RUTHFULLY YOURS

Renouncing oil and its byproducts would plunge civilization into a pre-industrial hell—a fact developing countries keenly realize.

Which would be worse: a hostile foreign regime using a sinister magnetic pulse to take down the entire electrical grid—or the chief executives of the world’s major oil companies having a collective personal crisis about carbon emissions, shutting down their operations, and sending their employees to live the rest of their days off the grid in rural Vermont? Either way, the country goes dark. Transportation stops. Schools, hospitals and businesses close down. We are left to grow our own scrawny vegetables and slaughter our own animals for meat. We cannot even text.

If you drive a car, or use modern medicine, or believe in man’s right to economic progress, then according to Alex Epstein you should be grateful—more than grateful. In “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels” the author, an energy advocate and founder of a for-profit think tank called the Center for Industrial Progress, suggests that if all you had to rely on were the good intentions of environmentalists, you would be soon plunged back into a pre-industrial hell. Life expectancy would plummet, climate-related deaths would soar, and the only way that Timberland and Whole Foods could ship their environmentally friendly clothing and food would be by mule. “Being forced to rely on solar, wind, and biofuels would be a horror beyond anything we can imagine,” writes Mr. Epstein, “as a civilization that runs on cheap, plentiful, reliable energy would see its machines dead, its productivity destroyed, its resources disappearing.”

When you consider that most of us live what we would consider decent, moral lives, it seems extraordinary that anyone feels it necessary to write a book called “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.” We use fossil fuels and their by-products in everything we do and rarely consider it a vice. A pang of conscience may strike us when we read of oil spills or melting icebergs. But not when we are sitting on a plastic chair, visiting a power-guzzling hospital or turning on our computers. To call fossil fuels “immoral” is to tarnish our entire civilization and should plunge us all into a permanent state of guilt, which seems a bit strong.

Narratives and allegations are not facts, despite what the media would have us believe.

In March 2007 the New York Times Magazine ran a stunning 12,000-word cover story on the subject of “The Women’s War.” It told the story of several female veterans of the war in Iraq, of the sexual assault some had endured in the military, and of their subsequent struggles with alcoholism, depression, PTSD and other effects of combat.

Among the most compelling characters in the piece was a woman named Amorita Randall, who claimed she had barely survived an IED attack on her Humvee and that she had been raped twice in her six years of Navy service. She claimed to have reported the second incident to her commanders only to be told “not to make such a big deal about it.”

The details are gruesome: “I remember there were other guys in the room too,” Ms. Randall told the Times. “Somebody told me they took pictures and put them on the Internet.” Ms. Randall, added reporter Sara Corbett, “says she has blocked out most of the details of the second rape—something else experts say is a common self-protective measure taken by the brain in response to violent trauma—and that she left Iraq ‘in a daze.’ ”

Only one problem: “Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did,” as the Times later acknowledged in an Editors’ Note. Instead, her overseas service was spent in Guam, 6,200 miles away from the combat zone. The Navy, the Times added, “had no record of a sexual-assault report involving Ms. Randall.”

The president’s unilateral approach ensures that a new global carbon pact will be a campaign issue in two years.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, this week and next will lay the groundwork for a more significant gathering in Paris a year from now: the 21st conference of the 1992 United Nations Convention on Climate Change. The third such conference, in 1997, produced the Kyoto Protocol, the much-heralded but ineffective plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions without applying to developing nations. The 15th conference, held in Copenhagen five years ago to draw up a successor treaty, collapsed spectacularly under determined opposition from China and India.

The Paris conference, also intended to bring about an agreement covering all the world’s emitters, promises to be different—if only in the way it influences the next U.S. presidential election.

The Obama administration drew two lessons from Copenhagen. First, that the key to getting a global climate deal in Paris would be to secure first a bilateral one with China. Second, that seeking a binding treaty is overambitious and unnecessary. An accord that doesn’t require Senate approval would suffice. America’s international commitments could be implemented by executive actions.

