RUTHFULLY YOURS

Even should nuclear brinkmanship not result in Armageddon, it can lead to abject defeat and a complete reordering of the international system. The extraordinarily complicated and consequential management of American nuclear policy rests upon the shoulders of those we elevate to the highest offices. Unfortunately, President Obama’s transparent hostility to America’s foundational principles and defensive powers is coupled with a dim and faddish understanding of nuclear realities. His successor will be no less ill-equipped.

Hillary Clinton’s robotic compulsion to power renders her immune to either respect for truth or clearheaded consideration of urgent problems. Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state once said that he was “pure act” (meaning action). Hillary Clinton is “pure lie” (meaning lie), with whatever intellectual power she possesses hopelessly enslaved to reflexive deviousness.

Donald Trump, surprised that nuclear weapons are inappropriate to counterinsurgency, has a long history of irrepressible urges and tropisms. Rather like the crazy boy-emperors after the fall of the Roman Republic, he may have problems with impulse control—and an uncontrolled, ill-formed, perpetually fragmented mind.

None of these perhaps three worst people in the Western Hemisphere, and few of their deplorable underlings, are alive to the gravest danger. Which is neither Islamic State, terrorism, the imprisoned economy, nor even the erosion of our national character, though all are of crucial importance.

The gravest danger we face is fast-approaching nuclear instability. Many believe it is possible safely to arrive at nuclear zero. It is not. Enough warheads to bring any country to its knees can fit in a space volumetrically equivalent to a Manhattan studio apartment. Try to find that in the vastness of Russia, China, or Iran. Even ICBMs and their transporter-erector-launchers can easily be concealed in warehouses, tunnels and caves. Nuclear weapons age out, but, thanks to supercomputing, reliable replacements can be manufactured with only minor physical testing. Unaccounted fissile material sloshing around the world can, with admitted difficulty, be fashioned into weapons. And when rogue states such as North Korea and Iran build their bombs, our response has been either impotence or a ticket to ride.

Nor do nuclear reductions lead to increased safety. Quite apart from encouraging proliferation by enabling every medium power in the world to aim for nuclear parity with the critically reduced U.S. arsenal, reductions create instability. The fewer targets, the more possible a (counter-force) first strike to eliminate an enemy’s retaliatory capacity. Nuclear stability depends, inter alia, upon deep reserves that make a successful first strike impossible to assure. The fewer warheads and the higher the ratio of warheads to delivery vehicles, the more dangerous and unstable.

Consider two nations, each with 10 warheads on each of 10 missiles. One’s first strike with five warheads tasked per the other’s missiles would leave the aggressor with an arsenal sufficient for a (counter-value) strike against the now disarmed opponent’s cities. Our deterrent is not now as concentrated as in the illustration, but by placing up to two-thirds of our strategic warheads in just 14 submarines; consolidating bomber bases; and entertaining former Defense Secretary William Perry’s recommendation to do away with the 450 missiles in the land-based leg of the Nuclear Triad, we are moving that way.

Supposedly salutary reductions are based upon an incorrect understanding of nuclear sufficiency: i.e., if X number of weapons is sufficient to inflict unacceptable costs upon an enemy, no more than X are needed. But we don’t define sufficiency, the adversary does, and the definition varies according to culture; history; the temperament, sanity, or miscalculation of leadership; domestic politics; forms of government, and other factors, some unknown. For this reason, the much maligned concept of overkill is a major contributor to stability, in that, if we have it, an enemy is less likely to calculate that we lack sufficiency. Further, if our forces are calibrated to sufficiency, then presumably the most minor degradation will render them insufficient.

Nor is it safe to mirror-image willingness to go nuclear. Every nuclear state has its own threshold, and one cannot assume that concessions in strategic forces will obviate nuclear use in response to conventional warfare, which was Soviet doctrine for decades and is a Russian predilection now.

Ballistic missile defense is opposed and starved on the assumption that it would shield one’s territory after striking first, and would therefore tempt an enemy to strike before the shield was deployed. As its opponents assert, hermetic shielding is impossible, and if only 10 of 1,500 warheads were to hit American cities, the cost would be unacceptable. But no competent nuclear strategist ever believed that, other than protecting cities from accidental launch or rogue states, ballistic missile defense is anything but a means of protecting our retaliatory capacity, making a counter-force first strike of no use, and thus increasing stability.

