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Peter O’Brien & Roger Franklin Capturing Carbon, Shackling Good Sense

CCS stands for ‘carbon capture and storage’ but it might just as easily, and more accurately, be taken as representing another aspect of the Climate Change Scam. The green-left detest it as means to keep the coal fires burning. Conservatives have much better reasons to scorn it.
The other day in The Australian an intriguing op-ed extolled the alleged virtues of carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a means of reconciling the federal government’s pledge, courtesy of Resources Minister Matt Canavan, that coal will remain a core part of the energy-supply mix for the foreseeable future, despite the standing commitment under the Paris agreement to see Australia’s CO2 emissions reduced by a best-case 28% as of 2030. It must have been all very inspiring for those keeping up with the latest talking points in fashionable green mythology, but more acute readers will have noticed the paragraph below and observed a cat making its exit from a bag of enviro-nostrums and rather costly cliches:

Having thrown its support behind domestic coal to the reported tune of $100 billion over the next two decades with the Paris Agreement looming large in the background, the federal government has the opportunity to advance clean coal technologies just as the government’s $2bn Australian Renewable Energy Agency has done for renewable energy.

It is this unexplored middle ground that the Prime Minister must now seize if the political headaches of energy price, reliability and carbon emissions are to be resolved.

If that sounds like of another green snout urging its way into the trough of other people’s money — in this case, energy consumers and taxpayers — go to the top of the class. The absolute confirmation of that suspicion came further into the piece, where we are asked to accept the bland assertion that CCS is poised to become “commercially viable”. Strip away the article’s rent-seeking rhetoric and what remains is the stark fact that this vaunted and as-yet-problematic technology would never have seen the light of day were it not for the market distortions inspired by the UN-sponsored CAGW scam.

Consider the cognitive dissonance of the green-steeped mind: The Global CCS Institute insists on the one hand that “CCS is a proven, safe, reliable and cost-effective technology” yet on the other and on the very same page we see (emphasis added), “policy parity is integral to the widespread adoption of CCS.” As the Institute’s CEO Brad Page further explains, this is a technology that “deserves the same recognition and commercial incentivisation as all clean technologies, particularly renewables.” Put more simply, CCS is right up there with, say, wind power in South Australia. Just keep those subsidies flowing and everything will be fine and dandy.

As Page continues, “the pace of CCS deployment must be accelerated if we are to meet Paris climate targets (we are currently way off target).” Well, he would say that! Like wind-farm consortiums and promoters of other disappointing “renewable technologies” such as tidal power (which even Their ABC admits — surprise, surprise — “is really expensive“) and Tim Flannery’s grant-gobbling “hot rocks”, he knows perfectly well that fossil fuels will be the life’s blood of the world’s energy requirements for many years to come. Where there is blood, expect leeches which, in this case, are dead keen to keep both host and narrative alive.

The Global CCS Institute further tells us:

At the time of launch of this Global Status of CCS: 2016 report, there were 15 large-scale CCS projects in operation around the world, with a CO2 capture capacity of close to 30 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa).

Germany Sets Plan to Rein In Extremists Measures would make it easier to monitor, detain and deport suspects by Ruth Bender

BERLIN—Germany released a plan to rein in known extremists after authorities failed to prevent a terrorist attack last month by a Tunisian radical on a government watch list.

The proposed overhauls aim to make it easier for police to monitor, detain and deport asylum seekers believed to pose a terror threat, Germany’s interior and justice ministers said on Tuesday.

The plan—which the government plans to implement with legal changes in the weeks to come—reflects efforts to tighten enforcement within the guidelines of constitutional safeguards, informed by abuses committed under the Nazis, that strongly protect personal freedom.

Under current state police laws, for instance, preventive custody doesn’t exceed 14 days. Detentions of foreigners to be expelled also face stringent legal requirements, such as the necessity to obtain proof of identity of a suspect from his or her country of origin.

Under the ministers’ proposals, police would be allowed to detain rejected asylum seekers deemed dangerous for up to 18 months, by lowering some of the current requirements.

German authorities have been seeking ways to improve antiterror enforcement since Anis Amri rammed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market last month, killing 12 people and exposing holes in the country’s security architecture.

The planned overhaul “shows that in difficult times we are capable of finding reasonable solutions that will increase the safety of citizens in Germany without disproportionately constraining the public’s freedoms,” said Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

German authorities came under criticism for failing to expel Amri in the months before the attack even though he was on a watch list of extremists, had voiced plans to commit atrocities and was using fake identities.

