The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
The major foreign policy shift would face deep opposition within Israel.
U.S. President Joe Biden addresses the nation about Israel, flanked by
Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Oct.
10, 2023. Source: YouTube/White House.
The Biden administration is bucking
decades of U.S. foreign policy by considering a plan to unilaterally
recognize a Palestinian state, despite deep opposition to the move
within Israel.
Both Axios and The New York Times
reported on Wednesday about this potential major shift in the American
approach towards Palestinian statehood, which hitherto has emphasized
direct negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
According to the Axios report,
which cites two U.S. officials familiar with the situation, Secretary of
State Antony Blinken requested a review of policy options for the
recognition of a Palestinian state after Israel’s war against Hamas in
Gaza concludes.
In the months since the Oct. 7 terrorist
assault on southern Israel, the Biden administration has been pushing
for Palestinian statehood as part of a major normalization pact and
regional security initiative between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Palestinian issue was not reportedly seen as a major obstacle
to a Jerusalem-Riyadh detente before the Hamas attack, but the Biden
administration’s stance has apparently changed and the Saudis are
emphasizing a pathway to a Palestinian state as a precondition for
normalization.
A senior U.S. official told Axios
that some inside the Biden administration believe that unilateral
recognition of a Palestinian state should be the first step in talks to
resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of the last.
This goes against the doctrine of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sees increasing relations with the
wider Arab world as the key to solving the Palestinian issue, as
exemplified by the 2020 Abraham Accords, which saw Israel establish
diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and
Sudan in a deal brokered by the Trump administration.
Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious coalition is firmly against establishing a Palestinian state.
There is also widespread opposition among the Israeli public to the creation of a Palestinian state.
According to the most recent “Peace Index” survey
released by Tel Aviv University last week, when asked whether they
support the creation of a “Palestinian” state alongside Israel, 66% of
Jewish respondents said they opposed such a move, while 27% expressed
support for the creation of a “Palestine.”
New York Times columnist Thomas
Friedman wrote that the Biden push to possibly recognize a demilitarized
Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip “would come into
being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible
institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was
viable and that it could never threaten Israel.”
He continued, “Biden administration
officials have been consulting experts inside and outside the U.S.
government about different forms this recognition of Palestinian
statehood might take.”
According to Friedman, the “Biden doctrine
for the Middle East” would also include a strong stance against Iran,
including a military response against Iranian terror proxies in the
region in retaliation for the killing of three U.S. soldiers
at a base in Jordan in a drone attack. It would also involve a “vastly
expanded” U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia that would include
Israel-Saudi normalization.
Furthermore, Axios reported on
several options the Biden administration could take, including bilateral
recognition of a Palestinian state, withdrawing its veto power against
the United Nations Security Council admitting “Palestine” as a full U.N.
member state, and urging other countries to recognize a Palestinian
state. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said on Monday that the U.K. was considering recognizing a Palestinian state.
Blinken is expected to meet with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer
in Washington on Thursday to discuss the Gaza war and plans for the day
after fighting in Gaza ends, as well as Israel-Saudi normalization.
Dermer held similar talks with U.S. National Security Advisor Jake
Sullivan on Wednesday.
Moreover, Blinken
will visit Israel for three days beginning on Feb. 3, his sixth trip to
the Jewish state since Hamas invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7.
I was born and raised in Georgia. I attended
the University of Tennessee — the Volunteers — and now reside in Texas,
where I finished my military career. I can tell you that there is a
ruggedness in the Lone Star State that can be traced back to names like
Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Mirabeau Lamar, Thomas Jefferson Rusk, James
Fanin, William Barret Travis, and Jim Bowie. This is the state that was
first its own Republic and fought for its independence all alone. Rough
men stood on a field and dared the vaunted Mexican cavalry to “Come and
Take It.” Texas is home to The Alamo, a sacred place embodying the
purest definition of courage and honor. This is the place where men met
at Washington on the Brazos in a windowless wooden cabin and wrote a
Declaration of Independence, the only state in the Union with such. The
San Jacinto battlefield is the site where Texas secured its
independence, defeating Santa Anna and his army in 18 minutes.
Joe Biden has foolishly decided to take on Texas over his
unconstitutional and treasonous undermining of our national sovereignty.
I am sure there are the leftist detractors who will say,
“But Colonel, the SCOTUS ruled . . . ” Well, the SCOTUS got it wrong,
very wrong. Last week I posted a detailed exegesis
of the fallacy, and danger, of their decision. The federal government
cannot disregard and abdicate an enumerated constitutional duty —
Article IV, Section 4, the Guarantee Clause — and expect the States to
have no recourse. The Founding Fathers understood that, hence enumerated
the power to the States, Article I, Section 10, Clause 3, to take
action “if actually invaded, under imminent danger, and without any
admit of delay.” It doesn’t take a constitutional scholar to be able to
read and comprehend that.
As a result, Biden has threatened to “federalize” the Texas
National Guard and force them to comply with his unconstitutional
actions of implementing an open borders policy. First of all, I know a
bit about federalizing the Texas National Guard. As an artillery
battalion commander in the 4th Infantry Division, one of my subordinate
firing units was in the Texas National Guard. As we prepared to deploy
for Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2002, I remember the Division Commander,
the late General Raymond Odierno asking me at the National Training
Center if I could get the unit trained up for the deployment. I knew he
would be asking and briefed him on a two-week training plan. The unit
was requested under Title X they were activated.
Secondly, we all remember Republican President Eisenhower
“federalizing” the Arkansas National Guard during the Little Rock School
desegregation crisis. The SCOTUS had decided in Brown v. Board of
Education in 1954 that the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision of “separate
but equal” was unconstitutional. Arkansas Governor Faubus used the
National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Central High
School in Little Rock. As an interesting side note, Democrats used to
keep Blacks from getting an equal and quality education by locking them
out. Now, the same Democrats keep Blacks from the same by locking them
into failing schools.
Eisenhower first called up the US Army’s 101st Airborne
Division, he subsequently federalized the Arkansas National Guard to
enforce the desegregation executive order. Yeah, a Republican President
enforced the Brown v. Board of Education decision, by way of his
executive order, and the use of military security.
