Netanyahu: No ‘Pause,’ No Ceasefire, No Fuel For Gaza Unless Hostages Released

AP Photo/Evan Vucci
"We won't stop until victory," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a short, televised address on Friday. He told the Israeli people that he had rejected U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's suggestion of a humanitarian "pause" in the fighting that does not include a release of their hostages. He also says Israel “will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza.”

He promised that victory would be “sharp and clear” and would “resonate for generations.”

For the first time since the war began, we can see daylight between the U.S. and Israeli governments. As Israel continues to prosecute a war that, by necessity, is leading to a high civilian death toll, Israel's friends find it more and more difficult to give the Jewish state unqualified support.

I'm pretty sure Netanyahu was aware of this going into the war. It doesn't appear that anything the United States says or does will deter him from achieving his number one war aim: destroying Hamas so they can never threaten to security of the Israeli people again.

Times of Israel:

He says he told Blinken that “Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of our hostages. Israel will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza and opposes sending money to the Strip.”

He notes that Israel has lost hundreds of civilians and soldiers on and since October 7 — wonderful fighters, incredible Israelis… people who blocked these monsters with their bodies.”

He tells some of their stories and says they “sacrificed their lives for our lives.”

“We are trying to fight with minimal danger to our warriors, but we will do whatever is needed to defeat our enemies,” he concludes.

Indeed, the call for a "humanitarian pause" would only give Hamas time to regroup and dig in. And a pause would definitely do no favors for the Israeli and foreign hostages being held in Gaza. Netanyahu has no choice. All he has for leverage regarding the hostages is Israel's ability to make life absolutely miserable for Gazans. 

Hamas, of course, is doing fine. It's the Gazans who are suffering and even if public opinion turned against Hamas -- a remote possibility -- the terrorists wouldn't care. They're not at war to save the Palestinians or create a homeland for them. They are fighting a holy war to destroy Israel. 

Hamas certainly doesn't care about a "pause" except how they can use it to better their strategic position.

Wall Street Journal:

As Israeli forces have advanced, quickly encircling Gaza City and bearing down on tunnel networks and strongholds, Hamas would like nothing more than to slow them down.

It strains credibility to think Hamas wouldn’t use a pause to its advantage. Nor is Hamas likely to release all hostages and forfeit its best leverage. It may drag out negotiations, dribbling out hostages to win reprieve after reprieve, plus propaganda bumps.

The way to help Palestinian civilians isn’t to slow the Israeli advance. The less control Hamas has over Gaza’s streets, the more civilians can escape the fighting and the more aid can be brought in securely. The ground invasion has already allowed humanitarian assistance to ramp up, with more than 100 truckloads now arriving each day. Hamas would use freedom of action to keep civilians as shields and pilfer more aid—limiting what Israel can let in.

The fate of the hostages may be uncertain but they are possibly Hamas's last, most potent weapon. As their infrastructure and fighters are being systematically eliminated, Hamas's only hope for survival is the intercession of others — the United States in particular — who could use its influence to stop Israel short of their primary war aim of destroying Hamas.

At the moment, Biden is still — reluctantly — on board. But Biden is in a campaign for re-election and anything is possible if American public opinion changes.

Israel cuts off food, water and power to Gaza: Day 3 update~Israel Hits 1,000 Hamas Targets in Gaza

Hamas is threatening to execute one captured Israeli for every civilian house bombed without pre-warning. This as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel's retaliation against Hamas has only just begun and it will change the Middle East.

Israel Hits 1,000 Hamas Targets in Gaza

Biden Offshore Drilling Plan Is the Most Restrictive In US History

If it’s taken you a month to recover from all the whoppers contained in the first “Biden 2024” ad – especially its claim that ol’ Joe engaged in “passing laws” that “make us more energy independent” – get ready for another Biden-created insult to your intelligence and attack on your wallet.

Iran, Venezuela and Syria sign groundbreaking tripartite deal to construct oil refinery in Homs, Syria

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/10/iran-venezuela-and-syria-sign-groundbreaking-tripartite-deal-to-construct-oil-refinery-in-homs;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The new tripartite deal just signed by Iran, Venezuela, and Syria to construct a groundbreaking oil refinery in Homs, with a capacity of 140,000 barrels per day, further strengthens the collaboration, as well as the economies, of these countries. Iran has been significantly aiding Syria and Venezuela to bypass the impact of Western sanctions — providing both countries with technical, economic, and military aid.

Iran’s relationships with Syria and Venezuela could be disastrous for Western interests. In 2020, U.S. Southern Command chief Admiral Craig Faller warned that Iran’s Quds Force was sending weapons and troops to Venezuela. In 2022, Venezuela provided Iran with 1,000,000 hectares of  alleged “farmland for cultivation.” That same year, an independent Israeli intelligence analyst stated that a Venezuelan cargo plane was linked to Iran’s attempts to attack Israelis. Venezuela has also hosted Hizballah and Fatah cells involved in money laundering, drug dealing, and jihad activity.

As for Syria, Iran carries out much of its proxy activities and plots against Israel there. In April, Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah talked further about “resistance” against Israel. Last month, it was revealed that Iran is now building a new airstrip in southern Syria, only twelve miles away from the Israeli border.

“Iran, Venezuela, Syria ink tripartite deal to construct a refinery in Homs,” Tehran Times, October 1, 2023:

TEHRAN – Iran, Venezuela, and Syria have signed a trilateral agreement to cooperate on constructing a new oil refinery in Syria’s Homs Province, a senior official with the Iranian Oil Ministry said.

Deputy Oil Minister Jalil Salari provided the information in an interview with Iranian media, IRNA reported on Sunday.

The deal foresees the construction of “a new 140,000-barrel refinery,” whose required oil would be provided jointly by the Islamic Republic and Venezuela, Salari said.

“The [relevant] fundamental studies and designing process [for implementation of the project] has been completed,” the official noted.

The refinery would complement two already functioning ones, the Banias Refinery and the Homs Refinery, which are both located in western Syria.

According to Salari, “the financing and construction [phases of the project] are on the agenda.”

Iran and Syria have also signed a memorandum of understanding towards repairing the 110,000-barrel oil refinery that is located in Homs, the Iranian official reported….

World’s Worst Philanthropist Honors Our Second-Worst President, JIMMY CARTER

World’s Worst Philanthropist Honors Our Second-Worst President
(AP Photo)
When you think of Jimmy Carter and his disastrous presidency, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Galloping inflation? The energy crisis? The national “malaise”? Appeasement of the Soviets? Appeasement of the Palestinian jihadis?

All that and more can be said about Carter’s sorry record as president, topped only lately by the frankly anti-American Biden regime, but as far as the world’s worst and scariest philanthropist, Bill Gates, is concerned, none of that is President Cornpone’s greatest achievement. The Gates Foundation has just awarded Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter with a lifetime achievement award for their “near-eradication of guinea worm disease.”

No, I am not making this up. Atlanta’s WSB reported Wednesday that America’s second-worst president, Jimmy Carter, and his wife Rosalyn “have been awarded for their lifetime of philanthropy and leadership with a lifetime achievement award from the Gates Foundation.” By “philanthropy and leadership,” of course, the Gates Foundation means “sanctimony and globalism.”

The award that Mr. and Mrs. Peanut got is called the Goalkeepers Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Gates Foundation explained why they deserved this illustrious and coveted honor: “From the near-eradication of guinea worm disease to their work for peace and democracy, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s trailblazing leadership has made a difference for the world. We’re thrilled to give them the Goalkeepers Lifetime Achievement Award.”

