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Massive oil and gas reserves found off South African coast a ‘game-changer’ By Rick Moran

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/massive_oil_and_gas_reserves_found_off_south_african_coast_a_game_changer.html

But will the radical-Left government allow for the full development of the find?

While many of the world’s industrial powers are looking for ways to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, a fabulous oil discovery off the coast of South Africa promises to alter the energy future of the continent.

French state oil company Total led a consortium of companies that had been exploring off the coast of South Africa for several years. Their find has excited the entire oil industry and promises to further reduce the influence of OPEC and other big energy-producers.

ZeroHedge:

“With this discovery, Total has opened a new world-class gas and oil play and is well positioned to test several follow-on prospects on the same block,” said Kevin McLachlan, Senior Vice President Exploration at Total.

According to Total’s chief executive Patrick Pouyanne, the discovery could hold 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent of gas and condensate resources.

South Africa still imports much of its oil and gas, which makes this one find a potential game-changer for them.

South Africa is currently working on new legislation that would separate the conditions for exploring and exploiting oil and gas resources from those for traditional minerals.

Commenting on Total’s discovery, Andrew Latham, vice president, global exploration at natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie, said:

“Even though the well isn’t an oil discovery, if Brulpadda proves to be anywhere near as big as the estimates of up to 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources, it will still be a game-changer for South Africa.”

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China Talks With Venezuela Opposition to Protect Investments Chinese diplomats discuss debt, oil projects with Guaidó camp as pressure mounts against ally Maduro By Kejal Vyas

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-holds-talks-with-venezuelan-opposition-on-debt-oil-projects-11549993261

China has been holding talks with Venezuela’s political opposition to safeguard its investments in the troubled Latin American nation, hedging its bets as pressure builds on Nicolás Maduro, the embattled leader for whom Beijing has been a vital ally.

Chinese diplomats, worried over the future of its oil projects in Venezuela and nearly $20 billion that Caracas owes Beijing, have held debt negotiations in Washington in recent weeks with representatives of Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader heading the U.S.-backed efforts to oust Mr. Maduro, according to people familiar with the talks.

“China recognizes the increasing risk of a regime change and does not want to be on the bad side of a new regime,” said R. Evan Ellis, an expert on Chinese relations in Latin America at the U.S. Army War College. “While they prefer stability, they realize they have to put eggs in the other basket.”

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Canadian Minister Steps Down Amid Political Uproar Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suffers setback as minister at center of brewing controversy resigns 0 Comments By Paul Vieira and Kim Mackrael

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadian-minister-steps-down-amid-ethics-probe-11549992251

The biggest political storm of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s term in office escalated on Tuesday with the resignation of the cabinet minister at the center of allegations that his office interfered in a criminal case.

Jody Wilson-Raybould, who until last month was Canada’s justice minister, said she was tendering her resignation “with a heavy heart” from her post as veterans-affairs minister, in a statement released on her Twitter account. Her surprise decision, for which she gave no further explanation, is the latest development in a political uproar coming just months before Mr. Trudeau hits the campaign trail to seek re-election.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould has declined to comment for nearly a week since allegations emerged that officials in Mr. Trudeau’s office tried last year to persuade her as justice minister to drop a criminal prosecution and cut a plea deal with SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., a Montreal engineering company facing bribery-and-fraud charges. She had invoked solicitor-client privilege as a reason why she couldn’t discuss the matter further, given her previous role as the Canadian cabinet’s legal adviser.

Mr. Trudeau and other government officials have vehemently denied the allegations, first revealed in a report by Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

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Marc Lamont Hill To Speak at Fundraiser for Group Whose Leaders Aided Hamas By Hesham Shehab

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/marc-lamont-hill-to-speak-at-fundraiser-for-group-whose-leaders-aided-hamas/

In March, recently fired CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill will be the keynote speaker for a Chicago-based group the Israeli government recently declared to be “terrorists in suits.”

