Smart move

  Israelis Questioning Their Nation's Dependence on USA...

The [UN] resolution called for a cease-fire as well as the release of hostages, instead of embracing the Israeli position that a cease-fire be predicated on the hostages’ release. ...

The U.S. has rarely used its leverage in the Security Council before to express dissatisfaction with Israel. The last time was in 2016, under the Obama administration, when the U.S. abstained from voting on a resolution that called for a halt to all Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

Hamas intelligence hub found beneath United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, 12 of whose employees are linked to Oct 7 massacre of Jews

 The Wall Street Journal reports:

Israel’s discovery of the Hamas operations below Unrwa offices is likely to put further pressure on the agency, which is facing international scrutiny after Israeli allegations that at least 12 of its employees had links to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which authorities say killed 1,200 people.

Israeli military officials assert that people working at Unrwa would have been aware of the tunnel complex, either from activities during its construction or by what they said would have been a jump in electricity usage when the complex started operating. ...

 

The organization’s main donors, including the U.S., have frozen funding pending the outcome of an investigation into the allegations. ...

 

Israeli military officials say they have known about the complex under Unrwa’s headquarters for a few years but say they decided they couldn’t use airstrikes to target it because of the U.N. presence above. ... 

 

Israeli military intelligence has estimated in recent weeks that roughly 10% of Unrwa’s 12,000 or so employees in Gaza, most of whom are Palestinian, have ties to the militant group, including nearly a quarter of its male employees—a percentage that Israel says is higher than the roughly 15% of Gaza males who are linked to the group, through either its military or political wings. ...

 

The Israeli military in a statement late Saturday said it had found large quantities of weapons, including rifles, ammunition, grenades and explosives, in rooms of the Unrwa buildings above the tunnel complex.

Long after Red Sea attacks began, ridiculous Biden administration appeasers finally re-adopt Trump designation of Houthis as terrorists which they had revoked in February 2021

The U.S. State Department on Wednesday designated the Iranian-backed, Yemen-based Houthi rebels as specially designated global terrorists, or SDGTs, in an effort to deter further attacks against commercial ships crossing the Red Sea. ...

The State Department under President Joe Biden revoked the Houthis’ designation as a foreign terrorist organization, or FTO, in Feb. 2021, just a month after it issued the label under former President Donald Trump.

The reversal came in response to calls from the United Nations and humanitarian groups who said that the terrorist classification and its associated sanctions were “accelerating Yemen’s slide into large-scale famine.”

Three years later, after months of Red Sea attacks, the Houthis have regained their spot on a U.S. terrorist list.

More.

Global fascists wrecked the US middle class, and now they want to wreck it some more

 UN Calls on Fed to Halt Rate Rises...

Once again, it was the idiot liberal Republican George H. W. Bush who advanced the anti-capitalist Democrat global warming agenda

 . . . the Inflation Reduction Act was signed by President Biden earlier this summer. It had been thirty years and sixty-five days since President George H.W. Bush signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro.

Here.

George also spawned the redundant hate crime legislation, huge increases to LEGAL immigration, wheel-chair access at every intersection's crosswalk among other expensive accommodations for the ambulatory handicapped, who in 2016 are fewer than 7% of the population, an unchastened Saddam Hussein, and READ MY LIPS . . . NEW TAXES.

Oh yeah. He also literally spawned the guy who didn't keep America safe on 911 and gave us the expensive nation-building wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the insidious Patriot Act, but don't get me started.

Everything BUSH has been terrible for America, which is saying a lot when everything Democrat always is anyway.  

Average temperature in 2021 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was the eighth highest on record in 124 years

The trend line after 123 years of data shows average temperature in Grand Rapids, Michigan, rising 0.7 degrees F, or 0.388 degrees C, 65% less than the 1.1 degrees C claimed for the world by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change yesterday.

And the minimal warming in Grand Rapids may in fact be misleading. Five of the data points in those top eight are from the last twenty-five years, during which increasing development around the KGRR measuring station may well be contributing heat island effects.

 

 

Climate Scientists Write To UN: There Is No Climate Emergency:

Professor Guus Berkhout
The Hague
guus.berkhout@clintel.org

23 September 2019

Sr. António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York, NY 10017, United States of America.

Ms. Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, Executive Secretary,
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
UNFCCC Secretariat, UN Campus, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1,
53113 Bonn, Germany

Your Excellencies,

There is no climate emergency.

A global network of more than 500 knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have the honor to address to Your Excellencies the attached European Climate Declaration, for which the signatories to this letter are the national ambassadors.

The general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is at present founded are unfit for their purpose. Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models. Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.

We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation.

We ask you to place the Declaration on the agenda of your imminent New York session.

We also invite you to organize with us a constructive high-level meeting between world-class scientists on both sides of the climate debate early in 2020. The meeting will give effect to the sound and ancient principle no less of sound science than of natural justice that both sides should be fully and fairly heard. Audiatur et altera pars!

