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November 2023

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

So, How’s That ‘Historic Investment In Clean Energy’ Paying Off?

By on November 9th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/09/so-hows-that-historic-investment-in-clean-energy-paying-off/

Anyone following the news might be confused by recent talk of offshore wind projects in trouble, automakers pulling back on EV production, and now multi-billion-dollar bailouts for the green-energy industry. How could that be, since President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats rammed through $370 billion in “clean” energy subsidies a little more than a year ago?

When Biden signed the criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” in August 2022, he boasted that it was “the most aggressive action ever — ever, ever, ever — in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening our economic — our energy security.”

So-called green-energy companies, not surprisingly, were ecstatic.

“Americans can now rest assured that our leaders have acted to lower costs, strengthen American energy independence, and create hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs, all while combatting the damaging impacts of climate change,” George Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, a solar developer, said at the time.

Has anyone checked up on those promises recently? Well, let’s see:

Lower costs? Electricity prices are up 3% since Biden signed that bill into law, and up 24% since he took office. Overall energy prices are unchanged compared with August 2022 and are up 44% since January 2021.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Campus Anti-Semitism in 1970 An encounter with fringe lunatics then gave a foretaste of today’s bitter hatred. By Jonathan Kellerman

By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/campus-anti-semitism-in-1970-jew-hatred-anti-israel-academia-college-7c7373d0?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

I was a junior at the University of California, Los Angeles when Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban came to town. It was Nov. 12, 1970, and he’d arrived to give a speech on Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. Alongside thousands of other students eager to hear him, I strolled to Pauley Pavilion, one of the campus’s largest venues.

On the way, my friends and I passed a small, vocal group of anti-Israel protesters, a motley bunch I’d seen on campus over the past year: three Libyan exchange students, a middle-aged German woman and a few members of Students for a Democratic Society, a radical group.

One of the SDSers confronted us, hurling insult after insult. He ended his tirade by screaming that we were Nazis. We walked on and enjoyed an eloquent, well-received speech by Eban. But the encounter remained with me.

Here I was—a second-generation American who had lost several relatives to the gas chambers, the son of a decorated World War II veteran who had fought the Nazis and survived both D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge—being branded as Hitlerian. What could be crueler and crazier?

Anti-Semitism at elite universities isn’t new. Those opposed to Israel planted the seeds of hatred following the Six Day War in 1967. Israel won that military conflict, but its enemies have since dominated the war of words.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Can/should Israel defy US pressure? A new 6-minute-video Yoram Ettinger

By on November 9th, 2023

https://bit.ly/3ssfqV1

Can/should Israel defy US pressure to act against its (Israel’s) own most critical national security interest (e.g., allowing a ceasefire in the war to obliterate the anti-Western Hamas Islamic terrorism; bolstering the Palestinian Authority despite its terror-driven policy and education system; allowing a non-Israeli security control of Gaza following the current war) while the US extends Israel a highly-appreciated(!), vital support, militarily, financially and diplomatically?
 
2. Israel’s defiance of US pressure has been an inherent feature of US-Israel relations since 1948. It has caused short-term frictions, while generating long-term US strategic respect toward Israel, triggering a dramatic enhancement of mutually-beneficial strategic cooperation. 
 
3. As expected, Israeli defiance of US pressure spared the US economic and national security setbacks, dealing major blows to enemies and rivals of the US.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Palestinian state is still a dangerous idea – opinion In a perfect world, every group that wants a sovereign state could have one. But in the real world, they shouldn’t. By Moshe Phillips

By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-772008

Despite the horrific October 7 pogroms in southern Israel, carried out by Hamas terrorists, US President Joe Biden continues to push for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian-Arab state next to the Jewish state. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to understand that October 7 has changed everything.

For decades, the debate over creating a Palestinian state revolved around two major issues: the intentions of the Palestinian Arabs and the actual borders of such a state.

Statehood supporters claimed that the Palestinian Arab leadership, and the majority of Palestinian Arabs, would live in peace with Israel if given a sovereign state.

Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, nobody knew whether that claim had real merit. Nobody knew for sure how the Palestinian Arabs would behave if given self-rule. But since 1993, the question of their intentions has been tested, and they have failed that test. Miserably. There’s just no debating that point.

The first test was in 1993-1995, when Israel signed the Oslo agreements and surrendered control of 40% of Judea-Samaria to the Palestinian Authority. The behavior of then-PA leader Yasser Arafat, and his successor Mahmoud Abbas, was supposed to show that it was safe to give them a full-fledged state.

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