The target of Tuesday’s proposals are people like Amri who are found to be radical Islamists capable of committing an attack. German authorities are tracking 550 such extremists—known in German as Gefährder—according to security officials. Half of them are believed to be in Germany. Amri was killed by police in Italy several days after the Berlin attack.

Most of these individuals haven’t been determined to have broken laws, leaving German authorities few legal tools to keep them in check. Around 80 are in detention. The others are being watched by police and intelligence services, some more closely than others, security officials said.

The German constitution makes it very hard to detain people who aren’t suspected of committing a crime. That contrasts with the U.S., which allows the detention of terrorism suspects for indefinite periods.

“It’s pretty much impossible to take a Gefährder into custody unless one has a very concrete indication that a person is planning an immediate attack,” said Nikolaos Gazeas, a Cologne-based lawyer and expert on counterterrorism law. “That would mean a complete inversion of our legal system.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Iran Steps Up Threats to Israel, U.S. by Majid Rafizadeh

“En Sha’a Allah [God willing], there will be no such thing as a Zionist regime in 25 years. Until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists.” — Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, September, 2015.

“If the Supreme Leader’s orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes.” — Ahmad Karimpour, a senior adviser to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite unit, the Quds Force.

Iran is also attempting to intimidate Donald Trump from taking a tough stance against Iran. Trump ought to be wary of falling into Iran’s tactical game of fear-mongering. For Iran, US concessions and silence in the face of Iran’s threats mean weakness and fear. On the other hand, when Iran sees that the US is taking a robust stance and that the military option is always on the table, Tehran retreats.

As long as Iran’s Supreme Leader is alive and as long as the ruling clerics preserve the political establishment, Iran will maintain the core pillars of its foreign policies and revolutionary principles: these are anchored in anti-Israeli, anti-American and anti-Semitic politics. Iranian politicians across the political spectrum totally agree on these fundamentals.

Iran’s threats against Israel and the US are becoming bolder and louder. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is now repeatedly threatening Israel’s annihilation relatively soon.

According to Iran’s Press TV, Khamenei recently stated:

“The Zionist regime — as we have already said — will cease to exist in the next 25 years if there is a collective and united struggle by the Palestinians and the Muslims against the Zionists.”

In addition, Iranian officials are warning President-elect Donald Trump that if he makes any wrong move, it would lead to a World War, wiping Israel from the face of earth and destroying the smaller Gulf states.

Iranian leaders are adopting their classic tactics and strategy of threatening in advance — and frequently — probably to obtain concessions, push the next US administration to pursue policies of appeasement, and, more importantly, to drive the US to abandon Israel.

In addition, through anti-Israeli and incendiary statements, Khamenei and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) are inciting Palestinians and the Muslim world to use violence against the Israeli nation. As a result, Khamenei heightens even further his anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiments. Many who follow his beliefs consider it their Islamic duty to fulfill his policies, religious doctrines and prophesies.

Ahmad Karimpour, a senior adviser to the Revolutionary Guards’ elite unit, the Quds Force, previously said that Iran is ready to follow Khamenei’s orders once the leader gives the green light. According to the semi-official Fars News Agency, Karimpour said, “If the Supreme Leader’s orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes.”

Considering the Real Russia Under Putin’s Authority By Herbert London

In the last debate of the 2012 presidential race Governor Romney discussed the potential threat of Russia. He was widely criticized by President Obama who maintained the Cold War ended in the 1980’s. Since then, of course, we have had a national “reset.” Vladimir Putin’s aggressive action in eastern Ukraine, Syria and his openly provocative statements about the Baltic states and the use of nuclear weapons offer revealing insights into Russian aims. Still there are those who believe Russia can be an ally, at least in areas where U.S.-Russian interests converge, e.g. battling militant Islam.

However, if one considers the history of Russia since the presumptive end of the Cold War, a different conclusion is plausible. Since 1989, Russian policy has been designed to undo the crumbling of the Soviet Empire, what might be described as Global Revenge. Putin’s stance is to reclaim the Near Abroad – those nations once within the Soviet orbit. Using the appearance of “democracy,” religious observance and elections, Russia’s president has moved assiduously to destroy internal adversaries and external opponents. The velvet glove of concern for those lost in the 9/11 attack concealed the iron fist of invasion and intimidation.

