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December 2016

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rex Tillerson: Pro-Energy Foe of Climate Hype By Daniel John Sobieski

By on December 15th, 2016

The measure of Trump’s picks for his cabinet, including Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, is the reaction of the left. Oh, sure, a main objection is to his business dealings with Russia, as if energy producing companies should have nothing to do with energy producing countries. But many on the left oppose him as a fossil fuel advocate who thinks climate change is an overhyped scam designed to deny us growth and job opportunities through the use of our abundant fossil fuel reserves.

As Andrew Freedman comments on Yahoo News:

If it weren’t real, it might read like a dark climate change comedy. …

Environmental groups were quick to criticize Tillerson. After all, the State Department is tasked with leading America’s diplomacy on climate change.

“This is unfathomable. We can’t let Trump put the world’s largest oil company in charge of our international climate policy,” said Mary Boeve, the executive director of 350.org.

“ExxonMobil is still a leading funder of climate denial and is pursuing a business plan that will destroy our future. Tillerson deserves a federal investigation, not federal office,” she said.

Speaking to reporters after the annual meeting of Exxon stockholders in May, 2008, Tillerson shoved political correctness aside and insisted the science on climate change is not settled and “to not have a debate on it is irresponsible” and that to “suggest we know everything about these issues is irresponsible.” As the Financial Post reported:

Avoiding the political correctness that many oil executives are now showing on global warming, Mr. Tillerson called for a continuation of the debate, rather than acceptance that it is occurring, with the potential consequence that governments will implement policies that put world economies at risk.

“My view is that this is so extraordinarily important to people the world over, that to not have a debate on it is irresponsible,” he said. “To suggest that we know everything we need to know about these issues is irresponsible….

Looking out 25 to 30 years, “everyone agrees that notwithstanding the growth in all other options for supplying energy, renewables, nuclear, biomass alternatives, you are still going to require substantial fossil fuels to meet energy needs, and two-thirds is going to come from oil and natural gas,” he said.

Climate-change skeptic Tillerson spoke of Exxon spending $8 billion of its profits on the Kearl oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. This project alone is aimed at recovering between 4.5 and 6.5 billion barrels of oil. Finding such oil takes money and expensive technology. That money comes from profits.

Kearl is part of the Athabasca oil sands located in the northeastern corner of Alberta, near the city of Fort McMurray. The Alberta government’s Energy and Utilities Board estimated in 2007 that about 173 billion barrels of crude were economically recoverable based on current technology and 2006 prices. But oil prices keep rising and technology keeps advancing. These oil sand deposits cover about 54,000 square mile and contain about 1.7 trillion barrels. Tillerson knows we will always need fossil fuels, as much as we can get, to promote the economic growth America needs. Trump knows it too.

It is the Albert oil sands that produce the oil that would flow through the Keystone XL pipeline that President Donald Trump is expected to approve. Environmentalists opposed Keystone XL because it encouraged oil sands extraction of crude, releasing so-called greenhouse gases in the process. Never mind that the oil would be extracted anyway, only to be shipped to an energy-hungry China via a pipeline to Canada’s west coast.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Drain the Intelligence Swamp! By G. Murphy Donovan

By on December 15th, 2016

G. Murphy Donovan was the former Director of Research and Russian (nee Soviet) studies at USAF Intelligence when James Clapper was the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper appeared on Public Television shortly before the presidential election for an extended interview with Charlie Rose. Mister Rose, like many of his peers these days, swings between hard news at dusk and bimbo chat at dawn. Indeed, Charlie is the very model of a Beltway double-dipper, a celebrity groupie who feeds at public and commercial troughs, PBS and CBS.

On any given day, Rose might be seen giggling with celebrities in the morning and then lofting softballs to political touts in the evening. The Council on Foreign Relations was the venue for the recent Clapper show. “Impartial, non-profit” think tanks are often used to provide the appropriate gravitas to administration spin. The Clapper performance, just before the November election, seemed to be of a piece with several other Intelligence officials who campaigned against Donald Trump.

