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Erie half built Pa. solar farm shows renewables aren’t ready for prime time
By Salena Zito
PORTAGE, Pa. — The pitch to the people of Cambria County when the Maple Hill Solar Farm was first announced two years ago was that the $200 million project would create 150 megawatts of electricity while eliminating 150,000 tons of carbon emissions that fossil fuel plants would have emitted — and that it would employ 250 workers at peak construction.
Even the Appalachian region’s reputation for cloudy weather was going to be overcome by technological advances that made the solar panels more efficient.
In short, the promise of the Green New Deal had come to coal country. In fact, the solar panel farm was to be constructed on an old coalmine strip.
With the exception of the reliably cloudy weather, though, none of it has lived up to its promise — to the frustration of the owners of the solar farm, climate change activists and the men and women who looked forward to new jobs to replace the ones lost in coal.
Climb to the top of the mountain where the solar farm is and you see thousands of racking systems spread across hundreds of acres that hold solar modules — but no panels.
The scene is jarring. The question is: Why?
The answer is Joe Biden — or at least that was the answer until a week ago, when Mr. Biden finally waived the tariffs on solar panels from Southeast Asia he had enacted after Auxin Solar filed an inquiry into whether China was circumventing tariffs.
The delay caused by the ensuing Commerce Department investigation has stalled solar farms like this one for months — others permanently — and threatened the climate change goals Mr. Biden laid out at his inauguration.
“The tariffs derailed renewable projects across the country,” said Tom Rumsey, senior vice president of Competitive Power Ventures, the developer behind Maple Hill. “Lifting the tariffs has helped, but here at this solar panel farm, we’re expecting it to go commercial second quarter next year.”
The uncertainty of the tariffs caused over 315 projects to be cancelled or delayed, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the industry’s top trade organization.
On the same day Mr. Biden lifted the tariffs, he also announced he was going to use wartime powers granted under the Defense Production Act to ramp up solar equipment production to speed up American-made clean energy manufacturing.
That’s the other rub: We don’t make solar panels in this country.
“The capability to manufacture the amount that you’re going to need, well that’s going to take probably over a decade,” explained Mr. Rumsey.
“And it’s not just build them — then where are you going to get the raw materials needed that go into them? That’s the part no one talks about. Yes, you can assemble them in the United States. You’re still going back to China, to the mines that everybody hates,” he said.
Solar energy requires rare earth minerals, and China holds most of them, primarily in Xinjiang, where manufacturing is tainted by the use of forced labor.
The problem here is the problem everywhere with renewable energy: It’s just not ready for prime time — at least not ready enough to produce the energy needed to keep this country humming.
Energy has become just another polarized “us versus them” issue, with climate activists treating it with religious fervor. Statements like “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., make it extraordinarily difficult to have a pragmatic discussion about how to balance an “all of the above” solution to energy.
The other less visible problem at this facility is wages. Shawn Steffee, the business agent for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 154, said the jobs available for this solar farm are a slap in the face — and won’t help the power plant workers who lost their jobs. “We were told these jobs were going to be family-sustaining jobs. Well, $16 an hour is not a family-sustaining wage,” Mr. Steffee said, shaking his head. “I honestly don’t know anyone who has gotten a green energy job.”
Mr. Rumsey said you’ll never hear his company talk green jobs: “That’s a political statement. We never say ‘green jobs.’ Why? Because it takes a day and a half to put up a wind turbine and once you construct the solar projects — and there are construction jobs there, for sure — but once they’re constructed, that’s it. There’s no operating jobs. There’s nothing,” he said honestly.
Mr. Rumsey, who has spent years in the energy industry, said ten years ago he was telling Republicans that they needed to be adaptable on climate change — and eventually, he said, they were. Today he is having the same conversation with Democrats, who want full renewable use to have started yesterday.
“There is no technology right now that you can simply call that can come up quickly if you have a bunch of wind or solar cut out, or go away — because like nuclear, you start it and you’re running,” he said.
Steady supply is an issue, Mr. Rumsey said of the renewable industry: “Battery storage just doesn’t have the capacity duration. There is no technology that can do it, other than natural gas. Our struggle is trying to break through the mindset that any new natural gas is just more dependence on fossil fuel.”
