RUTHFULLY YOURS

While the Obama administration is painting the ongoing Iran nuclear talks in Vienna as a fluid process with flexibility on the table, Tehran is stressing that non-negotiables remain yet the U.S. is in the palm of its hand.

In an address [1] last week to mark Mining and Industry Day, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the sanctions eased by President Obama are demolished for good and cannot be rebuilt even if a deal is not struck 13 days from now — confirming the warnings of the president’s harshest Democratic critics in the Senate.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested in a meeting with senior officials today that the U.S. is keeping Israel from striking at Iranian facilities.

“The reason of the US’ prevention is that [it] does not see the attack affordable and we also strongly emphasize that a military attack on the Islamic Republic is not affordable for anyone,” Khamenei said, according to [2] Iran Press TV.

The ayatollah added that the “enemy’s hand is empty in both fields of sanctions and threats.”

He stressed that uranium enrichment remains a sticking point in negotiations with the P5+1, saying that Iran’s bottom line is an enrichment capacity of at least 190,000 Separative Work Units (SWUs) while the U.S. wants to limit the Islamic Republic to 10,000 SWUs.

Khamenei also said it would be “laughable” to consider shutting down the Fordow nuclear facility.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters last week that she wouldn’t go into specifics about “where the biggest gaps remain,” but stressed that the main issues are centrifuges, enrichment, the Arak heavy water reactor, and Fordow, an underground uranium enrichment facility near Qom.

A senior administration official said Thursday that the negotiations proceeding toward the July 20 deadline were “very intense” and centered around “a series of reasonable, verifiable, and we believe easily achievable measures that would ensure Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon and that its program is limited to exclusively peaceful purposes.”

Deputy Secretary William J. Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy R. Sherman, and National Security Adviser to the Vice President Jacob J. Sullivan led the delegation to Vienna at the beginning of the month.

There’s a good lesson in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s heated dissent from a Thursday order in the case of Wheaton College v. Burwell: When making an argument, you should be cautious about imputing bad faith to your adversaries–not only because civility has intrinsic value but also because such aggression magnifies the embarrassment if you turn out to be mistaken.

That’s just what Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, did in this dissent. “Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word,” she declared, using the first-person plural to refer to the court. “Not so today.” In making that assertion, Sotomayor committed an elementary error of logic.

The decision to which she referred was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which the court handed down just three days earlier. By a 5-4 majority, with Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kagan among the dissenters, the court held that Hobby Lobby and two other closely held corporations were entitled to an exemption from parts of ObamaCare’s administrative mandate that employer-provided medical plans include coverage for birth-control drugs and devices. The companies’ owners have religious objections to birth-control methods that also act as abortifacients and filed lawsuits seeking relief under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The government can overcome a RFRA claim if it can show, among other things, that the burden it seeks to impose on the plaintiff is the “least restrictive means” of achieving its goal. The justices held that the Department of Health and Human Services had failed that test–and quite obviously, for it had already developed a less-restrictive means, available only to religiously based nonprofit corporations. Rather than pay directly for the disputed coverage, those nonprofits may sign a form directing their insurance companies to take care of it.

Many nonprofits, including Wheaton College, take the position that even that accommodation intolerably burdens their religious liberty. The court didn’t rule on that contention Thursday; its stay merely bars enforcement of the modified mandate while the litigation proceeds.

Sotomayor imagines that the court gave its blessing to the nonprofit accommodation by citing it in deciding Hobby Lobby. In reality, the court expressly disavowed that position: “We do not decide today whether an approach of this type complies with RFRA for purposes of all religious claims,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito.

Logic is on the majority’s side. In order to disprove the government’s contention that the mandate is the least restrictive alternative, it is sufficient to establish that there is a less restrictive alternative–the nonprofit accommodation. But for the accommodation to withstand a RFRA challenge, the government would have to prove that it is the least restrictive alternative.

How to combat the threat of domestic terrorism waged by Americans trained amid Middle Eastern conflict.

Mr. Silber is an executive managing director of K2 Intelligence, and former director of intelligence analysis for the New York Police Department.