Despite its newly adopted nomenclature, the KGB operatives dominate foreign policy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov is expected to be a magician who has veils behind veils in his Orwellian rhetoric. On the one hand, he speaks with compassion about the victims of bombing in Aleppo and then signals Russian planes to engage in indiscriminate bombing in this Syrian city. What you see is only what you think you see. Having played Secretary of State John Kerry like a drum, Lavrov has converted Russia into the strong horse in the Middle East and reduced the United States to irrelevance.

With the crumbling of communism, Russia became distracted by privatization schemes in the 1990’s. What these schemes truly represented was the emergence of a new elite that distributed national wealth to the soon to be oligarchs and the former KGB leaders who slowly entered into “partnerships” with the corporate and banking sectors. Revelations of Putin’s wealth suggest he may be the richest man on the globe. In fact, his daughter, who hasn’t engaged in any legitimate business activity, has an estimated wealth of $16 billion.

Hungary Plans to Crackdown on All Soros-Funded NGOs by Zoltan Simon

Ruling Fidesz party vice president pledges to ‘sweep out’ NGOs
Premier Orban, Trump backer, vowed to build ‘illiberal state’

Hungary plans to crack down on non-governmental organizations linked to billionaire George Soros now that Donald Trump will occupy the White House, according to the deputy head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party.

The European Union member will use “all the tools at its disposal” to “sweep out” NGOs funded by the Hungarian-born financier, which “serve global capitalists and back political correctness over national governments,” Szilard Nemeth, a vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, told reporters on Tuesday. No one answered the phone at the Open Society Institute in Budapest when Bloomberg News called outside business hours.

“I feel that there is an opportunity for this, internationally,” because of Trump’s election, state news service MTI reported Nemeth as saying. Lawmakers will start debating a bill to let authorities audit NGO executives, according to parliament’s legislative agenda.

Orban, the first European leader to publicly back Trump’s campaign, has ignored criticism from the European Commission and U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration for building a self-described “illiberal state” modeled on authoritarian regimes including Russia, China and Turkey. In 2014, Orban personally ordered the state audit agency to probe foundations financed by Norway and said that civil society groups financed from abroad were covers for “paid political activists.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Orban and his administration have frequently singled out NGOs supported by Soros, a U.S. Democratic Party supporter with a wide network of organizations that promote democracy in formerly communist eastern Europe.

DANIEL GREENFIELD MOMENT: ISRAEL MUST KILL THE TWO STATE SOLUTION

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents the Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the editor of Frontpage’s blog, The Point.

Daniel discussed Israel Must Kill the Two State Solution, explaining that, if it doesn’t, the two-state solution will kill Israel.

Don’t miss it!

The whitewashing of the PLO must end. Caroline Glick

It is not in the least surprising that the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority did not condemn the terrorist attack on Sunday. It is not surprising because the PLO-controlled PA encouraged the attack.

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute, in the aftermath of last month’s US-enabled passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criminalizes Israel, the PA went on the warpath.

Among other things, Muhammad Abu Shtayyeh, who serves as a close adviser to PLO chief and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called for an intensification of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Shtayyeh said that now is the time to “bolster the popular resistance” against Israel.

As Abu Toameh noted, “‘Popular resistance’ is code for throwing stones and petrol bombs and carrying out stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.”

Sunday’s terrorist murderer probably was inspired by Islamic State, and its adherents’ recent truck ramming murder sprees in Nice and Berlin, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

But Sunday’s 28-year-old cold blooded killer hailed from Jerusalem, not Nice.

His brain was washed since he was five years old by the PLO-controlled PA’s steady cycle of jihadist incitement.

From the time he was in preschool, the killer was indoctrinated to aspire to commit the mass murder of Jews he carried out on Sunday.

For 23 years, Israel and the US have empowered the PLO.

During this period, the terrorist group never took any concrete steps to promote peace. At no point in the past generation has a PLO leader ever told the Palestinians or supporters abroad that the time has come to bury the hatchet and accept Israel.

Instead, for 23 years, the PLO has openly supported Israel’s annihilation. Often that support has been stated in code words like “popular resistance” which everyone understands means murder.

To make it easy for Americans and Israelis to continue funding, arming, training and of course, recognizing the PLO as a “moderate” organization despite its continued sponsorship of terrorism, PLO members are always happy to talk about a “two-state solution” with Westerners that wish to be lied to.