Well, yeah, Carter certainly has made a difference in the world. He weakened America on the world stage in what turned out to be the final stages of the Cold War, which his successor, Ronald Reagan, brought to a close by abandoning Carter’s policies of appeasement. He emboldened genocidal Palestinian jihadis by forcing Israel to accept the fiction of Palestinian nationality and make numerous other concessions in the widely and unjustly hailed Camp David Accords. He embodied pusillanimity as he adopted the pose of the self-righteous schoolmarm, scolding America to turn down the thermostat in response to a fictional energy crisis (created by a forest of regulations that Reagan cleared away, thus ending the crisis).

Political cartoonists of the day took to portraying Carter as a tiny man seated in a massive presidential chair; throughout his presidency, the conviction grew among Americans that he was just too small a man for the job. Thus it is fitting that Bill Gates would look up from his efforts to depopulate America and the world and decide that the great achievement for which Jimmy Carter ought to be remembered and honored is the “near-eradication of guinea worm disease.” Maybe it takes one worm to eradicate another.

Related: Jimmy Carter’s REAL Personality and What It Reveals About the Left’s Hypocrisy

After all, what else could the Gates Foundation say? That Carter emboldened and strengthened America’s enemies, as has nearly every president who has followed him into the Oval Office? That the “malaise” for which Carter wagged his finger at Americans has now become the official policy of the Biden regime? That regime appears bent on removing every source of comfort and happiness from American lives and leaving us riding stinking, jam-packed electric buses on the way home from our joyless jobs to our overcrowded, dilapidated, crime-ridden yet high-rent apartment blocks, where a revolting meal of bugs awaits us.

Carter set the ball rolling toward that dystopian future when he called upon Americans to swelter in the summertime and freeze in the winter so as to address a crisis he created. Half a century later, the America-Last successors of Carter are preparing to force Americans to take similar steps to solve the fake crisis of “climate change” as Merrick Garland’s Gestapo is poised to put dissidents on terror watch lists.

The father of the dystopia we already enjoy is Jimmy Carter, and so he is more deserving of an award from the sinister and dystopia-minded Gates Foundation than anyone else, with the possible exception of Old Joe Biden himself. But hey, there’s always next year to honor the conscienceless kleptocrat who now sits in the Oval Office.

If Gates does honor Old Joe, he could throw in a new award also: the Jimmy Carter Award, given to the president of the United States who damages the country the most while crowing about how much he has accomplished and smugly hectoring the American people to look up his works and hail him for his magnificence. Who would have thought that Jimmy Carter, of all people, would become the paradigmatic president in our Age of Absurdity? But here we are.

Biden Admin Quietly Moves To Ban Natural Gas Transport Via Rail Systems

Biden Admin Quietly Moves To Ban Natural Gas Transport Via Rail Systems

EAST PALESTINE, OH - FEBRUARY 23: U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (C) visits with Department of Transportation Investigators at the site of the derailment on February 23 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. On February 3rd, a Norfolk Southern Railways train carrying toxic chemicals derailed causing an environmental disaster. Thousands of residents were ordered to evacuate after the area was placed under a state of emergency and temporary evacuation orders (Photo by Brooke LaValley-Pool/Getty Images)
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg (C) visits with Department of Transportation Investigators at the site of the derailment on February 23 2023 in East Palestine, Ohio. (Photo by Brooke LaValley-Pool/Getty Images)

OAN’s James Meyers
1:09 PM – Wednesday, September 6, 2023

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/biden-admin-quietly-moves-to-ban-natural-gas-transport-via-rail-systems/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Biden Administration quietly reversed a Trump-era regulation by moving to ban the transport of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by rail system. 

In a federal filing on Friday, ahead of Labor Day weekend, the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), moved to suspend a Trump-era rule allowing the transport of LNG via train cars.

However, the rule will remain in effect until a permanent rule regarding a new LNG rail tank car transportation is proposed and put into place, which could take several months or until June 30, 2025. 

“We are encouraged by the decision to suspend the dangerous practice of transporting highly flammable LNG by rail through communities,” said Patrick Grenter, the director of eco group Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign.

“We have seen the destruction that an accident can cause to communities bordering the railway route, often communities most impacted by pollution and we support any step that will keep it from happening again,” he added. “We urge PHMSA to make the only reasonable decision available to them: make the suspension permanent and ban LNG by rail once and for all.” 

This news comes after Democrat lawmakers had written to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg earlier this year, pleading for a permanent ban on LNG transportation by a rail system, citing safety risks pointed out by a handful of environmental groups. 

The PHMSA claimed that the new rule would help the federal government limit public health risks and environmental consequences.

The agency also stated that the new regulation will allow enough time to complete ongoing testing and evaluation for LNG rail transportation, which can help create mitigation measures to limit risks during transportation. 

“This suspension will give time for PHMSA, in conjunction with the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering as well as its Canadian regular counterparts, to complete critical research on transporting cryogenic liquids like LNG (and hydrogen) by rail more safely,” said PHMSA Deputy Administrator Tristan Brown. “This research is expected to conclude in the next year or so and will inform future federal safety regulations from PHMSA and the FRA.”

Republican Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, said that the move by the Biden administration was the latest example of its war on energy. 

“Today the Biden administration has fired another salvo in its war on American energy by essentially prohibiting the movement of LNG by rail,” Cruz said. “America is a leader in reducing carbon emissions largely because of the United States development and use of natural gas. The energy renaissance we are seeing in this country is producing enormous environmental benefits.”

“This is yet another example of why the Biden administration cannot be trusted to implement pro-domestic energy policies,” he added.

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GOP slams Biden administration’s proposal for home water heaters amid CO2 emission fears

 

First, They Came for Your Gas Stove. Now They're Coming for Your Hot Water Heater.

SEE ALSO: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/07/23/first-they-came-for-your-gas-stove-now-theyre-coming-for-your-hot-water-heater-n1712949

BY BROOKE MALLORY

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/gop-slams-biden-administrations-proposal-for-home-water-heaters-amid-co2-emission-fears/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (L) looks on as US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (R) speaks during a daily press briefing. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

OAN’s Brooke Mallory
11:33 AM – Sunday, July 23, 2023  

If a new Department of Energy plan that has been heavily opposed by Republican senators becomes law, water heaters might soon be subject to considerably stricter efficiency criteria.

The Biden administration is currently pushing towards requiring the majority of electric water heaters to adopt heat pump technology and gas-fired water heaters to utilize condensing technology in a draft regulation.

The proposal was released by the Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday.

It comes months after the Biden administration sparked a tempest over feared stovetop rules, with Albany, New York, lawmakers passing a contentious first-in-the-nation gas stove ban.

“Today’s actions, together with our industry partners and stakeholders, improve outdated efficiency standards for common household appliances, which is essential to slashing utility bills for American families and cutting harmful carbon emissions,” said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

The Biden administration reportedly claims that the regulation “plan,” which is slated to take effect in 2029, would save Americans $198 billion and reduce CO2 emissions by 501 million metric tons over the following 30 years. However, these proposed numbers and estimates have been disputed by many analysts from GOP think tanks.

Minimum efficiency criteria for oil-fired storage water heaters, gas-fired water heaters, and gas-fired instantaneous water heaters will be heavily raised by the department.

