RUTHFULLY YOURS

Vienna
With Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif’s one-day trip back to Tehran for consultations with supreme leader Ali Khamenei, it was a slow day for the nuclear talks here in the Austrian capital. Journalists are shuttling back and forth between the press tent and the lobby of the adjacent Marriott where Iranian intelligence officers, many of them posing as journalists, unabashedly photograph and film anyone that catches their attention. I opted out and spent the morning wandering around the city.

It’s a small city, say Viennese. It’s a very small city, several Viennese have now told me. It’s true Vienna has only 1.5 million residents, but it’s the former capital of a mighty empire. And the scale of the city—its monumental architecture, and broad avenues— is appropriately imperial. But for current residents, Vienna perhaps resembles the enormously oversized wardrobe of an ancestor with exquisite, if impossible, taste. That is, Vienna isn’t small—it’s the Austrians that got smaller. The country is unable to project power even in its near abroad and thus its foreign policy is driven entirely by business concerns. And that’s one reason why the Austrians are happy to host this round of the P5+1 talks—an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program means business opportunities for Austrian industry.

There comes a time when every conservative thinker tries to find some common ground with the left in some area. Today it’s criminal rights and the headlines have Rand Paul denouncing the racist justice system while Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers join with the left to back their reforms. As usually happens, the conservatives or libertarians turn out to be the useful idiots of the left.

Liberals have a long history of being the left’s useful idiots. It’s only fair that libertarians get a turn.

Republicans are still trying to figure out a truce on gay marriage. They retreated to civil unions, then accepted a full defeat on gay marriage and then acted baffled when Christian bakery owners were dragged into court for refusing to participate in gay weddings. When the left insisted that gay marriage was a civil rights issue, they refused to take them as their word.

Now they’re wondering how an accommodation can be made with tranny rights. A brief look back at gay rights will show that the only possible accommodation is one in which men in dresses have a legal right to use the ladies room and every single closed female space and event. And yes, that means your business will be shut down if you object to Steve using the female locker room.

More American journalists were involved in spying for the Soviet Union than was previously believed, according to new research published in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies.

Traditionally, research has focused on the role that U.S. reporters played as messengers, recruiters, and sources of information (and disinformation), but some of those “journalist spies also collected a large amount of secret diplomatic and military information” from 1941 through 1946 as World War II gave way to the Cold War, writes Alexander G. Lovelace of Ohio University. The article, published this month, is “Spies in the News: Soviet Espionage in the American Media During World War II and the Beginning of the Cold War.”

Throughout the life of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics only a tiny fraction of all U.S. journalists joined the Soviet espionage network. Quantifying the harm done is difficult but the information they transmitted to their handlers undoubtedly inflicted damage on both the U.S. and its allies during World War II and the Cold War. Some of these American journalists had access to the highest echelons of the U.S. government and provided the Soviets information of great value to America’s enemies.

Connecting the young with the roots of Western civilization.

The tiny State of Israel can accurately be described as a nation born in battle. Surrounded by blood-thirsty enemies from all sides, Israel has endured countless attacks and threats to its survival from various quarters and successfully weathered them all.

Historian, former ambassador to the United States and current member of the Israeli parliament Dr. Michael Oren noted that attacks and threats against Israel have evolved over the years and have gone through three very distinct phases. During Israel’s formative years, the threats against the Jewish State were largely symmetrical and conventional. In 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, the Arab armies who massed menacingly along Israel’s borders or invaded were repelled and soundly defeated.

Having failed in destroying Israel by conventional means, the Arabs began to rely on international terrorism as a strategy of weakening the Jewish State. Here too they failed miserably as Israel quickly developed effective counter-measures.

In the mid-2000s, anti-Israel groups shifted gears once again, adopting new tactics involving false and malicious propaganda designed to de-legitimize and demonize Israel in efforts to isolate the Jewish State. Anti-Semitic hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sprang up throughout college campuses across the United State and Europe and a pernicious movement known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) was inaugurated. The advent and proliferation of social media magnified several fold the effect of propaganda and the importance of the battle for the hearts and minds.

Efforts to combat these malevolent forces were slow off the mark but gained traction in recent years with the formation of groups and organizations dedicated to combating anti-Israel canards with truth and fact. One such group is the Western Civilization Heritage Israel Program known by its acronym as CHIP. I had the opportunity to interview CHIP’s founder and president, Nurit Greenger, and asked her some pointed questions about her organization and what it hopes to accomplish.