But they do not hesitate to threaten anyone who rejects their lies about Jews and Israel. For instance, Abbas reacted to US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to abide by the US law requiring the State Department to move the US embassy to Jerusalem by threatening him.

Trump’s plan will have “serious implications” for the US, Abbas told a group of visiting Israeli leftists.

PLO Executive Committee chairman Saeb Erekat said that if Trump moves the US embassy to Israel’s capital, the PLO will lobby Arab states to expel the US ambassadors from their capitals.

Jebl Mukaber, the Jerusalem neighborhood where Sunday’s terrorist lived, used to be just an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem. It wasn’t particularly friendly.

The UN Is Beyond Reform D.C. isn’t the only swamp our new president needs to drain. Bruce Thornton

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to get tough with the UN, a corrupt, bloated bureaucracy that for seven decades has existed to provide cushy jobs for international deadbeats, and to promote the interests of tyrannical regimes and anti-American pygmy states. Recognizing the UN’s failures and corruption, some commentators are calling for targeted reductions of the estimated $8-10 billion a year we spend on the UN and its 15 affiliated organizations, thus prodding Turtle Bay to reform. But the better argument is to withdraw completely. Changing the shade of lipstick on this multinational pig is not going to keep it from acting like a pig.

Indeed, “reforming” the UN is a mantra politicians periodically repeat in order to avoid doing what’s necessary to make significant changes. Remember the old UN Human Rights Commission? It was completely ineffective because it regularly seated some of the world’s worst human rights violators, including China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Uganda and Vietnam. At the same time, as stalwart UN critic Ann Bayefsky wrote in 2002, “Commission members seek to avoid directly criticizing states with human rights problems, frequently by focusing on Israel, a state that, according to analysis of summary records, has for over 30 years occupied 15 percent of commission time and has been the subject of a third of country-specific resolutions.” To add insult to the injury, that same year the Commission passed a resolution giving the Palestinian Arabs the de facto “legitimate right” to use terrorism against Israel.

The serial ignoring of Sudan’s responsibility for the human rights disaster unfolding in Darfur, and the election of Sudan to the Commission finally put an end to the UNHRC, which was replaced in 2006 with the “reformed” UN Human Rights Council. After ten years it’s obvious that the change was cosmetic, as the Council has repeated the same sins of its predecessor. It continues to seat members from nations like current members China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, all notorious for violating human rights. And it continues its chronic demonization of Israel, which it has condemned five times more than any other country. Nor is this vicious bigotry confined to the Council: last March, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) condemned only one nation, Israel, for violating women’s rights.

U.S. Pilots See Close Calls With Russian Jets Over Syria As planes share crowded airspace fighting parallel wars, militaries struggle to minimize threat of an accident By Michael M. Phillips and Gordon Lubold

One night this past fall, a U.S. radar plane flying a routine pattern over Syria picked up a signal from an incoming Russian fighter jet.

The American crew radioed repeated warnings on a frequency universally used for distress signals. The Russian pilot didn’t respond.

Instead, as the U.S. plane began a wide sweep to the south, the Russian fighter, an advanced Su-35 Flanker, turned north and east across the American plane’s nose, churned up a wave of turbulent air in its path and briefly disrupted its sensitive electronics.

“We assessed that guy to be within one-eighth of a mile—a few hundred feet away—and unaware of it,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Paul Birch, commander of the 380th Expeditionary Operations Group, a unit based in the Persian Gulf.
A Russian Su-35 Flanker fighter shadows U.S. F-15s as they refuel over Syria in September. The photo, taken by a camera on one of the American planes, shows the Russian pilot far closer than the three-mile safety limit set in a 2015 U.S.-Russian agreement. Photo: U.S. Air Force

The skies above Syria are an international incident waiting to happen, according to American pilots. It is an unprecedented situation in which for months U.S. and Russian jets have crowded the same airspace fighting parallel wars, with American pilots bombing Islamic State worried about colliding with Russian pilots bombing rebels trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Russian warplanes, which also attack Islamic State targets, are still flying daily over Syria despite the recent cease-fire in Moscow’s campaign against the anti-Assad forces, according to the U.S. Air Force.

The U.S. and Russian militaries have a year-old air safety agreement, but American pilots still find themselves having close calls with Russian aviators either unaware of the rules of the road, or unable or unwilling to follow them consistently.

“Rarely, if ever, do they respond verbally,” said Brig. Gen. Charles Corcoran, commander of the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, who flies combat missions in a stealth fighter. “Rarely, if ever, do they move. We get out of the way. We don’t know what they can see or not see, and we don’t want them running into one of us.”

