RUTHFULLY YOURS

Winston Churchill called Russia a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. We could say Obama’s energy and climate policy is confusion wrapped in muddled thinking inside obfuscation – and driven by autocratic diktats that bring job-killing, economy-strangling, racist and deadly outcomes.

President Obama was recently in China, where his vainglorious arrival turned into an inglorious snub, when he had to use Air Force 1’s rear exit. He was there mostly to join Chinese President Xi Jinping and UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon, to formally sign the Paris climate treaty that Mr. Obama insists is not a treaty (and thus does not require Senate “advice and consent” under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution) because it is not binding – yet.

However, once it has been “signed and delivered” by 55 nations representing 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it will be hailed as binding. China and the US alone represent 38% of total emissions, so adding a few more big nations (Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan and Germany, eg) would reach the emission threshold. Adding a bunch of countries that merely want their “fair share” of the billions of dollars in annual climate “adaptation, mitigation and reparation” cash would hit the country minimum.

Few if any developing nations will reduce their oil, natural gas or coal use anytime soon. That would be economic and political suicide. In fact, China and India plan to build some 1,600 new coal-fired power plants by 2030, Japan 43, Turkey 80, Poland a dozen, and the list goes on and on, around the globe.

Meanwhile, the United States is shutting down its coal-fueled units. Under Obama’s treaty, the USA will be required to go even further, slashing its carbon dioxide emissions by 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. That will unleash energy, economic and environmental impacts far beyond what the Administration’s endless, baseless climate decrees are already imposing.

Federal agencies constantly harp on wildly exaggerated and fabricated “social costs of carbon” – but completely and deliberately ignore the incredible benefits of carbon-based energy.

The battle is now shifting to natural gas – methane. Hillary Clinton and Democrats promise to regulate drilling and fracking into oblivion on federal lands. California regulators are targeting cow flatulence!

EPA continues to expand ethanol requirements, even though this fuel additive reduces mileage, damages small engines, uses acreage equivalent to Iowa, requires enormous amounts of water, fertilizer, pesticides, gasoline, methane and diesel fuel – and releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it removes.

Today, institutional slavery conjures images of pre-Civil War Southern ownership of African slaves. However, slavery is an ancient practice dating from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as early Amer-Indian empires in Mexico and Central America. It was also well established and ideologically sanctioned in the Muslim world from the days of Mohammed.

Concurrently with African enslavement in the Americas, a flourishing slave trade existed from 1500 to 1800 of white Christian Europeans by the Muslims of North Africa’s Barbary Coast. In his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, Ohio State history professor Robert Davis takes a close look at this rarely discussed aspect of modern history.

Originating from the life of the Prophet Mohammed, slavery is deeply embedded in Islamic law and tradition. Muslims are required to follow the teachings of Mohammed, who was a slave owner and trader. Further, a large part of the sharia – in the Sunna of Mohammed and the Koran – is dedicated to the practice of slavery. Muslim caliphs typically had harems of hundreds of slave girls captured from Christian, Hindu, and African lands. Slavery is still practiced today in several Muslim countries and glorified by present-day jihadist groups.

In Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, Davis describes how, from 1500 to 1800, Muslim corsairs from the Barbary Coast systematically enslaved white Christians from Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Iceland, Great Britain, Ireland, and Greece. The Muslims raided ships at sea and attacked coastal villages in an activity called “Christian stealing.” During that time, Davis explains, the Mediterranean had a reputation as the sea where people vanished: fisherman or sailors on board boats, shepherds tending flocks, farmers toiling near the shore, and townspeople, including women and children, living in coastal communities. Coastal dwellers and those who traveled by ship constantly risked capture, violence, and exploitation at the hands of Barbary Coast Muslims.

As part of this jihad against Christianity begun in 1500, piracy and slaving were the main instruments used to deprive infidel communities of useful, productive citizens and to acquire booty. Davis estimates that during three centuries of Muslim predation, as many as 1.25 million Europeans were permanently and stealthily removed from their families and communities.

A new guide being circulated among ISIS supporters online directs lone jihadists to construct explosives from “simple things” like rat poison and use poisonous plants to inflict casualties.

The guide says it’s from the Nashir Media Foundation, which last month circulated different terror plot suggestions including creating hazardous driving conditions. This month, after the assassination of ISIS’ No. 2 Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, the Nashir Media Foundation issued a statement to jihadists “specifically in France” to “delete anything related to the Islamic state from your devices” to avoid detection and “hurry in your operations before it becomes too late.”

The “important” new guide, as touted by one ISIS supporter who tweeted the cheat sheet, pulls together past suggestions of poison and bombmaking recipes into a comprehensive guide to “fight back” against “the infidel West.” It was distributed with an image of a howling wolf against a forest backdrop.

