RUTHFULLY YOURS

As bad deals go, it’s hard to do worse than the “Minsk II” cease-fire signed in February between Kiev and Moscow. First the Kremlin reneged on its promises to stop fighting by Russian forces and Kremlin-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Now Kiev’s attempts to implement its half of the deal are sparking a political crisis among the good guys in this fight.

That was clear after Monday’s grenade attack outside the Parliament building in Kiev, which killed three and injured dozens. The attack appears to be an isolated incident, but it highlights the extent to which Kiev is struggling to maintain law and order as nationalist discontent rises and the government fights a war that the Minsk agreement was supposed to have ended.

Iran did not go mad and threaten to hit all NATO installations in Turkey because it wanted 3.5 million Turkish citizens to die from the chemical warhead of a Syrian missile. It went mad and threatened because it viewed the defensive NATO assets in Turkey as a threat to its offensive missile capabilities.

Iran’s reaction to the NATO assets in Turkey revealed its intentions to attack. It could be a coincidence that the U.S. and Germany (most likely to be followed by Spain) have decided to withdraw their Patriot missile batteries and troops from Turkey shortly after agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran. But if it is a coincidence, it is a very suspicious one. Why were Assad’s missiles a threat to Turkey two and a half years ago, but are not today?

Apparently, NATO allies believe, although the idea defies logic, that the nuclear deal with Iran will discourage the mullahs in Tehran from attacking Israel.

Hillary Clinton has tried to confuse the public about the definition of “classified,” but some in the press corps are cutting though the fog. We’re learning, in particular, that Mrs. Clinton’s self-serving decision to use a private email server for official communications may have resulted in far greater mishandling of classified information.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Mrs. Clinton wrote and sent on her private server at least six emails that contained classified information. This destroys Mrs. Clinton’s statement that she never sent any classified information. It also blows up her campaign’s diversionary argument that nothing she sent or received was “marked” as classified.

Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State, with greater knowledge than anyone in her operation about national security secrets, and with a duty to protect such information. Whether the classified material she was sending or receiving was marked as such makes no difference to an official’s obligation. Mrs. Clinton knew this.

Meanwhile, Fox News reports that State Department lawyers have been hiding the extent to which Mrs. Clinton handled classified material on her server. According to the Fox account, career State employees initially marked four Clinton emails as classified. State Department lawyers then stepped in to recategorize the emails as “deliberative.” This meant they couldn’t be viewed by investigators from Congress.

The Obama network wants control of the party they won from the Clintons.

Here’s the short reason for the boomlet to get Joe Biden into the race: Hillary’s just not fun anymore.

Set aside whether she ever was. Let’s divide humanity into two groups: normal people and politicians. What makes the political class flutter about Joe Biden is a little different than what excites the rest of us.

On Labor Day weekend, more than 99% of the American population will unwind with family and friends, picnics, the beach and baseball. Not the politicians. Every elected politician in America, from Podunk town mayors to super PAC-backed candidates for the presidency will be pressing flesh with strangers. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is going to spend Friday afternoon with his new best friends in Contoocook, N.H.

Why do they do it? Because they love it. Politicking is the only thing they do. And standing nearby in politicking’s upper divisions this weekend will be aides, abandoning normal life for the same reason. They love it.

Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski on Wednesday became the 34th Senate Democrat to announce her support for President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, enough to sustain a veto on a resolution of disapproval. So the deal will proceed, and Democrats had better hope it succeeds because they are taking responsibility for Iran’s compliance and imperial ambitions. Politically speaking, they now own the Ayatollahs.

The Democratic co-owners include Vice President Joe Biden, presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and nearly every member of the Congressional leadership. While New York Senator Chuck Schumer came out early against the deal, he has done nothing publicly to rally opponents. His silence suggests he has long known Mr. Obama would have enough votes to prevail.

Democrats will reinforce their ownership if they now use a Senate filibuster to block a vote on the motion of disapproval. More than 50 Senators are expected to oppose the deal, and a large bipartisan majority will oppose it in the House. Yet the White House is pushing for 41 Senate Democrats to enforce a filibuster, so that a bipartisan motion of disapproval dies in the Senate and Mr. Obama wouldn’t have to veto.