“This proposal reinforces the trajectory of consumer savings that forms the key pillar of Bidenomics and builds on the unprecedented actions already taken by this Administration to lower energy costs for working families across the nation,” Granholm continued.

According to the agency, water heating accounts for 23% of consumer utility expenses and yearly residential energy usage.

Congress compels the agency to develop efficiency criteria, and it claims to have last modified its water heater policy in 2010.

Thomas Massie, a Republican U.S. representative for Kentucky’s 4th congressional district since 2012, shared his thoughts on the new water-heating proposal on Twitter.

 “Leave us alone. These products already exist in the free market. Consumers should decide whether the upfront cost of a heat-pump water heater is worth the possible long term savings. In many cases, the monthly savings never make up for the upfront cost of the equipment,” Massie said.

“From the people who want showers and faucets without enough water pressure, dishwashers that don’t fully clean, washers and dryers that fully wash or dry, etc., they now want water heaters that don’t fully and quickly heat. All in the name of ‘environmentalism’ or ‘climate change,’” said a separate social media user.

These new regulations would apply to new water heaters that enter the market in 2029.

The departments emphasized that President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act includes “tax credits, rebates, and other incentives” to help people save money on more efficient water heaters.

The new suggestion has already sparked debate among many notable online users.

“First they came for your gas stoves. Then they came for your dishwashers. Next, they came for your water heaters and air conditioners. Now the Biden apparatchiks are coming for your portable gas generators,” Forbes contributor David Blackmon asserted.

In recent months, the government has also taken steps to tighten requirements for a variety of domestic equipment, including air conditioners, washing machines, refrigerators, and others. A member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission sparked outrage earlier this year when he suggested that a widespread ban on gas stoves may be on the table.

The House voted last month to prevent the federal government from doing so in the future, and the Senate has not yet voted on that bill.

The Biden administration boasted in December of last year that it had taken 110 steps to boost efficiency regulations in 2022 to help its “climate change goals.”

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Well, Biden Screwed Us Forever on Another Damn Thing

Well, Biden Screwed Us Forever on Another Damn Thing

BY STEPHEN GREEN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/07/19/well-biden-screwed-us-forever-on-another-damn-thing-n1711962;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

I was thinking of Presidentish Joe Biden on Sunday when I was filling my Jeep’s smallish 15-gallon gas tank to the tune of $50 when it still had a couple of gallons left. Remember (because maybe he doesn’t) when Biden was emptying our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to force down gas prices in time for the midterms, promising to fill ‘er back up once prices dropped low enough?

Yeah, about that. The SPR is probably never going to be refilled, according to one expert, and maybe not even for the reason that first popped into your mind.

Let me set the stage for today’s big reveal.

The SPR was created under President Gerald Ford in 1975 following the 1973–1974 Arab oil embargo, which turned out to be just the first of that decade’s two major oil shocks. Set in massive salt caverns in Louisiana and Texas, the SPR was supposed to hold enough crude oil—714 million barrels— to help us weather any future embargo. While it was never large enough to do that for any significant time, the SPR’s very existence strengthened our geopolitical position versus some very nasty oil producers in places like Iran and Russia.

It took until about 2010—35 years!—to fill those reservoirs all the way up. It took Dementia Joe just two years to cut our reserves in half, down to levels not seen since 1983.

Biden and the SPR
(Chart courtesy of Zero Hedge.)

All to buy his party a few more votes on Election Day. “It could take decades to put it all back,” Julianne Geiger warned at OilPrice on Tuesday. (Hat tip, Zero Hedge.) Geiger writes that “the SPR could stay half-empty forever.”

That is, if prices ever come down long enough to make refilling profitable—if those salt caverns even can handle being refilled.

I always figured that the Biden Cabal was never serious about refilling the SPR. That crew cares about exactly one thing: the next election. If permanently damaging our economic security could save them a few House or Senate seats for just two years, well, that’s a small price (for somebody else) to pay.

But it was news to me when Geiger noted the “issue of infrastructure and feasibility of filling, withdrawing, refilling, etc. of the SPR.”

She continued:

Those salt caverns are made of… well, salt, and according to SPR former project manager William Gibson, who spoke to Bloomberg, they were built—in the ‘70s—with the idea that they would last 25 years. They were also designed to be withdrawn and refilled just five times, lest the salt caverns simply dissolve.

As one former official put it, the caverns were “not really intended for daily ATM-type operations.”

So. Even if the Biden Cabal were willing to risk sending gas prices back up by pumping more crude into SPR storage (which they aren’t), they’d have to take into account the advanced age of the facilities (which they won’t) and prepare to find replacements (which their Green Nude Eel friends would forbid).

In short, should the geopolitical situation or our domestic oil production suddenly change—either could make us more dependent again on foreign oil—we’d have an SPR cushion no bigger than it was in 1983.

1983, when our oil needs were much smaller and we were still in the process of wisely adding to the SPR instead of stupidly withdrawing from it like our national reserve is the Democrats’ private piggy bank.

Most days, I manage to laugh or at least just shrug at the short-sighted, destructive, vindictive, petty, and ham-fisted preening morons in the Biden White House, but today they have me seething.

Iran Seizes More Tankers in Persian Gulf~The Islamic Republic’s actions are a slap in the face to the Biden regime.

BY KENNETH R. TIMMERMAN

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/iran-seizes-more-tankers-in-persian-gulf/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Last Wednesday we learned that the Iranian regime had seized a second oil tanker recently in the Persian Gulf, forcing it to dock at an Iranian port under orders from the regime’s “judiciary.”

It was seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Go-fast boats in the Strait of Hormuz. This remains the world’s most important oil transit chokepoint, according to the US Energy Information Administration, where roughly 20% of the world’s oil transits every day.

The Pentagon subsequently informed us that these two incidents were just the latest of fifteen cases since Biden came to the White House where Iran has threatened or attacked international shipping in the Persian Gulf region.

These kinds of attacks are unacceptable. The Iranians know that, and I guarantee you our enemies and adversaries know that. And yet the Iranians act with impunity. Why?

For starters, they know the current U.S. President. Biden has been taking money and supporting pro-Tehran regime lobbyists since at least 2002 when a group of Tehran supporters threw a fund-raiser for him in California that brought in $30,000.

From then on, Biden became a reliable vote (along with Senator Chuck Hagel) when it came to opposing sanctions on Iran. He railed against President George W. Bush and his “axis of evil” because it included the Iranian regime.

Since becoming president, he has tried hard to re-invigorate the bad Iran nuclear deal, a deal that not only gave Iran a date certain to become a nuclear weapons state with impunity but lifted all sanctions on the regime’s ballistic missile programs as well.

Just think how many people in Israel, Ukraine, Yemen, and Iraq – including US soldiers and contractors – have been victims of those missiles since 2015.

One reason the Iranians may have chosen the Niovi, a Panama-fragged tanker, as their latest target was specifically to embarrass the United States. Over the past year, the Treasury Department has sanctioned over one hundred Iranian-owned ships laundered through various owners and reflagged in Panama.

The Panamanian government responded in January by de-flagging 136 Iranian vessels. So hitting a Panamanian registered vessel was pay-back by Iran to Panama, as well as an embarrassment to the U.S.

In the days when America still commanded a 600-ship navy, we would have sailed an aircraft carrier – or even two – through the Strait of Hormuz to put the Iranians on notice.

Not today. We used to have sixteen carrier battle groups; today, we have just eleven carriers still in service. Of those eleven, eight are in dry dock or on extended home port duty in San Diego or Norfolk, VA.