In a nuclear world, unsentimental and often counterintuitive analysis is necessary. As the genie will not be forced back into the lamp, the heart of the matter is balance and deterrence. But this successful dynamic of 70 years is about to be destroyed. Those whom the French call our “responsibles” have addressed the nuclear calculus—in terms of sufficiency, control regimes, and foreign policy—only toward Russia, as if China, a nuclear power for decades, did not exist. While it is true that to begin with its nuclear arsenal was de minimis, in the past 15 years China has increased its land-based ICBMs by more than 300%, its sea-based by more than 400%. Depending upon the configuration of its missiles, China can rain up to several hundred warheads upon the U.S.

As we shrink our nuclear forces and fail to introduce new types, China is doing the opposite, increasing them numerically and forging ahead of us in various technologies (quantum communications, super computers, maneuverable hypersonic re-entry vehicles), some of which we have forsworn, such as road-mobile missiles, which in survivability and range put to shame our Minuteman IIIs. CONTINUE AT SITE

Around 200 migrants from Calais, the principal ferry crossing point between France and England, are successfully smuggled into Britain each week, according to police estimates cited by the Telegraph.

In recent months, masked gangs of people smugglers armed with knives, bats and tire irons have forced truck drivers to stop so that migrants can board their vehicles.

“Before, it was just attempts to get on trucks. Now there is looting and willful destruction, tarpaulins are slashed, goods stolen or destroyed. Drivers go to work with fear in their bellies and the economic consequences are severe.” — David Sagnard, president of France’s truck drivers’ federation.

“They want to go to England because they can expect better conditions on arrival there than anywhere else in Europe or even internationally. … They can easily find work outside the formal economy…” — Natacha Bouchart, Mayor of Calais.

“The asylum seekers could apply for protection in France or the European country they first landed in… they only reached Calais by crossing French borders. France is part of the borderless Schengen Area of the EU, whereas Britain is not.” — James Glenday, ABC News.

Building work has begun on a wall in the northern French city of Calais, a major transport hub on the edge of the English Channel, to prevent migrants from stowing away on cars, trucks, ferries and trains bound for Britain.

Dubbed “The Great Wall of Calais,” the concrete barrier — one kilometer (half a mile) long and four meters (13 feet) high on both sides of the two-lane highway approaching the harbor — will pass within a few hundred meters of a sprawling shanty town known as “The Jungle.”

The squalid camp now houses more than 10,000 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are trying to reach Britain. The migrants at the camp are mostly from Sudan (45%), Afghanistan (30%), Pakistan (7%), Eritrea (6%) and Syria (1%), according to a recent census conducted by aid agencies.

Construction of the wall — which will cost British taxpayers £2 million (€2.3 million; $2.6 million) and is due to be completed by the end of 2016 — comes amid a surge in the number of migrants from the camp trying to reach Britain.

Based on a recent Farsi-language news story, a man identified as Ahmad, a devout Muslim from the Islamic Republic, conducted sigheh, a “temporary marriage,” with a woman identifed as Elnaz.

Sigheh is allowed under Iran’s Islamic and Sharia law. After three days Ahmad allegedly stole money from Elnaz’s family and left her. After the marriage contract, it was revealed that he also has another wife and children. Elnaz cannot take him to the court, divorce him, or marry another person because the marriage was Islamic and legal. Iranian officials and media outlets are also blaming her for what happened to her.

Under Iran’s Islamic and Sharia law, there exist two kinds of halal (religiously permissible) marriages: permanent and temporary. The latter is called “sigheh” or “motaa” (enjoyment). Sigheh is a verbal contract that can last as long as desired; an hour, two hours, half day, a week, a year, or more. Although sigheh is sold to women as a real marriage and that the man will truly treat the woman as his wife, the real story is different. Normally, in such a contract, the man gives something to the women (money, place to sleep, etc.) in exchange for sex and complete control over her body and emotions.