The hard truth is that renewables aren’t ready to play the role in the national energy mix that activists and politicians claim. But instead of acknowledging that an all-of-the-above approach keeps our electricity going while reducing our carbon emissions, the Biden administration remains beholden to a Democratic base resistant to compromise.
The worst part isn’t just the wind whistling among the thousands of empty racks that make up Maple Hill or the temporary, low-paying jobs to install the panels: It’s the blackouts that, according to the Washington Post, could hit much of the country this summer.
Many of the coal fired power plants that for decades lit our homes and kept us cool in the summer have gone offline, having been driven out of existence. But the country doesn’t have reliable renewable energy infrastructure to replace it.
And if that wasn’t enough, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission predicts electricity prices will rise as much as 233% over last summer’s prices, which will go nicely with the prices Americans are paying at pump.
Maple Hill is a symbol of both promise and overreach. Eventually, it will be productive. But without clear minds to manage the energy mix, the financial pain and inconvenience Americans are experiencing will only continue, or get worse.
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Did I/we get played? lynn never believed anything would come of it and sad: "so what who cares etc."
If this truly is so and turns out to be a side show it will be tragic because, speaking only for myself, it will be an et tu Brute moment for me.
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Durham Played You For A Fool!
John Durham and Bill Barr finally ran out of the clock on Spygate. Why are you surprised?
By Emerald Robinson
It’s the summer of 2022 — and where are all those Durham indictments you were promised? And where's that much-discussed Durham report? Do you know that you’ve been played for a fool yet — or are you still watching Fox News? Maybe you need another year to figure out the entire game. Maybe you still believe Bill Barr! Didn’t that legendary windbag tell us that the wheels of justice grind very slow but justice is coming?
Let’s turn back the clock two years — in case you forgot what AG Bagpipes promised the American public.
Twitter avatar for @newsmaxNewsmax @newsmax
"The attorney general is saying that Americans will recognize some names under investigation as a part of US attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation. But the attorney general is saying those names won’t include Obama or Biden." @EmeraldRobinson reports.
June 10th 2020
Indictments are coming!
People will know the names of these people!
Criminal prosecutions! Not just a report!
Notice that (then) AG Bill Barr promises justice for the Russia Hoax while at the very same time excluding Obama and Biden as subjects of the Durham investigation.
That’s the moment that you should have known: the fix is in.
The entire “tick tock” narrative that followed was brought to you (mostly) by Fox News and Bill Barr.
People ask me all the time how I knew — all the way back in the early months of 2020 — that the Durham investigation was a sham. (What do I mean by a sham —you ask? I mean a counterfeit of real justice — a ploy — a ruse to mislead the public.) It wasn’t because I had sources at the FBI or the DOJ. I correctly predicted the Durham investigation was a joke because the Huber investigation was a joke, and because the Hillary Clinton email investigation was a joke, and because the Huma Abedin laptop investigation was a joke, and because the Jeffrey Epstein investigation was a joke….
You get the idea.
I correctly predicted that the federal government doesn’t really investigate itself in order to successfully prosecute Democrats. Call it Emerald’s Law.
DURHAM INVESTIGATION: There hasn’t been a lot of movement but reports are saying there were will most likely not be any indictment before the election. Newsmax TV’s @EmeraldRobinson shares more details. nws.mx/tv
September 28th 2020
The people who disagreed with me (publicly at the time) all worked at Fox News, or appeared on Fox News, or were guests on Fox News — and these people were all in the business of misleading their audience because the GOP establishment wanted its voters to be fooled. Bill Barr didn’t really want to arrest or prosecute Democrats — and certainly not in 2020. After all, the GOP establishment was busy collaborating with Democrats in 2020 to steal the November election from President Trump — or don’t you remember?
In other words: the Durham investigation was simply the clean-up phase of Spygate disguised as an investigation of Spygate. This was perfectly obvious at the time — and it remains obvious today. It doesn’t take two years for the DOJ to prosecute its targets. You know that — right? Just ask Roger Stone. When the DOJ really wants to prosecute you, it’s easy to tell because two dozen special agents in SWAT gear appear at your door in a pre-dawn raid with a CNN camera crew already stationed across the street.