Gao Yu is 71 years old, a grandmother and a political prisoner of China’s Communist regime. She’s now 14 months into her latest prison term, and her family says her health is deteriorating because the government is denying basic medical care.

After a prison visit this month, Ms. Gao’s brother reported that she is suffering from severe heart pain and a chronic skin allergy. Her heart troubles date to 1989, when she was jailed for 15 months amid Beijing’s suppression of the student-led pro-democracy movement, which she covered as a journalist. She was jailed again for six years in 1993 for “leaking state secrets,” the same pretext used to imprison her most recently.

“Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.”

Al Bernstein

American sportscaster

June is the month – at least in the Northern Hemisphere – of the summer solstice, the day when the sun reaches its highest point. Subsequently, the sun retreats south. Days shorten, until six months later we experience the longest night of the year, the winter solstice. The calendar is a reminder of the ever-changing world in which we live.

For Greece, of course, the sky turned darker as the month wore on, culminating in a decision to close banks for a week. For years, it has seemed that, ultimately, the only answer is for Greece to abandon the Euro and then enter detoxification. (As of early this morning, it appears that Greece has, with conditions, accepted the terms of its creditors.) Nevertheless, Greece is addicted to spending what they do not have.

I have recently become quite concerned about ice ages and the dangers they pose to humans on our planet — and indeed to most of terrestrial ecology.

I must confess I never much worried about the supposed dangers of global warming — even if we could rely on the predictions of IPCC climate models. In fact, they seem to be failing miserably, as judged by the ongoing pause in GW — while atmospheric levels of anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to increase. It seems that our climate is mainly controlled by natural forcings, like solar activity and atmosphere-ocean oscillations that are not included in current models.

What drew my attention to ice ages is the manuscript (Climate and Collapse) by agricultural economist Dennis Avery, my coauthor on Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 years [Rowman&Littlefield 2007]. Dennis documents the historic collapse of civilizations, using recorded history and archeological data. Cold periods and droughts appear to be the main dangers to agriculturally based societies in all regions of the world.

Sure, an Iran nuclear deal might work as envisioned by the White House — as long as it’s enforced by some power more functional than the crew that is concocting this deal in the first place.

If a deal finally emerges from the latest diplomatic hoopla in Vienna, maybe the Obama administration should farm out the monitoring and enforcement to an outfit that actually keeps its promises and meets its deadlines. Say, Federal Express. Or the Bombay lunchbox delivery [1] system. As it is, the Iran nuclear deal reportedly taking shape is one that, instead of dismantling Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, would aim merely to keep Iran at least a year away from nuclear breakout.

This would require rapid detection of any cheating by Iran, swift confirmation of the problem, and decisive response — one timely and effective enough to stop Iran in its tracks.

President Obama was confronted directly about the U.S. hostages in Iran today as the deadline of the P5+1 nuclear talks has been extended to July 7.

At a press conference with visiting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Obama was asked what he would say to the families of Amir Hekmati, Saeed Abedini, Jason Rezaian and Bob Levinson if he went ahead and signed an agreement with Tehran without the release of U.S. hostages.

Amir Hekmati, a decorated Marine veteran who served in the Iraq war, was visiting extended family for the first time in August 2011 when he was seized and sentenced on trumped-up espionage charges.

While secretary of state, Clinton was keenly attentive to domestic political issues
WASHINGTON—While serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was keenly attentive to domestic political issues—following the gay-rights debate, staying in touch with Democratic allies and keeping tabs on her public image—a batch of emails released by the State Department Tuesday shows.

The 3,000 pages of emails offer a window into the thinking of Mrs. Clinton and senior staff, who ran the State Department during President Barack Obama’s first term.

Mrs. Clinton, now the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, received numerous updates from her department advisers about the changing politics of gay rights and activists’ frustration with the Obama administration. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton both ran against gay marriage in 2008 but the politics of the issue were quickly changing within the Democratic Party after Mr. Obama’s election.

One top adviser sent Mrs. Clinton a 2009 Politico article titled “Gay groups grow impatient with Obama.” Advisers also shared a CNN article that emphasized Mrs. Clinton’s early role in pushing the Obama administration to give federal benefits to same-sex couples.

The emails also show Mrs. Clinton tending to her image. Shown an early draft of some remarks for a food event, Mrs. Clinton wrote to her top advisers, “Can we claim more leadership for you, me and State?”