Hill, who was fired by CNN following a speech at the United Nations where he used the anti-Israel eliminationist rhetoric “from the river to the sea,” will speak at a fundraising event for American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). Founded in 2005, AMP promotes extreme anti-Israel views and has provided a platform for anti-Semitism. The organization seeks to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state, and plays a leading role in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States. AMP campaigns have depicted Israel as an apartheid state and have called for an end to American aid to Israel.

A report published by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs just this month noted that leaders and senior members of AMP were involved, directly and indirectly, in providing funding assistance to Hamas.

The report added that the funding activity took place through the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), an organization the U.S. government alleges was set up to provide propaganda services for Hamas. Formerly the largest Islamic charity in the United States, HLF and five of its directors were convicted of multiple terrorism-related charges, including material support for terror.

The report concluded that leading figures in HLF and IAP subsequently joined AMP, and now hold senior positions in the organization.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Lust for Destruction-by Waller Newell

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

Posted: November 6, 2018https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/lust-for-destruction/

Journalist Victor Sebestyen’s Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror is a fast-paced, absorbing new biography of one of history’s greatest revolutionaries—or, if you share my perspective, political mass murderers. Scrupulously researched and vividly written, it is the first major new biography of Vladimir Lenin in 20 years and makes extensive use of the archival materials that have become available in that time. It will be an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the founder of the Soviet Union.

Much of the interest in the book has been over its revelations about Lenin’s personal life, hitherto largely unknown. Although his wife, Nadya Krupskaya, has often been portrayed as a dour helpmate in a loveless marriage who cooked and cleaned for the Iron Man, Sebestyen reveals real depth of feeling and complexity in their private lives. At the same time, Lenin carried on a passionate love affair for a decade with a beautiful French émigré, Inessa Armand, “by far the most glamorous of all the Russian émigrés in the radical circles of Paris.” His “ménage à trois” with Inessa and Nadya (who condoned the affair) was “central to Lenin’s emotional life.” According to Sebestyen, the Soviet leader was “not a monster” but, in personal relationships, “invariably kind.” He could even laugh at himself, “occasionally.” What’s more, he didn’t revel in “the details of his victims’ deaths” as did Hitler or Mao, because, for Lenin, “the deaths were theoretical, mere numbers.” I’m afraid Sebestyen may have succumbed to the temptation every biographer faces of getting too attached to his subject.

After he led the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 against the crumbling Czarist autocracy, Lenin’s socialist state quickly became a totalitarian hell of mass executions, forced collectivization, and slave labor. Newly revealed details about his personal life furnish no further insight into this vast project of institutionalized terrorism. Countless men display traits of loyalty in marriage as well as lapses from that loyalty; very few emerge as political murderers on such a grand scale. The most that these details can establish is the sickening contrast between someone capable of tenderness and affection in private life and capable at the same time of mobilizing the deaths of millions.

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PRESIDENT TRUMP ON ILHAN OMAR

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

President Trump on Rep. @IlhanMN:https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1095382455735988225

“Her lame apology, and that’s what it was, it was lame, and she didn’t mean a word of it was just not appropriate. I think she should resign from Congress.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Furies in Congress by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22344/the-furies-in-congress http://goudsmit.pundicity.com
http://lindagoudsmit.com

In ancient Greek mythology the Furies are the three goddesses of Vengeance, Jealousy, and Anger. They are the daughters of Mother Earth Gaia and her son Father Sky Uranus. The Furies are infamous for taking vengeance on men and punishing all crimes including breaking the rules of society by striking the offenders with madness.

The Furies in ancient mythology dispensed vigilante justice and were the “guardians of the law when the state had not yet intervened or did not exist, or when the crime was a crime of ethics and not actual law.” Here is the problem – we don’t live in ancient Greece and we are not characters in a mythological story. We live in the United States of America, the greatest experiment in liberty and individual freedom the world has ever known.

For 242 years our Constitution has been the supreme law of the land that provides the national frame of government and rules of society to guide American life. Our Founding Fathers envisioned ordered liberty based on individualism, personal responsibility, and the meritocracy. Their economic principles included property rights, free markets, and sound money.