That, ladies and gents, are two examples of the correct, and constitutional, means for federalizing the National Guard.
Joe Biden and the progressive socialist left seek
dictatorial tyranny. Then again, it was Joe Biden who spoke of the
federal government having F-15s and nuclear weapons, a direct threat to
American citizens. All uniformed members of our Armed Forces take an
oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I have
yet to see any article, section, or clause in the Constitution that
supports open borders and wanton illegal immigration. Heck, I find it
quite telling that Biden would seek to federalize the Texas National
Guard to enable the continued flow of single military-aged males,
illegally, into our Republic but not have them conduct operations to
regain operational control of our border from the transnational
narco-criminal terrorists, the cartels. Or why is it that Biden has
remained silent about pro-Hamas terrorist groups holding violent marches
in our nation? After all, Hamas is still holding Americans hostage and
killed Americans on October 7, 2023.
One can only deduce that the Biden administration is taking
the next step in their willful, intentional, and purposeful undermining
of our national sovereignty. They are going to use the military to
enable the flow of drug, human, and sex trafficking. I do not think our
military is willing to aid and abet human and sex trafficking.
Texas will not comply. I can assure you that the members of
the Texas National Guard will say to Biden as those men said on October
2, 1835, at Gonzales . . . “Come and Take It.” This is a very bad hill
upon which Joe Biden has chosen to die. As we say in the military, he
has written a check that his butt can’t cash. He has elevated the issue
of border security to an even higher position. As well, he is
galvanizing what will be more than two-thirds of this nation against
him, and his lawless, tyrannical, dictatorial, and unconstitutional
administration. Texans will not idly sit by anymore and watch our
safety, security, and sovereignty be threatened.
There’s a saying down in these parts, “Don’t Mess with
Texas.” Any hope for the progressive socialist, Marxists, to ever win
the state of Texas just went up in smoke. And, yes, if the ol’ Colonel
is asked to head down, man a position, or lead an element of the Texas
State Militia, hell yeah! Nah, I am not an insurrectionist. Joe Biden
is, as well as being a petty usurper and dangerous charlatan.
Secretary Mayorkas willfully allowing millions to invade the country is not just a “policy dispute.”
As the House Homeland Security Committee advanced articles
of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
over an invasion of the country by millions, Democrats and some
Republicans argued that it was a “policy dispute” and not impeachable.
“Political and policy disagreements aren’t impeachable offenses,”
former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The Journal‘s
own editorial board used that same line in its own subheader opposing
impeachment, arguing that, “a policy dispute doesn’t qualify as a high
crime and misdemeanor.”
Democrats have been making that argument all along.
The Democrat Committee on Homeland Security put forward a 45-page
statement which mentions the word “policy” 45 times, and argues that,
“iImpeachment is an extraordinary remedy under the United States
Constitution. It is not a tool for policy or political differences.”
“This is simply a policy dispute, a disagreement about how a
different party is attacking a policy problem. And the Republicans are
trying to abuse their power and the Constitution to convert what is
simply a disagreement into somehow some way, a high crime and
misdemeanor there is no crime, much less a high crime or misdemeanor
here,” Rep Dan Goldman contended.
Impeachment is not an “extraordinary remedy”, it’s just the ultimate
form of congressional oversight. Presidents are not kings, they do not
have unlimited power to do whatever they please, and cabinet members may
be appointed by presidents, but they must be approved and serve at the
pleasure of two branches of the federal government, and not just of one
single man.
The same Democrats protesting that impeaching Mayorkas is an abuse of
power were responsible for sending Peter Navarro, a former Trump
official, to prison for refusing to testify before their partisan
committee. That was and is an extraordinary abuse of power.
Mayorkas, unlike Navarro, is a sitting government official.
Impeachment, as Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers,
involves those “offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”
Impeachable offenses “relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself,” he wrote.
It’s hard to think of a better example than allowing millions of
illegal aliens to invade the country, and doing everything possible to
wilfully impede the efforts of states trying to slow that invasion.
As the internet meme goes, Homeland Security had one job. Is our homeland secure?
Entire cities have been overloaded and are groaning under the weight
of an invasion that has no precedent in American history. Major cities
are swarmed, police officers are being assaulted in broad daylight and
stores are being cleaned out by massive mobs of illegal migrant
invaders.
There were 2.5 million encounters at the border in the last fiscal
year alone. And that does not count the millions more who were never
‘encountered’. The same House Committee on Homeland Security moving to
impeach Secretary Mayorkas had released statistics showing that there were 269,735 encounters in just the last month of the fiscal year.
Nearly 7 million illegal alien invaders have shown up on Mayorkas’
and Biden’s watch. They include tens of thousands of gang members and
criminals, hundreds of terrorists and enough fentanyl to kill every
American ten times over… and those are just the ones that we caught.
Is 7 million illegal invaders a policy dispute or a war?
Biden, Mayorkas and other officials claim that they’re helpless to
act and that they’re doing the best that they can, and that House
Republicans can fix the problem with a “border deal.”
All of that is a lie.
The Biden administration calculatedly set out to dismantle every
border security policy. It ended construction of the border wall and
sued Arizona and Texas for trying to fortify their own borders. It
fought in court to end Title 42 authority by claiming that the pandemic
was over even as Biden tried to justify his massive student loan bailout
plan because of the pandemic. It went to court to be able to not only
release illegal alien invaders into America, but to do so without court
dates.
When a court blocked the release of illegal aliens without court dates, Secretary Mayorkas denounced it as a
“very harmful ruling.” During the negotiations for a ‘border deal’, the
Biden administration insisted that preventing it from releasing illegal
aliens into the country was a ‘red line’ that it could not compromise
on. That’s because releasing them is the whole point.
You can file this under “treason” or “high crimes and misdemeanors”,
but it is at its most elemental, a profound breach of the public trust
with massively catastrophic consequences.
It is a “policy dispute” in the same sense that announcing China can
freely invade California or that anyone born before 1959 can be freely
killed without fear of prosecution is a policy dispute. In theory every
policy position, no matter how horrifying, is a policy dispute. Public
officials should not be casually impeached over policy disagreements,
they should however be impeached when their malicious actions violate
their duties and cause tremendous harm.