And that’s just for the crime of “lying to Congress.”
Did you really think that John Durham need two years to bring serious indictments against the Spygate plotters? Did you really fail to notice that his low-level indictments came just as the statue of limitations expired? Or that Durham brought minimal charges that were always going to bring minimal sentences?
That’s because John Durham was the cleaner.
Don't tell me that you actually believed that one guy at the DOJ was going to investigate how the DOJ and the FBI and the CIA were trying to sabotage President Trump all by himself? All the majors players in Spygate walked away while Durham sent you on a wild goose chase hunting for commas in charging documents — and that wild goose chase was so successful in conservative media that you’re still talking about two low-level guys getting charged with process crimes four years after Durham supposedly started his investigation.
Durham kept you high on the hopium for four years. That was his real job. He actually made you think that Spygate plotters were going to be prosecuted during the Biden Administration — or the Third Obama Administration as it should properly be called. It’s almost as if you somehow forgot that Obama and Biden were the ones who met on January 5th, 2017 to conceal the Obama Administration’s illegal spying on the Trump campaign (since Trump was now President-Elect) and to formally launch the Russia Hoax.
So the joke is on you.
As I said on Twitter at the time: “At the current rate of speed that Durham’s investigation moves, we can expect the guilty to be prosecuted sometime during the second Hunter Biden administration.”
One of the giant red flags about the Durham investigation from the very beginning was that he allowed Democrat super-attorney (and 2016 Hillary Clinton general counsel) Marc Elias to run around for years interfering in our elections. Durham even allowed the Democrats’ “dirty-ops-org-disguised-as-a-law-firm” Perkins-Coie to separate itself legally from Elias just three weeks before he charged their employee Michael Sussmann! Elias was so certain that Durham was a nothing-burger that he even took over the Black Lives Matter corporate franchise while Durham was still investigating!
How’s that for justice?
You should also notice by now that Democrats never have to play stupid games like “tick tock trust the plan” because they’re too busy actually fabricating evidence, planting false media stories, and falsely prosecuting Trump officials like General Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Paul Manafort.
They’re too busy getting simpletons like (then) AG Jeff Sessions to recuse himself in order to bring down the Trump Administration.
In fact, the Spygate plotters (Obama, Biden, Rice) are currently in control of the White House — in case you hadn’t noticed. How’s that for getting away with it? Sure, Durham made a valiant attempt to transfer the blame for the whole scandal onto Hillary Clinton and her campaign aides — but Hillary Clinton wasn’t meeting with James Comey about the Russia Hoax in the White House and texting Peter Strozk and Lisa Page was she?
Durham even tried to get the American public to believe that the FBI and the CIA had somehow been fooled by Hillary Clinton into investigating Trump. That’s right: the FBI and the CIA claimed to be innocent rubes who were deliberately led astray by Lady Macbeth. Spygate was reduced to something about the Alfa Bank, and whether Michael Sussmann told the FBI that he represented a client when he dropped off “information” on thumb drives at Langley seemingly three days a week in 2017.
The Sussmann media coverage was absurd from the start — but every conservative media outlet on Earth ran these stupidities with a straight face in 2022. There were moments during the trial of Michael Sussmann when it was easy to believe that Sussmann’s case had more to do with Perkins Coie billing the Clinton campaign for two thumb drives — rather than, you know, participating in a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the sitting President.
That’s what happens when you reduce a criminal conspiracy to overthrow the sitting President into a single charge of lying to the FBI. The elephant in the room transforms into a fly, and then the fly gets swatted.
Durham’s job was to run out the clock during the Trump Administration — he was there to protect Obama and Biden and the national security state from any accountability. Think about it. Why did you trust Durham at all? You trusted John Durham because you were told to trust him by Bill Barr — and the same people who told you to trust Barr were the ones who told you to trust Rod Rosenstein. Before that, you were told that Matt Whitaker was riding to the rescue. Do you even remember being told to trust John Huber? And who can forget trusting Jeff Sessions?
