RUTHFULLY YOURS

Attempting to secure the Congressional vote required to confirm President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has necessitated Secretary for State John Kerry pledging Obama’s “rock solid” diplomatic support and increased military assistance for Israel – the bitterest opponent of Obama’s Iranian proposal. Speaking at the National Constitution Center on 2 September, Kerry said:

“And diplomatically, our support for Israel also remains rock solid as we continue to oppose every effort to delegitimize the Jewish state, or to pass biased resolutions against it in international bodies.”

Kerry continued:

“I take a back seat to no one in my commitment to the security of Israel, a commitment I demonstrated through my 28-plus years in the Senate. And as Secretary of State, I am fully conscious of the existential nature of the choice Israel must make…”

The leftist political prejudice in Whitehall and the wider British establishment is as undeniable as the repeated and shameful shunning of Robert Conquest, chronicler of Soviet evil. As one wag put it: anti-communism may die, but anti-anti-communism lives forever
One of the perks of working at Downing Street in my day (the mid-to-late 1980s) was that you were invited to propose candidates for the Honours List. You weren’t encouraged to propose too many people, or to do so too often, and there was certainly no guarantee that your candidates would get beyond the hurdle of the first patronage committee meeting. But it was a pleasant—okay, slightly grand—feeling to know that some worthy person might have his worth recognised as a result of your proposal.

I proposed two people. The first was Professor Norman Gash, the author of a classic biography of the great nineteenth-century Tory statesman Sir Robert Peel, and one of the few strong supporters of Mrs Thatcher in the academic world. The other was Robert Conquest, the historian of Stalin’s purges and the forced Ukrainian famine, who died on August 3. He was more than a supporter of Mrs Thatcher; he was her informal but valued adviser on foreign policy.

If asked in advance which of my candidates would be chosen, I would have plumped firmly for Conquest. Both men were great historians, but Conquest had achieved an international reputation that had understandably eluded the more provincial Gash. In fact it was Gash who appeared in the next Honours List. He got a CBE. (It should have been a knighthood.)

The untold story of Israeli hydrodiplomacy, from the 1950s until now.

n November 1898, Theodor Herzl arranged a meeting with the German emperor, Wilhelm II, to obtain help in creating a Jewish state in the land of Israel. In their conversation, the Kaiser praised the work of the Zionist pioneers, telling Herzl that, above all else, “water and shade trees” would restore the land to its ancient glory. Four years later, Herzl had a lead character in his political tract-cum-novel Altneuland (“Old-New Land”) say of Jewish settlement in Palestine: “This country needs nothing but water and shade to have a great future.” Another character predicts that the water engineers of the Jewish homeland will be its heroes.

Utopian novels set the bar high, and Altneuland is nothing if not a utopian novel. Yet even before statehood, Zionists made remarkable strides in putting the land’s limited water resources to good use. They drained swamps, drilled wells, and developed irrigation systems. By the 1960s, Israel had developed a nationwide system of underground pipes to transport water from the relatively water-rich north to the Negev desert in the south. Israeli engineers also developed the system known as drip irrigation, which simultaneously conserves water and increases crop yields. Later, Israel would pioneer desalination technology. Combining scientific advances with efficient management, the Jewish state is now in no danger of running out of water. In fact, it provides large amounts from its own supplies to the West Bank, Gaza, and Jordan, while each year exporting billions of dollars’ worth of peppers, tomatoes, melons, and other water-intensive produce.

In a new biography of Donald Trump due out later this month, the deal-making presidential candidate says that his attendance at the New York Military Academy gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.”

I guess that’s sort of like Obama getting all that foreign policy experience by simply living in Indonesia for a few years.

In truth, Trump hasn’t said or done anything outrageous in recent days so this eyebrow-raising comment on his military service will serve to give his numbers another boost.

New York Times:

Donald J. Trump, who received draft deferments through much of the Vietnam War, told the author of a forthcoming biography that he nevertheless “always felt that I was in the military” because of his education at a military-themed boarding school.

On the very first day back from recess, as the House prepared to begin Wednesday debate on the Iran nuclear deal, a Democratic opponent of the agreement introduced his resolution to authorize military force against the Islamic Republic.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) sits on the House Rules Committee that determined the guidelines for the upcoming 11 hours of debate in the lower chamber, and warned his colleagues this evening that they need to be prepared for what comes after the Obama administration’s implementation of the deal.

Hastings was thinking ahead to that a month ago, when he came out against the Iran deal.

On Tuesday, he introduced the “Authorization of Use of Force Against Iran Resolution.”

More than six years after President Obama took office promising the most transparent administration in history [1], we have now arrived at the moment when the State Department appoints a “Transparency Coordinator.”