Of all the impeachments over the years, impeaching Mayorkas may be the most justified.
Past impeachments have often been partisan exercises or like the
impeachment of Judge Alcee Hastings for bribery (who then became a long
serving Democrat congressman) a matter of personal corruption where the
overall public harm was either intangible or negligible.
The impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas is not a matter of personal
misconduct. There is no evidence that he is stealing, conducting an
affair, taking or soliciting bribes or corrupting the government for his
own personal agendas. His only actual crime is following orders.
And that’s the only argument against impeaching Mayorkas. He’s not acting on his own.
Enabling the mass invasion of the United States is not the action of
one man, but of an administration, which has used every federal agency
at its disposal, including the EPA, to enable that invasion, which has
dispensed a fortune to the invaders to encourage them to invade, and
another fortune to the refugee resettlers to make sure that they never
leave.
And it’s not just the policy of one man or one administration, but of
a party that has spent decades conniving, scheming and maneuvering,
since the Kennedy administration, to fundamentally transform immigration
law in order to shift the national demographics and the political
culture through laws, UN treaties, economic incentives and the neglect
of existing laws.
Elected officials can advocate for laws, no matter how destructive,
and they can even lie about the consequences of those laws, as JFK and
Ted Kennedy did about the shift toward third world immigration, as LBJ
did about the disastrous UN refugee treaty that is at the heart of our
asylum problem today, and as Senate Democrats did about their amnesty in
1986. But that amnesty, part of another in a series of “border deals”
became part of the trend of not only advocating, but ignoring and
refusing to enforce immigration laws. And then creating anti-immigration
laws, such as sanctuary cities and states, and a federal crackdown on
state immigration enforcement.
Beyond a refusal to enforce laws, Obama initiated a unilateral
amnesty for some illegal aliens as part of what was deemed “selective
enforcement” and “discretion”. That already illegal policy evolved under
Biden into virtually no enforcement for anyone except the worst of the
worst.
Elected officials and appointees have certain responsibilities,
regardless of their partisan agendas, and there are consequences for
failing to uphold them. As a partisan political appointee, Secretary
Mayorkas would inevitably work toward open borders, as has every
Democrat before him, but that did not change his responsibility to his
official duties.
Overseeing and implementing an invasion is incompatible with those duties.
Elected officials can have policy disputes, but appointed officials
are managing the machinery of the state which must continue to run
despite their partisan leanings. An anti-war secretary of defense cannot
simply drive all the tanks into the ocean and announce that the United
States will no longer defend itself against enemy invasions. And,
contrariwise, a conservative EPA head cannot reject the concept of
pollution and refuse to fulfill the responsibilities of his office.
That is what Secretary Mayorkas has done. He was following orders,
but that’s no excuse. Cabinet members may be chosen by presidents, but
they answer to two branches of the government. That second branch of the
government is preparing to impeach Mayorkas for actions that have
wrecked entire cities, trashed much of the country and cost countless
lives.
No one died because of anything that Clinton or Trump faced
impeachment for, but people have died in sizable numbers because of the
action and inaction of Secretary Mayorkas and Biden. The murders,
fentanyl overdoses and diseases spreading across the nation are a crime.
They are a high crime whose origin lies with the policies of Mayorkas
and the Biden administration.
If a political official willfully refusing to do his duty leading to
an invasion of millions and the deaths of over a hundred people doesn’t
justify impeachment, what possibly does?
"You can go into the November election with the best laws on the books, but if those laws are gutted in your courts [...] then that law is not worth the paper that it’s written on,” Jason Snead said.
As the 2024 election cycle begins, the Honest Elections Project releases its report on 14 election reforms that states should make to protect the integrity of elections.
With the 2024 presidential primary elections underway, a bipartisan election integrity watchdog has released its updated report
on election reforms that they say will help secure their elections.
Some of these reforms have been considered or implemented in various
states since the 2020 presidential election, during which there were numerous irregularities and inequities.
The Honest Elections Project released its report on Friday, titled, “Safeguarding Our Elections: Critical Reforms to Secure Voter Integrity and Rebuild Confidence in Americans Elections,” listing 14 election reforms that states should implement.
On
Wednesday, Jason Snead, Executive Director of the Honest Elections
Project, told reporters on a press call that the watchdog’s original
2021 report was updated this year because "the election integrity fight
has changed.” He said that there are new “threats to election integrity
that are being pushed from the left,” such as ranked-choice voting,
“Zuckerbucks 2.0,” foreign influence through donations, and non-citizen
voting.
"Zuckerbucks" is a phrase used to describe funding from Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which critics say is
run by a former Obama Foundation fellow that receives its funding from
big tech companies, including more than $350 million in “Zuckerbucks”
from Mark Zuckerberg. In turn, CTCL allegedly injects that cash into boosting Democrat turnout in swing states.
Block “Zuck Bucks 2.0” and other private election funding schemes.
Stop foreign influence in elections.
Require transparency and robust post-election audits of election processes and procedures.
Ban non-citizen voting in all elections.
Consolidate election dates.
Ensure that elected lawmakers write election laws.
Require prompt and accurate election results.
Maintain clean and accurate voter rolls.
Protect the integrity of the voter registration process.
Secure early and mail voting laws.
Protect vulnerable mail ballots.
Require Voter ID for every ballot.
Investigate and prosecute election crimes.
In the report, the recommended reform
of “Ensur[ing] that elected lawmakers write election laws” explains
that "Lawmakers, not courts and bureaucrats, make the laws that govern
elections. But partisan special interests, spearheaded by left-wing
lawyer Marc Elias and allied left-wing groups, use frivolous lawsuits
and collusive settlements to weaken and rewrite election laws for
political gain.”
The reform states
that “Legislatures should protect their constitutional authority to
regulate elections by barring executive agencies from agreeing to legal
settlements or consent decrees that substantively alter or weaken
election laws. States should prohibit sue-and-settle litigation, in
which activists and partisans sue officials to secure an agreement to
ignore or effectively rewrite election law.”
