RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Saudis are planning to establish themselves as the Arab world’s undisputed military superpower…. At this rate Saudi Arabia will soon replace Egypt as the Arab world’s most significant military power.

The Saudi royal family is determined to secure the overthrow of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, one of Iran’s most important regional allies, and any attempt by Riyadh to deepen its involvement in the Syrian conflict is likely to result in direct military confrontation with Iran.

The tragedy of all this for the Obama administration is that, had it not been for its obsession with doing a deal with Iran, Washington could have formed a useful strategic alliance with Riyadh to defeat common foes, such as Islamic State (ISIS,Isil) in Syria and Iraq.

I would recommend that Classical Liberalism – A Primer, by Eamonn Butler, be incorporated into the standard curriculum of any university’s political science or economics course, and be made required reading, qua primer, except I know that in today’s educational environment pigs will fly first class on Kuwait Airways before that ever happens. I would even recommend it be used as a textbook in high schools’ “social studies” courses; however, I realize that is unlikely as roses blooming on Mars, as well, as long as public schools remain in the government’s “public” hands. Public schools and universities are in the tenacious grip of anti-American, anti-Western, anti-freedom, anti-freedom of speech faculties of Marxists, collectivists, feminists, enforcers of politically correct thought and language, and the advocates of tolerance for everything but free inquiry.

High school students who survive the dumbing-down of their cognitive powers and the corruption of the evidence of their senses by Common Core, and college students who successfully resist, at the risk of their tenure as students, their incessant political indoctrination in academia, may or may not have difficulty reading Butler’s brief introduction to the subject of classical liberalism. It all depends on their commitment to take their “education” seriously and their willingness to escape or combat the poisonous miasma of contemporary educational philosophy. It all depends on whether they’re satisfied with being the passive receptors of the “received wisdom” of Karl Marx and Howard Zinn and the U.S. Department of Education, or have active minds that are not satisfied or content with the zealous but pat explanations offered by their PC professors.

NICKELSDORF, Austria — Thousands of migrants who have been bottled up in Hungary, demanding passage to the West, will be allowed into Austria and Germany, the Austrian chancellor said late Friday. Early Saturday, the first buses carrying them arrived at the Hungary-Austria border.

In a chaotic scene here at the main border crossing on the road to Vienna, local volunteers handed out water and bananas to the first busloads of exhausted but happy migrants. As they began passing from Hungarian territory through the border checkpoint, a few shouted, “Thank you, Austria!”

Earlier, after several days of chaos and civil disobedience by the migrants, Hungarian officials threw in the towel and allowed the people living in a squalid encampment in a below-ground plaza outside the city’s main train station onto more than 40 buses headed for the Austrian border, as they had been demanding.“On the basis of the current situation of need, Austria and Germany agree to allow in this case the onward journey of these refugees into their countries,” Chancellor Werner Faymann of Austria wrote on his Facebook page.

Belgian police have concluded an investigation into a vicious anti-Semitic assault at a cafe in Brussels, in which a European Union official physically attacked a female co-worker, while verbally abusing her as a “dirty Jewess.”

The assault, in full view of other restaurant patrons, occurred on the patio of the “Italiano” cafe near European Union headquarters in the city, Haaretz reports.

A 50-year old Italian woman – a department head at the European Council – saw a man at the cafe holding a metal plaque engraved with “Mussolini” and praising the World War II-era Italian fascist leader.

She apparently infuriated the man by informing him that “he [Mussolini] was still a dictator,” to which the man replied: “Dirty Jewess … Hitler should have exterminated all Jews, just like Jews today are exterminating Palestinians.”

When Israeli Jews are murdered, often barbarically, nearly all European and American media blame Israel and find excuses for the killers.

Forgotten is that the “Palestinian people” and the “Palestinian cause” are a mythic narrative invented by the KGB and Nasser’s secret service propaganda machine in the 1960s.

Hamas has an even more genocidal goal: the destruction of Israel and all Jews. For many journalists, that is also a detail not worth mentioning.

The Iranian regime claims non-stop that its main objective is the elimination of Israel and Israeli Jews. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has just published a book, Palestine, detailing his plans to destroy Israel. For most commentators, the book is of no relevance. It does not matter. Leaders of Western countries adopt the same view.

What is at stake in enriching Iran and arming it with nuclear capability is more than the fate of Israel and Israeli Jews: it is also the fate of America — even if it does not wish to realize that goal yet –as well as values of Western civilization.