Do you see where this is going?
Let’s ask a different question: why do you need to trust anybody? The Left burns down entire cities in coordinated riots to achieve its political objectives. The Left tries to assassinate a conservative Supreme Court justice to stop anti-abortion legislation right after forcing a liberal Supreme Court justice into retirement in order to install an even more left-wing justice. The Left, in other words, trusts nobody because it only cares about results.
Meanwhile, you were told: sit back and watch the show.
You were told: trust the plan.
The question is: why were you dumb enough to believe Durham in the first place?
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| Caroline Glick: This is why the Bennett-Lapid gov’t really fell |
| CAROLINE GLICK / JNS |
| “Mideast News Hour” with Caroline Glick and guest Dr. Gadi Taub |
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Israel's AI-powered system that can 'SEE' through walls: Algorithm tracks live objects inside a building to determine if they are adults, children or animals to better prepare soldiers before they attack
Camero-Tech's Xaver 1000 uses algorithms to track targets behind an obstacle
It can determine if a person is sitting, standing or lying down
The system also tells users if they are adults, children or animals
The system is being used by the Israeli military
By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
The Israeli military is using AI-powered detection system that lets soldiers see through walls before attacking.
Designed in part with Camero-Tech, Xaver 1000 uses algorithms to track targets behind an obstacle, which are then displayed on a screen fitted in the center of the device.
Xaver 1000, which users place directly on the wall, produces such high resolution displays that users can determine if a person is sitting, standing or lying down.
The system is also capable of providing measurements of targets and determining if the image is of an adult, child or animal, allowing soldiers or police officers to know what they are up against on the other side of the wall.
Designed in part with Camero-Tech, Xaver 1000 uses algorithms to track targets behind an obstacle, which are then displayed on a screen fitted in the center of the device
The device is designed like a diamond with four flaps that open outward.
A single user can operate it, which is done by placing it flat up against a wall.
There is a 10.1-inch display at the center with a navigational system that allows the user to search around a room to see what may be hiding inside.
Camero-Tech claims the new XAVER-1000 is an 'essential system' for militaries, law enforcement officers, intelligence units, and search and rescue teams.
Another technology that's able to see through walls made its debut in December 2020, but this innovation is a satellite orbiting Earth.
The system is also capable of providing measurements of targets and determine if the image is of an adult, child or animal, allowing soldiers or police officers to know what they are up against on the other side of the wall
Called Capella-2, it can create high resolution images of nearly any place on our planet using radar – and is powerful enough to penetrate the walls of buildings.
Capella-2, designed by Capella Space, uses Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which can view the Earth regardless of air visibility, cloud covering or time of day - and is the same technology NASA has used since the 1970s.
SAR shoots powerful radio signals to 'illuminate' a point of interest, and collects data on the echo of each pulse that bounces back, interpreting them to create a detailed image.
'Ghost' images that appear to show the inside of structures is due to the satellite beaming down its own signal, and not just collecting light, which sometimes allows it to penetrate structures.
The satellite is capable of 50cm x 50cm resolution imaging with its latest update called Spotlight mode that allows for long exposures up to 60 seconds over an area of interest (AOI), which results in 'crystal clear' imagery.
Capella is currently testing a single device, but has obtained contracts with government agencies, including the National Reconnaissance Office and the US Air Force.
But Capella insists that the technology can't be used to spy on people in their homes, and although the radar waves can penetrate walls, they say they cannot image anything inside.
The company explains: 'The technology uses radio waves, which are capable of traveling through walls (like cell phones and Wi-Fi).
'But, as we know, even cell phone and Wi-Fi signals weaken as they move further away from a cellular tower or a Wi-Fi access point. Radar signals are the same: They can travel through walls, but are far too weak to image or see anything indoors.'
An image of Chiyoda City skyscrapers in Tokyo appears to make the towers see-through, with streets visible on the other side.
However, the firm says the layover effect is caused by 'imagery distortion giving the buildings a ghost-like appearance.'