The report cited
instances in in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, where
“officials contravened state laws following lawsuits and agreed to count
absentee ballots that were received late.”
In a review by The Amistad Project
of more than 400 cases regarding the 2020 election, Democratic and
left-leaning plaintiffs filed a plurality of election lawsuits, 180 in
all. However, only 18% of their cases were won, with 40% lost on the
merits and 42% lost on procedural grounds.
Snead
said on Wednesday that “One of the biggest threats that we’re gonna
face between now and November is gonna be just a torrent of left-wing
litigation.”
He
explained, “We saw the chaos, we saw the confusion, we saw the rules
changes that [Mark] Elias and his operation were able to impose on
states through the litigation process of 2020. And they’re already
starting that up again this year.”
Snead referenced Elias’ report from early January on election cases to focus on this year.
“I
think litigation is gonna be one of the big, big threats because you
can go into the November election with the best laws on the books, but
if those laws are gutted in your courts, if those laws are gutted
through consent agreements between a Democrat suing a Democrat, then
that law is not worth the paper that it’s written on,” Snead said.
Another
significant issue facing states this year is ranked-choice voting,
Snead added. Ranked-choice voting (RCV) is an election process being introduced in states across the country,
but is facing pushback from both sides of the political aisle,
including efforts to ban it. With RCV, if no candidate receives more
than 50% of the vote, then a runoff system is triggered. When voters
cast their ballots, they rank each candidate in order of
first-to-last.
If
one candidate doesn't reach the 50% plus-one vote threshold, then the
candidate with the least amount of first-choice votes is eliminated,
then second-choice votes from those who voted for the last-place
finisher are reallocated among the remaining candidates and tallied – in
a process that continues until a candidate receives the majority of the
vote.
RCV
proponents argue that the system results in representative outcomes and
majority rule, incentivizes positive campaigning, allows for more voter
choice, and saves money when replacing preliminaries or runoffs, according to pro-RCV organization FairVote.
Alaska and Maine are the only two states to have RCV at the state level, with three U.S. counties and 45 cities using RCV at the local levels. Florida, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Tennessee have banned RCV.
Efforts
are underway to have residents in various states vote on ballot
measures for RCV-related constitutional amendments in November, with
some measures already set to be voted on in the general election. Many
of the ballot measures would implement RCV for presidential primary
elections.
Snead previously told Just the News
that RCV presidential primaries are like the California jungle primary
system, where there is no party primary and all the candidates run "on a
single ballot for each race."
Snead
added that by forcing candidates to seek to win second and third-place
votes, they must outsource their negative campaigning to independent
expenditure groups. Therefore, campaigns need “more dark money,” he
said.
The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission told the utility that the “premature closure of these [coal] plants adds to the uncertainty of electrical generation resource adequacy in the upper Midwest.” Some energy experts call the government's policies "irrational."
Despite ongoing warnings that the electricity grid of the United
States is becoming increasingly unstable, a major utility is moving
forward with the elimination of two major coal-fired power plants in the upper Midwest. Energy analysts say the instability is a byproduct of the shutdown of reliable generation sources.
Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy closed one of three coal units at Sherburne County Generating Plant,
in December, as part of its plans to deliver 100% carbon-free
electricity. It will shut the other two stations down, according to the Star Tribune, by 2030. The utility will also shutter its Allen S. King coal plant by 2028.
The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission is asking Xcel Energy to reconsider the plan,
warning the “premature closure of these plants adds to the uncertainty
of electrical generation resource adequacy in the upper Midwest.”
Isaac Orr, policy fellow for the Center of the American Experiment and co-author of “Energy Bad Boys,”
told Just The News that the move to shut down the plants is part of an
increasingly irrational energy policy that encourages bad decisions.
In its latest assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation,
a grid watchdog, warned that the MISO region is under some of the
highest risks for resource inadequacy, which means that during peak
demand periods, rolling blackouts are a possibility. Xcel Energy, according to the Energy News Network, is even looking at variable rates to encourage customers to conserve energy and use it during off-peak periods.
Orr said it’s problematic that utilities are substituting having
adequate electricity generation for programs to discourage energy use.
“It’s like saying, ‘Oh you’re hungry? Have you tried skipping lunch?’ To
me, that’s not okay,” Orr said.
Other People’s Electricity
Orr said that Xcel Energy has a capacity surplus, according to the
way MISO over credits wind and solar capacity. “I think that's
problematic, especially in winter, if you think that wind is going to
show up at negative 23 [degrees]. I think that you're mistaken,” Orr
said.
Orr added that as Xcel shuts down its coal capacity, it’s going to
move into a situation where it doesn’t have enough electricity to meet
demand, such as during a severe cold snap. Their plan, he said, is to
just import power from resources in the MISO territory. “The problem
with that is eventually you run out of other people's electricity,” Orr
explained.
Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Nebraska have all set goals to decarbonize their grid by 2040 or 2050, which will mean eliminating coal-fired power plants entirely. These goals are on top of federal green energy mandates.
Orr said that he and fellow writer Mitch Rolling, who is also a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, started posting articles on “Energy Bad Boys” because they “like beating up on bad arguments that wind and solar advocates make for their preferred energy policies.”
Investor-owned utilities like Xcel are regulated monopolies, the writers explain in “The Death of a Wind Farm,”
meaning they are prohibited from making profits on the electricity they
sell. They can only charge enough to cover the cost of providing
electricity and a 10.2% rate of return on equity when they spend money
on capital assets. This includes everything from wind farms to new
corporate offices. They only need public utility commissions to approve
the expenses.
That profit declines every year as the capital assets depreciate in
value, which means the utilities have an incentive to build as many wind
farms as possible.
Federal production tax credits (PTC) are also creating incentives to
overbuild wind farms and refurbish the turbines before the end of their
expected lives. The PTCs expire after the first 10 years of a wind
farm’s life, unless the turbines are furbished. As a result, Rolling and
Orr explain, wind farm operators are incentivized to refurbish the
turbines well before their useful life.