SEPTEMBER 2, 1945: General Douglas MacArthur presides over the formal surrender of Japan aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, a ceremony which brought an end to nearly four years of war. After a steady drumbeat of costly victories in the Pacific campaign, by the summer of 1945 the Japanese empire’s military might was largely smashed on sea and in the air, and American forces had captured Okinawa, from which a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands was to be launched. But the Japanese high command held fast, determined to preserve the power of the monarchy and defend the home islands at all costs. It was only with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Emperor Hirohito assented to the term of the Potsdam Declaration to end the war. MacArthur would serve as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers during the occupation of Japan.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/slideshows/today-history-3

The ongoing migration crisis in Europe, with its drownings and other deaths, is forcing Europe’s post-borders elites into an uncomfortable position. Because they preside over polities that are still somewhat democratic — and the peoples of Europe do not choose to commit national suicide — governments there can’t abolish immigration limits altogether, much as they might want to. At the same time, Europe’s rulers are unwilling to take the steps needed to enforce the limits nominally on the books.

The result is hundreds of thousands of people from less happier lands calculating that it’s worth the relatively small risk of death to make it to Europe, where they will almost certainly be permitted to stay, whether they’re formally awarded refugee status or not.

Given the Middle East’s disintegration and sub-Saharan Africa’s general dysfunction, this means that Europe is at the mercy of the countries to its immediate south. So long as Qaddafi kept order in Libya and Turkey was willing to contain most of the Middle Easterners trying to pass through, a spineless Europe could maintain the façade of immigration limits. There was a lot of immigration even then, but the heat rose slowly enough that the frog, while increasingly restless, had not yet been induced to jump out of the pot.

Black lives matter — unless, apparently, you’re Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The left is renewing its venomous, racist attacks on Thomas in the aftermath of his dissent in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in favor of gay marriage.

Actor George Takei smeared Thomas as a “clown in blackface.” The Huffington Post called his dissent “beyond ridiculous” and tarred him as a hypocrite for opposing a court-created “right” to gay marriage:

“Clarence Thomas is married to a white woman — something that would be illegal today, if it weren’t for the Supreme Court’s historic Loving v. Virginia ruling.” As if his personal life is fair game.

Last Friday, in another low blow, New York Times reporter Adam Liptak portrayed Thomas as a lightweight whose opinions are cut-and-paste jobs from briefs submitted to the court.

But in truth, all the justices refer liberally to briefs. Thomas borrows about 11.3 percent of his judicial prose from briefs, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor lifts 11 percent and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 10.5 percent. It’s not “cribbing” or plagiarism, as Liptak’s hatchet job implies, but simply the way decisions are written.

In fact, Thomas appears to be the most productive justice, having written 37 opinions this past term, more than any other justice. That fact’s enough to dispense with New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin’s bogus claim that Thomas has “checked out” and “is simply not doing his job.”

If the 2016 presidential election ends up a contest between 1992’s surnames — Bush vs. Clinton — we will have failed in some way as a republic.

The case for Jeb Bush is not exactly clear, though he enjoys an advantage vis-à-vis Mrs. Clinton in that the case against Herself is as clear as can be: She’s inept and dishonest.

Bush was a good governor of Florida — a long time ago, politically speaking. Things were different then: His time as governor coincided with a real-estate bubble that relieved him and other Florida leaders of the need to make a great many pressing financial decisions, and larger decisions about the structure of government.

Has Hillary Clinton been lying about her email system and did she violate the laws against mishandling classified material? Coverage of Clinton’s email scandal has been focused on those questions, but shouldn’t we be paying more attention to the nature and scale of the damage to American national security caused by Hillary’s carelessness with classified information? We’re not focused on the details of the security damage because it’s difficult to know whether and to what extent Hillary’s communications were intercepted, and more difficult still to make public whatever our intelligence agencies may have figured out on that score.

But maybe we already know enough to conclude that Hillary’s email scandal constitutes one of the most serious American national security disasters on record. The Daily Beast has a story out speculating that the email scandal may soon spread to the White House. Interesting as that question is, this passage seems more significant:

“There’s a widely held belief among American counterspies that foreign intelligence agencies had to be reading the emails on Hillary’s private server, particularly since it was wholly unencrypted for months….senior counterintelligence officials are assuming the worst about what the Russians and Chinese know.”