RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dr. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

In her Political Diary item on June 26, Allysia Finley wrote that California has “insane water rationing” policies and that Californians “pay dearly for their government’s green sanctimony.” She’s correct. And there’s another example: Santa Cruz, Mendocino and Marin counties—all of which boast politically correct, far-left politics—are among the local jurisdictions that have banned a proven technology that could conserve vast amounts of water.

The technology is genetic engineering performed with modern molecular techniques, sometimes referred to as genetic modification (GM) or gene-splicing, which enables plant breeders to make old crop plants do spectacular new things, including conserve water. Throughout the U.S. and in about 30 other countries, farmers are using genetically engineered crop varieties to produce higher yields with lower inputs and reduced impacts on the environment.

Because irrigation for agriculture accounts for roughly 70 percent of the world’s fresh water consumption, the introduction of plants that grow with less water would allow much of it to be freed up for other uses. Especially during drought conditions such as those found throughout California, even a small percentage reduction in the use of water for irrigation could result in huge benefits to farmers and consumers.

Plant biologists have identified genes that regulate water use and transferred them into important crop plants. These new varieties grow with smaller amounts of water or with lower-quality water, such as that which has been recycled or that is high in natural mineral salts. For example, Egyptian researchers showed a decade ago that by transferring a single gene from barley to wheat, the plants can tolerate reduced watering for a longer period of time. This new, drought-resistant variety requires only one-eighth as much irrigation as conventional wheat and in some deserts can be cultivated with rainfall alone.

One genetically engineered, drought resistant corn variety has been commercialized in the U.S., and many more are in advanced field testing. How successful they’ll be might depend on whether green activists and politicians have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Hank Paulson endorses a carbon tax. But is he right this time?

The climate change industry always needs a fresh angle, and the latest is that carbon emissions are an economic threat akin to mortgage-backed securities before the financial panic. The analogy comes from Hank Paulson —and if he has spotted a bubble this time, we guess one out of two is an improvement on zero out of one.

With the travelling billionaire wilburys of Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg, the former Treasury Secretary put out a 197-page study last week that predicts the costs of a warming catastrophe. Their “Risky Business” project is meant to awaken the green conscience of business leaders, and President Obama’s endorsement was inevitable: Even George W. Bush’s money man agrees . . .

The report reads like a prospectus, except with years of “investments” in fossil fuels returning damage across industries and regions. The authors estimate storms along the eastern seaboard and Gulf of Mexico will cost $2 billion to $3.5 billion more, while they also look at so-called “tail risks,” or worst-case crises with a 1-in-100 chance of happening: New York City could be 6.8 feet underwater by century’s end, crops could wither in heat waves by 42%, and so forth.

Mr. Paulson’s particular contribution has been to summon the apparitions of the 2008 crash. He recently mused that his career in business and government taught him that “it is time to act before problems become too big to manage.” The “climate bubble,” as he puts it, is like the housing excesses that built up in the global financial markets and could lead to contagion.

CEOs might reasonably question Mr. Paulson’s skills as a risk manager, given that as Treasury chief he went along with the Beltway flow and assured the public that Fannie and Freddie were in good shape until it was too late. And are there even amateur investors who are unaware that climate change is a matter of some political interest? Many public companies already embed a proxy cost of carbon when they invest and disclose material risks that climate change may or may not pose to their balance sheets.

Following the recent kidnapping of three Israeli teens, Iron Dome anti-missile defenses are back in action again, with recognizable and welcome success. The specific event linkages are clear. When Palestinian terrorists in Gaza began to step up attacks against Israel, the Iron Dome capably intercepted those rockets that had been fired toward the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council in the south. Looking ahead, the IDF initially deployed anti-missile units in the coastal region near Ashdod in mid-June, then correctly anticipating that renewed terror rocket attacks upon Israel would be unleashed from Gaza.

But Gaza is not Iran. Their respective tactical and strategic threats to Israel are very different, and so, too, are the country’s required active defenses. Although a lower than 100% reliability of interception could be taken as more-or-less acceptable to Israel in the face of shorter-range and exclusively conventional rockets, a less-than-perfect level of reliability could not be tolerable following any nuclear missile attack from Iran. Such an attack is not yet technically possible, of course, but this current limitation on Iran’s offensive military power is apt to change in the next several years.

For Israel, in the altogether plausible case of a future Iranian long-range rocket attack bearing nuclear warheads, not even a single incoming missile could be allowed to reach its target. Significantly, however, at least for the moment, no operational Israeli system of active defense could hope to assure such a total level of protection. This means that while the Iron Dome, Arrow, and still in development David’s Sling (aka Magic Wand), can contribute mightily to Israel’s assorted and intersecting security postures, any such contribution would still remain less than perfect. It is also clear that no system of Israeli missile defense could be of any protective service against enemy acts of nuclear terrorism that would employ non-missile delivery systems. In essence, this limitation references such foreseeable delivery systems as commercial trucks and container ships.

