RUTHFULLY YOURS

The top-paying job for grads last year: petroleum engineer, at $97,000. Yet most colleges seem oddly uninterested.

How Climate Change Conquered the American Campus

Here is a college quiz. While many parts of the U.S. economy struggle to recover from the Great Recession of 2008-09, one domestic industry is experiencing a technology-driven expansion in which American innovations have led to countless new company startups, a surge in hiring and some of the highest-paying entry-level jobs for graduating college seniors.

How are the nation’s universities responding so students might prepare for a promising career in this growing and intellectually challenging field? By largely ignoring it. Why? Because the industry is oil and gas.

This fact may surprise the casual campus observer, since almost every U.S. college these days seems to have an energy research institute. Most of these energy think-tanks, however, are run by academic advocates of theories about global warming and man-made climate change, most of whom view energy through green-colored lenses. The research focus is more on promoting the clean, sustainable, renewable, non-CO2-emitting energy of the future, as opposed to studying and analyzing the hydrocarbon resources of the here and now.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304640104579487473582984500?mg=reno64-wsj

The Kremlin has an interest in conquest. The White House makes the taking easier.

If I were Vladimir Putin I’d invade eastern Ukraine this week. Strike while the iron is hot.

Never again will the taking be so easy. Never again will the government in Kiev be so helpless. Never again will the administration in Washington be so inept, its threats so hollow. Never again will the powers in Europe be so feeble and dependent. Never again will Western monetary policy do so much to prop up energy prices.

While Mr. Putin is at it, he might consider invading one of the Baltic states. Barack Obama isn’t about to ask Americans to die for Estonia, where a quarter of the population is ethnically Russian. The U.S. president wants “nation-building at home,” after all. Let him have at it.

Even now, the West misses the point. We have convinced ourselves that Russia is inherently weak; that its economy would collapse if the price of oil were to fall; that human and financial capital are in flight; that its population is shrinking (and frequently drunk); that the regime has lost the support of an urban middle class disgusted by endemic corruption. And so on.

http://spectator.org/articles/58642/testing-and-detesting-sgo

With former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell’s congressional testimony, a new Iranian ambassador to the UN, and a great UN report on global warming, there’s a lot in one week SGO to catalogue and remember. And to do justice to the week, we have to go at it in reverse order

(For those just joining us, “SGO” is the comprehensively useful acronym for “s*** goin’ on” created by my pal and former SEAL Al Clark.)

At week’s end, retiring Cong. Jim Moran (D-of course, VA-unfortunately) told Roll Call that Congress was underpaid. Before we could see clearly through our laughter-teared eyes, he added that “I understand that it’s widely felt that they underperform, but the fact is that this is the board of directors for the largest economic entity in the world.” And he said all that with a straight face.

Someone who is certainly not underperforming and probably isn’t underpaid is Iranian prez Hassan Rouhani. Liberals were so heartened by his election that they proclaimed — or was it President Obama who personally proclaimed? — that the decades of enmity between Iran and America were over. Before Moran’s moronic remarks, the UN and hangers-on including Amnesty International reported that under the Teflon Ayatollah there has been an inexplicable (to them at least) surge in torture, executions, and other such conduct by the keepers of the flame of the Iranian Revolution. Even before that, Rouhani, or some stand-in, appointed a new Iranian ambassador to the United Nations by the name of Hamid Aboutalebi.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8003

Another round of talks in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) is taking place this week. On Tuesday and Wednesday, negotiations to reach a final deal by July 20 will pick up where the “expert-level” meetings that ended Saturday night left off.

As tiresome as it has become to restate the obvious, no good can come of these or any other discussions with representatives of the Islamic republic. But this isn’t stopping the West from engaging in the ongoing charade, whose only purpose is to be persuaded by Tehran that its nuclear program is peaceful in nature.

Never mind that all evidence points to the opposite conclusion. Keeping the momentum going has turned “dialogue” into the goal. This makes sense, from the point of view of countries whose leaders bow down to the god of diplomacy. With veiled threats of “all options are on the table” in the air, acknowledging that Iran’s centrifuges are spinning in order to subjugate the world’s “infidels” would mean having to do something about it.

Indeed, this is how sanctions came into being. The idea behind them was to crush the Iranian economy, and make it impossible for the Islamic republic to achieve its hegemonic ambitions through the acquisition of an A-bomb.