Complicating the aerial traffic jam, the Russian planes don’t emit identifying signals, flouting international protocols. CONTINUE AT SITE

Douglas Hassall :The Australian Monuments Men……. (Very interesting History ) *****

Entirely overlooked by the Hollywood scriptwriters whose recent movie hailed the military unit that saved great works of art from Europe’s rubble in the dying days of the World War II, Tom Dunbabin and John McDonnell deserve not merely to to be remembered but celebrated.
Aeneas John Lindsay McDonnell (1904–64) was born in Toowoomba and educated at Cranbrook School in Sydney, where he developed his early interest in art. In 1928 he joined in the partnership which ran the Macquarie Galleries in Sydney. He had a particular interest in French art and architecture, spoke fluent French and travelled widely. He later became private secretary to the Governor of Queensland. With the outbreak of the Second World War, he joined the Red Cross in April 1940, serving in Africa and the Middle East until 1943. In May 1944, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and was commissioned as a lieutenant and then seconded to special duty with the British forces.

Owing to his expertise in art and his fluency in French, he was then assigned to the Civil Affairs Division of the Allied Armies as an Australian representative to the SHAEF Mission to France in early 1945. “At SHAEF Headquarters in London, McDonnell was tasked with creating the MFAA (Commission on Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives) Handbook for France alongside Monuments Officers Walter Hancock and Bancel LaFarge.” The MFAA was established by a directive of President Roosevelt:

to protect cultural artifacts and monuments from war damage [and] then afterwards, [to] repatriate cultural treasures stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners when and where possible. [It] was comprised of about 350 to 400 men and women who were trained as museum directors, curators, art historians and educators. From 1943 till the cessation of hostilities, officers of MFAA saved and protected countless cultural artifacts, monuments and churches across Western Europe.

The MFAA’s work has been described in L.H. Nicholas’s The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (1994) and by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter in The Monuments Men (2010). McDonnell’s service as a Monuments Officer took him throughout the American and British Zones in Occupied Europe. In May 1945 he was with Lieutenant Commander Charles Kuhn, Deputy Adviser to the MFAA, during the ten-day inspection of Nazi art repositories in Germany. At Altaussee, McDonnell examined the Ghent Altarpiece by Van Eyck and the Bruges Madonna by Michelangelo. He also saw the very large collection of looted French art stored by the Nazis at the Schloss Neuschwanstein. He headed the first conference of the Archivists of the British Zone held at Bunde in 1946.

mcdonnellMcDonnell (left) was appointed an Officer of the Legion of Honour by the French government and was awarded the Australian Service Medal, the British War Medal (with the Mentioned in Despatches Oakleaf), and the France and Germany Star. His decorations set is now in the collection of the Australian War Memorial.

After his discharge in January, 1947, with the honorary rank of lieutenant-colonel, McDonnell was appointed to be the London adviser to the Felton Bequest for the benefit of the National Gallery of Victoria, in which capacity he served until his untimely death in 1964. He worked closely with Sir Kenneth Clark and other art historians in London and on the Continent, on the Bequest’s campaign to augment the collections of the NGV. Among the major works the NGV acquired through the Felton Bequest during McDonnell’s time as its London adviser were paintings by Poussin, Rembrandt and Gainsborough, as well as the collection of Albrecht Durer prints amassed by Sir Thomas Barlow of Manchester.

McDonnell was one of the two Australians who served with the Allied “Monuments Men” in Europe from 1943 to 1947. The other was Thomas James Dunbabin (1911–55) a classical scholar and archaeologist who served with SOE on Crete (alongside Patrick Leigh Fermor) from 1942 to 1945, after which he worked in Athens as the Director of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives section of the Allied Forces in Greece. Later, he returned to Oxford University, becoming Reader in Classical Archaeology and All Souls Bursar in 1950. His best-known published work is The Western Greeks: The History of Sicily and South Italy from the Foundation of the Greek Colonies to 480 BC (1948). Dunbabin died of pancreatic cancer at the age of only forty-four on March 31, 1955.

dunbabinDunbabin (right) was born in Tasmania, the son of the celebrated Australian journalist Thomas Dunbabin. He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. As Derby Scholar in 1933, he travelled extensively in Sicily and southern Italy and by 1936 was already the youthful Director of the British School at Athens.