Please let us know your thoughts about such a joint meeting.

Yours sincerely, ambassadors of the European Climate Declaration,

Professor Guus Berkhout                               The Netherlands
Professor Richard Lindzen                             USA
Professor Reynald Du Berger                         French Canada
Professor Ingemar Nordin                              Sweden
Terry Dunleavy                                               New Zealand
Jim O’Brien                                                     Rep. of Ireland
Viv Forbes                                                       Australia
Professor Alberto Prestininzi                          Italy
Professor Jeffrey Foss                                     English Canada
Professor Benoît Rittaud                                 France
Morten Jødal                                                   Norway
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt                              Germany
Rob Lemeire                                                    Belgium
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley            UK

There is no climate emergency
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate polities should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crop worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.

Policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.

Read full story here…

Justin Raimondo is right, and Coulter and Nehlen are wrong: Afghanistan is the world's first narcostate, supplying over 75% of the world's heroin

Nuke Afghanistan's poppy fields, and you solve a lot of the world's problems. Raimondo is right, Coulter and Nehlen are wrong. Mexico isn't the "source". It's the conduit. 

From the New York Times in 2013, here:

Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and last year accounted for 75 percent of the world’s heroin supply. “The assumption is it will reach again to 90 percent this year,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations’ top counternarcotics official here.

China's nine-dash-line claim in the South China Sea will finally get its day in court

But China won't be there to defend it.

From the story here in The Diplomat:

On Thursday, October 29, the Permanent Court of Arbitration awarded its first decision in the The Republic of Philippines v. The People’s Republic of China. The court ruled that the case was “properly constituted” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, that China’s “non-appearance” (i.e., refusal to participate) did not preclude the Court’s jurisdiction, and that the Philippines was within its rights in filing the case. In short, Thursday’s decision means that the Permanent Court of Arbitration rules in the Philippines’ favor on the question of jurisdiction. With the jurisdictional issue resolved, the case can move forward to evaluating the merits of the Philippines’ legal assertions in the South China Sea. ...

First, and most vexing for China, is the status of Beijing’s nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea. Manila argues that the nine-dash line is an excessive maritime claim and not in line with the entitlements for coastal states under UNCLOS. With jurisdiction question resolved, we can look forward to China’s nine-dash line getting its day in international court (although, notably, without China taking part to defend it). China has kept the scope of its nine-dash line ambiguous under formal and customary international law, but once the Court decides on the matter, its ability to maintain ambiguity will be limited.

Second, based on the first point, that the nine-dash line is an excessive claim, the Philippines is arguing that China’s occupation of various features in the Spratly Islands is illegal.

Hillary Clinton cleverly hides within the sacrosanctity of her husband's presidential email server

But when is she going to stop needing her president husband and stand on her own two feet?

The answer is never. Elect Hillary and Bill Clinton will be president all over again.

From the story here:

Hillary said she emailed with Bill, but the thing is ... Bill Clinton doesn't use email.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton said the server that housed her emails while she was secretary of state (that was reportedly housed at her home in New York) was set up for President Bill Clinton. She also said that some of the "personal" emails she deleted were between her and her husband.

But just before Hillary began the press conference at the United Nations building, the Wall Street Journal reported that Bill Clinton does not use email.

"The former president, who does regularly use Twitter, has sent a grand total of two emails during his entire life, both as president, says Matt McKenna, his spokesman," WSJ reported. "After leaving office, Mr. Clinton established his own domain that staff use — @presidentclinton.com. But Mr. Clinton still doesn't use email himself, Mr. McKenna said." . . .

But Hillary said during her press conference that her email server "contains personal communications from my husband and me."

It appears at least one Clinton is not telling the whole truth.

So, Libya was really Hillary's war, and more broadly the women's war, not Obama's

From the first part of an investigative report, here, which details that there were secret recordings between Gaddafi's son and none other than Rep. Dennis Kucinich, now out of office:

Mr. Kucinich, who challenged Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, acknowledged that he undertook his own conversations with the Gadhafi regime. He said he feared Mrs. Clinton was using emotion to sell a war against Libya that wasn’t warranted, and he wanted to get all the information he could to share with his congressional colleagues. ...

Numerous U.S. officials interviewed by The Times confirmed that Mrs. Clinton, and not Mr. Obama, led the charge to use NATO military force to unseat Gadhafi as Libya’s leader and that she repeatedly dismissed the warnings offered by career military and intelligence officials. 

In the recovered recordings, a U.S. intelligence liaison working for the Pentagon told a Gadhafi aide that Mr. Obama privately informed members of Congress that Libya “is all Secretary Clinton’s matter” and that the nation’s highest-ranking generals were concerned that the president was being misinformed. ...