It continues: 'What appears as a black and white optical satellite image is in reality a visual representation of the radar data — the reflectance of radio waves against the Earth's surface and manmade objects.'
Capella says their innovation is a way to help people around the world utilize space to improve their businesses and lives by monitoring everything from climate to crop fields and infrastructure.
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Bless his heart
Biden sneaking amnesty through for a million illegal border-crossers
Who says crime doesn't pay?
When you can cross the border illegally, and not only be allowed to stay here, collect big benefits, and actually be allowed to apply for citizenship as a reward for your lawbreaking, why wouldn't you come without papers instead of come the legal way? You'd be a fool not to. Applying legally and waiting years for entry at great personal expense with no adjacent benefits is a fool's errand, given the Biden administration's current policies.
That's the shocking reality revealed in a report from the Washington Examiner showing that the Biden administration is now .... ever so quietly ... dropping charges against tens of thousands of unvetted illegal border crossers and visa overstayers, leaving them with clean records and incredibly, the "right" to apply for green cards and U.S. citizenship. If the current pace of that continues, at least a million are going to be effectively amnestied by 2024, the Examiner reports.
Federal prosecutors are quietly dismissing stacks of cases against illegal immigrants [sic] under a Biden administration mandate that could be on pace to effectively pardon 1 million people by 2024, according to leaked information reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Attorneys for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have begun to throw out tens of thousands of the 2 million backlogged cases in immigration court following a political appointee's order not to go after illegal border crossers from before the November 2020 election.
"This is a de facto amnesty," said an ICE federal prosecutor who spoke with the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity.
Nothig like a little queue-jumping to get the job done.
Jason Hopkins, who serves as investigations manager at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, who first warned about that memo, has been keeping an eye on this policy and its Biden administration perpetrator who's the top lawyer at ICE.
Back in April, Hopkins wrote this piece for AT, summing up Doyle this way:
To further understand how unserious this administration is about enforcing immigration law, it's imperative to look at the author of this memo: Kerry Doyle. Appointed in September 2021, Doyle serves as the principal legal adviser of ICE, making her the agency's top prosecutor in all removal proceedings. Before her appointment, Doyle worked for years as an immigration attorney in the Boston area.
Doyle adamantly opposed ICE enforcement actions and doggedly supported sanctuary city measures during her career as an immigration attorney. As recently as 2020, she spoke in favor of a Massachusetts bill, the "Safe Communities Act," that would have applied sanctuary city policies statewide and claimed that ICE was an "agency that is currently out of control."
Further investigation by my organization, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, found other incendiary remarks by Doyle.
Speaking before the Boston City Council in September 2019, Doyle accused ICE of being "a tool of almost terror to the immigrant [sic] community" and wanted the Boston Police Department (BPD) to believe as much. In that same testimony, she adamantly opposed the idea of the BPD sharing intelligence information with federal immigration officials.
Now she's at ICE and doing the full Chesa Boudin thing, which is shirking her actual job duties and collecting a big paycheck. According to the Examiner, it's bad — the numbers are big:
Doyle's mandate to close out cases took effect on April 25. An indicator of how quickly ICE has moved is the number of cases wiped out in those two months. Between 60,000 and 80,000 cases have been closed, according to the ICE attorney. The total case closures since the start of fiscal year 2022 last October is more than 97,000, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research organization at Syracuse University in New York. Case closures eight months into 2022 are already up fourfold from all of 2021, another sign of how quickly ICE prosecutors are moving to clear the books.
If the agency's 1,200 prosecutors keep the current pace of 60,000-80,000 case closures every two months, ICE could hit 360,000 to 480,000 closed cases by next April and 1 million by early summer 2024, months before the presidential election.
That kind of underperformance in any job would be a firing offense, but not at Joe Biden's ICE, because Joe wants it that way.
The biggest outrage is that the illegals who have had their cases dropped are now completely free to apply for permanent residency and U.S. citizenship, well ahead of the vetted (legal) immigrants still waiting in line to enter the states:
The tens of thousands of noncitizens who have been cleared from the immigration court dockets over the past eight weeks may now apply to become permanent legal residents, the prerequisite to becoming a U.S. citizen. An illegal border crosser is barred from applying for legal permanent residency as long as his or her case is pending in court. With no case pending, they may apply. Once approved, they may apply for adjustment of status to citizenship after five years.