‘I’ll see you in New York.” Those were Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s parting words to his U.S. captors in 2009 when he was handed over to the Iraqi government, which subsequently released him. Now, as the extremist group he leads, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, expands the territory it controls in Syria and Iraq, concerns have grown that he intends to launch attacks on U.S. soil. Local and federal counterterrorism officials would be wise to take this threat seriously.

Even before ISIS’s recent territorial gains, Jeh Johnson, the new head of the Department of Homeland Security, pointed out in his first policy address in February how individuals from North America and Europe were heading to war-torn Syria where “they will encounter radical, extremist influences” and “possibly return to their home countries with the intent to do harm.”

Like it or not, local law enforcement is on the front lines of this counterterrorism fight. While I was the director of intelligence analysis at the New York Police Department from 2007-12, we identified and thwarted a number of individuals from the greater metropolitan area who sought to train and fight in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere. Our fear was that if we missed outbound aspiring jihadists they would return home to carry out attacks—like the ones that hit London when two waves of homegrown British suicide bombers were launched in July 2005, one of which killed 52 people.

The primary and most effective counterterrorist tool we had was collecting “humint” or human-derived intelligence. As opposed to electronic surveillance, this involved utilizing undercover officers and confidential informants, when certain legal thresholds were met, to penetrate budding terrorist conspiracies and to gather evidence of unlawful and violent intentions and plans, sometimes recording conversations. Humint was absolutely vital in detecting New Yorkers who aspired to join terrorist groups abroad and subsequently thwarting them.

The NYPD operates under the authority of a federal consent decree, known as the Handschu Guidelines, which specifically authorizes the department to utilize humint as an investigative technique when certain legal thresholds are met. This capability was often paired with federal antiterrorism statute 18 U.S. Code 2339B, which barred the provision of material support to proscribed terrorist groups.

Rob Astorino is a decent, intelligent man who would make a great governor for New York State. He is running against a political pitbull Andrew Cuomo and deserves to win…..rsk
Residents of the northern New York City suburbs were recently treated to a TV ad invoking images of the Jim Crow South and claiming that Westchester County executive Rob Astorino has “repeatedly violated anti-discrimination laws for years.” None of the ad is true, but it does reveal some important political news with national implications.

To wit, Mr. Astorino is resisting the Obama Administration’s attempt to rewrite local zoning laws by federal fiat, and as the Republican candidate for Governor of New York he has a better chance to beat incumbent Andrew Cuomo than the conventional wisdom believes.

On the credibility of the discrimination charge, consider that Al Sharpton, the racial provocateur, recently made a trip to Westchester to deplore making race a political issue. He was sent by Mr. Cuomo specifically to make race a political issue.

New York state gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino Associated Press

The facts are that Mr. Astorino took office in 2010 in the heavily Democratic county and inherited a 2009 housing settlement with the federal government signed by his Democratic predecessor. The deputy county executive at the time the original lawsuit was filed was none other than Larry Schwartz, who is now Mr. Cuomo’s chief of staff. In 2007 the county executive’s chief adviser, Susan Tolchin, called the lawsuit “garbage.”

The suit was always dubious given the lack of evidence of discriminatory practices. Between 2000 and 2010, the numbers of blacks and Hispanics living in Westchester’s mostly white neighborhoods increased by 56%. The county is the fourth-most diverse in the state and rivals Manhattan in the number of black and Hispanic residents.

If British politicians are serious about putting a stop to the misuse of charity for pro-terror purposes, lawmakers could propose legislation that removes the effective immunity of charitable trusts from liability when their trustees are found to have used funds for terrorist or other unlawful activities.

Two British Cabinet Ministers are “at war” over the growth of Islamist extremism in public institutions, The Times reported this month.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has blamed the Home Office, according to The Times, for the increasing influence of extremist groups, citing recent attempts by “hardline Islamists” to infiltrate British schools.