Only two are actively deployed, and both of them are in Asia. (The USS George Washington is off the west coast of Australia, and the USS Nimitz is off Thailand). A third, the USS Ronald Reagan, is idling off the coast of Japan under “Restricted Availability.”

When the United States shows weakness, it creates vulnerability. Weakness invites attack.

There is only two ways to respond to Iranian regime aggression: forceful military action, and by empowering the Iranian pro-democracy movement.

In 1988, after a spate of similar maritime piracy incidents (including the mining of international sea lanes), President Reagan ordered Operation Praying Mantis on April 18, 1988, the fifth anniversary of the Iranian suicide bomber attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

In roughly twenty-four hours, U.S. forces sank one-third of the Iranian navy. Iran didn’t dare attack us again openly until 2004-2005 in Iraq, and even then they initially acted through proxies. (They also acted through proxies – al Qaeda – in attacking U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, and the 9/11 attacks in 2001).

Fast forward to New Year’s Eve 2020. Iranian-backed militiamen stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the final days of 2019. President Trump responded immediately by redeploying hundreds of U.S. Marines from Kuwait to protect the embassy in Baghdad, to prevent another Benghazi from occurring.

And when he learned that the initial attack on the embassy was just the beginning and that Quds Force commander Qassem Suleymani was flying into Baghdad to supervise the next wave of attacks, President Trump ordered him taken out.

Iran responded by launching a half-dozen missiles on the al-Asad air base in Iraq, after warning the base commander so troops could take cover. And while regime officials including Ayatollah Khamenei have claimed they intend to assassinate President Trump and other U.S. leaders in retaliation, until now they have been unable to do so. To date, Iran has not found a successor with anywhere near the charisma, contacts, and capabilities.

The United States has never taken vigorous action to empower the pro-democracy forces inside Iran. Voice of America and Radio Farda have paid lip service only to anti-regime protests, and Biden administration officials have lashed out at the regime’s cruel repression with diplomatic wet noodles.

I have no expectation the Biden regime will change its approach. But how long will it take for Congress to start demanding an accounting of the administration?

Here’s my suggestion for an opening salvo: what kickbacks did U.S. government officials eventually receive from Iran for the $1.7 billion in cash Obama sent to Tehran in 2016?

Just asking.

Ken Timmerman’s 12th book of non-fiction, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies,  was published by Post Hill Press in August 2022. Timmerman was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and has covered the Middle East for 40 years.

Not a Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the Government Will Be Coming for Your Gas Stove

Not a Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the Government Will Be Coming for Your Gas Stove

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/05/04/not-a-conspiracy-theory-yes-the-government-will-be-coming-for-your-gas-stove-n1692571;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Last January, when Consumer Product Safety Commission member Richard Trumka Jr. suggested that the entire U.S. could follow the lead of Berkeley, Calif., and ban the use of gas stoves, conservatives lit into the CPSC and Trumka for even suggesting such a thing.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer called suggestions that the government wanted to end the use of gas stoves in residences a “MAGA conspiracy theory.” “Nobody is taking away your gas stove,” he said.

That may be true. But if you like cooking with gas or heating your house with gas, don’t try to relocate. The chances are good that if you want to move to a blue state in the next couple of years, you’re going to be forced to cook with electricity. That’s because it will soon be all the rage in blue states to ban the installation of gas stoves in all new construction.

The movement to rid the planet of gas stoves got a big boost on Wednesday when the New York legislature passed a bill that would ban gas stoves in new residences starting in 2026.

Why? Gas stoves are powered by natural gas — a fossil fuel. There have also been a couple of studies showing that cooking with gas can give your child asthma. Or something.

Reason.com:

Steve Everley, writing in National Review in January, covered several flaws in the most recent studies finding serious health impacts from gas stoves. Experimental studies that found links between gas stoves and child asthma used airtight rooms without ventilation. The author of another much-touted meta-analysis finding a link between gas stoves and child asthma said their study “does not assume or estimate a causal relationship.” Masses of earlier studies, Everley notes, have found no health impacts from gas stoves.

In the short-term, mandated electrification of appliances is probably worse for the climate. On-site use of gas stoves and furnaces uses almost all the energy in the gas. Generating electricity from gas and then using that electricity to power appliances is much less efficient. Of New York’s 10 largest power plants, for instance, five are powered by natural gas.

Cherry-picking scientific studies to “prove” something is dangerous is dishonest and anti-science. But eco-fads like banning gas stoves wouldn’t be possible without climate hysterics driving the conversation and the media lapping it up like good little puppies.

Does it matter that people actually like their gas stoves?

“Most home chefs—and pretty much all professional chefs—will tell you that electric stoves take a long time to heat up and are far less responsive when changing heat levels. Induction stoves, which are actually quite fast to heat up, require different types of cookware and kitchen thermometers, in addition to being a lot more expensive than electric stoves,” wrote Reason‘s Liz Wolfe earlier this year.

This is a consequence of demonizing fossil fuels. The “devil’s breath” is not a hazard, nor does it contribute measurably to net carbon emissions. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that greens were demanding the coal-fired plants be repurposed to burn natural gas.

As soon as I buy my “Mr. Fusion,” I’ll give up my gas stove.

Biden to Double Cost of Electricity

How many Americans can afford to pay twice as much for their utilities?

BY DANIEL GREENFIELD

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-to-double-cost-of-electricity/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Americans can’t afford to buy food, so Biden decided that they also shouldn’t be able to heat their homes during the winter. After an “environmental” measure that would prevent a majority of the country from being able to afford new cars, Biden is now going after their power bills.

The latest EPA proposal would mandate ‘carbon capture’ at power plants. A study by MIT showed that carbon capture raises the cost of electricity from 30% to 50% depending on the type of plant. Another study by Australia’s Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis however showed that prices could actually climb as high as 95% to 175%.

Imagine your power bills doubling? That will be the final blow for millions of Americans.

Biden’s corrupt inflationary spending broke the economy and sent prices soaring. State environmental regulations in California, New York, and other leftist areas increased the cost of electricity. Last year, 1 in 6 homes had fallen behind on their utility bills. A survey found that a third of households were cutting back on food and medicine to be able to heat their homes.

With more than 20 million households struggling, Biden decided to deliver the killing blow.

His administration’s illegal carbon capture mandates would hike electricity costs by 30% to 175% and utilities will be forced to pass the cost of this expensive ‘green’ tech to their customers just as they are already being crushed under the burden of expensive and unreliable solar and wind systems. How many Americans can afford to pay twice as much for their utilities?

Not only would Americans pay more for the privilege of ‘carbon capture’ power, but the power plants would produce less power. Louisiana’s Cleco utility warned that its carbon capture experiment would cut power production by 30%. Pay more, get less: that’s carbon capture.

But that’s also all ‘green energy’.

Like most ‘green’ technologies, carbon capture is a scam. That’s not just a conservative position. Even the most fervent environmentalists, including Greenpeace, which calls it the “Great Carbon Capture Scam”, and the Sierra Club, have said it doesn’t work.

A Stanford study found that carbon capture actually increases air pollution.

A UC Berkeley study found that carbon capture would double water use which would be environmentally catastrophic in Southern California and other water-poor areas.

If carbon capture is unpopular with both conservatives and environmentalists, why is Biden so determined to impoverish Americans using a plan that both sides agree is a bad idea?

