RUTHFULLY YOURS

It’s not unusual for a person with expertise in one discipline to get into trouble when he expresses opinions in another. An example is William Shockley, a Nobel laureate in physics for his research on semiconductors, blundering into advocacy for racial eugenics. The phenomenon recurred recently when financiers Mark Spitznagel and Nassim Taleb (author of The Black Swan), neither of whom possesses the most rudimentary understanding of the history or techniques of genetic modification, warned about the dangers of genetic engineering in a bizarre commentary in the New York Times. They went so far as to posit the possibility that modern molecular genetic engineering could cause “complex chains of unpredictable changes in the ecosystem” that could lead to worldwide catastrophe.

It’s true that as complexity increases, so does uncertainty and the possibility of calamity. Arguably, it was the synergistic failure of complex systems that gave rise to the great Northeast blackout of 2003, in which 50 million people lost power; and even to the First World War, which, because of the complex web of alliances and treaties, the assassination of a relatively obscure Austrian nobleman was able to trigger.

Translation of the original French version published in mid-June http://frblogs.timesofisrael.com/orange-amer-orange-pressee/ ].

The right word would be hazukashi, Japanese for “shame,” which means admitting you were wrong and making sincere amends. Sad to say, but “avoir honte,” being ashamed in French, too often means denial of the misdeed compounded by fresh lies.

Monsieur Stéphane Richard, CEO of France’s sterling telecommunications outfit Orange™, did a song and dance in Cairo. The international cad told his Cairo buddies he had a pressing urge to cut ties with that damned Israeli so-called partner. As if Partner (that’s actually the name of the Israeli company) were a lowdown Chinese knockoff of Orange™. If Monsieur Orange did not actually pinpoint the “colonies,” all the better: the boycotters consider all of Israel a colony. His deep desire to maintain good relations with Egypt and the whole wide Arab world was reason enough to ditch Partner.

President Obama is said to feel liberated, in the sense that he can finally say what, and do as, he pleases — without much worry any more over political ramifications, including presidential and congressional elections. Obama’s lame-duck presidency has now devolved into the progressive bully pulpit that his base always longed for. Of course, his editorializing and executive orders may worry Hillary Clinton — much as Donald Trump’s pronouncements do his more circumspect Republican rivals.

Trump is a celebrity who tweets and phones his praise of and insults to comedians, athletes, and media kingpins. But so does Obama love the celebrity world. He is comfortable with Jay Z and Beyoncé, picks the Sweet Sixteen on live television, and has reminded us that he’s the LeBron of the Teleprompter, who won’t choke under the spotlights. Both see pop culture and the presidency as a fitting together perfectly.

Maybe complete and total inclusivity isn’t as easy as it sounds.

The organizers of Free Pride Glasgow in Scotland have hit a snag in their mission to plan a totally inclusive event: Some activists think drag queens are offensive to transgender people, others think banning drag queens is offensive to transgender drag queens, and still others think allowing only transgender drag queens is offensive to cisgender drag queens.

Whoa.

Although drag performances had been part of Free Pride Glasgow for years, the event organizers announced in a statement on Saturday that they would not be allowing them this year because some transgender individuals found “some drag performance, particularly cis drag,” to be offensive because it “hinges on the social view of gender and making it into a joke.”

At the New York Times website this morning, if you dig down under stories on the Donald Trump Circus, you will find a one-line link, buried beneath several other one-line links, to a report titled, “U.N. Vote on Iran Nuclear Deal Irks Congress.” Further burying the lede, you must scour down to a passing reference in paragraph four to find a glimmer of the real story: The Obama administration has already raced to the United Nations Security Council to spearhead action, today, that would adopt Obama’s Iran deal in a resolution that will begin the deal’s implementation.

The Times tut-tuts that this has left the people’s representatives in Congress “irked,” that lawmakers of both parties are “complaining that the Security Council action, expected Monday morning, would pre-empt the congressional debate.”