From President Obama’s viewpoint, developments are moving in the right direction. At Copenhagen, China’s posture was that its carbon-intensity target was its own affair. But on Nov. 12 Mr. Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China had agreed not to exceed its carbon emissions at 2030 levels, while the U.S. would double the pace of America’s greenhouse-gas reductions.

The consequence is that the fate of the current attempt to agree on a global climate pact won’t be decided around the negotiating tables in Paris a year from now, but by American voters in November 2016. President Obama has all but guaranteed that where candidates stand on implementing a Paris climate accord will be a campaign issue.

Maj. Avichay Adraee, an Israeli army spokesman, was taken aback when he received a message from a mysterious man writing from the heart of Syria’s bloody civil war.

The man, a Sunni Muslim who created a Facebook page called “Jobar Synagogue,” said he was on a mission to preserve his town’s crown jewel, a centuries-old religious site venerated by the three major religions. Merely contacting the Israelis was an act that could have put his life in danger.
“If we do not move fast to protect this historical heritage, it will be lost forever,” he wrote to the Israeli major, via Facebook.

The exchange last year was part of a frantic mission to rescue the synagogue, located in the battle-worn Damascus suburb of Jobar. The man behind the Facebook page, who uses the nom de guerre Abbas Abu Suleiman, got the attention of rabbis in Israel and New York, Syrian exiles in Washington and a Manhattan diamond-district salesman who visited the synagogue as a boy.

Mr. Suleiman hoped the Jewish community would intervene with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad not only to save the site, but to halt the bombardment of his hometown. Safeguarding a part of Syria’s multicultural religious heritage, he hoped, might help the country rebuild whenever the war was over.

Maj. Adraee gets as many as 18,000 Facebook messages each day, many berating him for Israel’s policies toward its neighbors. After receiving Mr. Suleiman’s plea, he didn’t know what to think. Was this man an ally? An opportunist? He replied to the Facebook message with a question mark.

Others contacted by Mr. Suleiman had a similar reaction. Jewish leaders on two continents worried about, among other things, whether intervening would endanger the tiny community of aging Jews remaining in Syria.

Obama isn’t at war with ISIS, the Taliban or the Muslim Brotherhood. He’s at war with the Constitution, the middle class, and, ultimately, with America.

For our president, the 2014 election was liberating. There’s no longer a need to pretend, for the sake of his party, that he feels anything but contempt for the nation he was elected to govern.

Last week was typical. On Monday, after a grand jury refused to indict Officer Darren Wilson for acting in self-defense, a mob once again rampaged in Ferguson, Missouri. After mouthing a regulation-issue call for calm, the president used the mayhem to push his racist/redistributionist agenda.

While there’s no excuse for violence, “we have to understand” the rage of the lynch mob, the leader of the free world told us. “We need to recognize that the situation in Ferguson (black businesses burned to the ground) speaks to the broader problems that we still face as a nation” – like having a president who condones anarchy?

Obama insisted, “There are good people on both sides of the debate” (who are the good people who wanted to crucify a cop for doing his duty?) who want to work with his administration in “much-needed criminal justice reform” – including eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and racial quotas for traffic stops. Attorney General Eric Holder, who never met a quota he didn’t like, said Ferguson shows the need for affirmative action in police hiring.

The nation’s felon-in-chief is in sync with the petty criminals who loot liquor stores and shoot at police cars. On November 5, he held a private meeting at the White House with the most prominent outside agitators, including Al Sharpton, who disclosed: “Mr. Obama was concerned about Ferguson staying on course in terms of pursuing what it was he knew we were advocating.”

The day before Ferguson again exploded, the president gave a speech in Chicago attempting to justify his latest lawlessness. It isn’t enough for him to amnesty five million illegal aliens in violation of the Constitution, he has to rub our noses in it.

The assumptions that Israel’s economic growth depends on the conclusion of peace accords, and that Israel’s economy cannot withstand BDS pressure (boycott, divestment and sanctions) are inconsistent with reality.