And the Clapper interview, like many administration dog-and-pony shows, was not about transparency or openness or even information per se. In another day, any public chat with an Intelligence official might have been relegated to the desinformatsiya file. Today, Intelligence officials like Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan play other, and some might say sinister, if not partisan roles.

Whether the subject is Islamism, Vladimir Putin, or fake news; the name of the game at the moment is overtly political. Call it spin control.

Clapper’s appearance on Public Television was a subtle version of partisan Intelligence spin. Michael Morell, former acting director of CIA and Michael Hayden, former director of NSA have been on the anti-Trump stump since the 2016 campaign began. Recall that Hayden (aka Elmer Fudd) presided over the worst warning failure in American history and that Morell was a principal in the Benghazi fiasco.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

French surprised that integrated middle-class Muslims arrested for terrorism By Ed Straker

By on December 15th, 2016

Every time a radical Muslim kills, the media is quick to remind us about the integrated middle-class Muslims – the hardworking cargo handler, the well liked elementary school assistant, the friendly grocer.

Unfortunately, France just arrested a hardworking cargo handler, a well liked elementary school assistant, and a friendly grocer on charges that they were getting ready to massacre a bunch of innocents.

One was a well-liked elementary school assistant. Another was a hard-working cargo handler. The third was a friendly grocer. They were longtime friends in their quiet suburban neighborhood, and they joked with teenagers and greeted children with a smile.

They found weapons in the apartment of the well liked elementary school assistant, and the authorities intimated that the group of well-liked Muslims were about to launch a massive attack.

Yet in the early hours of Nov. 20 agents from France’s internal security agency swooped down, plucking the three and one other from their apartments, charging them with plotting a terrorist attack, and locking them up in a prison outside Paris.

Here was a new type of terrorism arrest: decently paid men in their 30s giving no warning signs of radicalization – no beards, no robes, no proselytizing[.] … There were certainly more obvious candidates for jihad. The four arrested gave no outward hint of radicalization.

And unlike many troubled youths in Paris and Brussels who have latched onto the Islamic State, they did not live on the margins. They had stable jobs and no previous brushes with drugs or crime.

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Iran Breaks Nuclear Deal and UN Resolutions by Majid Rafizadeh

By on December 15th, 2016

“We will have a new ballistic missile test in the near future that will be a thorn in the eyes of our enemies.” – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani

The range of existing Iranian ballistic missiles has grown from 500 miles to over 2,000 kilometers (roughly 1,250 miles), which can easily reach Eastern Europe, as well as countries such as Israel.

In addition, Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan said that there would be no limit for the range and amount of missiles that Iran will develop.

The nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Agreement (JCPOA) — effective, as of October 18, 2015, according to the State Department – clearly and distinctly stipulates that Iran should not undertake any ballistic missile activity “until the date eight years after the JCPOA Adoption Day or until the date on which the IAEA submits a report confirming the Broader Conclusion, whichever is earlier.”

Not only is Iran avoiding honoring this stipulation, but also Iran’s ballistic missile operations have significantly ratcheted up. More importantly, there has been no criticism at all from the Obama administration or other involved parties regarding this critical violation.

As cited by Iran’s state-owned Fars News Agency, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Iran’s commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, said in Tehran on Dec 6, 2016:

“In addition to enhancing the precision-striking power and quality of ballistic missiles, the Iranian authorities and experts have used innovative and shortcut methods to produce inexpensive missiles, and today we are witnessing an increase in production [of ballistic missiles].”

Iran is bragging about it.

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Saving Europe From Itself—Again A Russian aggressor could drive through NATO’s weak center or bite off its edges piece by piece. By Mark Helprin

By on December 15th, 2016

Though Europeans bridle when confronted with the possibility that Americans have something to offer, the Champs Élysées is not called Unter den Linden, and the Thousand-Year Reich and Warsaw Pact are no more, because—intelligently, successfully, and sacrificially—the U.S. came three times to Europe’s aid.

But for the past quarter-century the U.S. has had no effective, proactive strategy in regard to the defense of Europe. Should it not awaken to this with strategic clarity and resolve, the price may be beyond calculation.