Even now, Israel’s strategic options against a steadily nuclearizing Iran should not entirely exclude preemption, that is, a conspicuously final resort prerogative to launch suitably defensive first strikes. Under authoritative international law, if the nuclear danger posed by Iran were in any fashion potentially existential, and simultaneously “imminent in point of time,” such Israeli strikes could be justified as “anticipatory self-defense.” Going all the way back to an 1837 case known in jurisprudence as The Caroline, this particular sort of proper justification could be fully in line with customary international law.

I agree with Victor Sharpe about the Kurds but Israel, at the moment has no “unique responsibility” for anything other than defense of its people and its borders….rsk
Today the world clamors for a Palestinian Arab state but strangely turns its back upon Kurdish national independence and statehood.

There is a people who, like the Jews, can trace their ancestry in their homeland back thousands of years. They are the Kurds, and it is highly instructive to review their remarkable history in conjunction with that of the Jews. It is also necessary to review the historical injustices imposed upon them over the centuries by hostile neighbors and empires.

Even though it lives in a terrible neighborhood and desperately seeks friends, Israel cannot and must not evade its unique responsibility towards the Kurdish people, who also suffer from the depredations of their hostile neighbors. The Jewish state must not ignore the Kurds, who remain stateless and shunned by the world and who seek, at last, the historic justice they have craved for centuries but been denied – an independent, sovereign state of their own.

Fact: There has never existed in all of recorded history an independent sovereign nation called Palestine – and certainly not an Arab one. The term “Palestine” has always been the name of a geographical territory, such as Siberia or Patagonia. It has never been a state.

Fact: On the other hand, Kurdistan with a population over 30,000,000, has an ancient history and an enduring nationhood scattered throughout northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

There are some twenty Arab states throughout the Middle East and North Africa, yet a hostile world demands that another Arab state be created within the mere forty miles separating the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan – within the territories of Judea and Samaria; the very biblical and ancestral Jewish heartland.

If this hostile world has its way, Israel, a territory no larger than the tiny principality of Wales or the state of New Jersey, would be forced to share this sliver of land with a new and hostile Arab entity to be called Palestine. The Jewish state would see its present narrow waist further reduced to a suicidal nine to 15 miles in width – what an earlier Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, described as the Auschwitz borders

The recent kidnapping of three Israeli teenage boys by terrorists in
the West Bank is an appalling reminder of the cruelty guiding radical
elements in the Middle East and of the need for vigilance and
solidarity by all those who cherish the sanctity of human life and
fundamental values of human rights.

I was in Israel last week when the boys were abducted. In fact, I
passed very near the spot where it took place the following day. The
stark contrast between the humanity and benevolence visibly on display
on my visit to Israel and the open hostility in Gaza and the West Bank
is a rude wakeup call to those who too often level criticism against
Israel.

The sight of Palestinians in Gaza and Hebron dancing jubilantly in the
streets and passing out sweets to celebrate the kidnapping is as
depressing as it is concerning. This attitude bodes ill for
reconciliation and co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Poll: Palestinians overwhelmingly reject two-state solution, want Palestine ‘from river to sea’
However, clear majority also opposes violence to achieve goals, favors Abbas over Haniyeh.

By more than a 2-1 margin, Palestinians oppose the two-state solution, favoring instead the goal of a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” according to a recent poll by the centrist Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

At the same time, though, the poll found that a large majority of Palestinians favored the tactic of “popular resistance” – such as demonstrations and strikes – over violence to achieve their goals, Globes reported Sunday.

Interestingly, Gazans were more moderate when it came to tactics, but more hardline about the goal.

The survey also found that West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas was a much more popular leader than Gazan leader Ismail Haniyeh – both in the West Bank (28.1 percent to 6.9 percent) and in the Gaza Strip (32.4 percent to 11.7 percent).

The poll, which questioned a relatively large sample of 1,200 respondents, was taken June 15-17 – following the abductions of three Israeli teenagers, the formation of the Fatah-Hamas unity government, and the collapse of the Kerry peace talks. However, it was conducted just before West Bank protests arose against Abbas for his cooperation with Israel’s search for the kidnapped boys and crackdown on Hamas.

Goals vs. tactics

Asked what political goal they favored over the next five years, 60.3 percent replied “action to return historic Palestine, from the river to the sea, to our hands,” while 27.3 percent answered “end[ing] the occupation of the West Bank in order to reach a two-state solution.”

Another 10.1 percent said the goal should be a “one-state solution, for the entire region, from the river to the sea, in which Jews and Arabs enjoy equal rights.”

If a Palestinian leadership were to reach agreement with Israel on a two-state deal, 64 percent said Palestinians should still continue to press on for a Palestinian state encompassing the territories and Israel, while 31.6 percent said they would accept a two-state solution.

The American Boomerang — on The Glazov Gang
Internationally renowned Australian author Nick Adams discusses how the world’s greatest ‘turnaround’ nation will do it again.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/the-american-boomerang-on-the-glazov-gang/

Children living in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, funded by Europe and the U.S., are encouraged to kill Jews and destroy Israel.

There can be no peace so long as financial incentives to kill Jews and destroy Israel continue to be dangled in front of Palestinian populations. It is this aggression, and not humanitarian relief, that much of the well-intended international funding — with no conditions whatsoever attached — is used for.

