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April 2019

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Will The Warming Alarmists Ever Cool It? J. Frank Bullitt

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/23/will-the-warming-alarmists-ever-cool-it/

A decade ago, a story on National Public Radio, referring to a study from the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” said global warming was at that point “irreversible.” A couple of years earlier, the WorldWatch Institute claimed that by 2000, global warming had already been responsible for “150,000 excess deaths annually.” In between those gloomy assertions, the Union of Concerned Scientists was sure “global warming is happening” and that man was the “primary cause.”

Today, adherents call it “climate change.” And, according to a professor in Zurich, “it’s already begun.”

Of course there could be no other possible explanations for what’s being observed — and for what’s being assumed, given that the temperature record can’t be trusted. No chance there are other factors. Not the sun, not the natural climate cycle, not wobbles in Earth’s rotation or its varying elliptical orbit around the sun, nor ocean currents. It has to be human activity.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Comedian Elected President of Ukraine By Georgi Kantchev

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/comedian-elected-president-of-ukraine-exit-poll-shows-11555867039

Ukrainians elected a comedian with no political experience as president Sunday in a damning verdict on their ruling class five years after a violent pro-Western revolution, exit surveys of voters showed.

Volodymyr Zelensky, who plays a school teacher-turned-president in a Ukrainian TV series, trounced incumbent President Petro Poroshenko with about 73% percent of the vote, according to national exit polls shortly after voting ended.

In the first round of voting in March, Mr. Zelensky defeated Mr. Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, gaining more votes than both of the political heavyweights combined.

Ukraine, Europe’s second poorest nation, has been a major flashpoint in deteriorating relations between the West and Russia since Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula and launched a covert military operation in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Takes Aim at Caracas and Havana Russia hopes to repeat in Venezuela the humiliation it inflicted in Syria. By Walter Russell Mead

By on April 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-takes-aim-at-caracas-and-havana-11555972251

As Washington and Moscow face off over Venezuela, the Caribbean has become a focal point for global politics for the first time since the Cold War.

The U.S. and its allies have recognized Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela and demanded that Nicolás Maduro step aside, doubling down on sanctions against the dictator and his allies in Havana. Mr. Guaidó has called on Venezuelans to turn out on May 1 for what he hopes will be the largest demonstration in the country’s history. Yet Mr. Maduro is standing his ground, backed financially by China and Russia, and receiving military and security assistance from Cuba and Russia.

For the Trump administration, all roads in the Western Hemisphere lead to Caracas. Left to accelerate, the breakdown of governance and civilized life in Venezuela can only create more refugees, enrich arms smugglers and drug cartels, allow forces like Hezbollah to insinuate themselves more deeply in the region. On the other hand, a return to some kind of stability under a pro-business government would initiate an economic recovery that would help the people of Venezuela and their neighbors alike, and deprive the terror cartels of much of their arms and funding. Crucially, if Venezuelan oil production recovers, it would help stabilize world energy markets and significantly increase American leverage with both Russia and Iran.

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