Although the Continent is dangerously weakened by ideological fevers, economic malaise and the importation of bereft masses from war-crazed cultures, keep your eye upon the sparrow—a resurgent, revanchist Russia, which with continued success in recobbling its lost empire will look westward to the rich lands between it and the Atlantic. Rather than arriving late as in the two world wars, the U.S. should take military and diplomatic measures now to deter yet another catastrophe.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was able to keep the Soviets at bay because its nuclear forces and resolution were at least equal to those of the U.S.S.R.; its powerful conventional elements were properly positioned opposite their adversaries; its command structure was unified; and American echelons were deployed in strength.

Despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the migration of most of its members to NATO, and the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, the European military balance is shifting toward Russia. While the U.S. has reduced the number of its nuclear weapons, failed to modernize them, and pacified its nuclear doctrines, Russia has cut less, steadily modernized, and promiscuously issued nuclear threats.

Some examples in regard to conventional forces: In 1987 the U.S. had 354,000 military personnel in Europe and surrounding waters, and 735 combat aircraft. Now it deploys 40,450 and 130, respectively. Between 1987 and 2015, Great Britain’s main battle tanks have dwindled to 227 from 1,200, France’s to 200 from 1,340, and Germany’s to 306 from 4,887. Britain’s combat aircraft have fallen to 194 from 596, France’s to 360 from 520, and Germany’s to 235 from 604.

Given the strategic chaos in the Mediterranean, it is astounding that while in 1985 the U.S. Sixth Fleet often comprised two aircraft carriers, six nuclear submarines, and 28 other warships, during most of the Obama administration it had been reduced to one virtually unarmed command ship.

Though to save themselves the Europeans must be pressured to increase defense expenditures, threatening publicly and without warning to refrain from U.S. treaty obligations, and eight years of military retreat under President Obama, have emboldened Russia and pushed Europe further into creating a European defense separate from NATO. Herding 28 countries into a coherent military structure is difficult enough without adding another level of command. And even if the possibility of aligning with Russia to balance out China were not met with Russian betrayal, the price would be Western Europe, which is obviously unacceptable. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Federica Mogherini, Top EU Diplomat, Says Bloc Is Prepared for Trump ‘We are ready for a transactional way of working,’ foreign-policy chief says, citing common interests By Laurence Norman and Julian E. Barnes

By on December 15th, 2016

BRUSSELS—The European Union is prepared for a more deal-oriented relationship with the U.S. once President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the bloc’s chief diplomat said Wednesday, adding that approach won’t prevent cooperation on a broad range of issues, including the Iranian nuclear deal.

“We are ready for a transactional way of working….one more based on an analysis of where our interests coincide,” Federica Mogherini said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in Brussels. “I believe that going through the list of global conflicts and regional issues, we would come out with a very long list of things where we have an interest in either a division of labor or a common approach.”

The bloc’s foreign-policy chief suggested a new trans-Atlantic relationship could have upsides for the EU, playing down the prospect that Mr. Trump’s interest in warmer ties with Russia would necessarily counter Europe’s interests. Indeed, she said a more independent EU might line up with Russia against any efforts on the Trump administration’s part to scuttle the Iran accord, shake up Middle East policy, or reduce the role of the United Nations.

Senior European officials have openly worried about the possible impact of the Trump administration’s foreign policy on Europe. They have expressed concerns not only about his stance toward Russia, but also that he will demand a higher price for underwriting the region’s security and will be less committed to working with the EU to press for democracy and the rule of law in Europe’s neighborhood.

However, Ms. Mogherini pointed to a range of shared interests where the EU and U.S. are bound to work closely, including counterterrorism, crisis prevention in key regions and fighting migrant-smuggling gangs. Since taking her job, the 43-year-old former Italian foreign minister has also made it a priority to deepen the bloc’s defense and security structures to allow it to start deploying hard power more effectively in its neighborhood.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Of Course Russia Meddles in Our Elections — But the ‘Hacking’ Claim Is a Farce The current spectacle has little to do with Russian intelligence — it’s about Democrats wanting an election do-over. Andrew McCarthy

By on December 15th, 2016

The hypocrisy oozing from the peddling of this week’s narrative about Russian “meddling” in the U.S. presidential election is thick even by the sorry standards of modern American politics.