In fact, Israel’s unique economic growth – from $1.5bn GDP in 1949 to $300bn in 2014, from $50mn annual exports in 1949 to $97bn in 2014, and from no foreign exchange reserves in 1949 to $92bn in 2014 – has been driven by Aliyah (Jewish immigration), fiscal responsibility, brain power, cutting-edge commercial and defense technologies, exports, military posture of deterrence and (most recently) natural gas; not by the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, or the Oslo Accord with the PLO.

For example, Israel’s GDP surged by 8%-14% annually following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War (1967-1972), and by 9% upon the launching of the Aliyah wave of one million Olim from the USSR in 1990. On the other hand, the post Oslo (1993-1996) economic growth of 4%-7% was triggered, mostly, by the Aliyah ripple effect, but was marred by rapidly worsening budget and trade deficits.

In addition, Israel’s 42.5% annual inflation in 1977 – when the Begin-Sadat peace initiative was launched – galloped to 111.4% in 1979 and 445% in 1984. Inflation was reduced to 19.7% in 1986, and to the current low single digit levels through an unprecedented policy of fiscal responsibility; not through the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

The BDS impact on Israel’s economy is minor as demonstrated by the improved trade balance between Israel and Turkey and Britain, independent of the Turkish government and British Parliament support of BDS. Moreover, Israel’s vulnerability to BDS is highly constrained since 90% of Israel’s exports are business-to-business, enhancing the cost-effectiveness and the level of health, medicine, irrigation, science, education and national security of Israel’s trade partners. Furthermore, Israel’s trade is trending away from Europe – the epicenter of BDS – towards India, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the former Soviet Republics.

While the Rev Al Sharpton was in Ferguson last Sunday, whipping up continued frenzy over the refusal of the grand jury to indict white Officer Darren Wilson for killing a black man who had just committed a robbery and when apprehended, tried to grab the officer’s gun, 8 black people were shot – 3 fatally – in Newark and 4 more at a baby shower in Brooklyn. These were all young adults whose lives were snuffed out or brutally impacted by other blacks, though no arrests have been made so far. A month ago, a black man used his car to plow into a crowd of black people who had also attended a baby shower, killing one and injuring two. The racial violence of black on black is a nightmare for law-abiding urban black citizens, most of whom understand that the police are there to protect them, not act as executioners. But for the Reverend Al, playing the race card has always been and continues to be his only modus operandi. It’s the ticket to his overwhelming acceptance by American political leaders, too intimidated to excoriate a lying tax cheat who profits from his motor-mouthed characterization of black people as continually oppressed and victims of white racism.

Numbers tell a different story than the narrative that’s been super-imposed on Ferguson. According to the FBI data for 2011: out of 2,695 black murder victims – 2,447 were killed by blacks. Though only 13% of our national population, blacks account for more than 50% of homicide victims, 94% of whom are killed by other blacks. When we look for reasons for poverty and criminality, there are two overriding statistics that govern their predictability – education and being raised in a single parent family. According to the Schott Foundation, only 52% of black males graduate from high school within 4 years (compared with 58% Latinos and 78% whites) and perhaps most significantly, 73% of black children are being raised by a single mother (Fed Center for Disease Control). What we see is that black children are most victimized by the disintegration of black family life and the resultant difficulty they face in completing their education and becoming gainfully employed. Without those two pre-requisites, there is a tsunami of possibilities for drug and alcohol addiction, mental problems, poverty, criminality, homelessness, disease and death by violence.

ISRAEL’S AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS RON PROSOR- NOVEMBER 24,2014
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/an-israeli-ambassadors-strong-response-to-united-nations-hypocrisy-on-israel?f=must_reads
“I stand before the world as a proud representative of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I stand tall before you knowing that truth and morality are on my side. And yet, I stand here knowing that today in this Assembly, truth will be turned on its head and morality cast aside.

The fact of the matter is that when members of the international community speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a fog descends to cloud all logic and moral clarity. The result isn’t realpolitik, its surrealpolitik.
The world’s unrelenting focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an injustice to tens of millions of victims of tyranny and terrorism in the Middle East. As we speak, Yazidis, Bahai, Kurds, Christians and Muslims are being executed and expelled by radical extremists at a rate of 1,000 people per month.

