RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bad news from the continent. In an interview with the German weekly Stern, Laurent ‘Riss’ Sourisseau, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, announced that he would no longer draw cartoons of any historical figure called Mohammed. This follows his former colleague Renald ‘Luz’ Luzier saying a couple of months back that he would no longer draw Mohammed either. ‘Luz’ announced that he was leaving the magazine shortly afterwards.

I don’t judge either of them for this decision. ‘Luz’ happened to be running late for work on the morning that the Kouachi brothers forced their way into the Charlie Hebdo offices and started shooting his colleagues. ‘Riss’ was in the office and took a bullet to the shoulder, bringing him to the floor where he lay – playing dead – while the sharia-blasphemy force finished off his colleagues. This would be enough to have made most people retreat into silence for the rest of their lives. But both men stuck with the publication through the immediate aftermath of the atrocity and asserted their right to keep publishing depictions of Mohammed.

Such is the self-absorbed arrogance of the Clintons that Hillary actually thought she could get away with the criminal activity of conducting her government business on a personal server and keeping and transmitting classified data in violation of federal law.

It was a server as vulnerable to foreign hacking as any in the private sector that has been hacked, or the servers at the foreign-hacked Office of Personnel Management. She put her country at risk, and now her personal political ambitions as well. Only the disinterested Justice Department of the administration she served and a sycophantic press will save her from the incarceration she so richly deserves.

Inspectors general of the State Department Hillary once ran said Friday that, contrary to the statements of Hillary and Team Clinton, information that was classified then and now was kept on her server – the server she refuses to turn over. So far, four emails in particular are at issue, found in a random examination of 40 sample emails. The four were discovered to have dealt with government secrets. How many in the 30,000 Hillary and her staff deleted also illegally contained government secrets?

“Taking the issue of Israel first, it was the height of insensitivity for Kerry to make two particular remarks. One was to mock Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech and the cartoon of a bomb he had drawn at the United Nations, and to state that Netanyahu had not offered a real alternative to the deal he had been long criticizing. The other was to warn Congress that a vote against the Iranian deal could mean that Israel will find itself more isolated in the international arena and “more blamed.”

Though the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) endorsed by unanimity the nuclear arms agreement of July 14, 2015 between Iran and the P5+1 powers, the United States Congress is expected to vote on it by September 17. The UNSC agreed to lift the economic sanctions on Iran it imposed by Resolution 1696 on July 31, 2006, after Iran refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program, if it believes that Iran has curbed its nuclear activities. The U.S. Congress has 60 days to decide whether to lift the separate U.S. sanctions.

Countless appropriate questions can be asked about the deal. Does it sufficiently limit Iran’s nuclear weapons capability? Can accurate verification of Iran’s actions truly be done? Was it appropriate to make the deal by U.S. executive agreement and not by treaty, thus deliberately making it more difficult for Congress to reject it? Was there really no alternative to the deal except war, as both President Barack Obama and Secretary John Kerry have maintained? Would rejecting the deal, as Kerry asserted, pit the U.S. against the rest of the world?

In view of Iran’s well-known record on the issue, not everyone can agree that, as Kerry remarked, everything in the agreement was verifiable and that it meant a process by which we would know what Iran is doing. Iran has been given 24-day notice for international inspection of suspect sites, and the likelihood of its cheating is high. Indeed, already Iran has stated that the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be denied access to the country’s military sites.

Sometimes, every so often, the widespread incidence of vocal idiocy can be quite heartening, especially for sentient Australians who have endured years of hectoring by deep-green nitwits. One of the chief contributing factors to the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 in Victoria was the refusal of Greens-influenced local councils and land-care authorities to initiate the prophylactic burning needed to reduce fuel loads and manage fire risk. It was much the same story a few years later in Tasmania, where the flames ran wild once again.

Surely these people were Australia’s particular curse, it was tempting to conclude, as there could be few, even in less flammable lands, who would find the direct relationship between lethal fires and abundant ground fuel just a bit too hard to grasp?

Well, thanks to a group of Californian activists — that’s them above, naked and cuddly with a stand of Berkeley blue gums — we now know that American fools are at least the equal of our own homegrown variety. Those trees are supposed to come down to reduce the fire risk, and there is good reason for the felling and lopping: Twenty-four years ago, wildfires feeding on the eucalypts’ oil-rich leaves and uncleared ground fuel destroyed some 3,300 homes and claimed 25 lives.

