RUTHFULLY YOURS

Russia’s armed intervention in the Syrian civil war is but the latest foreign policy disaster of Barack Obama’s tenure. Yet Obama has been nothing if not consistent. What many see as bungling, naiveté, or evidence of a plot to destroy America is simply the consequence of a particular view of interstate relations he has openly and frequently endorsed.

Obama came into office chanting all the mantras of idealistic internationalism. In contrast to the caricature of George W. Bush as a unilateralist cowboy disdainful of diplomacy, Obama promised to “rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security.” Balance of power realism, which is predicated on the notion that sovereign nations seek power to pursue their own interests, was rejected: “In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero-sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group or people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” Contrary to accepting force as an arbiter of conflict, he championed “tough diplomacy” and “new partnerships,” promising our enemies to “seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” and to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Finally, he evoked America’s history of foreign policy aggression as a factor in contemporary conflict, in his Cairo speech decrying “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”

In this 800th anniversary year, I’m honored to be part of a new book, with Chris Berg and John Roskam from our friends at the IPA, called Magna Carta: The Tax Revolt That Gave Us Liberty. If you live not just in England but in North America, Australia, New Zealand and around the Commonwealth, this is the great foundational document of individual liberty, and this book is its story. If you’d like your copy personally autographed by me, do swing by the SteynOnline bookstore.

~These are tough times for core liberties around the western world. A week ago, I was at the Danish Parliament for the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. We’ve been posting the remarks of the various speakers piecemeal throughout the week, but I thought we’d assemble them in one convenient central location, so you can get a sense of the whole event as it unfolded. Please note that the videos below are extended versions of the ones previously posted, so they include not only the speeches but questions from the audience – including my final one about picking up imams.

First up, our hosts for the day, Katrine Winkel Holm of the indispensable Free Press Society and her sister Marie Krarup, Member of Parliament and defense spokesperson for the Danish People’s Party:

As climateers turn their gaze toward Paris, what the warmist media won’t be reporting is just how poorly qualified and error-prone many of them are. That’s no mere sceptic’s complaint, by the way, but the honest verdict of their fellow scientists.
The basis for the Paris climate talks in December is “the science” produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The science must be good because it’s coming from the world’s top climate-type scientists,[1] or so the story goes.

Well, the story is guff.

The IPCC scientists aren’t the best available, far from it. They’re a motley crew assembled via a typical United Nations boondoggle that stacks the scientific ranks with heavy quotas for Third Worlders, along with special consideration for females. The IPCC rules explain that the IPCC hierarchy “shall reflect balanced geographical representation with due consideration for scientific and technical requirements.” (My emphasis).

The senior scientists draft the all-important Summaries for Policymakers (SPMs), as distinct from their thousands of back-up pages of science studies. Then politicians and bureaucrats, not the scientists, sculpt the wording on the final drafts, including the Synthesis Report.

In IPCC-Orwell speak: “The endorsement process is based on a dialogue between those who will use the report – the governments — and those who write it – the scientists.” The stenographers of the mainstream media ignore this, receiving the summary kits and chorusing, “The Science has spoken.”[2] The best example of Summaries’ propaganda is that, while their 2013 forecasting of CO2 doom is climate-model based, no Summary includes the all-important admission from Working Group 1’s body text: that 111 of 114 model runs had over-forecasted actual temperature rises from 1998-2012.

Another Muslim murder, followed by hand-on-heart protestations from our political class that Islam is the religion of peace. Perhaps, after the ‘community leaders’ have been glad-handed and the TV cameras vanish, our leaders should actually read the Koran
Years ago, John Howard was ridiculed by chatterers when he extolled the value of immigrants embracing Australian values. They sneered and they postured. What Australian values? Shrimps on the barbie? Well, giving people ‘a fair go’ is an Australian value. And that is not to be sneered at.

Values matter. Modern Western civilisation — the best that mankind has known – is built upon a set of shared societal values. In general, these mould the minds of individuals in their formative years; for the better or, depending on those values, for the worse.

Described as a radicalised youth of Middle Eastern background, fifteen-year old Farhad Jabar Khalil Mohammad, shot to death, in cold blood, NSW police civilian employee Curtis Cheng. It was a shocking business, in the sense of being tragic for him and his family and deeply upsetting and saddening for all of us. But it should not have come as a shock, in the sense of being surprising.

Yet our political leaders were evidently taken unaware. They expressed shock and incomprehension that such a thing could happen.

“There is no more rule of law.” — Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia’s prime minister for 22 years.

The essential dynamics of the Islamist polity do not much vary from one Muslim-majority country to another: Corrupt, authoritarian leaders who have no respect for ethnic or religious plurality or dissent of any kind, who crack down on the press and legitimize their corrupt governance by frightening Muslims masses with a made-up threat of the clandestine Jew.

A flight from Kuala Lumpur to Istanbul will usually take around 11 hours. All the same, politically, Turkey and Malaysia are not so distant. The Turkish-Malaysian political parallels are crucial in understanding political Islam.

Back in 2013, President (then Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief advisor, Yigit Bulut, said that he would be “willing to die for Erdogan.” He added: “There are millions like me.” The statement was not shocking news in a country where Erdogan fans had the habit of walking around in shrouds — in expression of their willingness to die for the supreme leader.

