RUTHFULLY YOURS

Australia’s Minister for Communications – Malcolm Turnbull – has sought to play down the threat Islamic State poses to world peace and security with these few throwaway unsubstantiated sentences during an address to the Sydney Institute on 7 July:

“… Da’esh is not Hitler’s Germany, Tojo’s Japan or Stalin’s Russia. Its leaders dream that they, like the Arab armies of the 7th and 8th century, will sweep across the Middle East into Europe itself.

They predict that before long they will be stabling their horses in the Vatican.

We should be careful not to say or do things which can be seen to add credibility to those delusions.”

Turnbull used the term “Daesh” – instead of Islamic State – on 16 occasions during his address.

Hillary Clinton has run a carefully stage-managed campaign so far in which she has repeatedly met with pre-selected crowds and avoided answering questions from the press. In the wake of her email scandal, several polls have shown that voters don’t believe she is an honest person, even if many are still willing to vote for her.

So it was a big deal this week when candidate Clinton gave her first big national televised one-on-one to CNN. Some have focused on the fact that she “played the victim,” blaming political opponents for many of her self-created problems. But more fundamentally, here are three falsehoods she told in the interview:

“I didn’t have to turn over anything. I chose to turn over 55,000 pages”

Obama may have forgotten about “war with Islam,” but war with Islam has not forgotten about him.

President Obama recently gave a speech at the Pentagon about our efforts against ISIS that confirmed he has little awareness of the real world our enemies inhabit. The talk reprised the usual received wisdom and unchallenged orthodoxy that comprise most of the foreign policy establishment’s ideas about Islamic jihadism and how we should fight it. Consider the following particularly egregious examples:

Ideologies are not defeated with guns; they’re defeated by better ideas–– a more attractive and more compelling vision.

Muslim extremists and jihadists pretend to be asylum seekers and apply for asylum in Europe, according to reports from intelligence and security services since the mid-1990s. The then Dutch Domestic Security Service BVD (now the AIVD) reported in May 1998 that radical Muslims from Tunisian, Egyptian and Algerian terrorist organizations had applied for asylum in the Netherlands. “These asylum seekers can count on the support of local sympathizers.” And in April 2001 the BVD/AIVD warned of “Islamic war veterans” posing as people who “are looking for asylum or illegal migrants who seek refuge in Western countries who will continue the fight or support it.”

In March 1996 a conference about fighting terrorism took place in the Egyptian Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh. The Egyptian government was worried about radical Muslims who had been granted asylum in England. Some of them were involved in the preparation of terror attacks. The then British Prime Minister John Major declared shortly after the conference that he would make the rules for granting asylum stricter, but nothing was done.

Only the final deadline will be deadly.

“We are certainly not going to sit at the negotiating table forever,” John Kerry said. That was last year around the time of the final deadline which had been extended from July 2014.

“New ideas surfaced” in the final days, he claimed and “we would be fools to walk away”. That’s also the theme of every sucker caught in a rigged card game, MLM scheme and Nigerian prince letter scam.

Smart people walk away after getting cheated. Only fools stay.

The Obama administration has trapped America. It is now ever clearer that current negotiations will not achieve a reliable, verifiable halt to Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. Absent such terms, a non-nuclear Middle East rests on Iran’s “good faith” and on Iran’s neighbors’ faith in her — both thin reeds. No magic rescue looms. Very hard choices and dark fates may await.

What if the Obama administration suddenly switched its approach on negotiations and sanctions? Sadly, it is almost certainly too late to force Iran to abandon its long-coveted goal. Three obstacles bar an effective reversal: Iran is so close it can taste nuclear-weapon status; the world is no longer willing to credit and follow President Obama’s “red lines”; and any new sanctions would take months to enact and years to bite.

If you are a legislator and the words “tearful plea” find themselves attached to your name in the headlines, you are doing it wrong.

Jenny Horne is a Republican representative in the South Carolina state house who on Thursday gave a weepy speech in which she implored her colleagues to vote to take down the Confederate battle flag, which became a focal point of sustained criticism right around the time the state started electing Republican governors instead of the Democrats who hoisted that flag in the first place.

Her sobbing theatrics constitute an excellent example of what is wrong with American governance, as does the subject of her incontinence, for that matter. There is the usual sentimental personalization of the issue — Horne demanding that her fellow legislators vote her way or insult “the widow of Senator Pinckney and his two young daughters” — and the second-rate thespianism: “I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to” — raising her voice to a shriek —“do something meaningful.”

A professor at the University of Texas at El Paso wrote a manifesto saying that animal-rights activists must rise up and commit “illegal raids” and “sabotage attacks” in order to save the world from a “mass extinction.”

In a 2009 piece for the Animal Liberation Front titled “Manifesto for Radical Abolitionism: Total Liberation By Any Means Necessary,” associate professor of philosophy Steven Best says that groups like PETA are just not radical or progressive enough. After all, they work with corporations (boo!) “in order to regulate, not eliminate, the ongoing nonhuman animal holocaust.”

Best explains that capitalism is “destructive,” the state is a “corrupt tool,” and keeping animals enslaved will definitely lead to a “mass extinction” — and so basically it’s just not enough to go vegan or adopt a rescue puppy.

This afternoon, Rick Perry issued a statement and offered a proposal on “sanctuary cities” that instruct their police department to not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

“In Texas, we have a long history of welcoming immigrants from all over the world, immigrants who have helped make our economy the strongest in the country. It’s not fair that some people try to jump the immigration line by coming across our border illegally. One of the core responsibilities of the federal government is to secure the border. As the recent tragedy in San Francisco has shown us, it’s important for the federal government and local governments to be able to cooperate to apprehend illegal immigrants with criminal histories. San Francisco—and many other cities in America run by left-wing governments—have become ‘sanctuary cities’ that choose to openly defy U.S. immigration law and prevent cooperation with federal authorities. Perversely, the federal government subsidizes this behavior by sending Justice Department funds to cities that intentionally harbor illegal immigrants in their jails. This has to end.”

Kathryn Steinle, the 32-year-old woman shot in San Francisco last week, was killed by a Mexican criminal, but she was a victim of American lawlessness. Her killer should never have been on the streets of San Francisco; Immigration and Customs Enforcement should have deported him (for the sixth time, as it happens).

But they couldn’t, because San Francisco, and many other states, counties, and municipalities across the country, don’t like our immigration laws, so they interfere in the enforcement of them — sometimes with deadly consequences.

San Francisco is a “sanctuary city,” meaning that its local law enforcement often doesn’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities trying to hold or deport aliens. In this case, the city’s sheriff released Steinle’s killer in April without notifying ICE, which had a detainer order out for the man, meaning the city should have held him until ICE took custody of him.