Negative Pricing
The PTCs also provide $26 for each megawatt hour of electricity that a
wind farm produces, and the credit is received whether or not the
electricity is being consumed.
Currently, the transmission line capacity isn’t capable of
transporting all the energy these wind farms produce, which causes power
prices to go negative, but as Rollin and Orr explain, thanks to PTCs, even at negative electricity prices, wind farms still turn a profit. Data from Berkeley Lab shows areas with the most wind farms are also areas with the most frequent negative electricity pricing.
Utilities in the U.S. are shutting down coal plants and not building any new ones.
Besides federal emissions regulations, Orr said that they are
incentivized to shut down depreciating assets, which means older coal
plants.
An Xcel spokesperson told Utility Dive
that the utility plans to complement its variable generation sources
with planned nuclear power plants and 800 megawatts of hydrogen-ready
combustion turbines, in addition to several hundred miles of
transmission lines.
At the same time, wind and solar farms require some form of reliable
backup, which is increasingly being supplied by natural gas-fired power
plants. So, as utilities build out wind and solar, they will also need
to invest in more new gas turbines. The end result is more profits.
Orr also said “They love the fact that the stuff that they're being
mandated to build isn't very good. That's a recipe to print money if
you're a regulated utility. And that's exactly what Excel is doing.”
Finally daring to speak out against the real cause of their misery.
Exclusive footage: Myriads of Gazans evacuate to a secure humanitarian area, chanting "Down with Hamas." The video was captured in the new passage in western Khan Younis, enabling Gaza residents to access the Al-Muwasi humanitarian area. pic.twitter.com/oTCeD76gnn
While the IDF continues to provide safe corridors for civilians
fleeing from Khan Yunis, Hamas operatives try to hold them back, for
they are the human shields Hamas relies on to discourage IDF attacks.
Now Gazans are openly expressing their anger with Hamas, which wants to
keep them imperiled, and also has been appropriating much of the
humanitarian aid that has been trucked into the Strip. More on this
public display of anger directed at Hamas can be found here: “Gazans
call for overthrow of Hamas as they flee through IDF humanitarian
corridor,” by Gadi Zaig, Jerusalem Post, January
The IDF has established a humanitarian corridor in recent
days for Palestinian residents of western Khan Yunis to move from
combat areas to the town of Al-Mawasi in southwestern Gaza, IDF Arabic
spokesperson Avichay Adraee announced on Saturday.
Adraee said that Gazan residents would be safe in Al-Mawasi and that
the corridor has been opened to evacuate civilians every day so that the
IDF can focus on fighting the Hamas terrorist organization and
deepening its incursion into Khan Yunis without the risk of civilians
being injured in the process.
Tens of thousands of Gazans have already passed through this corridor safely, according to the spokesperson.
Adraee also quoted a number of Gazan civilians passing through the
corridor, who informed IDF soldiers that Hamas was preventing them from
leaving combat areas, using threats and violence. Additionally, IDF
soldiers were also assisting civilians at the scene, including the
elderly and sick.
The humanitarian corridor remains open until 4 p.m. for residents to cross over to Al-Mawasi.
“The people want to topple Hamas,” can be heard from the Palestinian civilians chanting.
COGAT official Major-General Rasan Aliyan said that “In recent days,
we see more and more evidence of public criticism voiced by the
residents of Gaza against the terrorist organization Hamas. The
residents of the Gaza Strip rightly prefer their well-being and the
safety of their children over the continued military strengthening of
Hamas and the terrorist activities that harm them and their future.”
Palestinians were also seen evacuating from the Nasser Hospital in
Khan Yunis on Friday, with COGAT stating that “Hamas operates from and
around the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals. The systematic use of hospitals
across Gaza by Hamas has been documented, including Hamas shooting a
rocket from within the hospital….
Hamas uses hospitals as places where it can hide both weapons and
fighters, and from which its operatives can launch rocket, RPG, and
machine-gun attacks on Israeli soldiers. It is critical that civilians
remain in them, acting as human shields, and limiting the IDF’s freedom
to search and destroy.
The IDF has established a safe corridor for Gazan civilians who wish
at this point to leave the areas in and around the last two hospitals —
Nasser and Al-Amal Hospitals — that are still functioning in Khan Yunis.
The IDF is cooperating with medical staff in order that both hospitals
can remain open and accessible to those needing treatment.
Gazans are finally daring to speak out against the real cause of
their misery — Hamas. It is not only that Hamas tries to prevent
civilians from fleeing to safety, in order that they remain as human
shields – it even kills some Gazans in flight to discourage others from
attempting to do the same. Equally enraging to Gazan civilians, Hamas
also retains control of the humanitarian aid — food and medicine — that
donors send for the people of Gaza. Hamas appropriates much of that aid
for itself, and what its operatives don’t use for themselves is sold on
the black market. Aid meant to be free is instead sold at high prices to
desperate civilians, with Hamas pocketing the profits.
That is why the civilians fleeing Khan Yunis have been shouting “Down
with Hamas”and “The people want to topple Hamas.” And, with help from
the IDF, they will.
Black pastors are pressuring President Joe Biden to save Hamas because they identify with “oppressed” Palestinian Arabs who launched a genocidal war, not a drive for civil rights. Don't they know that? That is a morally bankrupt position.
(JNS) For the 1,000 black pastors who have joined a movement to
pressure President Joe Biden to force a ceasefire in the war between
Israel and Hamas, the issue, they contend, is solidarity with the
“oppressed.” This can be seen as part of a general revolt within the
activist base of the Democratic Party against the administration’s
policy in the Middle East. Much like the petitions signed by lower-level
officials throughout the government, Democratic congressional staffers
and even the president’s campaign staff.
But as reports in The New York Times, NPR
and other publications have made clear, the opposition of black
churches, which have long been key to get-out-the-vote campaigns to
elect Democrats, to Biden on an issue they say “isn’t marginal” poses a
potentially lethal threat to his hopes for re-election.
But the
key question to be asked about this effort is not so much about its
political impact, significant though it may be. It’s why so many
African-Americans, especially church leaders who have real influence
among their congregants as well as the general black community, could
come to believe that the cause of the Palestinian Arabs is somehow
linked to their own interests and beliefs.