While carbon capture is a hypothetical technology that, like most green tech, doesn’t work, it does fulfill its primary purpose of making it too expensive for consumers to use power. Carbon capture technology doesn’t actually change anything about the environment, but it makes conventional gas and coal plants too expensive to operate.

And that is the whole point.

After being shut down by the Supreme Court which struck down the EPA’s power grab of regulating ‘carbon emissions’, which is not a pollutant, the new move is meant to force power plants out of business so that they can be replaced with even more expensive and unreliable wind and solar. As expensive and inefficient as carbon capture is, wind and solar are monumentally more expensive and inefficient. A carbon capture mandate for power plants might hike power bills by 30% to 175%, but would in the long run be far more expensive than that when those plants are shut down and everyone is forced to depend on wind and solar.

While carbon capture is unpopular with environmentalists, some top Democrat donors have heavily invested in it including Bill Gates and George Soros. Carbon capture startups scored $882 million in capital last year so there’s a lot of Democrat donor money riding on it.

Millions of Americans will get poorer and freeze in the winter so Biden’s donors can get richer.

In the UK, which has even more fanatical environmental regulations than America, 50,000 people die every year because of “fuel poverty”. In December 2022, an estimated 1,000 people died because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes. Most of them were senior citizens.

This is the nightmare that Biden and his advisers want to bring to America.

France suffered its deadliest summer in a decade with thousands of deaths last year because of a lack of air conditioning. (The Biden administration has also been working to make air conditioners too expensive for working-class Americans to afford.)

The EPA has tracked a growing increase in heat and cold-related deaths in America while falsely blaming them on its invented bogeyman of ‘climate change’ rather than environmental regulations that have made it too expensive for people to heat and cool their homes.

With a third of Americans struggling to pay their power bills, how many will die if Biden succeeds in illegally forcing carbon capture through and doubling power bills? With a population that is five times that of the UK and areas even colder, we could see as many as 250,000 deaths.

That is an outcome that environmentalists, who want a drastic reduction in the human population to ‘save the planet’, have enabled in the UK and which they are implementing here.

The Biden administration has destroyed our standard of living, is taking away our cars, and our gas stoves, and now wants us to freeze in the winter and suffer heat stroke in the summer. This brutal purge will enrich his donors and eliminate many of the elderly more likely to vote GOP.

The only thing carbon capture really ‘captures’ are our lives.

Biden Wants Us to Sit In the Dark For Climate Change~Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs

Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/04/04/darkness-descending-upon-america-as-biden-bans-incandescent-light-bulbs-n1684321;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Old Joe Biden and his sinister handlers are doing just what they threatened to do. On July 5, 2020, Old Joe’s Twitter ghostwriter tweeted: “We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.” They have done so. They have transformed the nation that was once known as the leader of the free world into a crime-ridden, open-borders free-for-all where opponents of the regime are arrested on bogus charges. Meanwhile, there seems to be nothing that Biden’s handlers won’t do in order to torment Americans and fill their lives with petty annoyances: now they are banning incandescent light bulbs. What’s next? FBI agents standing on street corners and poking us with sharp sticks?

Fox News reported Saturday that Biden and his henchmen are “preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide ban on commonly used light bulbs as part of its energy efficiency and climate agenda.” Yes, the nation is going to go dark because of a hysterical junk science myth. “No credible scientific body,” wrote energy and environmental researcher Michael Shellenberger in 2019, “has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization, much less the extinction of the human species.” In fact, the whole idea that temperatures are rising to catastrophic levels is based on circular reasoning. But the Biden regime is all in on the climate change myth, and as always, ordinary Americans are the ones who have to pay the price.

You may recall that we have been here before. Barack Obama banned incandescent light bulbs, and the Trump administration rolled back that ban in Sept. 2019. Fox notes that the Department of Energy (DOE) devised the new restrictions to reverse Trump’s action back in April 2022, meanwhile, and adds that Trump himself “was also personally opposed to LED light bulb adoption, remarking in 2019 that they are often more expensive, not good and make him ‘look orange.’” Ah, so that’s it! How can we all properly hate the Left’s Emmanuel Goldstein if we keep seeing him in lighting that doesn’t show him as Bad Orange Man?

The new rules go into effect on Aug. 1, so you still have some time to stock up on good light bulbs, if you can find any. According to Fox, the DOE “will begin full enforcement of the ban on that date, but it has already urged retailers to begin transitioning away from the light bulb type and, in recent months, begun issuing warning notices to companies.” The way the Biden regime is going, if a store is selling incandescent light bulbs after Aug. 1, watch for ATF or FBI agents to come bursting through the door, armed to the teeth, pointing their guns at dumbfounded, slack-jawed clerks and screaming: “Throw down your light bulb and back away from the cash register!

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm assures us that all this petty authoritarianism is for our own good: “The lighting industry is already embracing more energy-efficient products, and this measure will accelerate progress to deliver the best products to American consumers and build a better and brighter future.” Yeah, authoritarian socialist regimes that arrest their political opponents are always building toward a better future, but it never seems to arrive. Journalist Mindy Robinson tweeted Sunday: “They can make lightbulbs that would last longer than I’ll be alive…but they won’t do it because ‘repeat business.’ Now this tyrannical regime wants to ban incandescents and push LEDs…which are garbage, distort colors, and give people like me headaches.”

Related: Get Ready to Stink for Climate Change, Thanks to Biden’s New Washing Machine Rules

Rising gas prices, rising food prices, rising crime, and now enforced harsh lighting in order to feed the regime’s climate fantasies. Are Biden’s handlers intentionally trying to annoy the American people? If they actually had that as a goal, would they be doing anything different from what they’re doing now? It is a constant of history: the Leftist regimes that are the most inhuman and inflict the most suffering upon their own citizens are those that most loudly proclaim how dedicated they are to the welfare of the people and how humane and democratic they are.

That’s why the Soviet Union was the workers’ paradise and the appalling hellscape that North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Biden’s America is not quite that far along yet; we just have the corrupt and authoritarian kleptocrats in Washington constantly nattering at us about how they’re saving “our democracy.” Sure they are. That’s why they’re nodding in approval as the leading critic of the regime is arrested on charges that wouldn’t have gotten anyone else arrested. As we sit in darkness or harsh institutional lighting in our apartments and eat our bugs, we can contemplate how selfless and wonderful the guardians of our democracy really are.

China Brokers Deal Between Iran and Saudi Arabia. What’s Next?

China Brokers Deal Between Iran and Saudi Arabia. What’s Next?

BY ANGELINE TAN

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/china-brokers-deal-between-iran-and-saudi-arabia-whats-next/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

On March 10, Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a diplomatic milestone when they agreed to reboot normalized ties in a deal brokered by China.

The countries unveiled their plans in a joint statement confirming that the two largest Middle Eastern nations by area will restart diplomatic relations after severing ties in 2016 when protesters stormed the kingdom’s embassy in Teheran after Saudi Arabia’s execution of a key Saudi Shi’ite cleric. The ensuing conflict between the two Islamic nations, situated less than 240 kilometers away from each other across the Persian Gulf, has long influenced politics and trade in the Middle East.

Tensions reached an alarming high in 2019 when a missile and drone assault on a key Saudi oil installation impacted half of the kingdom’s crude production. U.S. officials claimed that Iran was directly responsible for the assault, though Iran denied involvement.

Besides, both countries have been fighting what is essentially a proxy war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is targeting Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Saudi officials have also frequently voiced concerns over Iran’s nuclear program, saying that the kingdom would be Iran’s first target.