I feel entitled to be amused, having maintained, through a decade of bipartisan idiocy, that Putin’s thug-ocracy is an enemy of the United States: from the Bush-administration howler that Russia is our “strategic partner,” through eight years of the Obama-Hillary “reset”; from Obama’s mumbling as Putin annexed Crimea and other swathes of Ukraine (after Obama, as a senator, joined with senior Republicans to disarm Ukraine), through Bush’s mumbling as Putin annexed swathes of Georgia. I saw Russia as a major problem long before it began violating the “new START” treaty that Obama signed and Republicans approved; before Secretary Clinton helped Putin cronies acquire a major slice of American uranium stock; and before Obama’s promise to Vlad (communicated through Putin-puppet Medvedev) that he’d have “more flexibility” to cut deals after the 2012 election.

Suffice it to say that if the American political class is suddenly worried about Russian aggression, deceit, cyber-espionage, and collaboration with Iran (in order to — get this! — fight terrorism), I welcome it to the club. And if the gray beards are fretting over Donald Trump’s potential coziness with our enemies, that’s good to hear . . . although it would have been nice to have a fraction of that fretting when it came to the Obama-Clinton operational coziness with our enemies.

All that said, the Democrats’ Chicken Little routine can’t be serious, nor is the chattering class that pretends to take it seriously.

To begin with, it would be shocking if the Russians had not attempted to meddle in our election. Historically, they’ve done it countless times (I assume, every time). That’s what hostiles do, they make mischief when and where they can. Democrats, moreover, conveniently forget that they’ve historically welcomed such mischief-making — such as when Jimmy Carter pleaded with Leonid Brezhnev for Soviet help in the futile effort to defeat Ronald Reagan in 1980 and when Ted Kennedy pleaded with Yuri Andropov for Soviet help in the futile effort to defeat Reagan in 1984.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Viva la difference? Islam vs. “Radical” Islam?

By on December 15th, 2016

Politically Correctness has no bounds, no demarcation lines. Everything is fair game to warp, subvert, and destroy, from wedding cake bakers to Halloween costumes to national security.
On December 12th, Judith Bergman, in her Gatestone column, “Europe: Illegal to Criticize Islam,” wrote:

In Finland, since the court’s decision, citizens are now required to make a distinction, entirely fictitious, between “Islam” and “radical Islam,” or else they may find themselves prosecuted and fined for “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith.”

I would like some state-appointed or free, independent Islamic scholar — Western or not — to explain with a straight face to me and to the world, the essential, fundamental differences between Islam and “radical Islam” or “extremist” Islam. If Islam is not just a bizarre, death-worshipping “religion,” but basically a collectivist ideology bent on total submission of its adherents and of the world, moved by a gnawing appetite for total and universal domination, what are the salient, distinguishing differences? How would one explain the differences, say, between “ordinary” Communism and “radical” Communism, or between “ordinary” Nazism and a benign “moderate” Nazism?

You can’t list those distinguishing differences. They don’t exist. Islam is a one-size-fits-all system, from your footwear to your hairstyle to your diet.

Islam is “radical” because, as both a “religion” and as a political ideology, it prescribes total submission of the individual – indeed, of society – to the arbitrary and wholly irrational rules, permissions, prohibitions, and punishments of its “creed,” otherwise known as Sharia Law. Just as Nazism and Communism required the total submission of the individual to the state, Islam requires the total submersion of the individual to the caliphate.

Islam is essentially, and readily admits, totalitarian – root branch, and twig.