A source at the Department for Education stated that the failure to tackle extremism has resulted in schools being targeted by “a group of people who are ideologically Islamist” and “extreme without being violent.” Gove, The Times reported, believes that the Home Office displays a “reluctance…to confront extremism unless it develops into terrorism,” and that “a robust response is needed to ‘drain the swamp’.”

Gove has a point. While thousands of hours of Parliamentary debate and countless pieces of new legislation have introduced extraordinary powers for the government, the police and the security services to tackle acts of terrorism, little work has been done either to define “extremism” or curb its influence. Previous attempts to combat extremism have mostly entailed throwing taxpayers’ money at self-proclaimed “moderate” groups, some of which were later revealed to be run by Islamist agitators – as Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged during his 2011 Munich speech.

Although “non-violent” Islamists play a central role in the radicalization of those who later become convicted terrorists, as repeatedly discussed, their influence over sections of the public sector is rarely challenged or even properly scrutinized.

The authorities’ attempts to battle terrorism are often framed as a struggle for balance between liberty and security. Similarly, politicians attempting to tackle the spread of extremist ideology understandably need to be mindful of threats to free speech. There is, however, legislation the government could easily introduce to promote accountability and curb extremist activity without compromising freedom of expression or other liberties.
1) Stopping Terror Subsidy

“When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” — Jean-Claude Juncker.

“We decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.” — Jean-Claude Juncker.

“Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to bring attention to that?” — Jean-Claude Juncker.

“I am for secret, dark debates.” — Jean-Claude Juncker.

Juncker has been an unabashed advocate for expanding the powers of the EU. Critics say that the new system for naming the Commission president amounts to an “institutional coup” because it severs any remaining direct connection with the democratic process at the national level.

European leaders in Brussels have nominated Jean-Claude Juncker, the former prime minister of Luxembourg, to be the next president of the European Commission, the powerful bureaucratic arm of the European Union.

Juncker, a European federalist, is well known for his commitment to further expanding the power of the European Union. His nomination—expected to be easily approved by the European Parliament on July 16—sends a clear signal that the European establishment has no intention of slowing the relentless march towards a United States of Europe, despite the surge of anti-EU sentiment across Europe.

Jean-Claude Juncker (r), the president-designate of the European Commission, poses with his predecessor, EC President José Manuel Barroso. (Image source: Council of the European Union)

British Prime Minister David Cameron and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban were the only two leaders of the 28-member bloc to vote against Juncker during a special meeting held in Brussels on June 27.

Cameron said he was opposed not only to Juncker as a candidate, but also to the way in which his candidacy was put forward.

Previously, the president of the European Commission was selected by European leaders on the basis of consensus.

The jihad terror organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) formally declared a “re-creation” of Islam’s traditional solidary religio-political entity, the “Caliphate” in a pronouncement issued June 29, 2014.

Here the flag of the Islamic State, the flag of tawhīd (monotheism), rises and flutters. Its shade covers land from Aleppo to Diyala.

ISIL’s rhetoric extolled its triumph over all infidels, with a particular emphasis on non-Muslims, and the attempted imposition of the totalitarian Sharia, in all its liberty-crushing, and dehumanizing barbarity. The jihad terror organization also claimed ISIL’s rule was restoring not only Sharia-mandated Islamic “justice” (for example, the destruction of Christian crosses, and extraction of the humiliating jizya, per Koran 9:29), but also local “stability,” and Islamic pride.

The Muslims are honored. The kuffār (infidels) are disgraced. Ahlus-Sunnah (the Sunnis) are masters and are esteemed. The people of bid’ah (heresy) are humiliated. The hudūd (Sharia penalties) are implemented – the hudūd of Allah – all of them. The frontlines are defended. Crosses and graves are demolished.