However, Friday’s deal would see a thaw in frosty ties, with each side reopening embassies in the other country within two months. Notably, this agreement was signed after four days of hitherto-classified talks in Beijing between top security officials from the two Middle Eastern powers. It was inked by Iran’s top security official, Ali Shamkhani, and Saudi Arabia’s national security advisor, Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban. A third signatory was China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi.

Both Middle Eastern countries thanked China, as well as Iraq and Oman for arranging earlier talks in 2021 and 2022.

“Talks were advanced on the basis of the consensus of the leaders of China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran…. China will continue to play a constructive role in handling hot-spot issues, (and) demonstrate our responsibility as a major nation,” said Wang.

Wang also pointed out that the talks demonstrated that the Ukraine crisis is not the only problem in the world and that there were many issues revolving around peace and people’s livelihoods that need proper handling.

In turn, Iraq lauded the agreement, saying the move would signify a new chapter between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

“A new page has been opened in diplomatic relations between the two countries,” read a statement from the Foreign Ministry of Iraq, which has conducted various rounds of reconciliation talks for the Iranians and Saudis since 2021.

A senior Iranian security official said Friday’s agreement was backed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“That is why Shamkhani traveled to China as the supreme leader’s representative,” the official told Reuters. “The establishment wanted to show that the top authority in Iran backed this decision.”

Observers contend that this plan would most likely have far-reaching ramifications throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world.

For instance, Beijing’s involvement displays China’s rising clout in the region as well as the dwindling global influence of the United States, said Jon Alterman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The not-so-subtle message that China is sending is that while the United States is the preponderant military power in the Gulf, China is a powerful and arguably rising diplomatic presence,” he said.

China’s role in brokering the deal could have “significant implications” for Washington, said Daniel Russel, the U.S. diplomat for East Asia under former president Barack Obama.

Russel said it is rare for China to independently broker a diplomatic deal in a conflict with which it is not involved.

“The question is whether this is the shape of things to come,” he said. “Could it be a precursor to a Chinese mediation effort between Russia and Ukraine when [President Xi Jinping] visits Moscow?”

Media outlet AFP reported China as being the “godfather” of the agreement, as its influence over Iran was key to reassuring the Saudis, citing analysts.

“This may be a sign of [China’s] growing confidence in its regional presence, it may be a sign that it thinks there is space to challenge US preponderance in the Middle East. In any case, it looks like a diplomatic win for China and a significant departure from its regional approach up to this point,” senior resident Atlantic Council fellow Jonathan Fulton told AFP.

For years, China has been trying to rival America’s role as a global superpower. Friday’s agreement was a big diplomatic win for China, challenging America’s influence in the Middle East.

The mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, the Global Times, praised the deal as a major indicator of Beijing’s influence as a global power, and the corresponding decline of American influence under aging Democrat President Joe Biden.

The Global Times further quoted analysts who credited Beijing with working out a deal between the Saudis and Iranians and providing stability to counter the “impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”

Alluding to the deal, Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said,

The White House has come out and said that it’s quite OK with the fact that they are reestablishing diplomatic relations, but it’s also clear that the United States could never have brokered this because it cannot speak to Iran directly. So if Iran and Saudi Arabia want to go ahead with this, they needed another intermediary, and that clearly was China. Now, is the United States happy that China is starting to present — profile itself in the Middle East as a potential broker of relations and with a history where it has had huge and growing economic and commercial investments and interests and is now starting to dabble in the political sphere? I’m sure that there are some concerns about the rising power of China that is starting to manifest itself in the Middle East as well on the political level.

Regarding America’s stance, White House spokesman John Kirby said that although Washington was not directly involved in Friday’s deal, Saudi Arabia informed U.S. officials of the talks.

Kirby seemed to minimize China’s role in Friday’s development, saying that internal and external pressure, including successful Saudi deterrence against attacks from Iran or its proxies, eventually convinced Teheran to normalize relations with the Saudis.

Nonetheless, former senior U.S. and UN official Jeffrey Feltman said China’s role, rather than the reopening of embassies after six years, is the most significant aspect of the agreement.

“This will be interpreted — probably accurately — as a slap at the Biden administration and as evidence that China is the rising power,” said Feltman, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“China doesn’t have the capacity to play a bigger security role in the region,” commented Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London think tank. But the deal to restore diplomatic ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia “foreshadows its potential to be an appealing alternative to Washington.”

Indeed, this recent deal brokered by China further adds to the communist state’s influence in the Gulf region, after authoritarian leader Xi Jinping’s meeting the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations in December last year.

In December, Xi had urged the Gulf countries — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — to conduct bilateral oil and gas transactions in the Chinese yuan rather than the U.S. dollar by using the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange as a platform.

Xi’s December trip marked “the birth of the petroyuan,” and China’s drive “to rewrite the rules of the global energy market,” according to Credit Suisse analyst Zoltan Pozsar, whose comments were published in a British newspaper.

Pozsar had previously said that China hoped to de-dollarize parts of the world since the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic status was used to undermine Russia. He acknowledged that Xi’s declaration was part of “a larger effort to de-dollarize” the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) “and many other parts of the world after the weaponization of dollar foreign exchange reserves” coinciding with the onset of the Ukraine-Russia crisis last year.

Dampening American influence in the region even further has been the tense relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, particularly since the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had criticized the Saudi regime. Based on U.S. intelligence reports in 2021, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorized an operation to kill or capture Khashoggi.

Also, with the United States having strained ties with Iran for decades since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, it would be less able than China to arrange a deal such as last Friday’s between the Iranians and Saudis. In contrast, China has bought huge amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia and has maintained warm ties with Iran.

“It should be a warning to US policymakers: Leave the Middle East and abandon ties with sometimes frustrating, even barbarous, but long-standing allies, and you’ll simply be leaving a vacuum for China to fill,” said Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative for the Atlantic Council, in a Friday statement.

It could be said that this deal reflects a shift in Saudi foreign policy away from the United States. While the United States remains Saudi Arabia’s largest military supplier, recent years have shown that the desert kingdom has been wooing several powers, including Russia, China, and now, Iran.

With Washington increasingly preoccupied with sending Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars in economic and military aid, the Middle East is trying to address its old divisions and ease tensions. Beijing’s ability to talk to all sides without lecturing them on human rights has thus far seemed to be a more appealing prospect for the region’s many authoritarian regimes.

Nevertheless, U.S. ally Israel lambasted last Friday’s announcement, stating it proved Washington’s and Israel’s “weakness” toward Tehran. “There was a feeling of US and Israeli weakness and this is why the Saudis started looking for new avenues. It was clear that this was going to happen,” a senior Israeli official told reporters traveling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Axios.

This new development would make Israel’s goal to target Iranian nuclear facilities and Washington’s plans to destabilize the Iranian government even more challenging.

An unnamed senior Israeli political official accused former Prime Ministers Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett for Friday’s China-brokered deal, after criticism from the opposition to the Netanyahu government for missing an opportunity to boost ties with Arab states.

In a statement to the Israeli paper Ynet, the official said, “The contacts between the countries started a year ago, during the term of the previous government, because there was a feeling of Israeli and American weakness. Weakness brings rapprochement with Iran, while strength pushes rapprochement away.”

“It is important to form a strong position against Iran, both in the United States and in Europe. The Israeli policy of preventing Iran from arming itself does not depend on the support of any country,” he noted.