One bomb recipe includes, in part, sulfuric acid, rat poison and screws, with the detonator needing a small bulb bought in a “kids toy or an electrical shop,” a car battery and a length of wire. Ingredient swap suggestions include “preferably sharp” nails and bolts to inflict greater harm. Jihadists are advised to encase the device in plaster, leaving the wires feeding out, and detonate the device in a place with traffic.

Other bomb ingredients discussed include fertilizer, Vaseline, citric acid, potassium chloride and sodium bicarbonate. Even hair dye containing ammonium hydroxide is discussed as a bomb ingredient, as well as acetone in nail-polish remover, hydrogen peroxide, coal powder, phosphorus insecticides, glycerin in skin moisturizers and sulfur powder found “in stores that sell agricultural materials.”

They also suggest jihadists try the garden for effective weapons, such as the castor seeds that harbor ricin. The guide underscores that children especially have “weak resistance” to the naturally occurring poison. They discuss extraction methods once the jihadists are able to obtain seeds.

But the botanical advice doesn’t stop there — lone jihadists are advised to explore the wide range of toxic plants that are “accessible to everyone.”

That includes Atropa belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, with a note that jihadists can commonly find it in home gardens because of its “beautiful shape.” Solanum dulcamara, or bitter nightshade, which is native to Europe and Asia and invasive in North America, is recommended for its “troublesome properties” — but the ISIS guide notes it’s “a rare reason of death.”

Jihadists are also advised to be on the watch — or sniff the wind — for Hyoscyamus niger, known as henbane or stinking nightshade. “The entire plant is extremely toxic… used sometimes in the commission of crimes,” states the guide. Laburnum anagyroides, or the golden chain tree, is another recommended botanical poison, as well as the native British Taxus baccata, or English yew.

The guide doesn’t give jihadists many suggestions on how to poison people with poisonous plants, but rounds up their list with extraction techniques for the Strychnos Nux-vomica, or strychnine tree. They warn that “even 1% of the killer in a glass of water” can be detected due to strychnine’s bitter taste, but laud it as “one of the most brutal kinds of poison.”

The guide was distributed on file-sharing sites and through social media. One ISIS member who tweeted the list Tuesday was suspended from Twitter the same day, though some others seen promoting the guide remained on the site.

Critics say that the creation of a European army, a long-held goal of European federalists, would entail an unprecedented transfer of sovereignty from European nation states to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU.

Others say that efforts to move forward on European defense integration show that European leaders have learned little from Brexit, and are determined to continue their quest to build a European superstate regardless of opposition from large segments of the European public.

“Those of us who have always warned about Europe’s defense ambitions have always been told not to worry… We’re always told not to worry about the next integration and then it happens. We’ve been too often conned before and we must not be conned again.” — Liam Fox, former British defense secretary.

“[C]reation of EU defense structures, separate from NATO, will only lead to division between transatlantic partners at a time when solidarity is needed in the face of many difficult and dangerous threats to the democracies.” — Geoffrey Van Orden, UK Conservative Party defense spokesman.

European leaders are discussing “far-reaching proposals” to build a pan-European military, according to a French defense ministry document leaked to the German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The efforts are part of plans to relaunch the European Union at celebrations in Rome next March marking the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Community.

The document confirms rumors that European officials are rushing ahead with defense integration now that Britain — the leading military power in Europe — will be exiting the 28-member European Union.

British leaders have repeatedly blocked efforts to create a European army because of concerns that it would undermine the NATO alliance, the primary defense structure in Europe since 1949.

Proponents of European defense integration argue that it is needed to counter growing security threats and would save billions of euros in duplication between countries.

Critics say that the creation of a European army, a long-held goal (see Appendix below) of European federalists, would entail an unprecedented transfer of sovereignty from European nation states to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU.

Others say that efforts to move forward on European defense integration show that European leaders have learned little from Brexit — the June 23 decision by British voters to leave the EU — and are determined to continue their quest to build a European superstate regardless of opposition from large segments of the European public.

The question of whether Socialism can be an effective economic system was famously raised when Margaret Thatcher said of the British Labor Party, “I think they’ve made the biggest financial mess that any government’s ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people’s money. It’s quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything.”

There are dire reports of people waiting in supermarket lines all day, only to discover that expected food deliveries never arrived and the shelves are empty.

There are horrific tales of desperate people slaughtering zoo animals to provide their only meal of the day. Even household pets are targeted as a much-needed source for food.

President Maduro is doubling down on the proven failed policies and philosophies of “Bolivarian Socialism,” while diverting attention away from the crisis — pointing fingers at so-called “enemies” of Venezuela such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and others.

A dozen eggs was last reported to cost $150, and the International Monetary Fund “predicts that inflation in Venezuela will hit 720% this year.

For many Venezuelans, by every economic, social and political measure, their nation is unravelling at breakneck speed.

Severe shortages of food, clean water, electricity, medicines and hospital supplies punctuate a dire scenario of crime-ridden streets in the impoverished neighborhoods of this nearly failed OPEC state, which at one time claimed to be the most prosperous nation in Latin America.