The answer to this
puzzle is clear. Intersectional myths in which the Palestinian Arab war
to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet is somehow analogous to
the struggle for civil rights in the United States are no longer merely a
talking point of academic fashion. These toxic ideas have now been
embraced by the African-American community. The teaching of critical
race theory and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion
(DEI) divides the world into two immutable groups locked in a
never-ending struggle: white oppressors and people of color, who are
always the victims. Black pastors have swallowed the neo-Marxist lies
that Jews are “white” oppressors and that Palestinian Arabs are
victimized people of color—and are sharing that with their congregants.
Racial myths about the Middle East
-The
clear fact that the conflict in the Middle East isn’t about race—Jews
and Arabs are the same ethnicity—and that about half of Israeli Jews are
themselves people of color because they trace their origins to the
Middle East and North Africa, is left out of the discussion about
American blacks’ opposition to Israel.
-They seem equally
ignorant or disinterested in the Palestinian Arabs’ consistent rejection
of every compromise offer, including those that would have granted them
independence and statehood provided they were willing to live
peacefully alongside a Jewish state.
-That a ceasefire existed
before Oct. 7 and that Gaza hadn’t been occupied since 2005—or that Jews
are the indigenous people in the place Americans call “the holy
land”—is also omitted from these discussions.
The
facts about the Palestinian Arabs’ century-long war against Zionism
don’t matter if you believe that any struggle can be reduced to an
intersectional equation of good people of color versus evil whites, with
the “whites” always in the wrong no matter what either group does.
The
language used by pastors in describing their campaign to bludgeon
Biden, who knows all too well that he only won his party’s presidential
nomination in 2020 and then the general election that year because of
black support, is not so much a reflection of political calculations as
an attempt to frame their stand as an extension of civil-rights
advocacy.
Barbara Williams-Skinner of the National
African American Clergy Network, a group that claims to represent 15
million black churchgoers, told the Times that “black clergy have
seen war, militarism, poverty and racism all connected.” But she said
that anger directed at Israel exceeded any protests heard from her
members about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She asserted that the
images of Palestinian Arabs set off the sort of, “deep-seated angst
among black people that I have not seen since the civil-rights
movement.”
This was echoed by another pastor quoted in the Times,
“We see them as a part of us,” said the Rev. Cynthia Hale, the founder
and senior pastor of Ray of Hope Christian Church in Decatur, Ga. “They
are oppressed people. We are oppressed people.”
Missing from these
statements is any sense of context about the war. Also left out of the
equation is what it is the “oppressed” Palestinian Arabs want, as well
as how they are going about trying to obtain their objectives and
whether that has anything in common with the objectives of the
civil-rights movement. Indeed, the narrative of solidarity with the
cause of the Palestinian Arabs has erased Israel, the rights of
Israelis, their suffering or their efforts to ensure that the atrocities
of Oct. 7 never be repeated.
It also should extinguish
the last vestiges of support for something that many once took for
granted: the alliance between African-Americans and Jews.
Erasing antisemitism
When
pressed for any acknowledgment of how the current war started or about
Israel, the pastors say that they are against terrorism and in favor of
the release of the estimated 136 Israelis who continue to be held
hostage in Gaza by Hamas. And they disclaim any connection with
antisemitism.
But the disconnect is not on the
side of Jews who are wondering how a group that they had resolutely
supported has effectively abandoned them.
Since
the Oct. 7 Hamas pogroms against communities in southern Israel, there
has been an unprecedented surge of antisemitism in the United States.
This shocking increase in open Jew-hatred on the streets of American
cities and college campuses, as well as in commentary in many mainstream
outlets like the Times, is directly tied to efforts to demonize
Israel and to treat its citizens and its American Jewish supporters as
fair game for terrorism. Yet the very people that liberal Jewish groups
have always worked closely with—black spiritual leaders—are so obsessed
with their alleged common ground with Palestinian Arabs that they are
completely ignoring the way their former friends are besieged by
antisemitic incidents and hate speech.
This is a shocking
turnabout, especially when you consider how loyally legacy Jewish groups
have stuck with the African-American community even as the evidence
that the relationship wasn’t reciprocal mounted. Organizations like the
Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have endorsed
the Black Lives Matter movement in spite of the fact that it was
connected to and led by Jew-haters. They also remain determined to
support DEI policies despite the way they provide a permission slip for
antisemitism—something that has become obvious since Oct. 7 as colleges
and universities failed to protect their Jewish students from the hate
directed at them by anti-Israel mobs.
Cars near Sderot after the Odt 7 massacreflash 90
The truth about the Palestinians
The
images that have pervaded the media about Palestinian Arab suffering
can explain some of the sympathy for their cause, but only if you don’t
consider why that suffering occurred or the practical alternatives.
The population of Gaza has suffered terribly as a result of a war they
started on Oct. 7 with an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture and
kidnapping that they initially cheered as a great “victory.” Palestinian
Arab civilians, not only Hamas terrorists in uniforms, took part in
massaxring Jewish civilians. Having sown the wind with terrorism, they
then reaped the whirlwind as Israeli forces began a systematic attempt
to root out Hamas terrorists from their Gaza strongholds. The
devastation has been great as Hamas had dug itself into the Strip
building a tunnel network underneath homes, mosques, schools and
hospitals.
Gazans didn’t protest when billions in international
aid money was diverted from humanitarian projects to turn the area into a
subterranean fortress where terrorists can hide behind the civilians
they deliberately expose to harm. There was no Palestinian Arab protest
movement, not even a glimmer of one. During the current war, Palestinian
Arab civilians held Israeli hostages in their homes and treated them
abysmally.
The notion that Israel has no right to
attack Gaza after Oct. 7 is a novel theory of war. If terrorists are
now granted the right to use populations as human shields while fighting
a war—Hamas has shot more than 15,000 rockets and missiles at Israeli
civilian targets since Oct. 7—then murderers will, in essence, be
granted immunity for even the most barbaric crimes.
And if a ceasefire is imposed on Israel before Hamas is eradicated, that’s what will happen.
