RUTHFULLY YOURS

A REVIEW OF “THE MORAL CASE FOR FOSSIL FUELS” BY ALEX EPSTEIN

In the anti-fracking film Gasland, producer Josh Fox proclaims that the process of extracting previously inaccessible oil and gas from shale pollutes water supplies, increases the incidence of cancer and leads to higher levels of seismic activity, despite ample contrary evidence. This self-proclaimed environmental watchdog and anti-fracking crusader has led extensive efforts to end or prevent fracking throughout the United States by obfuscating the truth and stopping communities from reaping the benefits of America’s shale boom. Josh Fox and others like him are uninterested in looking for improvements in fracking technology and safety. Instead they seek to shut down shale exploration and other fossil fuel extraction altogether.

In his recent book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein challenges the ethical bias of environmentalists who oppose fossil-fuel use and deftly argues that fossil fuels have vastly improved the planet and the lives of its human inhabitants. He contends that a human-centric moral value that supports the well-being and prosperity of human beings ranks on a higher ethical plain than the utopian, environmentalist ideal of a “wild” earth or environment absent little or no human impact. Epstein’s moral position is that man should serve human beings, not nature, and that it is wrong-headed and misguided to view man as a destructive force meriting punishment for cultivating the environment for his benefit. With fossil fuels, limiting their use creates reduced economic prosperity, higher levels of human starvation, lower life expectancies and higher rates of infant mortality.

Beware of Saudi bedfellows

It sounds silly to say this about a regime that engages in egregious human-rights abuses as a matter of course (i.e. treating women as chattel, flogging bloggers, and chopping off the body parts of petty criminals), but Saudi Arabia has got a nerve.

According to a report on Israel’s Channel 2 on Tuesday, an anonymous European official revealed that the “Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran.” So much so, in fact, that they “have declared their readiness for the Israeli Air Force to overfly Saudi airspace en route to attack Iran if an attack is necessary.”

Though Riyadh has yet to confirm or deny this claim, it sounds plausible.

It is hard to get your arms around the stubborn determination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. For most of the nine years he has served as Israel’s leader, first from 1996 to 1999 and now since 2009, Netanyahu shied away from confrontations or buckled under pressure. He signed deals with the Palestinians he knew the Palestinians would never uphold in the hopes of winning the support of hostile US administrations and a fair shake from the pathologically hateful Israeli media.

In recent years he released terrorist murderers from prison. He abrogated Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. He agreed to support the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He agreed to keep giving the Palestinians of Gaza free electricity while they waged war against Israel. He did all of these things in a bid to accommodate US President Barack Obama and win over the media, while keeping the leftist parties in his coalitions happy.

The new law, which the Austrian government says could serve as a model for the rest of Europe, seeks to reduce outside meddling by prohibiting foreign funding for mosques, imams and Muslim organizations in Austria. It also stresses that Austrian law must take precedence over Islamic Sharia law for Muslims living in the country.

The Turkish government has expressed outrage at the financing ban, which it says amounts to “Islamophobia.”

“Countries cannot have their own version of Islam. Islam is universal and its sources are clear. … [E]fforts taken by state leaders to create a version of Islam that is particular to their own countries are futile.” — Mehmet Görmez, Head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate.

Rock, Paper, Scissors of PC Victimology Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews

For all of 15 minutes last weekend, Patricia Arquette was a progressive hero. Arquette, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar Sunday evening for her role in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, used the final few seconds of her acceptance speech to deliver a stirring plea for female equality. “To every woman who gave birth, to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights—it’s our time to have wage equality once and for all, and equal rights for women in the United States of America,” Arquette declared, to enthusiastic cries of approval and passionate finger-pointing from fellow celebrities Jennifer Lopez and Meryl Streep.

But in the time it took for Arquette to move from the Academy stage to answer questions from the press, she went from a liberal champion who used her two minutes of fame to speak passionately on behalf of a cause that she believed in to the latest target of the left’s ritualistic Two Minutes of Hate. Her offense: “It’s time,” she said, “for all the women in America and all the men that love women, and all the gay people, and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”

The government of the West Bank, which receives hundreds of millions in U.S. foreign aid, is found liable for financing terrorism in Israel.