Sigheh only increased after the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Intriguingly, Iranian leaders and Imams have their own Islamic justification for such an act. They argue that this tradition began with Muhammad during the wars he engaged in for several reasons, including that Muhammad’s troops were away from the wives for a long period and needed to release their sexual desires. As a result, Muhammad said that Allah allows temporary marriages. Iranian clerics also argue that many of Muhammad’s troops were killed during holy wars. Therefore, many women were left without husbands. The story goes that Muhammad allowed the men to temporarily marry as many women as they desired.

The Muslim Brotherhood won seats in Tuesday’s Jordanian parliamentary elections, a mostly symbolic victory that revives the movement’s presence in the country’s legislature for the first time in nearly a decade.

Results of the of the vote were disclosed on Thursday.

The Islamic Action Front, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, won eight seats and its political supporters took another seven, making for an alliance of 15 out of the 130 lawmakers in the lower house of Jordan’s parliament. But the alliance’s small numbers would limit its influence in shaping policy or opposing laws promoted by the government.

Governing powers would continue to reside largely with Pro-western monarch King Abdullah II. While usually drafted by the government, the country’s laws must be endorsed by both houses of Parliament.

“Still,” said Oraib al-Rantawi, director of the Al Quds Center for Political Studies in Amman, the Muslim Brotherhood “will create controversy and stimulate heated discussions.”

King Abdullah earlier this year dissolved parliament, swore in a new government and named former foreign minister Hani Mulki prime minister in a bid to bolster confidence in government among Jordanians.

Despite those changes, voter apathy was apparent this week, with just 37% of the country’s 4 million eligible voters casting ballots.

The country is struggling with a range of domestic issues including stagnant economic growth and the cost of absorbing more than 650,000 United Nations-registered Syrian refugees into its population of roughly 8.1 million.

Unemployment for Jordanians under age 30, who comprise more than 70% of the country, has hit 30%, according to a 2015 report by the International Labor Organization. A lack of prospects for youth has led many to consider joining the Islamic State militant group and has aided in the proliferation of extremist ideologies, U.S. officials have said.

The Muslim Brotherhood had campaigned on a message of relative political moderation and fielded a slate of candidates that included Christians and women. “We are the only bloc in parliament who ran on a platform with a program, and we will forge alliances with others,” said Ali Abu al-Sukkar, Islamic Action Front’s deputy head.

Election laws this year were revised to stipulate parliamentary candidates would no longer be listed as unaffiliated individuals and instead would be required to appear on slates defined by political party, geography or a loosely defined political agenda.

Those changes were aimed at encouraging party politics, but people generally voted according to family and community ties.

The composition of new parliament is dominated by tribal candidates and businessmen local to voting districts, in similar fashion to the previous assembly. CONTINUE AT SITE

This summer, President Obama was often golfing. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were promising to let the world be. The end of summer seemed sleepy, the world relatively calm.

The summer of 1914 in Europe also seemed quiet. But on July 28, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip with help from his accomplices, fellow Serbian separatists. That isolated act sparked World War I.

In the summer of 1939, most observers thought Adolf Hitler was finally through with his serial bullying. Appeasement supposedly had satiated his once enormous territorial appetites. But on September 1, Nazi Germany unexpectedly invaded Poland and touched off World War II, which consumed some 60 million lives.

Wars often seem to come out of nowhere, as unlikely events ignite long-simmering disputes into global conflagrations.

The instigators often are weaker attackers who foolishly assume that more powerful nations wish peace at any cost, and so will not react to opportunistic aggression.

Unfortunately, our late-summer calm of 2016 has masked a lot of festering tensions that are now coming to a head — largely due to disengagement by a supposedly tired United States.

In contrast, war, unlike individual states, does not sleep.

Russia has been massing troops on its border with Ukraine. Russian president Vladimir Putin apparently believes that Europe is in utter disarray and assumes that President Obama remains most interested in apologizing to foreigners for the past evils of the United States. Putin is wagering that no tired Western power could or would stop his reabsorption of Ukraine — or the Baltic states next. Who in hip Amsterdam cares what happens to faraway Kiev?

