RUTHFULLY YOURS

I confess to binge watching on the tube. My latest all nighter is Netflix’s “House of Cards” all about a venal and ruthless presidential couple….played by Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. In season 3, the Prez’s wife is the Ambassador to the United Nations….and is consumed with brokering a deal with America, Russia, Israel and “Palestine” participating.

Imagine that! Netflix recognizes an independent Arab state- something that Presidents, Prime Ministers, American administrations since the “Rogers Plan” of 1972 and its clones Camp David Agreement, Oslo, Road Maps- have failed to do and which continued Arab terrorism and the present nuclear threats from Iran have thrust into the back burner if not the dust bin of history.

How ridiculous. Shame on them.

President Obama Monday dismissed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran recognize the state of Israel as a condition of a nuclear arms control pact, arguing Iran’s regime will not change that drastically, even if Tehran’s nuclear activities do.

The president’s remarks to National Public Radio, during an interview to air in its entirety Tuesday, offered another look at the simultaneous global and domestic pressures the United States is juggling just days after clearing interim hurdles in pursuit of a lasting agreement with Iran.

The Iranian threats to Israel are likely to remain, Obama said. The United States is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon via tough commitments, intrusive inspections and scientific oversight. By the same token, the United States remains committed to defending Israel, he added.

President Obama gives an exclusive interview to Thomas (“Meet the Flintstones”) Friedman, in-house thinker of The New York Times. It’s dispiriting stuff:

“What we will be doing even as we enter into this deal is sending a very clear message to the Iranians and to the entire region that if anybody messes with Israel, America will be there.”

Ask the Libyan and Yemeni governments how that worked out. Scott Johnson looks on the bright side:

At least he didn’t say that the destruction of Israel is a red line for him.

The most forlorn part of the Friedman/Obama encounter is this:

“Who knows?” he added. “Iran may change.” But if not, he said, the United States retains “the most firepower” to address any contingencies.

Apparently appointing people as ambassadors to countries because they gave you a bunch of money does not produce good results. So much for that smart, smart power.

Czech President Milos Zeman says he has “closed” the door of Prague Castle, the seat of the country’s presidency, to the U.S. ambassador because of comments he made about Zeman’s planned trip to Moscow.

U.S. Ambassador Andrew Schapiro told Czech television last week that it would be “awkward” if Zeman were the only EU head of state to attend a May 9 ceremony in Moscow marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Zeman told the news site Parlamentni Listy that he “can’t imagine” the Czech ambassador in Washington giving advice to an American president about “where to travel.”

One of George W. Bush’s worst decisions was failing to pardon Lewis “Scooter” Libby before he left the White House, as we and others urged him to do at the time. That abdication looks even worse today as the chief if reluctant prosecution witness against Mr. Libby, journalist Judith Miller, says she now believes her testimony at trial was wrong.
Peter Berkowitz recounts the story in detail nearby based on Ms. Miller’s revelation in her new book, released this week. She says she testified truthfully, but she now believes based on information she didn’t know at the time that she was led into a false conclusion about her notes by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The perjury case against Mr. Libby was always flimsy, hanging on uncertain memories from years earlier about noncriminal behavior. But if Ms. Miller’s testimony was false, then the conviction was an even worse injustice than we thought.

Why bring all this up now? Well, it is never too late to correct an unjust conviction, and Mr. Libby deserves to have his reputation restored. The episode also teaches lessons about the methods of modern prosecutors, as well as the pitfalls of Washington that the many Republicans running for the White House should want to avoid.

What Israel Wants

A complete end to Iran’s nuclear weapons research and development activity
An unspecified but significant reduction in the number of centrifuges
Closure of the Fordow facility as an enrichment site
Complete disclosure of Iran’s past nuclear work and research
Removal of Iran’s entire stockpile of enriched uranium from the country
Right of international inspectors to review any facility at any time

What’s in the Framework

No uranium enrichment over 3.67% purity—the level suitable for power plants but not arms
Reduction in the number of installed centrifuges to 6,104 from about 19,000
Fordow to be converted into a research center
Unclear if Iran would have to disclose past nuclear research
A reduction to Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium from 10,000 kilograms to 300
The right of inspectors to access all of Iran’s nuclear facilities and its supply chains

We are dealing with a case of Mutually Assured Obfuscation.

‘So when you hear the inevitable critics of the deal sound off, ask them a simple question: Do you really think that this verifiable deal, if fully implemented, backed by the world’s major powers, is a worse option than the risk of another war in the Middle East?”

That was Barack Obama on Thursday, defending his Iran diplomacy while treating its opponents to the kind of glib contempt that is the mark of the progressive mind. Since I’m one of those inevitable critics, let me answer his question.

The proverbial thin veneer of civilization has never been thinner in California, as if nature has conspired to create even greater chaos than what man here has already wrought. What follows below was a fairly typical seven-day period in the land of the highest sales, fuel, and income taxes that have led to the nearly worst freeways, schools, and general infrastructure in the nation.

I recently came home from an out-of-state trip. Something was wrong: I noticed off in the distance a strange geyser at the top of the hill. Vandals had apparently earlier taken sledgehammers to the pump’s four-inch plastic fittings — all to scavenge two brass valves (recycle value of about $20).

The prescient writings of Adams predicted today’s folly.

Expatriate Iranian journalist Amir Taheri [1] has written an intriguing — and essential — “linguistic” analysis comparing the various diplomatic “framework” statements at the conclusion of the latest round of the deadline-challenged Iranian nuclear negotiations. The discordances range from nuanced but important grammatical differences [1] in how the Persian text delineates Iranian versus U.S. responsibilities, to the Persian and U.S. texts being “diametrically opposed [1].”

It is these latter starkly contrasting representations that merit elaboration. As Taheri describes [1]:

Even in poor countries that become breeding grounds for Islamic terror, the funds needed always come from richer Muslim nations. What we are facing is not a revolt of the poor.

What matters is what you are taught, where and by whom and for what purpose. Many jihadists are taught a vision of the world and the place of Islam in it that is bound to lead to conflict, violence, terror and ultimately war.

Non-Western cultures have no doubt that they are the best… it is only Western civilization that regards self-criticism as as an almost sacred duty. In a civilization built on critical, and self-critical, thinking, we are invited to practice censorship and self-censorship. If danger there is, it comes from those who wish to silence such voices in the name of multiculturalism and “respect for the other.”

The adepts of political correctness in the West measure everyone’s worth with the degree of his or her victimhood.