At
no point do black civil-rights activists who believe the Palestinian
Arab cause is no different from theirs acknowledge why Hamas started the
fighting on Oct. 7. The terrorist organization based in the Gaza Strip
is explicit about the fact that it aims to destroy Israel and slaughter
its people. Contrary to some of Biden’s disingenuous statements about
the issue, voting and polls have consistently shown that Hamas and its
genocidal platform are widely supported by Palestinian Arabs.
This
suffering for the Palestinian Arabs began when Hamas launched its
murderous attacks on Israel. It could have been ended at any point by
Hamas’s surrender and the freeing of all hostages. But Hamas and its
allies don’t care about Palestinian Arab suffering. On the contrary,
they wish to maximize it in order to garner more foreign sympathy.
Black
pastors claim to oppose the “occupation” without understanding (we
hope) that to the Palestinian Arabs, that term refers to any land
that Israel controls. These clergy leaders may claim to oppose
everything Hamas stands for, and yet they support it because they have
accepted the lie that the Jews are intrinsically evil by seeking to
defend their homes and families.
How does that differ from the American civil-rights movement?
Dr Martin Luther KingReuters
African-Americans
fighting against Jim Crow laws didn’t seek to kill whites or establish a
principle that blacks must rule as the Islamists of Hamas do about
Muslims. They wanted equal rights and an end to legal segregation. The
goal of Martin Luther King Jr. was coexistence and a society where his
children would be judged by “the content of the character rather than
the color of their skin.”
Morally bankrupt pastors
The
upside-down world of intersectionality and critical race theory turns
that hope on its head. For the American black community, which claims to
be a champion of civil rights, to consider a cause rooted in genocidal
intent and intolerance of any notion of coexistence with other faith or
ethnic groups as seeing themselves in the actions and fate of the
Palestinian Arabs, is absurd.
It is shocking that people like the
black pastors, who pretend to have moral authoritym would identify with a
cause that would benefit the killers of Hamas.
It’s equally
astonishing that they stand with the mobs chanting for the destruction
of Israel (“from the river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews
wherever they live (“globalize the intifada”), rather than with their
former Jewish allies as they suffer from prejudice and violence.
But in this brave new intersectional world, that is what passes for civil-rights advocacy in the black community.
This
is all the more disturbing when throughout the world, atrocities are
being carried out against black Africans in countries like Nigeria,
Mauritania or Sudan by Islamist forces, including mass killings, rape
and even a modern-day version of slavery. Why aren’t these atrocities
being spoken about by pastors to their congregations?
Having
accepted intersectionality, they are now prepared to ignore crimes
committed against people with whom they ought to have a natural
affinity—black Africans—because the perpetrators are Muslim or Arabs,
while claiming to see Palestinian Arabs who want to slaughter Israelis
as worthy not just of sympathy but the expenditure of their political
capital.
It is long past time for the Jewish groups that have
slavishly stuck to the pretense that these pastors and the organizations
that they represent are allies to stop putting their heads in the sand.
Those who enable antisemitism and wish to assist those who slaughter
Jews are enemies, not friends. When it comes to support for Hamas and
indifference to antisemitism, there is no middle ground.
Black
pastors who seek to demonize Israel and are silent about the Jew-hatred
that is inherent in their intersectional stands embracing the cause of
Israel’s destruction should be under no illusions about the choice
they’ve made. For all of their high-flown rhetoric about compassion and
the oppressed, these pastors are morally bankrupt.
And American
Jews who have long stood by their side in the struggle for civil rights
should bluntly tell them that they are finished with such antisemites
dressed in clerical garb.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.
Statistics Canada says the country’s fertility rate reached an all-time low of 1.33 children per woman in 2022.
2.1 is a replacement birth rate. 1.3 is is catastrophic. It’s as bad as Japan. A little above China.
Canada used to be at 1.5. Now it’s 1.33. America was at 1.6. But we’ve been dropping for a while.
And both 1.33 and 1.6 are illusory because Americans and Canadians
are the groups in their respective countries with the lowest birth
rates. A lot of that birth rate is coming from the replacement
population and there’s a whole lot of those arriving.
Canada’s total population growth for the first nine
months of 2023 has already exceeded the total growth for any other
full-year period since Confederation in 1867, including 2022, when there
was record growth, it said.
Canada’s current population sits at 40,528,396. It has seen its population grow by 1,030,378 people since January…
International migration was responsible for 96 per cent of the
population growth in that time frame, the agency said. The remaining
four per cent was the result of natural increase, or the difference
between the number of births and deaths.
There’s a lot of talk about demographic replacement, but let’s face it, we’re replacing ourselves.
People delay marriage and stop having children. Basic human
relationships are falling apart. And the rest is tragically inevitable.
There’s no reversing the decline without reversing the cultural
decline. Stopping the invasion is only part of the picture. Japan has no
real immigration but it’s still vanishing. The civilized world isn’t
just under attack, it’s also committing suicide.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is
an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and
Islamic terrorism.
SB 261, by State Sen. Henry Stern, D-Canoga Park, requires any companies with over $500,000 in revenue conducting business in California to prepare climate-related financial risk reports disclosing the risk and measures adopted to reduce and adapt.
(The Center Square) -
(The Center Square) - The
California Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit to block California laws
mandating companies submit inventories of all direct and indirect
emissions and issue climate risk disclosures. The suit cites First
Amendment violations for compelling companies to make inaccurate
statements regarding emissions inventories due to reporting
difficulties, and to make public statements with which they disagree
regarding climate risk disclosures.
“Both policies violate the First Amendment because they compel
companies to make public statements that are likely inaccurate or with
which they disagree, due to the incredible challenge of accurately
reporting or obtaining reliable information regarding the emissions of
their entire supply chain,” said California Chamber of Commerce chief
executive officer Jennifer Barrerra in a public statement.
SB 261, by State Sen. Henry Stern, D-Canoga Park, requires any
companies with over $500,000 in revenue conducting business in
California to prepare climate-related financial risk reports disclosing
the risk and measures adopted to reduce and adapt.