That being said, the official stated that efforts will continue for an Israeli reconciliation with Riyadh. “The contacts are frequent and the basic picture did not change. The stronger the Western position against Iran is, the less significant their relations with Saudi Arabia will be.”

Meanwhile, Lapid’s office dismissed the official’s remarks, responding, “These are delusional statements. During the period of our government, an aviation agreement was signed with Saudi Arabia and the tripartite security agreement with Saudi Arabia and Egypt.”

Lapid then proceeded to blame Netanyahu for straining relations with Washington, stating, “All of this came to a halt when the most extreme government in Israel’s history was established here, and it became clear to the Saudis that Netanyahu was weak and the Americans stopped listening to him. Apparently, the Italian wine blurred Mr. Netanyahu’s memory.”

Lapid added, “The [Saudi-Iran] agreement is a complete and dangerous failure of the Israeli government’s foreign policy.”

“This is what happens when you deal all day long with legal madness instead of doing what needs to be done vis-à-vis Iran and instead of strengthening relations with the United States.”

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett reinforced Lapid’s views, saying, “The renewal of relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran is a serious and dangerous development for Israel, a political victory for Iran, and a fatal blow to the effort to build a regional coalition against Iran. It is a resounding failure of the Netanyahu government, stemming from a combination of diplomatic neglect with general weakness and internal conflict in the country.”

Bennett added, “The countries of the world and the region watch Israel and see a country in conflict, with a dysfunctional government. And so these countries choose a side. The Netanyahu government is a resounding economic, political, and security failure. Every day, its actions endanger the State of Israel.”

Senior opposition member Gideon Saar, who is also a member of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and security committee, tweeted, “Netanyahu promised peace with the Saudis. But eventually [the Saudis] made peace with Iran.”

Chair of the Knesset’s foreign affairs and security committee Yuli Edelstein said that the agreement “is very bad for Israel and for the entire free world,” adding, “The world does not stop while we are busy here with power struggles and clashes — certainly not our worst enemy.”

The news of the China-brokered deal came as Netanyahu was in Rome for his meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Speaking with Italian business people before the publication of the agreement, Netanyahu said, “I think the possibilities will grow beyond imagination if we are successful with another goal that I have, and that is to achieve normalization and peace with Saudi Arabia. One of my central goals is to achieve normalization with Saudi Arabia.”

The Israeli press pointed out that Netanyahu’s optimistic words before the publication of the Iran-Saudi agreement clearly showed he was out of touch with the Saudis’ intention that the Saudi deal showed that Riyadh does not think Israel has a feasible plan for curbing the Iranian nuclear program.

For years, Iran and Israel have been at loggerheads with each other, with Israel being one of the fiercest critics of Iran and its nuclear program. The Israeli government under Netanyahu had protested the 2015 nuclear deal that curtailed the program in exchange for the United States loosening sanctions on the Iranian regime.

In recent years, Israel has stepped up its diplomatic efforts with various Arab states, primarily via the 2019 Abraham Accords that saw Israel mending ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Subsequently, Sudan and Morocco also set up diplomatic relations with Israel.

The New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia has issued its conditions for recognizing Israel, which encompassed a security guarantee from the United States, the development of a civilian nuclear program, and reduced sanctions on U.S. arms sales.

President Biden appeared to express support for the Saudi-Iranian deal in a statement Friday, saying that “Better relations between Israel and their Arab neighbors are better for everybody.” Biden’s comments certainly hold true, but with his administration’s full-fledged support of the Ukraine conflict and reduced clout in the Middle East, it is not surprising if observers conclude that his words are mere rhetoric. After all, better relations between Ukraine and Russia, without further provocation of Russia by a U.S.-led NATO, would also be better for everybody.

Biden Sabotaging U.S. Energy Grid, Warns Expert

The Biden administration’s energy and climate policies are devastating American energy infrastructure and hurting U.S. consumers and the broader economy while doing nothing beneficial for the environment, explained President Frank Lasee of Truth in Energy and Climate in this interview with The New American magazine’s Alex Newman. Lasee, who served in the administration of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and also as president of the Heartland Institute, sounded the alarm about wind and solar “energy,” as well as the electric cars being forced on America by government policy. It does help Communist China, which is a major threat to America, and greedy cronies getting rich off the schemes, though, Lasee said. There are also many useful idiots who treat “green” as a sort of religion. Finally, Lasee breaks down some of the most outrageous propaganda and disinformation being put out by the government and amplified by establishment media.

Biden Limits Arctic Oil Drilling Project

Biden Limits Arctic Oil Drilling Project

BY DAVID KELLY

SEE: https://thenewamerican.com/biden-limits-arctic-oil-drilling-project/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

President Biden approved a controversial oil project today in a compromise, a multistep decision affecting the Willow Master Development Plan in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A). The decision reduced the ConocoPhillips Willow project’s drill pads by 40 percent, while also “protecting” up to 16 million acres of land and sea in the U.S. Arctic Ocean from any future oil and gas leasing. 

Since before Biden took office, he has been at war with the oil and coal industries, seeking to reduce if not end their operations in the United States in deference to clean “green energy” wind and solar resources. Today’s decision supposedly was balanced to provide job opportunities and infrastructure for the nearby communities while protecting wildlife and the region’s unspoiled natural environment. It also helped to avoid a potential lawsuit over federal leases that ConocoPhillips has controlled on the NPR-A since 1999. 

The Willow project covers an area roughly the size of the state of Indiana. AP reported:

The project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, according to the company — about 1.5% of total U.S. oil production. The project is the largest proposed oil drilling on U.S. public land and the biggest oil field in Alaska in decades. Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said the development could be “one of the biggest, most important resource development projects in our state’s history.”

Today, following Biden’s announcement, the Interior Department (DOI) issued a Record of Decision substantially reducing the size of the Willow project by denying two of the five drill sites proposed by ConocoPhillips, including relinquishing “rights to approximately 68,000 acres of its existing leases in the NPR-A, including approximately 60,000 acres in the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area.” The agreement also “reduces the project’s freshwater use and eliminates all infrastructure related to the two rejected drill sites, including approximately 11 miles of roads, 20 miles of pipelines, and 133 acres of gravel, all of which reduces potential impacts to caribou migration and subsistence users.” 

 

BLM.gov

Biden will still have to face the music over the new drilling agreement, as net-zero greenhouse-gas zealots will be greatly disappointed to learn the administration gave in to oil giant ConocoPhillips. “Extracting and using the oil from Willow would produce the equivalent of more than 278 million tons (306 million short tons) of greenhouse gases over the project’s 30-year life, roughly equal to the combined emissions from 2 million passenger cars over the same time period,” AP reported

The Willow agreement didn’t stop the administration from moving forward with their climate-change activism by taking important steps to limit future industrial development in the Beaufort Sea and NPR-A, securing indefinite “protection” to the area. The DOI has proposed a rule, which will be available for public comment in the coming months, to consider additional protections for the more than 13 million acres designated as “Special Areas” in the region. The land was recognized for its importance to wildlife and subsistence users.  

A DOI press release stated: “The rule would limit future oil and gas leasing and industrial development in the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon, and Peard Bay Special Areas — places collectively known for their globally significant intact habitat for wildlife, including grizzly and polar bears, caribou, and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.”  

Adding to the Willow project agreement, the DOI in another announcement said that “the Biden-Harris administration is taking sweeping action to complete protections of the entire U.S. Arctic Ocean from any future oil and gas leasing.” This includes the DOI “preparing new rules to provide maximum protection to millions of acres of lands in the western Arctic….”