The people in the lands of the State move about for their livelihood and journeys, feeling safe regarding their lives and wealth. Wulāt (plural of wālī or “governors”) and judges have been appointed. Jizyah (a tax imposed on kuffār) has been enforced. Fay’ (money taken from the kuffār without battle) and zakat (obligatory alms) have been collected. Courts have been established to resolve disputes and complaints. Evil has been removed. Lessons and classes have been held in the masājid (plural of masjid) and, by the grace of Allah, the religion has become completely for Allah. There only remained one matter, a wājib kifā’ī (collective obligation) that the ummah sins by abandoning. It is a forgotten obligation. The ummah has not tasted honor since they lost it. It is a dream that lives in the depths of every Muslim believer. It is a hope that flutters in the heart of every mujāhid muwahhid (monotheist). It is the khilāfah (caliphate). It is the khilāfah – the abandoned obligation of the era.

Despite subsequent dissatisfaction with ISIL, and its newly minted “Caliphate”—already emerging just 3-weeks after the regular Iraqi army and police forces of the al-Maliki central government were crushed, or fled—in the immediate aftermath of the Sunni takeover, 81.5% of Mosul’s predominantly Sunni residents felt more secure after the Sunni insurgents seized control of the city.

Hollow proclamations have followed suit from Muslim leaders claiming ISIL’s Caliphate “vision” somehow distorted this idyllic historical Islamic institution. Sheikh Khaldoun Oraymet, secretary-general of Lebanon’s Supreme Islamic Council opined,

What ISIL is doing is in complete contradiction of the principles of the Islamic caliphate: a righteous caliphate which preserves the rights of all people, and respects all people and the opinions of others who are of different faiths, race, time and place.

Even the Jordanian jihad ideologist Issam Barqawi, known as Abu Mohammed al-Maqdessi, claimed on jihadist websites, that ISIL’s leaders evidenced, “no manners,” voicing his main concern, “What would the fate be of other Islamist fighters in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere?”, before adding the obligatory disclaimer, that ISIL was “distorting religion.” Previously, ahistorical drivel from the Western Muslim “advocacy” group the Muslim Association of Britain, lionized both the Caliphate, and the corollary implementation of Sharia, as promulgators of “a peaceful and just society.” Moreover, Egypt’s current President al-Sisi—recently elected in a landslide victory—extolled the Caliphate in his 2006 U.S. Army War College “mini-thesis” as “the ideal form of government,” broadly

…recognized as the goal for any new form of government very much in the manner that the U.S. pursued the ideals of “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” From the Middle Eastern perspective, the defining words governing their form of democracy [emphasis added] would likely reflect “fairness, justice, equality, unity and charity.”

Such warped apologetics are reminiscent of the equivalent protestations made to advance destructive Communist totalitarianism, “Communists, what have you made of communism?”

The prototypical Caliphate under Umar Ibn al-Khattab (d. 644), the second “rightly guided” caliph of Islam, merits summary examination. During his reign, which lasted for a decade (634-644), Syria, Iraq and Egypt were conquered, and Umar was thus responsible for organizing the early Islamic Caliphate. Alfred von Kremer, the great 19th century German scholar of Islam, described the “central idea” of Umar’s regime, as being the furtherance of “…the religious-military development of Islam at the expense of the conquered nations.” The predictable and historically verifiable consequence of this guiding principle was a legacy of harsh inequality, intolerance, and injustice towards non-Muslims observed by von Kremer in 1868 (and still evident in Islamic societies to this day, nearly 150 years later):

It was the basis of its severe directives regarding Christians and those of other faiths, that they be reduced to the status of pariahs, forbidden from having anything in common with the ruling nation; it was even the basis for his decision to purify the Arabian Peninsula of the unbelievers, when he presented all the inhabitants of the peninsula who had not yet accepted Islam with the choice: to emigrate or deny the religion of their ancestors. The industrious and wealthy Christians of Najran, who maintained their Christian faith, emigrated as a result of this decision from the peninsula, to the land of the Euphrates, and ‘Umar also deported the Jews of Khaybar. In this way ‘Umar based that fanatical and intolerant approach that was an essential characteristic of Islam, now extant for over a thousand years, until this day [i.e., written in 1868]. It was this spirit, a severe and steely one, that incorporated scorn and contempt for the non-Muslims, that was characteristic of ‘Umar, and instilled by ‘Umar into Islam; this spirit continued for many centuries, to be Islam’s driving force and vital principle….With a strong hand, he held the reins of spiritual and worldly power, commanded with unlimited full authority over the political and religious activities of Muslims, already many millions in number. Under him, the conquest of Syria was completed, Iraq and Persia were conquered as far as the Oxus and the borders of Hindustan, while in the west, Egypt obeyed him…