In opposition, CalChamber warned requiring the same level of
reporting to even small businesses would be unfair, writing, “SB 261
takes a one-size fits all approach to the business community … there
should be a proportional approach to developing disclosure requirements
to ensure that smaller organizations are not subject to risk.
SB 253, by State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, requires
companies with over $1 billion in revenue with any presence in
California to submit inventories of their every emission, even indirect
emissions from commuting or contractors, or face fines of $500,000 per
year for errors or noncompliance. Republicans warn this will discourage
corporations from doing business with smaller companies that may have
difficulty counting emissions.
“Senate Bill 253 is going to put a much bigger impact on businesses
than intended,” said Sen. Roger Niello, R-Fair Oaks, to The Center
Square. “While the supporters have emphasized that only about 5,300 U.S.
corporations will be required to report, there will be small businesses
that work with those corporations that will also be overly burdened to
comply.”
Wiener, meanwhile, claimed, “it’s both inexpensive and easy for
corporations to make these disclosures” and that “the Chamber is taking
this extremist legal action because many large corporations … are
absolutely terrified that if they have to tell the public how
dramatically they’re fueling climate change, they’ll no longer be able
to mislead the public and investors.”
SB 253 requires such stringent reporting of all emissions that if a
company’s suppliers, contractors, and other providers of goods and
services are big enough to have to inventory emissions, their emissions
would be counted multiple times.
According to an independent analysis from Thompson Reuters, “Double
counting may occur when a manufacturer and a retailer both account for
Scope 3 emissions resulting from the third-party transportation of goods
between them,” and that “Collecting data on Scope 3 emissions requires
information from multiple sources, such as suppliers, customers, and
other stakeholders, making it difficult to obtain accurate and reliable
data.”
Naomi Ragen, an Israeli writer, has been posting online a “Gaza War
Diary.” A recent installment describes the hardening of Israeli
attitudes toward Gazan “civilians,” beginning with those who joined
Hamas operatives, and took part enthusiastically in the rapes, tortures,
mutilations, and beheadings of Israeli men, women, and children on
October 7. These “civilians” who entered Israel in the wake of Hamas
also managed to kidnap some Israelis, whom they are presumed to be
holding inside Gaza, where those kidnapped are likely being used as sex
slaves, or simply as slaves, by these “civilians.” Freed hostages have
testified as to how they were spat on and beaten by these “ordinary
Gazans” when they were first paraded around Gaza by their Hamas captors.
And the “civilians” in Gaza have, according to opinion polls,
overwhelmingly approved of the atrocities committed on October 7. Thus,
like Naomi Ragen, most Israelis, including those once in the “peace
camp,” have come to realize that many of those so-called “innocent
civilians” in Gaza not only supported, and still support, the atrocities
committed by Hamas operatives, but also that some participated in those
atrocities themselves. More from Naomi Ragen on the changes in Israeli
public opinion can be found here:
An article written by Dr. Michael Milstein and published
today on Ynet English gives an in-depth analysis of how Israeli sympathy
for the “poor Gazans” has taken an irreversible 180 degree turn. While
before October 7, many Israelis and their political leaders believed
that “the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are different from Hamas,
which controls them through fear and oppression, and share a universal
human longing for a good life…” leading to the “assumption that by
improving their situation it would be possible to ensure security,
stability and even bend the ideological fervor of Hamas.”
These beliefs were shattered on October 7. “Not only did the Gazan
public not protest against Hamas following the attack, but thousands
took an active part – publicly and without fear – in the massacres,
kidnappings, rapes and lootings, including the theft of bodies as a sort
of ‘appreciating asset,’ and of course participated in the victory
celebrations that included abuse of the kidnapped and the bodies.”
Released hostages have added to this picture with their experiences
at being tortured by women and children while held prisoner. Moreover,
the discoveries made by IDF soldiers of the widespread weaponry, tunnel
entrances, and hate material found in the average Gazan home, have been a
factor in enlightening even the most resistant to reality.
Recently, the head of a soldier decapitated on October 7 was found by
the IDF in a refrigerator in Gaza. According to the testimony of a
Hamas prisoner, the head had been offered by Gazans for sale for
$10,000. The IDF returned it to Israel for burial.
Think about that head of a decapitated soldier put up for sale by
Hamas for $10,000. There are no limits to the barbarism of Hamas — or
was that head being kept for sale by an “ordinary civilian”?
The Israel Democracy Institute found in a survey
conducted last month, that 40% of Israelis believed that the harm to the
population in Gaza should have a limited bearing on Israel’s decisions
and a similar percentage say it should have no bearing at all.
Palestinian surveys conducted at the same time found that 72% to 75% of
the Palestinians support the October 7 massacre, and about 70% support
the armed struggle as the main means of confronting Israel.”
Let there be no mistake: this is a war between Israel and the Gazans.
All of them. It is a war between Israel and the Palestinians, excluding
Israeli Arabs. We shouldn’t be feeding them, employing them, minimizing
harm to them, or providing them with electricity or shelter. Just as
the average Berliner was a Nazi, the average Gazan and West Bank
Palestinian, is Hamas-ISIS. They want us dead.
Dr. Milstein believes that we should nevertheless not dehumanize the
Gazans: “This would undermine the moral foundations of Israel and its
image in the eyes of the world.”
What we have to do then, is dispose of our illusions that anything we
do can affect change in their morality, prejudice, savagery, and
genocidal dreams. What we need to do is create a buffer zone between us
and never, ever allow them to pass over it….
Dr. Milstein has concluded that there is nothing Israel can do —
except to commit politicide, and disappear altogether — to in any way
diminish the “prejudice, savagery, and genocidal dreams” of the
Palestinian Arabs, and especially of those in Gaza. He calls, as have
others, for the creation of a buffer zone inside Gaza, all along its
border with Israel. That area would become uninhabited, save for the IDF
forces that will be deployed in that buffer zone to make sure there is
no repetition of October 7.
Naomi Ragen’s uncompromising attitude of mistrust and anger directed
not just toward Hamas, but toward those in Gaza whom too many still
believe to be “innocent civilians,” shines through her coruscating
commentary.
More of Ragen’s “Gaza War Diary” can be found here.