Bergman, writing about Terhi Kiemunki, a Finnish writer, was found guilty of “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith,” and noted that,

Finland is the European country most recently to adopt the way that European authorities sanction those who criticize Islam. According to the Finnish news outlet YLE, the Pirkanmaa District Court found the Finns Party politician, Terhi Kiemunki, guilty of “slandering and insulting adherents of the Islamic faith” in a blog post of Uusi Suomi. In it, she claimed that all the terrorists in Europe are Muslims. The Court found that when Kiemunki wrote of a “repressive, intolerant and violent religion and culture,” she meant the Islamic faith.

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Phishing the Clintons If John Podesta was hacked by the Russians, he made it too easy.

By on December 15th, 2016

Democrats claim Russian hackers stole victory from Hillary Clinton, yet President Obama told alleged comedian Trevor Noah that they released “what were frankly not very interesting emails that didn’t have any explosive information in them.” Well, either the content of the emails influenced the outcome, or not—which is it? And that isn’t the only contradiction in this narrative.

Another is the amazingly reckless information security programs of the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. New details Wednesday in the New York Times still manage to astonish, even from someone who ran her own homebrew email server out of her basement as Secretary of State.

The Times reported that a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent repeatedly called the DNC and left multiple voicemails warning that its computer system appeared to have been compromised. DNC staffers never called back for seven months because they told the Times they weren’t sure he was a real agent.

The Clinton campaign faults the FBI for not showing up in person at the DNC, as if it is the FBI’s fault the FBI wasn’t taken seriously. Yet two separate hacking rings, uncoordinated and unknown to each other, penetrated the DNC system.

Meanwhile, campaign chairman John Podesta was taken in “phishing” email, a relatively unsophisticated deception to trick someone into giving up a password. His aides thought the message was perhaps suspicious, but the IT team told them it was legitimate and to follow the link. Mr. Podesta also hadn’t activated two-factor authentication on his Gmail account, which might have provided another layer of security.

Not to blame the victims, but the reality of the modern era is that cyberattacks are a constant menace that requires vigilance. When the Chinese can steal millions of individual records from the Office of Personnel Management, any campaign must know that it is likely to be a target and take countermeasures to protect sensitive information.

Joe Kennedy told his kids never to write anything down that might one day appear on the front page of the Times. The modern analogue is to turn on two-factor authentication.

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Steal This Election Abbie Hoffman wrote ‘Steal This Book.’ Democrats are doing the 2016 update. By Daniel Henninger

By on December 15th, 2016

A serious person might ask: Why did John Podesta, the Democratic Party, and various of its media affiliates head into the fever swamps after Donald Trump won the election?

We knew months ago that the Trump phenomenon could drive women mad and make grown men weep, but how to explain the adoption of a Tom Clancy conspiracy, to wit: Vladimir Putin, using hacker slaves in a Kremlin basement, stole the election for Mr. Trump? Therefore let’s sequester the 538 folks from the Electoral College in a safe house for a CIA briefing before they vote to validate the results of the 2016 election.

Several explanations press into view, the simplest being . . . embarrassment.

Mr. Podesta and his associates lost the election, or at least the one that has been deciding U.S. presidential results since George Washington carried the Electoral College vote in 1789. (Gen. Washington got 69 votes, John Adams 34.)

This year’s loss happened in large part because the Hillary campaign ignored Bill Clinton’s advice to pursue the blue-collar vote that won him the presidency. The Clinton campaign thought Barack Obama’s “coalition of the ascendant” would win a third straight time. Staring out across the U.S. political map today, they look now like the coalition of the descendant.

Little surprise that the people responsible for this debacle are filling the skies with Putin-elected-Trump flak to divert eyes from why they lost states they should have won.

Another, more plausible explanation would be the belief among Democrats that the Trump victory is a temporary political bubble.

Mr. Trump won by gaining the support of les deplorables who formerly voted Democrat or who had stopped voting altogether after losing faith in the system. That is a thin, volatile presidential base.

If President Trump doesn’t deliver prosperity that satisfies these new voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, they’ll abandon the Trump Republicans. Then, like Silly Putty, the Democrats’ Blue Wall of electoral-vote states will reform in 2020. CONTINUE AT SITE

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