The US campaign season is yet in its early days, with the imminent need for voters to make their final, rational decisions still a far-off notion. In such an environment the ability to generate headlines can serve as substitute for policy, which is why the brash billionaire is flying high — for now.
We Americans like to think that each presidential election is one for the history books — that some vital aspect of any and every contest will be studied by political scientists for years to come. With Bush vs. Gore in 2000, for example, it was said that the disparity between the popular and the Electoral College votes would dominate discussion and analysis for years to come. This had actually occurred twice before — in the Hayes vs. Tilden race of 1876 and 1888’s Harrison vs. Cleveland. Heard much of them lately or, for that matter, the interminable Florida recounts that eventually put Dubyah in the White House? Probably not.
In 2008 the watershed was, of course, America’s first black president. Once we stop fetishising race, expect history to treat Obama like a Gerald Ford: exceptionally unexceptional. Alternately, he might come to be seen as a more disagreeable Jimmy Carter, forever caught unawares by the consequences of his incompetence, innocence and, as the Iran deal demonstrates, his impotence.

While working as a farm laborer on a hot day, Asia Bibi was told to fetch water. When she returned, Muslim coworkers refused to drink from the water, saying it was unclean because a Christian had touched it.

Six years later, Asia Bibi still has not been executed. Instead, sick, isolated, and regularly beaten by both prison guards and Muslim inmates, she has evidently been left to rot to death.

Every time any Western organization calls for her release, Pakistani Muslims threaten to take Sharia law into their own hands. One mosque prayer leader has even offered $6000 to anyone who kills her — a strong incentive, since many in Pakistan would probably kill her for free.

According to Islamic law, the word of a Christian is not valid against the word of a Muslim. Accusations of blasphemy against Christians by Muslims routinely result in the Christians being imprisoned, beaten, and sometimes killed — in some cases even without evidence. Pakistan does not require proof of a crime, only allegations — often made for extraneous reasons, and totally unfounded.

What a moment for the Obama administration to leak word that it is considering releasing Jonathan Pollard. He is being held at a federal prison in North Carolina on a life sentence. Almost 30 years ago, he’d pled to a single count of passing defense information to, in Israel, a friendly nation. The Iran accord is coming up for a vote in the Congress. Israel is warning about appeasement. Could there be a connection? The Wall Street Journal quotes administration sources as suggesting there is.

This wouldn’t be the first time President Obama has played politics with Pollard. As recently as last spring the administration proffered the possibility of springing Pollard as part of what the Reuters called “an emerging deal to salvage Middle East peace talks.” Better the spy should sit in prison, we said at the time. If Pollard doesn’t deserve to be let out, we wrote, no release should be countenanced. If he does, no deal should be asked — leastwise one that demands Israel give up its legitimate claims.

News reports on Thursday indicated that Iran is already seeing an inflow of trade funds and investment from Europe and other Western countries in the wake of the nuclear agreement signed between Iran and the P5+1 powers on July 14.

Since Iran and the world powers agreed on the deal, European leaders and representatives of major industries have been rushing to explore business opportunities in the country.

Iranian state-controlled Press TV reported that Iran and the European Union have opened a conference on trade and investment in Vienna, with Iran pledging to spend more than $180 billion on oil and gas projects.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underlined that
Tehran’s ballistic missile production and use is no violation of the nuclear
agreement between the country and the world powers.

“Using the ballistic missiles doesn’t violate the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action (JCPOA) and it is a violation of a paragraph in the annex of the
(UN Security Council) Resolution (2231) which is non-binding,” Zarif said in
response to questions by legislators in an open session of the parliament in
Tehran on Tuesday.

“This paragraph (of the an

Who says that history does not repeat itself?

As I listened to Barak Obama extol the virtues of the agreement with Iran and heard the chorus of hallelujahs bursting forth from the international choir, I could not help recalling the words of Neville Chamberlain and the cheers of those who believed in 1938 that peace in our time had been achieved.

To refresh your memory here are the memorable words uttered by the British PM: “the agreement made in Munich is in my view only a prelude in which all of Europe may find peace…”

Here is the reaction of Ban Ki Moon in 2015: “I warmly welcome this historic agreement. I believe that this agreement will lead to greater mutual understanding and co-operation on the many serious security challenges in the Middle East. As such it could serve as a vital contribution to peace & stability in the region and beyond.”