For the better part of a decade, Congress has annually allocated $400 million to the Palestinian Authority in foreign aid, ostensibly to build schools, renovate hospitals and repair roads. On Monday in a U.S. federal court, a Manhattan jury found that this same Palestinian government financed and supported six terrorist acts that killed dozens of people in 2002-04 during the Second Intifada against Israel.The verdict held the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization liable for $218.5 million in damages. Under the 1992 Anti-Terrorism Act, the sum automatically triples to $655.5 million, roughly 15% of the Palestinian Authority’s annual budget. The Palestinian groups said they will appeal.

Speeches by foreign leaders to Joint Meetings of Congress are routine events, and often among the more forgettable. So it might have been with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ’s address to Congress next Tuesday. But leave it to the political wizards of the Obama Administration to turn it into the global diplomatic event of the year.
From the moment House Speaker John Boehner invited Mr. Netanyahu, the Obama Administration has made its displeasure plain, first accusing the Israeli government of breaching diplomatic protocol and leaning on Congressional Democrats to boycott. Then this week the Administration unleashed a withering personal and political attack that is unprecedented against a close ally. National Security Adviser Susan Rice even said the speech is “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between Washington and Jerusalem.

That’s some claim against one speech, and it’s worth asking why the Administration has gone to such extraordinary lengths to squelch it. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to make the case against President Obama’s looming nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps the Administration knows how vulnerable it is to such a critique.

‘Threat intelligence’ from the Internet was crucial to arresting three men planning terrorist strikes.

The arrest on Wednesday of three Brooklyn residents of Central Asian descent on charges of trying to join Islamic State and carry out attacks against the Coney Island amusement park and U.S. law-enforcement officers demonstrates the changing nature of the threat from homegrown extremists. It also demonstrates the means that intelligence and law-enforcement agencies have to disrupt this threat.

That two permanent U.S. residents, Abdurasul Juraboev, a citizen of Uzbekistan, and Akhror Saidakhmetov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, along with Uzbek immigrant Abror Habibov were arrested for attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization is unfortunately familiar. However, the way this conspiracy came together, as well as the way it was detected, speaks to the increasing importance of “threat intelligence” harvested from the cyber world.

Democrats may be ready for Hillary, but nothing is inevitable for the GOP.

Thoughts on the 2016 presidential primaries:

No one expects anything from the Democrats. They will back, accept or acquiesce in a coronation. This will not be called passive but disciplined. But when you think about it—one of our two major parties, in a time of considerable national peril, will settle its presidential nomination without vigorous debate—it is weird and disturbing.

Republicans are the action, and will draw all the lightning. A read on where the base—huge, broad and varied, including but not limited to attendees of this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference—is:

Republicans this year are not looking for Reagan. They’re looking for Churchill. They’re looking for the guy who knows the war is already here, not the guy who knows the war can be averted if we defeat the guys who would wage it. What is “the war”? Everything from scarily sluggish economic growth to long-term liabilities and deficits; from the melting away of the post-World-War-II order to the Mideast to domestic terrorism. Every four years there is frustration and argument; this year there is urgency.

Nearly two months have passed since the global outpouring of support for the murdered staffers of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Now those paeans to freedom of speech have disappeared down the same media black hole as the “bring back our girls” campaign protesting the kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian girls by the jihadist gang Boko Haram. This substitution of sentimental bluster and empty threats for meaningful action is consistent with decades of Europe’s intimidation by Muslim criminals, duplicitous “religious leaders,” and violent jihadists. The “Je suis Charlie” slogan should now be “Je suis Charlie, tendance Brown”––“I am Charlie, Brown variety.”

In one of Peanuts’ favorite running gags, Charlie Brown is baited into kicking a football held by the malignant Lucy, only to have her snatch away the ball at the last minute and send the hapless chump flying. This dynamic has defined the West’s relations with the Islamic world since the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization initiated the modern age of terrorism in the 60s. Indeed, dealing with the Palestinian Arabs has been an endless repeat of this bait-and-switch. From Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas, the “two-state solution” and “Palestinian national homeland” and “two nations living side-by-side in peace” have been the bait luring Europeans and Americans into demonizing Israel, pouring money into corrupt Palestinian Arab terrorist fronts, and making concessions to a never-ending series of escalating demands, all so the West can achieve the mythic “final peace agreement” that the Arabs have repeatedly demonstrated they have no interest in.