Iran swapped American hostages for cash. An Iranian missile narrowly missed a U.S. aircraft carrier not long ago. Iranians hijacked an American boat and buzzed our warships in the Persian Gulf. There are frequent promises from Tehran to destroy either Israel, America, or both. So much for the peace dividend of the “Iran deal.”

North Korea is more than just delusional. Recent nuclear tests and missile launches toward Japan suggest that North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un actually believes that he could win a war — and thereby gain even larger concessions from the West and from his Asian neighbors.

Radical Islamists likewise seem emboldened to try more attacks on the premise that Western nations will hardly respond with overwhelming power. The past weekend brought pipe bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey as well as a mass stabbing in a Minnesota mall — and American frustration.

Obama’s last address before the UN General Assembly was typically and predictably condescending, hypocritical, disingenuous and vainglorious. He used the opportunity to perform some electioneering and take a swipe at Donald Trump. “Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself,” he said in a not too subtle reference to Trump’s promised plans to secure the southern border with the construction of a wall and restrict immigration from high-risk countries.

France, a NATO ally that has partnered with the U.S. to combat the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamic extremism in Mali, was also derided. Though he did not mention France by name, he criticized “liberal societies” for their “opposition to women who choose to cover themselves.” This of course was a veiled reference French laws banning Burkas and Burkinis, items of Islamic clothing that are oppressive to and denigrate women.

Of course, Obama made no mention of the Paris and Nice massacres. Nor did he note that as a result of Muslim violence, 70 percent of Europe’s Jews won’t be attending synagogue during the Jewish High-Holy Days. Obama did of course heap praise on Indonesia, a Muslim nation that discriminates against minorities and the LGBT community, still maintains so-called “blasphemy” laws, and imposes draconian Sharia law in some districts. This year, a 60-year old Christian-Indonesian woman was given 28 lashes for selling alcohol. This is the model nation that the president touts before the world community.

The vainglorious president also took the opportunity to tout his disastrous Iran deal, noting that the United States “resolved the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomacy.” Obama, however, failed to note that he inked the worst deal in U.S. diplomatic history and likely the worst deal since the 1938 Munich Accord. He also omitted the fact that the infusion of $150 billion into Iran’s anemic economy will enable the mullahs to continue to sow misery throughout the region.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he hopes that tens of thousands of Syrian refugees admitted into his country “will be soon able to join our middle class” through “offering them the same things we offer to all our citizens, a real and fair chance at success for everyone.”

In his Tuesday speech to the UN General Assembly, Trudeau said that to allay the anxiety of people everywhere “we need to create economic growth that is broadly shared, because a fair and successful world is a peaceful one.”

“We need to focus on what brings us together, not on what divides us. For Canada, that means reengaging in global affairs through institutions like the United Nations,” he said. “It doesn’t serve our interests or the world’s to pretend we’re not deeply affected by what happens beyond our borders.”

The prime minister said Canada “got a very important thing right… we see diversity as a source of strength, not weakness.”

“And make no mistake, we’ve had many failures from the internment of Ukrainian, Japanese, and Italian Canadians during the world wars, to our turning away of boats of Jewish and Punjabi refugees, to the shamefully continuing marginalization of indigenous peoples. What matters is that we learned from our mistakes and recommit ourselves to doing better,” he said.

“To that end, in recent months Canadians have opened their hearts and their arms to families fleeing the ongoing conflict in Syria. And from the moment they arrived those 31,000 refugees were welcomed, not as burdens, but as neighbors and friends as new Canadians.”

French politicians seem to believe they are elected NOT to defend French people and the French nation, but to impose a “human rights ideology” on society.

The rule of law is there to protect citizens from the arbitrary actions of the State. When a group of French Muslims attacks the entire way society is constructed, the rule of law now protects only the perpetrators.

For Western leaders, “human rights” have become a kind of new religion. Like a disease, the human rights ideology has proliferated in all areas of life. The United Nations website shows a list of all the human rights that are now institutionalized: they range from “adequate housing” to “youth.” At least 42 categories of human rights fields are determined, each of which are split into two or three subcategories.