How many resolutions did you pass last week to address this crisis? And how many special sessions did you call for? The answer is zero. What does this say about international concern for human life? Not much, but it speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the international community.

I stand before you to speak the truth. Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, less than half a percent are truly free-and they are all citizens of Israel. Israeli Arabs are some of the most educated Arabs in the world. They are our leading physicians and surgeons, they are elected to our parliament, and they serve as judges on our Supreme Court. Millions of men and women in the Middle East would welcome these opportunities and freedoms.

Nonetheless, nation after nation, will stand at this podium today and criticize Israel.

Our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state.
Sixty seven years ago this week, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Simple. The Jews said yes. The Arabs said no. But they didn’t just say no. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon launched a war of annihilation against our newborn state.

In light of the number of commentaries which attempt to justify our presidents use of executive order to defer indefinitely the deportation of illegals until our congress passes a comprehensive immigration reform law, or which seek to blame our congress for current law which could be argued is too broad, leaving it to bureaucrats to write or the other branches to interpret and enforce-or not enforce, one must consider the administrative policies which led to the massive influx of undocumented children and adults in the first place.

In December, 2013, Judson Berger writes in Judge claims DHS delivering smuggled children to illegal immigrant parents, according to U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen, “in more than one case before his court, immigration officials are arresting human traffickers smuggling children into the U.S. — and then “delivering the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States.” This is verified by “Chris Crane, president of the National ICE Council union.”

In an article written by Michele Hickford in June 2014, Feds advertised for escort services for unaccompanied alien children in January , she brings the readers’ attention to an opportunity posted on FedBizOpps.gov which reads, “help wanted” in which “the feds were looking for vendors to help escort unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in JANUARY of this year.”

In two separate Breitbart.com articles written this past summer, Feds Dole Out Healthcare and Child Support Payments for Foreign Minors and Collect More Than $7,000 Per Month for ‘Fostering’ Adult Illegal Aliens, Kristin Tate writes about how illegals have been incentivized by the Obama administration to come to this country. She explains that in advertisements looking for foster parents to house illegals, many of which are already adults, prospective parents will be paid thousands of dollars to house illegals who receive taxpayer subsidized legal counsel, food, education, health care, transportation, and an “allowance.”

The idea that the numbers of illegals are so vast that we cannot enforce the law as it is written brings to mind The Cloward-Piven Strategy, as explained by Richard Poe and published in 2005 at DiscoverTheNetworks.org. In this article, Poe writes, “the Cloward-Piven Strategy seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”

By sacrificing himself, the Jihadist expects to attain an otherwise unattainable immortality. Existential fears are converted into a twisted form of “heroism” while Israel, meanwhile, is expected to help in its own genocide.

Somewhat like war, Islamic terrorism is founded upon assorted fantasies of redemption through sacrifice. Today, the universal Jihadist rallying cry, “We love death,” animates much of what is presented publicly as “liberation” or “self-determination,”[1] and is common to a broad variety of terrorist groups. This variegated collection includes both Sunni and Shia elements.

The rallying cry, always shrill, and always shouted in chorus, exhibits no core differences between ISIS in Iraq or Syria, and Hamas/Fatah in Gaza.

Oddly, this critical observation has been lost upon the administration in Washington. For some as yet undisclosed reason, the president decided to bomb the former, but (effectively) support the latter.

Despite readily discoverable commonalities of Islamist terror, in the particular evolution of Palestinian terror, there exists an almost unique historical narrative. Originally, before an explicitly sacred love of death took its uncompromising hold throughout the Islamic Middle East, the fraternity of Palestinian terrorist groups had brought together several extraordinarily disparate bedfellows.

Then, the principal desired end of insurrection and war, Israel’s “liquidation” (the first term used most frequently in the Arab aggressor’s lexicon) had amply justified all manner of eager participants.

Then, virtually every Arab enemy of Israel was more-or-less welcome to join in the expectedly conclusive battle against “Zionists.”