1. Hungarian TV “told not to broadcast images of refugee children”2. Norwegian bank apologizes for issuing anti-Semitic credit card3. Spanish broadcaster removes “Jewish Satanism” show from its website4. Swiss Foreign Ministry says sorry for cartoon of birds defecating on Netanyahu5. Luxembourg’s biggest supermarket chain stops selling Israeli products6. Chinese conglomerate ignores BDS protests, buys majority stake in Ahava7. Two injured as Jewish football team attacked in Berlin8. Man arrested for attack on Paris synagogue9. Visitors complain about “cool down” showers at Auschwitz10. Prince Albert of Monaco apologizes for his country’s deportation of Jews11. Jewish cafe re-opens in Shanghai12. Labour’s Corbyn criticized for supporting Palestinians who bombed Jewish charity13. Iran bars Daniel Barenboim from concert over Israeli citizenship14. ISIS-affiliated terrorists fire rocket at Israel but hit Gaza

Good morning and welcome to another Winning With Women Wednesday. Last week we interviewed, Charles (Chuck) Brooks who currently serves as the Vice President for Government Relations & Marketing for Sutherland Global Services. Chuck leads Federal, State & Local Government relations activities. He is also an Advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Technology Partner network and serves on the boards of several prominent public and private companies and organizations. Chuck has extensive service in Senior Executive Management, Marketing, Government Relations, and Business Development and worked in those capacities for three large public corporations.

After four years of devastating civil war with more than 240,000 dead — some from government use of chemical weapons and some from government- induced starvation — Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has admitted he has a manpower problem. In fact, he has a bigger problem than that.

Assad’s Russian and Iranian sponsors know that his grip on Syria is far from secure. The Islamic State group has expanded its territory in the north, and fighting in the suburbs of Damascus could trigger a collapse of the regime if one major breakthrough occurs. Thus the Syrian government has turned to brutalbombings of civilians and other measures to try to stave off what is looking more and more inevitable.

The situation could deteriorate further, and Assad may use even more desperate methods if he can find them.

Stratfor’s George Friedman published an interesting article on September 1, “ Pondering Hitler’s Legacy,” to mark the 76th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. The first outcome of Hitler’s war, he says, was that it destroyed Europe’s hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest:

Within 15 years of the end of the war, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands lost their empires . . . By the end of the war they had lost the will, the energy and the wealth to maintain their power. After half-hearted and doomed attempts to resist, these countries willingly participated in the dismantling of what they had once thought of as their birthright . . . After the war, Europe faced the task of rebuilding buildings. The ambition to rule had been exhausted.

This assertion is disputable. The dusk of European hegemony started in the aftermath of the First World War. The wealth was largely gone by 1918. A financially crippled Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931. France was even more severely damaged: the ravages of war on her soil exceeded 100 percent of her 1913 GDP; the national debt rose from 66% of GDP in 1913 to 170% in 1919. High inflation caused the franc to lose half its value against the British pound.

After mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks, fleas, flies and other tiny disease-carrying insects that seem to exist solely to cause human misery and pain and which are otherwise expendable, the cicada is the next most useless creature in the animal kingdom. Ants and worms aerate the soil. Bees distribute pollen.

The cicada, however, does nothing. It doesn’t even transmit a disease. It’s also so ugly it resembles an alien life form. I’m surprised that no independent film producer has shot and released “The Attack of the Flesh-Eating Cicadas From Planet Xylophone.” It’s noisy. The mating call of the American cicada, as anyone who has ever heard one (or a forest full of cicadas) can testify, is a shrill, high-pitched, compressed clicking similar to the sound of a car’s gears being stripped. Or a DVD player spinning its wheels. Or a badly designed alarm clock. It can outshout the mating call of a tree frog.

I’d rather listen to a forest full of crickets. That can be deafening, too, but at least I know the crickets are not coming after me.

Basically, the cicada provides an “ecological” service to everyone and everything by just dying. It is basically a parasite. It doesn’t even feed on other parasites. Like the equally useless bagworm, It sucks on tree fluids, becomes an adult, reproduces, and dies. It is only good for being mulched in soil after it dies, or being consumed by ants and other insects, and by squirrels, birds, and other animals when they’re desperate.

All the websites on the cicada say that it is a nutrient-rich delicacy. There are actually cicada recipes. No, thank you. I have a hard time picturing people chowing down on chocolate-covered ants and snails.

One can’t say about the cultural cicadas that make a lot of noise on Netflix that they’re “nutrient-rich.” These movies and TV series are not nutrient-rich – at least not for one’s souls – and are otherwise useless as esthetic and/or moral experiences. They are not produced for “uplift.” They do not provide what novelist Ayn Rand called “emotional fuel” for one to pursue one’s values. They are a hybrid cicada, and can burrow into one’s mind and soul to lay eggs. They are produced, consciously or unconsciously, to inculcate an enervating epistemological and metaphysical drone that life is pointless, that happiness is random and arbitrary, and that existence is just one long sentence of spiritually eviscerating numbness with no chance of relief or commutation.