 

BLM.gov

In today’s action, according to the DOI, Biden, using his authority under Section 12(a) of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, made approximately 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean nearshore in NPR-A indefinitely off limits for future oil and gas leasing. “Today’s withdrawal ensures this important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears, as well as for subsistence purposes, will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development.” 

These announcements and impending actions on controlling oil and gas leasing in the Arctic comprise yet another step in Biden’s goal of adhering to the UN’s Agenda 2030.

To prove Biden’s success in his ongoing climate-change agenda, the DOI closed its press release by stating, “With these actions, President Biden continues to deliver on the most aggressive climate agenda in American history. He has made the United States a magnet for clean energy manufacturing and jobs. He secured record investments in climate resilience and environmental justice. And his economic agenda has put the United States back on track to reach its climate goals for 2030 and 2050, all while reducing America’s reliance on oil and protecting American families from the impact of Putin’s war on global energy markets.” 

Biden, Harris Say They’re Doing a Great Job Lowering Your Energy Bills

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/03/11/biden-harris-want-you-to-know-about-the-great-job-theyre-doing-lowering-your-energy-bills-n1677444;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

“I took the most aggressive action ever — in all of history in any country — to take on the climate crisis by lowering your home energy bills,” crowed Joe Biden during a speech touting his insane budget proposal. He might as well have claimed that he took “the most aggressive action ever — in the history of the universe” for all the truth there was in that statement.

The Republican National Committee was bewildered.

“Huh?” wondered the RNC. “Electricity is up 11.9%, fuel oil is up 27.7%, and natural gas is up 26.7% over last year.”

Not to be outdone, Vice President Kamala Harris had her own fantasy to share. On Feb. 24 during a speech at Bowie State in Maryland, Harris created a shopping list for Americans to buy stuff with all that money they were saving because of lower energy costs. “For working families, we have reduced heating and electricity bills so folks have more money in their pockets to buy things like school supplies, replace the dishwasher, or take a family vacation,” she said.

Can you take a family vacation on the difference between what gasoline cost in July and what it cost in February? Maybe you could ask your neighbor to put you and the kids up for a few nights. And what kind of dishwasher would you be able to buy?

Related: The Economic Case for Net Zero Is Zero

Our incurious and slavishly devoted media can’t rouse themselves to comment on the utter stupidity of both Biden’s and Harris’s flagrant lies.

FoxBusiness:

“Gas prices are up $1.03 a gallon from when Joe Biden took office. Biden’s administration continues to undermine American energy,” RNC rapid response director Tommy Pigott tweeted at the time. “Families have lost $2,250 paying higher energy costs since he took office.”

In December, California Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special legislative session to tax California’s oil refiners while blaming them for the state’s high energy prices.

Both Harris and Newsom know damn well that people haven’t saved a dime in energy costs since Biden took office. And Newsom knows that refineries aren’t responsible for California’s sky-high energy costs. But even when there’s pushback on these ludicrous statements, the administration just trots out another flunkie to continue the lies.

If only excessive, serial repetition made it so. “Cost relief” is not slightly coming off highs your policies created. You shouldn’t be crowing about it as if you’d accomplished something” explained Hot Air’s Beege Welborn.

That’s straight out of the Joseph Goebbels playbook: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

This Is the Left: Whitmer Enjoys an Evening Out While 700,000 Michiganders Freeze Without Power

This Is the Left: Whitmer Enjoys an Evening Out While 700,000 Michiganders Freeze Without Power

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/02/25/this-is-the-left-whitmer-enjoys-an-evening-out-while-700000-michiganders-freeze-without-power-n1673759; Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes:

Leftists have already made it abundantly clear that they don’t feel bound to observe the rules they impose upon us. Remember Nancy Pelosi’s hair salon appointment while the salons were closed to other women in 2020 because of the COVID-19 hysteria? Pelosi’s nephew Gavin Newsom was likewise caught dining at a fancy French restaurant in defiance of his own COVID protocols. And now another star of the contemporary Left, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-FBI Kidnapping Hoax), took Thursday evening off to head in to Detroit, where she caught a performance of the musical “Jagged Little Pill” at the Fisher Theatre. This would have been an utterly unremarkable incident were it not for the fact that while Whitmer was enjoying her fun-filled evening out, 700,000 Michiganders were without power, smack in the middle of winter. This, once again, is how the Left governs.

An Instagram user inadvertently blew the whistle on Friday, when she posted a photo of herself with Whitmer, adding the caption: “Met the Governor, I can now say I have the key to the city. #dearborn #dearbornheights #detroit.” The first and only comment on the post, however, was less bubbly: “Oh hell nah. Tell her to get her a** to f**king work on the power.”

The commenter had good reason to be annoyed with Whitmer. The far-Left governor certainly was behaving like an entitled monarch indifferent to the suffering of her hapless subjects. The Detroit Free Press reported Thursday that “the freezing rain and ice storm that blew through Michigan downed trees and limbs, cut power to about 700,000 homes and businesses, closed schools and offices, suspended the QLINE, delayed air travel, caused car crashes and killed a firefighter in Paw Paw, who was electrocuted.”

Detroit’s DTE Energy, which had “nearly a half-million customers without power at one point Thursday” said on that day that most of its customers should have their power back by Sunday. Consumers Energy, which serves the other 200,000 customers whose power was knocked out, likewise said that the lights would come back on Sunday. That meant that these 700,000 people were facing up to four days without power from the time the storm hit and began knocking out the electricity on Wednesday night. And this happened in February. Yet Gretchen Whitmer thought it would be a fine time to take in a play.

What was Whitmer thinking? The lone Instagrammer who posted her photo seems to have been the only person who noted that she was enjoying an evening out while hundreds of thousands of her citizens were freezing without heat in their homes, so maybe she thought that the ever-sycophantic far-Left establishment media would cover for her, given her impeccable far-Left credentials, no matter what. And she would have gotten away with it, had it not been for the star-struck citizen who asked for, and then posted, a photo with the governor.

It may also be that Whitmer just doesn’t care about the bad optics. Democrats enjoy virtually complete control of Michigan at this point, so what are the proles going to do when they see her governor out in a warm hall taking in some entertainment? They can vote Republican all they want, but Michigan’s Democrat machine will roll right over them and leave them right where they were, freezing without power while those who have the power enjoy themselves.

Related: Whitmer’s Last-minute Live-shot COVID-dodge Clown Show

This is the way Leftists always govern. In the Soviet Union, the collective farms and soul-destroying high-rise apartment boxes were for the proletariat who were supposed to be exercising their dictatorship. Those who really had political power, meanwhile, lived it up in sumptuous dachas and feasted on gourmet meals served on the finest china. They deserved reward, after all, for all their efforts for The People, and so does Gretchen Whitmer.

Meanwhile, one of Whitmer’s subjects, Rochelle Brown, “said she wasn’t sure where she was going to spend the night.” Brown recounted: “A wire fell into my yard, my driveway. I thought it was going to set my house on fire. It sparkled and crackled all night. It’s cold in my house. I sent my kids other places, but I stayed in the home with my dog.” The National Weather Service noted that the ice “was between a quarter-inch and more than a half-inch thick, and utility executives added that when there is that much ice on the power lines, the effective stress of 20-mph winds is as if they were gusting at 60.” But why should Gretchen Whitmer be concerned about that? That’s for the common folk to be worried about.

 

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