With what result? More than 140 countries (out of 193 UN members) engage in torture. The number of authoritarian countries has increased. Women remain a subordinate class in nearly all countries.

“Saudi Arabia ratified the treaty banning discrimination against women in 2007, and yet by law subordinates women to men in all areas of life. Child labour exists in countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Powerful western countries, including the US, do business with grave human rights abusers.” — Eric Posner, professor at the University of Chicago Law School

Human rights, originally conceived of as an anti-discrimination tool, became a Trojan horse, a tool manipulated by Islamists and others to dismantle secularism, freedom of speech and freedom of religion in European countries.

On August 13, the Administrative Court in Nice, France, validated the decision of the Mayor of Cannes to prohibit wearing religious clothing on the beaches of Cannes. By “religious clothing,” the judge clearly seemed to be pointing his finger at the burkini, a body-covering bathing suit worn by many Muslim women.

These “Muslim textile affairs” reveal two types of jihad attacking France: one hard, one soft. The hard jihad, internationally known, consists of assassinating journalists of Charlie Hebdo (January 2015), Jewish people at the Hypercacher supermarket (January 2015) and young people at the Bataclan theater, restaurants and the Stade de France (November 2015). The hard jihad also included stabbing two policeman in Magnanville, a suburb of Paris, (June 2016); truck-ramming to death 84 people in Nice on Bastille Day (July 14), and murdering a priest in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, among other incidents. The goal of hard jihad, led by ISIS, al-Qaeda, and others, is to impose sharia by terror.

The soft jihad is different. It does not involve murdering people, but its final goal is the same: to impose Islam on France by covering the country in Islamic symbols — veils, burqas, burkinis and so on — at all levels of the society: in schools, universities, hospitals, corporations, streets, beaches, swimming pools and public transportation. By imposing the veil everywhere, soft Islamists seem to want to kill secularism, which, since escaping the grip of the Catholic Church, has become the French way of “living together.”

No one can understand secularism in France without a bit of history.

UNITED NATIONS—A global climate agreement moved closer toward taking effect by the end of the year, as 30 more nations ratified it Wednesday during a special meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

The deal, championed by the Obama administration and struck last year in Paris among 195 countries, sets out a global plan to take steps aimed at limiting climate change. But it can enter into force only once 55 countries representing 55% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—the main cause for a steady rise in global temperatures—have ratified it.

As of Wednesday, one of the two conditions—the number of countries—was met, as 60 countries have now ratified it, representing 47.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters—the U.S. and China—ratified the deal earlier this month. A further 13 countries committed to ratify the deal by the end of the year.

“I’m evermore confident that the Paris agreement will enter into force this year,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, said during the event Wednesday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry thanked the “warriors for the planet” for taking action, noting that the months of July and August were “the hottest months ever recorded on the planet,” and expressed hope that the Paris deal will enter into force before the next U.N. meeting on climate change in Marrakesh, Morocco, in November.

If the agreement enters into force this year, the U.S. would be prevented from pulling out for 4 years, potentially binding the hands of the next president—even if he or she was intent on reversing course.

President Barack Obama sought to implement the Paris agreement, one of his legacy projects, before the end of his term.

There is a campaign designed as a rescue mission for Lejla, arranged by Anni Cyrus’ Live up to Freedom. Please continue to help: https://www.gofundme.com/lutfmission.

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents the Lejla Colak Moment with Lejla Colak, a brave Bosnian journalist who survived Islam.

Lejla discusses My Escape From Islam’s Rape and Death Sentence and sends her gratitude to Anni Cyrus and all others for snatching her out of the hell that Sharia’s guardians had planned for her.

And make sure to watch the special edition of The Glazov Gang that presented the Afshin Sohrabzadeh Moment with Afshin Sohrabzadeh, a brave dissident who was brutalized by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Afshin sends out a personal message to Anni Cyrus, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Jamie Glazov and all the others who have reached out to save and heal him:

There is a campaign designed as a rescue and healing mission for Afshin, arranged by Anni Cyrus’ Live up to Freedom. Please continue to help: gofundme.com/HopeforPersecuted.

Read Pamela Geller standing up for Afshin in Breitbart: HERE.