Instead of relying on the Defense Department or the intelligence community for analysis, officials told The Times, the White House trusted Mrs. Clinton’s charge, which was then supported by Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice and National Security Council member Samantha Power, as reason enough for war.

Bloomberg's Al Hunt hurls the loaded term "denier" at Republicans

Here's Al Hunt, insinuating that the doubters of climate change are in the same class as Holocaust deniers:

"Still, Francis's message is unsettling to more than a few conservatives, particularly his focus on climate change and his initiatives to influence the United Nations' conference in Paris this year. Some prominent Republicans, such as Senate Environment Committee Chairman James Inhofe, are climate-change deniers."

Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Favors Multinationals Over Sovereigns

If I didn't know better, I'd say fascism for Obama is merely a now worn out model for a grander scheme of global governance by elites who exercise that rule as staff of multinational corporations and think of themselves as citizens of the world.

From HuffPo, here:

[A] newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration's advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws. ...

[F]oreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings. ...

Two United Nations groups recently urged global governments not to agree to trade terms currently being advocated by the Obama administration, on the grounds that such rules would hurt public health.

Such foreign investment standards have also come under fire at home, from both conservative sovereignty purists and progressive activists for the potential to hamper domestic priorities implemented by democratically elected leaders. The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by Congress in 1993, and a host of subsequent trade pacts granted corporations new powers that had previously been reserved for sovereign nations and that have allowed companies to sue nations directly over issues.

While the current trade deal could pose a challenge to American sovereignty, large corporations headquartered in the U.S. could potentially benefit from it by using the same terms to oppose the laws of foreign governments. If one of the eight Pacific nations involved in the talks passes a new rule to which an American firm objects, that U.S. company could take the country to court directly in international tribunals.

Public Citizen challenged the independence of these international tribunals, noting that "The tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as 'judges' and as advocates for the investors suing the governments," according to the text of the agreement.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism here is so beside herself she's wondering if Obama can be impeached over this.

Everything You Need To Know About Gerald R. Ford

"Reagan’s uncommon good sense extended to sound judgments about controversial people who were similarly outspoken and principled—and thus unpopular if not under constant fire. He was an early supporter of Pat Moynihan’s courageous efforts to end decades of hypocrisy at the United Nations—at a time when even many Republicans still viewed the institution as a sacred cow. Jeanne Kilpatrick’s contentious, but insightful distinctions between Stalinists and right-wing dictators abroad won over an unabashedly supportive Reagan. He praised Soviet dissidents—even as a cautious Gerald Ford refused to meet with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. When William Bennet was taking a beating for his unsettling honest talk about the corruption in our schools and universities, Reagan brushed off worries that his Education Secretary was becoming a political liability."

-- Victor Davis Hanson, here

Saudi Arabia Puts The Screws To The Muslim Sympathizer In Chief

Turki al-Faisal, here, in The New York Times:

Today, there is a chance for the United States and Saudi Arabia to contain Iran and prevent it from destabilizing the region. But this opportunity will be squandered if the Obama administration’s actions at the United Nations force a deepening split between our two countries. ...

American support for Palestinian statehood is therefore crucial, and a veto will have profound negative consequences.


Expect more bowing to Saudi Arabia from President Obama: "Palestinian" statehood based on the pre-1967 borders, despite Israel's right to Judea and Samaria as the spoils of the 1967 war, will not be vetoed by the US at the UN because Obama, well, you know, has a problem with Israel.

The tyrant is but the slave turned inside out.

The Pittsburgh Press, June 12, 1967

MAKING AFGHANISTAN SAFE FOR THE OPIUM TRADE

Not that long ago, going to war meant destroying the enemy's ability to make it on you.

That quaint idea has been replaced by the asshats' better idea of "winning hearts and minds."

In Afghanistan we're trying to do that with electricity, which the Taliban in turn steals in areas it controls and "sells" to the locals, who use it to power irrigation pumps which help the opium poppies grow. Like good organized criminals, the Taliban then also skims the drug trade pipeline to Iran to fund its insurgency.

The electricity skimming operation nets the Taliban about $4 million annually, according to this report in The Wall Street Journal. But the drug skimming must net them far more. The United Nations estimates the export value of Afghanistan's opium production at $4 billion annually, only a quarter of which may actually go to the growers.

You'd think "shoot 'em all, let God sort 'em out" would be the appropriate response to this situation, if it were a real war. But then you would be wrong. Instead, America is making Afghanistan safe for the Taliban gangsters and for the world's primary source of heroin.

So far the Kajaki hydroelectric power plant in the south has gotten $100 million in upgrades from the US. $400 million more is being requested for 2011, some of which will go to fund electricity generation also in the southern city of Kandahar.

In a real war the dams and power plants would be targets. That we can't even imagine the necessity of destroying them explains why there's not going to be a victory in Afghanistan for the US.