The jihad campaigns waged in the era of Umar’s Caliphate, consistent with nascent Islamic Law (Sharia), spared neither cities nor monasteries if they resisted. Accordingly, when the Greek garrison of Gaza refused to submit and convert to Islam, all were put to death. In the year 640, sixty Greek soldiers who refused to apostatize became martyrs, while in the same year (i.e., 638) that Caesarea, Tripolis and Tyre fell to the Muslims, hundreds of thousands of Christians converted to Islam, predominantly out of fear.

Altruism, or the sacrifice of values for lesser ones, or for none at all, has sired many of the most horrendous, treacherous crimes in history, committed in the name of a “greater” good. But, that is the nature of altruism: If values exist, altruism requires that they be sacrificed, destroyed, or discarded. Altruism, practiced consistently, is essentially nihilistic in nature.

I grew tired very early on listening to the repeated, self-righteous nonsense that Americans have sacrificed their lives to fight for their country or to advance democracy in the world. Frankly, I am not interested in advancing “democracy” anywhere, in any country, not if it means the literal sacrifice of American lives and treasure. But if by chance Americans have lost their lives in such a “moral adventure” (a Progressive/Wilsonian term, and Woodrow Wilson was nothing if not a willing sacrificer), and if such a project were then abandoned (as Obama has abandoned Iraq), then, indeed those lives were sacrificed. An American fighting for his own country is not “sacrificing” anything. He is fighting to preserve a value, and putting his life at risk doing so.

President Barack Obama is in competition with himself to see how malicious and destructive he can be. One is hard pressed to fashion a chart of every evil, consciously malign, deliberately pernicious action he has taken since assuming office six grueling years ago. The chart and accompanying list would be revealing and several pages long without annotations. Readers of my columns know that list all too well.

However, if one wanted evidence of just how racist Obama is, all one need to is examine his policy of encouraging tens of thousands of Mexicans to enter the country illegally, and add to that violation of his oath of office his ancillary policy of encouraging the bussing of thousands of ignorant, disease-ridden Hondurans and other Central Americans into the country, with plans to resettle them in selected towns and cities across the country.

The shocking revelation – a revelation made under duress and in the face of threats of arrest of journalists and medical staff by the federal government – that the overwhelming number of Central Americans carry communicable diseases, diseases once eradicated or in decline this in this country, but now reappearing or on the rise again, should be enough to raise the hackles of anyone who values this country’s future. Todd Starnes of Fox News reported on July 2nd on the conditions inside a “camp” at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio. A nurse said:

… children in the camp had measles, scabies, chicken pox and strep throat as well as mental and emotional issues.
“It was not a good atmosphere in terms of health,” she said. “I would be talking to children and lice would just be climbing down their hair.”
A former nurse at the camp told me she was horrified by what she saw.
“We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness – all this stuff coming into the country,” she said. “We were very concerned at one point about strep going around the base.”

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-28198622

Graphic images are being shared on social media to show how people have been affected by the renewed tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.

Over the past week the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack has been used hundreds of thousands of times, often to distribute pictures claiming to show the effects of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.

A #BBCtrending investigation has found that many of these images are not from the latest conflict and not even from Gaza. Some date as far back as 2009 and others are from conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Produced by Neil Meads

This is a treat for those of us who relish Ed Cline’s pithy, erudite and informative columns on politics, culture and history….rsk
Available in print and Kindle

The Pickwick Affair: A Detective Novel of 1930 (The Cyrus Skeen Mystery Series Book 7) by Edward Cline (Jul 3, 2014)

http://www.amazon.com/Pickwick-Affair-Detective-Novel-Cyrus/dp/1500217166/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404575147&sr=1-2&keywords=the+pickwick+affair+edward+cline