The only conclusion one can draw is the EU and the U.S. are actually on the side of terrorism.

So long as the EU and the U.S continue to fund entities which openly promote acts of terror, they should be held criminally liable as accessories to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Rival factions of Fatah and Hamas formed a new Palestinian “unity government” on June 12. The Israeli government expressed deep concern. Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, stressed that the alliance could lead to a resurgence of terrorist acts. The European Union and current U.S. administration decided, nevertheless, to legitimize the new government.

No Western leader highlighted that Hamas had not renounced its explicitly genocidal goals, and that Hamas leaders have never renounced the use of violence.

Netanyahu’s prediction proved accurate: rocket fire resumed from Gaza.

On June 11th, rockets were fired at one of the main roads in southern Israel. The next day, June 12, three Israeli teens were kidnapped in the Hebron area. The kidnappers are apparently members of Hamas, even though Hamas has so far denied this.[1]

Ten concrete measures to prevent Islamic terrorism in the Netherlands.

In several Western countries, the authorities are concerned about the security risk posed by young Muslim immigrants who went to Syria and Iraq to wage jihad and are now returning home. They are considered the most serious security risk in decades.

The risk is not just theoretical. Indeed, on May 24, Mehdi Nemmouche, a young Muslim with a French passport, went on a killing spree with a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the Jewish Museum in Brussels. He killed four people. Nemmouche had previously been in Syria, where he was trained in guerrilla warfare.

During the past three years, thousands of young Islamic immigrants from all Western countries, Europe, Australia, America and even Russia, have gone to fight in Syria, where they have committed the most horrible atrocities. Some of them were killed in action, while others have since returned home. They carry Western passports but they hate the West. They walk our streets as ticking time bombs, eager to cause as much havoc in our cities as they have caused in Syria.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
A FEW QUICK THOUGHTS ON COCHRAN
1. Beating a Senate incumbent is still really hard. Even when the votes go your way, the incumbents have any number of dirty options at their disposal. It happened in Alaska. Now it happened again.
The system itself is corrupt and winning an election means beating the system. The bigger the election, the harder the system pushes back. It’s an elastic effect. Scale that up and you can see how hard winning the White House becomes.
This is why the left started at the bottom. It’s much easier to take over organizations from the top than the bottom. You have to become the system before you can beat the system.

2. The Tea Party brand has been severely damaged. That is to be expected. Even the left doesn’t stick with a brand. It uses innumerable front groups. The Tea Party brand should be retained as feeders for recruitment, but it might be wiser to route actual work through groups branded with names like “Reform” and “Change”.
And that takes me to…

3. The ongoing problem on the right is that it talks ‘extremist’ and legislates ‘moderate’ while the left talks ‘moderate’ and legislates ‘extremist’.
That’s a big part of why Obama is in the White House and conservatives are still struggling to make headway.
Obama isn’t in the White House because Americans woke up Communist one morning. I know that “Free Stuff” is a popular theory, but people always liked free stuff. The larger welfare population helped shift the balance, but if Obama had been a non-viable candidate, there would have been no balance to shift and it would have done him as much good as it did Jesse Jackson or Dukakis.
Obama is in office because much of the country believes that he is a moderate and a centrist.
The left can get away with it because it talks centrist and lives radical. If the right is ever going to do better than another liberal Republican, its candidates are going to have to talk like liberal Republicans while legislating well to the right.
It is doable. Rand Paul has been doing the talking part well enough. Unfortunately he talks the talk so well because he actually is well to the left.
And that’s the bigger problem.
Lefty candidates can have a certain amount of trust from the base because they are committed to an ideology. Obama’s supporters knew that he was for gay marriage and racial polarization no matter what he said. The right needs candidates who are ideologically committed so that trust stops being an issue.

NOT A ONE
There can be no conservative case for amnesty because there is no such thing as a conservative case for a policy that will not have a conservative outcome.
The only meaningful argument for a policy is based on outcomes.
If the outcome of a conservative policy is more liberalism, it was never a conservative policy to begin with. That is the simplest and most reliable acid test of any “conservative” policy agenda.
Will Policy X put the country on a more liberal or conservative track?
There Is No Conservative Case for Amnesty

Kerry: Russia Must “Literally” Disarm, State Department, Don’t Take Him “Literally” – This administration and its foreign policy are literally a joke.

CYNICAL AND DISHONEST
The leading factor behind the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq didn’t come from Iraq. It came from Syria.
The theory that turned Al Qaeda into a regional monster didn’t come from Dick Cheney. It came from Obama’s Presidential Study Directive 11 which helped pave the way for the Arab Spring. The definitive speech that opened the gates of hell wasn’t Bush’s speech on Iraq, but Obama’s Cairo speech.
Al Qaeda in Iraq was a vicious terrorist organization before the Arab Spring, but it was not capable of menacing Baghdad with a sizable army while crushing numerically superior forces along the way.
That didn’t happen in Iraq. It happened in Syria.
Don’t Blame Bush for Al Qaeda in Iraq, Blame Obama