It’s difficult to say what’s more striking about President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation: its breathtaking radicalism, the refusal of the press to cover it, or its potential political ramifications. The danger AFFH poses to Democrats explains why the press barely mentions it. This lack of curiosity, in turn, explains why the revolutionary nature of the rule has not been properly understood. Ultimately, the regulation amounts to back-door annexation, a way of turning America’s suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities.

This has been Obama’s purpose from the start. In Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities, I explain how a young Barack Obama turned against the suburbs and threw in his lot with a group of Alinsky-style community organizers who blamed suburban tax-flight for urban decay. Their bible was Cities Without Suburbs, by former Albuquerque mayor David Rusk. Rusk, who works closely with Obama’s Alinskyite mentors and now advises the Obama administration, initially called on cities to annex their surrounding suburbs. When it became clear that outright annexation was a political non-starter, Rusk and his followers settled on a series of measures designed to achieve de facto annexation over time.

Facts, as the saying goes, are stubborn things.

Unfortunately, these days debates about climate change too often occur in fact-free zones. So let’s stipulate two truths: Yes, our climate is changing over tim,e and, yes, humans have played some part in that change. That said, before we react rashly to warnings of imminent climate catastrophe, we should consider humankind’s checkered history of such claims.

When I was growing up, people across the country were riveted by Paul R. Ehrlich’s best-selling book, The Population Bomb. Ehrlich’s book warned of mass starvation that would hit the United States in the 1970s and ’80s due to overpopulation, and called for immediate, draconian measures in response.

So what happened to his prediction?

The short answer is Norman Borlaug. Borlaug, known as the “father of the green revolution,” was awarded the Nobel Prize because, perhaps more than anyone else, he was responsible for the expansion of global food production, which allowed the world to avert Ehrlich’s now-infamous forewarning of impending catastrophe.

“Islam belongs in Europe… I am not afraid to say that political Islam should be part of the picture.” — Federica Mogherini.

Under the treaties establishing the EU, there are no democratic checks on figures such as Mogherini or on the enormous power they wield.

“It was Hamas’s strategy, not illegal Israeli action — as this report shamefully alleges without a shred of evidence — that was the reason why over 1,000 civilians died in Gaza.” — Col. Richard Kemp.

As a result of the border policies imposed by Mogherini, ISIS’s scheme to augment such a migrant flow with jihadists is now being accomplished.

Mogherini, the official responsible for the EU’s borders represents a sheltered elite, convinced that the solution to problems in the Middle East and North Africa is importing their populations into Europe.

“We simply can’t have a situation where different rules apply to families from different family backgrounds. The law of the land should apply equally regardless of the heritage of the children involved.” — Conservative MP Philip Hollobone.

Observers say that Pastor McConnell’s prosecution is one of a growing number of examples in which British authorities — who routinely ignore incendiary speech by Muslim extremists — are using hate speech laws to silence Christians, but not others.

“It [Islam] doesn’t seem to be a bit accommodating at all in understanding everybody else’s religions.” — UK Independence Party MP David McNarry.

The devil is in the details, as they say, and the map (above) illustrating the claim — reverently reported by the Fairfax press, of course — that June, 2015, was the hottest month ever recorded on Planet Earth makes the point. According to the “news” organisation’s Peter Hannam, SMH environment editor, “land and sea-surface temperatures last month and for the first half of 2015 were the warmest in 136 years of records, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Monday.”

Now Quadrant Online cannot speak for sweaty sorts in Brazil and we are in no position to agree or differ about what the mercury has been doing in Malawi. But we do know about Melbourne, which has been enduring one of the harshest winters in decades.

How cold? Well, it has been a snap to get the cling wrap off your delivered morning newspaper because near-freezing overnight temperatures make the plastic brittle and easy to unfurl. There has been snow in places that seldom see it. Little kids being dropped off at school by their mums are so rugged-up and padded they make the Michelin Man seem svelte.