Not a moment too soon, one might suppose. Perhaps the Transparency Coordinator’s [2] first assignment should be to bring more transparency to her own job description. News of the post came by way of a press release from Secretary of State John Kerry [3], in which Kerry noted a dramatic increase in requests for information from State, but mentioned not a word about the over-the-top administration secrecy that has provoked so many of these requests. Kerry said he was “pleased to announce the appointment of Ambassador Janice Jacobs [4] as the State Department’s Transparency Coordinator, charged with improving document preservation and transparency systems.”

What might that mean in practice? Go figure. Like Obama in 2009, Kerry went on for a couple of paragraphs about “our commitment to transparency” and how he wants the Department to “lead on these issues,” and “set and achieve a new standard,” and “harness new technological tools,” and “think boldly and creatively” and “fundamentally improve our ability to respond to requests for our records.”

“An America that inspires hope in its ideals is the best complement to an America that inspires awe in its strength. Integrity, generosity, and vision have always been essential cornerstones of our policy and prosperity. We are a more secure America when we rally the world to our side.”

– Rep. Adam Schiff

Keeping the American people safe is, perhaps, the most essential role of government and Rep. Adam Schiff has made national security a focus of his service in Congress. As Ranking Member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a member of the House Foreign Affair Committee from 2001 to 2006, and thereafter as a member of the Appropriations Committee (2007-2014), Schiff has emerged as an articulate voice for a smart, progressive security policy that uses the full range of tools to fight extremism, advance American interests abroad, and improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe, while adhering to our values here at home.

Building our Capacity for Diplomacy and Development

Rep. Adam Schiff has long championed expanding the size of the Foreign Service and USAID to expand the American diplomatic presence abroad. America’s diplomats are truly our first line of defense and perform heroic, unsung and often extremely dangerous work on behalf of the American people. Investing more in our foreign affairs and development professionals will greatly expand the ability of the State Department and USAID to perform their vital work on behalf of the nation, and advance our interests abroad.

Reforming Our Nation’s Surveillance Collection Methods

It is obvious that Democrats are really worried about what Trey Gowdy’s House Special Committee on Benghazi will find. They are going to the absolute bottom of the barrel to find a way of arguing for shutting it down, and come up with this (via Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross):

A Democratic member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi is calling for an end to the investigative body, but Republicans are hitting back hard, pointing out that the lawmaker, Adam Schiff, has largely served “in absentia,” attending only one of 45 interviews the committee has conducted.

Schiff, from California, issued the call to disband the committee in a New York Times op-ed published on Friday. He claimed that the panel has lost sight of it purpose of investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is now focused only on taking down former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

How would he know? By listening to talking points from Hillary’s staff?

Just saw a report that ISIS wants to insert its own into the wave of refugees moving toward Europe. This is from Today’s Express out of London:

AN OPERATIVE working for Islamic State has revealed the terror group has successfully smuggled thousands of covert jihadists into Europe.

The Syrian operative claimed more than 4,000 covert ISIS gunmen had been smuggled into western nations — hidden amongst innocent refugees.

The ISIS smuggler, who is in his thirties and is described as having a trimmed jet-black beard, revealed the ongoing clandestine operation is a complete success.

“Just wait,” he smiled.

The Islamic State operative spoke exclusively to BuzzFeed on the condition of anonymity and is believed to be the first to confirm plans to infiltrate western countries.

This assimilation question is fundamental but it is being ignored — frank talk is verboten in today’s PC times.

The flood of migrants from the Middle East and Africa into the EU seems unstoppable. Leaders talk of curtailing the human traffickers but the human tsunami may persist for years. Let unsaid is whether million of Syrians, Afghans, Libyans and sub-Saharan African can ever become assimilated Europeans. In the final analysis, adding a few million Germans or Hungarians is hardly a demographic disaster provided they eventually become “good Germans” or “good Hungarians” indistinguishable from native populations. Absent that assimilation, these largely Muslim newcomers will, as EU anti-immigration activists insist, only undermine any EU nation foolishness enough to welcome indigestible refugees.

This assimilation question is fundamental but it is being ignored and, as we shall see, for good reason — frank talk is verboten in today’s PC times.

Ample on-the-ground evidence predicts that assimilation will fail. Many Germans daily witness what happens when thousands of middle Easterners dominate a neighborhood — very un-German filth and criminality. Or visit Malmo, Sweden, or numerous cities in Great Britain, France and Italy to see nearly identical scenes. And many of the refugees are young men with a penchant for violence. And nervousness about this flood far exceeds budget-busing new social welfare expenditures; unease is about cultural and political survival, transforming first world nations into little Iraqs or Libyas. Contrary to what one German leader said, these refugees are not equivalent to the East Germans fleeing westward after the Berlin wall fell.