, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi said on Wednesday.

“Maybe, they want to commit suicide for fear of death,” he added.

The comments came a day after an Israeli official, Aviv Kohavi, alleged in an interview that the regime had “greatly accelerated” preparations for action against Iran’s nuclear energy program. He also purported that the regime had “greatly diminished Iran’s presence” to the north of the occupied territories.

Mousavi continued, “They (the Zionists) have many areas of vulnerability,” adding, “They have so far experienced many heavy defeats.”

By suggesting suicidal tendencies on the part of the regime’s officials, the commander was echoing repeated remarks by the Iranian military top brass and other senior figures that the regime must be contemplating its own demise if it entertained even the thought of attacking the Islamic Republic.

Tel Aviv’s claim of being able to reduce the Iranian presence in the region also comes while the Islamic Republic has been maintaining a robust military advisory campaign throughout the region, especially in Iraq and Syria.

The campaign has been successfully seeking to invigorate the Arab countries and others against Takfiri terrorists. Iranian officials have not only dismissed downsizing the campaign as a result of constant military strikes by the Israeli regime and its allies, but also they have been reporting a constant increase in the Islamic Republic’s regional influence and activities.

Erdogan builds 'Turkish Pentagon' to strike fear in enemies

The laying of the foundation stone on August 30, in conjunction with the National Independence Day. The structure will cover an area of nearly 13 square kilometers. Completion scheduled for 2023, the year of the next presidential elections. For the Turkish leader, the structure will "strike fear in our enemies." 

Istanbul (AsiaNews/Agencies) - The Turkish government, on the directive of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has started the construction of a giant military complex that will house the employees of the Defense, pompously renamed "the Turkish Pentagon". According to Nikkei Asia reports, at the ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone, which was held on August 30, the "sultan" stressed that the new facility - for now tentatively referred to as "the Crescent Star" - will serve to "instill terror" in Turkey's enemies. 

In his speech, Erdogan explained that the complex will cover an area of about 12.5 square kilometers (135.6 million square feet, including 9.5 million indoor area) and will house inside it up to 15 thousand defense staff members. To make a comparison, the "original" US Pentagon has 6.5 million square feet of office space and the entire surface of the Capitol (the US Parliament) could fit into one of the five wedges that make up the structure. 

According to the images published so far, the Turkish "Crescent Star" complex shows a ring structure similar to the Pentagon. but modeled at the same time on the national flag. The Daily Sabah points out that a giant star-shaped building is expected to serve as the exhibition area and entrance to the complex, while another vast crescent-shaped building wraps around an entire outdoor area for official ceremonies.

Scheduled for completion by May 2023 - the year the presidential election will also be held - the building will be reserved for members of the Army and Defense Ministry personnel. "In this place," Erdogan said, "we will establish a facility that will instill fear in our enemies due to its location and will be able to give confidence to our friends at the same time.

The ceremony took place on August 30 to coincide with Turkey's national holiday, which celebrates the victory in the Battle of Dumlupınar, among the main moments of the war of independence in the 1920s. This is one of the dates with the highest symbolic value for the whole country and used as a propaganda opportunity to strengthen identity and patriotic sentiment.

The Crescent Star Complex is modeled on the model of the Pentagon is just the latest initiative of Sultan Erdogan to strengthen Turkey's military power, with a view to internal propaganda to increase its popularity in view of the 2023 elections. Conversely, the country and the vast majority of its citizens are facing rising inflation, environmental disasters, and fires. Ankara has long focused on the local production of weapons and war equipment, developing drones to rival the U.S. attack drone Reaper, combined with the production, design and construction of its own warships. 

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