But President Barack Obama entered the White House with a different concept of how to combat Iranian hostility — through American appeasement and courtship. It didn’t take a rocket scientist (Iranian or other) to grasp that such a policy would guarantee an increase in anti-Americanism and in incentive to produce weapons of mass destruction. Radical Shiites are funny that way.

AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW FROM DOWN UNDER –

http://www.aitse.org/global-warming-anthropogenic-or-not/

Katharine Hayhoe, PhD, who wrote the December AITSE piece “Climate Change: Anthropogenic or Not?”, is an atmospheric scientist and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She is senior author of the book “A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions”. I am a senior research geologist who has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on palaeo-environmental and palaeo-climatic topics and also author of the book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus”. Quite clearly, Dr. Hayhoe and I are both credible professional scientists. Given our training and research specializations, we are therefore competent to assess the evidence regarding the dangerous global warming that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) alleges is being caused by industrial carbon dioxide emissions.

Yet at the end of her article Dr. Hayhoe recommends for further reading the websites RealClimate.org and SkepticalScience.com, whereas here at the outset of writing my own article I recommend the websites wattsupwiththat.com and www.thegwpf.org (Global Warming Policy Foundation). To knowledgeable readers, this immediately signals that Dr. Hayhoe and I have diametrically opposing views on the global warming issue.

The general public finds it very hard to understand how such strong disagreement can exist between two equally qualified persons on a scientific topic, a disagreement that is manifest also on the wider scene by the existence of equivalent groups of scientists who either support or oppose the views of the IPCC about dangerous anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming (DAGW).

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14806#.U0PTF1eCUtU

Almost from the beginning, Israel’s physical survival as a state has depended upon its nuclear weapons. Although still ambiguous and undisclosed, this “bomb in the basement” has kept a substantial number of sworn enemies at bay.

Today, with Iran rapidly approaching full and unobstructed membership in the Nuclear Club, this equalizing element of national power has become indispensable.

“Mass counts,” wrote the classic Prussian military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), and only Israel’s enemies have mass. Nonetheless, each year, these enemies call disingenuously for a Nuclear-Weapons Free-Zone in the Middle East.

In Washington, as well as in Jerusalem, it is time to acknowledge that nuclear weapons are never evil in themselves, and that in certain circumstances, they can be utterly vital to self-defense and survival.

In principle, at least, President Obama still seeks “a world free of nuclear weapons.” But once an enemy state and its allies believed that Israel had been bent sufficiently to “nonproliferation” demands, adversarial military strategies – either singly, or in calculated collaboration – could begin to embrace extermination warfare. Significantly, this could happen even if all of Israel’s national adversaries were to remain determinedly non-nuclear themselves.

Any Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone for the Middle East, even if seemingly well-intentioned, would render Israel existentially vulnerable. Although such vulnerability might be prevented by instituting certain parallel forms of chemical/biological weapons disarmament among these adversaries, such measures could never actually be implemented.

After all, as Israel’s enemies cheerfully recognize, any verification of compliance would be effectively impossible.

President Obama still misunderstands. Nuclear weapons are not the problem per se. If they were, his country might have abandoned its own nuclear arsenal and associated strategies back in August, 1945

In the Middle East, the core problem has absolutely nothing to do with Israel’s nuclear weapons and posture, assets which have never been used to threaten or even to intimidate recalcitrant enemies. Rather, this peril remains a persisting and unreconstructed Jihadist commitment to “excise the Jewish cancer.” This openly annihilatory commitment is more-or-less common to both Sunni Arab foes, and to Shiite Iran.

Although apparently counter-intuitive, Israel’s nuclear weapons actually represent a critical impediment to the military use of nuclear weapons, and to the commencement of a regional nuclear war. They must, therefore, remain at the vital center of Israel’s security policy, and must also be guided by a continuously updated and refined strategic doctrine.

Essential elements of any such doctrine should include a carefully calibrated end to “deliberate ambiguity,” more recognizable emphases on “counter value” or counter-city targeting, and expanding evidence of secure “triad” nuclear forces. Such forces would also have to be presumed capable of penetrating any foreseeable aggressor’s active defenses.