When is this sad farce going to end? Since she began her campaign for the presidency last spring, we’ve seen defiant Hillary, aloof Hillary, regretful Hillary, warm and fuzzy Hillary, comedienne Hillary and now this very morning, “visibly angry” Hillary.

Via Business Insider:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton unloaded on Congress’ Benghazi investigation during a Monday morning interview on the “Today” show.

A visibly angry Clinton tore into the Republican-led Select Committee on Benghazi when she was asked how she would react to hypothetical GOP leaders facing scrutiny over their own government email use.

“Look at the situation they chose to exploit, to go after me for political reasons: the death of four Americans in Benghazi. I knew the ambassador. I identified him. I asked him to go there. I asked the president to nominate him,” she said.

A casual glance at the BI comment section shows that even the readers of that left-leaning website are not impressed or fooled by her latest contrived performance.

Coons: “We can expect them to use some of the proceeds of sanctions relief to try and fund terrorist organizations.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Congress should expect the Iranians to cheat under the nuclear agreement.

“I think the Congress has a critical role to play in the oversight of the implementation of this deal. As I’ve said both at the University of Delaware and the Carnegie Endowment, after coming to a decision to support the deal, it’s with some real concerns. I think there are some real challenges in the short term, the middle term and the long term in how this deal plays out if in fact it’s fully implemented. We can expect the Iranians to cheat,” said Coons at the Washington Ideas Forum.

“They have a long history of cheating both in flagrant ways and marginal ways. We can expect them to use some of the proceeds of sanctions relief to try and fund terrorist organizations in the region and to promote destabilizing activities. We can foresee in 10-15 years their having industrial-scale enrichment capability that is significantly threatening to the stability of the region and the world,” he added.

Coons stressed that Congress must remain engaged in the situation with Iran over a long period of time to restrain or deter harmful actions.

Growing organic crops, which means avoiding even safe insecticides, has a down side. According to a notice from Michigan’s Department of Agriculture, a potentially serious threat to food production has been detected in the Mitten State. At risk is the state’s crops of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and related food plants. The pest, known as the Swede midge (Constarinia nasturii) has been detected in the state for the first time five organic production fields in Sanilac County, which borders Lake Huron. The above plants belong to a family called Brassicaceae (also called Cruciferae or crucifers).Widely cultivated, with many genera, species, and cultivars being raised for food production such the above-mentioned, as well as garden cress, bok choy, and brussels sprouts. The alternate name for the family (Cruciferae, New Latin for “cross-bearing”) is derived from the shape of their flowers, whose four petals resemble a cross. Ten of the most common cruciferous vegetables eaten by people, known colloquially as cole crops,[1] are in a single species (Brassica oleracea).

The larvae of the pest cause swelling and severe distortion of young plant tissues, resulting in the death of the growing tip or the development of blind or multiple heads in cruciferous plants. Secondary bacterial infections are common. The Swede midge is a threat to both conventional and organic growers, but organic growers may be at greater risk because they lack effective chemical control options.

This is bad news:

New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, announced Monday morning that she will challenge first-term US Senator Kelly Ayotte in 2016, setting up what will likely be next year’s most competitive Senate race in New England and the most high-profile Senate race among two women in US history.

For months, polls have shown a hypothetical matchup between Ayotte and Hassan to result in a statistical tie. Democrats must win a net of at least five US Senate races in 2016 to take control of the Senate.

Hassan has twice won the governorship. Dems were working her hard to get her to go for this race. Hassan’s husband is the headmaster at Phillips Exeter.

The US House races in New Hampshire regularly turn over from one party to the other (the GOP tends to win in off years). There is not a huge advantage to incumbency for Ayotte.

Few Western foreign policy analysts have taken seriously Vladimir Putin’s radical reorientation of Russia from communism back to Russian Orthodox Christianity.

Putin is perhaps uniquely qualified to discern that his nation’s identity has been for centuries within a spiritual, distinctly Christian narrative and that a violent rending of Russia’s historically religious roots led to utter disaster for the Russian peoples.

Son of a militant atheist and a pious mother, Putin lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resurgence of capitalism as defined in Russian terms. Though raised a secularist, he is now a devout Christian in the Russian Orthodox tradition and has devoted himself to the advancement of Christianity and the repudiation of what he sees as Western decadence. While some may be dismissive of Putin’s Christian beliefs, there is no doubt that Christianity informs the way he now chooses to shape his own narrative and the story of his country.

Putin’s religious values are rooted in Russian Orthodoxy and personal religious experiences, including his wife’s car accident in 1993 and a life-threatening house fire in 1996. Just before a diplomatic trip to Israel, his mother gave him a baptismal cross. He said of the occasion, “I … put the cross around my neck. I have never taken it off since.”

By his own testimony, Putin has had the personal conversion experience so often ridiculed by the communist regime in which he was embedded for so many years. He now is putting his recently found faith to work in Russia and abroad.

Perhaps nothing more powerfully symbolizes Putin’s attempt to transition back to Russia’s religious heritage than the recent installation of a huge bronze statue of Vladimir the Great on Borovitskaya Ploshchad, right next to the Kremlin and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.