In the last several decades the radical left has engaged in a culture war against the United States that seeks to undermine the Constitution and replace it with a “living document” that would support collectivism aka socialism.

The Furies in Congress Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar are the spawn of the radical leftist narrative that embraces liberalism’s dogmatic tenets of political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism. These three women were elected by a segment of the American electorate who embrace radical leftism’s orthodoxy.

The new secular religion Leftism embraces the antisemitism of Islamic sharia law, the Marxist hatred of American capitalism, and the misandry (hatred of men) of the ancient Greek Furies. The Leftists in Washington have common cause to collapse America’s representative republic but what are they offering to replace it? This is where the Leftist alliance collapses.

POLITICS Comments turned off

2020 LINEUP SO FAR

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

De Blasio heads to New Hampshire as he contemplates run for president By SALLY GOLDENBERG

https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2019/02/11/de-blasio-heads-to-new-hampshire-as-he-contemplates-run-for-president-848323
‘This Is My Space’: Kirsten Gillibrand’s Unabashedly Feminist Campaign

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/12/us/politics/kirsten
Klobuchar dismisses ‘moderate’ label, says she should be seen as ‘progressive’Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/klobuchar-dismisses-moderate-label-people-should-see-me-as-a-progressive
Kamala Harris Backs Legalization: I Smoked Marijuana, “I Think It Gives A Lot Of People Joy”Posted By Ian Schwartz

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/02/11/kamala_harris_backs_legalization_i_smoked_marijuana_i_think_it_gives_a_lot_of_people_joy.html
Will Sherrod Brown Carry the Blue-Collar Torch in 2020? By Philip Wegmann

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/12/will_sherrod_brown_carry_the_blue-collar_torch_in_2020_139439.html

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Trump tax returns: House Democrats ready for ultimate fishing expedition by Byron York

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-trump-tax-returns-house-dems-ready-for-ultimate-fishing-expedition

Yes, Democrats want to start a new investigation into already-under-investigation Trump-Russia allegations. And yes, they want to investigate Trump associates like Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and others. But by far the biggest thing Democrats want, now that they have the majority in the House, is to get their hands on the president’s tax returns.

House Democrats want to use a 1924 law that allows any one of three entities — the House Ways & Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, or the Joint Committee on Taxation — to demand that the Treasury Department turn over the returns of any individual. Passed in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal and controversy over the finances of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, the law has almost never been used. For the first 50 years of the law’s existence, no one tried to get a president’s returns — although the law played a role in the fight over Richard Nixon’s finances — and in the years since Gerald Ford took office, presidents have voluntarily made their returns public. Until Donald Trump.

POLITICS Comments turned off

In El Paso, Beto O’Rourke Makes It Easy For Trump To Target ‘Extreme’ Democrats By John Daniel Davidson

Posted By on February 12th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/12/el-paso-trump-sets-sights-extreme-democrats/

With Beto O’Rourke as a perfect foil, Trump kicked off his 2020 reelection bid by painting Democrats as ‘outside the mainstream.’

EL PASO, Texas — It was altogether fitting that President Trump’s rally Monday night in El Paso was something of a circus. After all, it was the first official campaign event of his 2020 reelection bid.

The rally had all the trappings of any other Trump rally: itinerant Trump vendors hawking their wares outside the venue, supporters decked out in MAGA gear who traveled from several states away, a handful of angry protesters who managed to sneak signs into the stadium and disrupt things for a minute or two.

But it also had something extra. There were the theatrics of being right on the U.S.-Mexico border while another government shutdown looms over funding for Trump’s border wall. There was also the spectacle of a protest march and counter-rally a few hundred yards away featuring none other than Beto O’Rourke, a likely 2020 Democratic contender.

It was a perfect setting for Trump to draw out the contrasts between his GOP and the Democratic Party heading into the 2020 cycle. On everything from the border wall to abortion to the Mueller investigation to the booming economy and the Democrats’ Green New Deal, Trump presented himself as reasonable and Democrats as extreme.