By Kenneth Levin, a psychiatrist and historian and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People under Siege.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/04/the_european_union_africa_and_the_jews.html

“Sepulcher city”; so Joseph Conrad’s narrator, Marlowe, labels Brussels inThe Heart of Darkness. “… a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulcher.” The terms derive from the Gospel of Matthew and refer to people and institutions that seek to project an appearance of virtue but are corrupt and rotted within. Marlowe is responding to what he has witnessed of the Brussels-directed pillaging of the Congo, the wholesale murder and other horrors committed there by the agents of the “Council in Europe,” and particularly by its most successful agent, Kurtz, in a merciless quest for ivory. This even as Kurtz and his sponsors and associates choose to project an image of the entire business as a virtuous undertaking and of Kurtz himself as a brilliant, sensitive genius — musician, painter, essayist, poet — embarked on a saintly mission, “an emissary of pity and science and progress.”

How fitting then that Brussels should be the headquarters of the European Union.

The EU, like Conrad’s “Council in Europe,” continues to perpetrate abuses in Africa under the guise of humanitarian good will.

Behind claims of, for example, helping to foster sustainable economic growth in Africa, the EU exploits African resources to the profit of EU member states and to the detriment of Africans. One notable instance is EU fisheries policy in West Africa, which ostensibly seeks to promote long-term sustainability but has instead led to high-tech European fishing fleets — subsidized by EU governments — depleting local stocks. Poor West African nations such as Senegal, Ghana, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and others, while being promised development assistance by the EU, have been subjected to decimation of their local fisheries. A significant portion of the population in the affected nations are critically dependent on local fish yields for their dietary well-being, and EU destruction of fisheries and dramatic depletion of potential catches by local fishermen have health ramifications for these nations that are devastating.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=16717

Have the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks reached a dead end? Barney Breen-Portnoy, Steve Ganot and Ruthie Blum discuss the crisis in the negotiations, as well as the prisoner release issue and the fate of imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.

With once-optimistic U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry expressing frustration over what seems to be the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, is there any hope left for the talks?

Columnist Ruthie Blum and Israel Hayom editors Barney Breen-Portnoy and Steve Ganot discuss the ramifications that may follow the failure of the talks, including the possibility of blame being placed on Israel and the chances of another U.S. peace effort being made.

If negotiations do go forward, what place does the prisoner release, specifically the release of Israeli Arabs, have in a future peace deal? Is releasing prisoners a slippery slope to a precedent that Israel should avoid, or is it simply a necessary part of negotiations?

Finally, is the offer to release imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard a sign of American desperation to save the peace talks?

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Hornswoggle is a word I have always liked. It is a verb meaning to bamboozle or to dupe. While its origin is considered “unknown,” the word is generally thought to be native to America. The word is said to date to the early 19th Century, but it does not appear in the 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. A man or a woman with an unfaithful spouse can be described as having been hornswoggled. It was the kind of colorful word we liked in New Hampshire, where we never trusted city folk who tried to sell us something we didn’t want or need. We suspected their motivation. We didn’t mind being the hornswoggler but we didn’t want to be the hornswogglee.

Glancing through the “Summary for Policymakers” just published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the word ‘hornswoggle’ came to mind. While the IPCC, according to its own principles, is a policy-neutral organization, its head Rajendra Pachauri, in an interview last September, said, “Humanity has pushed the climate system to the brink.” He added, “We need to transition away from fossil fuels.” With the release of the document a week ago, and sounding just a mite less patronizing, he said, “Adaption alone is not going to solve the problem and we need mitigation at the global level.”

In some respects the IPCC has become its own worst enemy. The problem with government (and non-government) bureaucracies is that they develop lives of their own. Jobs and careers, in the case of the IPCC, depend on man-made influences on climate change being the principal cause. Such agencies also serve as vehicles for politically correct politicians.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

We are not a violent society. We are a society sheltered from violence. No one in Rwanda spends time wondering what kind of man would murder people. They probably live next door to him. If your neighborhood is diverse enough, you might be unfortunate enough to live next door to war criminals all the way from Eastern Europe to Africa.

Guns are how we misspell evil. Guns are how we avoid talking about the ugly realities of human nature while building sandcastles on the shores of utopia.

It’s not about the fear of what one motivated maniac can do in a crowded place, but about the precariousness of social control that the killing sprees expose. Every murder tears apart the myth that government is the answer.

The gun control issue is about solving individual evil through central planning in a shelter big enough for everyone. A Gun Free Zone where everyone is a target and lives under the illusion that they aren’t. A society where everyone is drawing peace signs on colored notepaper while waiting under their desks for the bomb to fall.

That brand of control isn’t authority, it’s authority in panic mode believing that if it imposes total zero tolerance control then there will be no more shootings. And every time the dumb paradigm is blown to bits with another shotgun, then the rush is on to reinforce it with more total zero control tolerance.