"All those removable aliens will be able to live and work in the United States indefinitely — which, in this context, means forever or at least until they themselves decide to leave. That is the definition of an amnesty," Arthur wrote.
Legal permanent residents no longer have to extend their temporary work permits — they have permanent approval to work in the country. Once citizens, they are afforded the same ability to apply for any federal, state, or local benefits and assistance.
Which rather brings to full circle the Republican charge that Biden is importing Democrat voters as he casts the border wide open. The Doyle memo purportedly only covers illegals who came to the states before November 2020. Does anyone believe that that won't be extended to those who came after 2020? The illegals, who are now surging in in record numbers from more than 100 countries, are reading it that way. And with Joe Biden on track to at least attempt to steal the midterms and perhaps the 2024 election to ensure a permanent blue nation, why wouldn't they be right? Why wouldn't this amnesty go on and on and on, extending every few years? With illegals now big consumers of government benefits, and Biden turning every benefit-doling government agency into a voter registration station, why wouldn't that be all about creating new Democrat voters?
Illegals already serve to pad Democrat congressional seats in dead districts where few are entitled to vote — and the million that have been allowed in amount to a full three congressional seats if they all move the same place. Now that they are being put on the fast track to citizenship, they become even more valuable to Democrats, who have only socialism and wokesterism to sell to the rest of the voters, as newly minted voters.
Increasingly, it's getting clear what this let-them-all-in Biden immigration policy is about. First thing a Republican-led Congress must do is force these characters into fulfilling their oaths of office to uphold the law is to demand the end to these policies or else impeach these scofflaws out of their jobs. One can only hope that Republicans will be motivated by some decent survival instinct amid this legal travesty.
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Biden keep experiencing one disappointment after the other:
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Reality Bites Biden
by Jonathan Schanzer, Washington Examiner
For a president who sought to walk away from the Middle East, focus American foreign policy toward its traditional alliances, and end America's oil dependency, Joe Biden's policy of treating the Saudis like a "pariah" never made much sense. His forthcoming visit to the desert kingdom is an acknowledgment of that.
The public has simply had it with the Middle East after watching successive governments fail to transform the region over two decades through hot wars, drone wars, and wars for hearts and minds. College students are too young to remember 9/11. Older Americans remember but now resent the blood and treasure squandered for little to no gain. The war on terrorism is over (or perhaps it's on hold until the next major attack). For better or worse, gone are the days of exporting traditional American values abroad. Americans are more interested in yelling at each other about vaccines, masks, and other facets of the culture war.
Along with redeployments, pivoting from the Middle East meant that America was giving up on trying to engineer regime changes. Yet this was exactly what Biden seemed to want. After the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the hands of a Saudi hit squad in Turkey, the president and his party wanted to punish Riyadh. Saudi human rights abuses at home, including the imprisonment of regime detractors, further angered Democrats (and Republicans in smaller numbers). A poorly prosecuted war in Yemen that killed far too many civilians only made things worse. The primary target was the crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, known more commonly as MBS — the country's de facto ruler and the king's designated successor whose ascent, some Democrats reasoned, could theoretically still be derailed before it becomes de jure.
Ironically, even as the crown prince fought off these heavyweight detractors, he pushed his backward country into the 21st century. The dreaded mutawa (religious police) are now nowhere to be seen. Radical clerics are losing influence. Women are driving and can travel without permission from male custodians. In other words, some of the reforms that America tried to encourage over the past two decades are now occurring without intense engagement from Washington, and at a time when Saudi-U.S. relations have been the most strained.
The crown prince, like a cornered boxer, played "rope-a-dope" while his American detractors exhausted themselves. There was no knockout blow. The fight ended when it was overtaken by other events. Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February thrust the world into an energy crisis. America, in an effort to calibrate its sanctions against the Kremlin while keeping energy flowing, now needs alignment with the government that sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves. Saudi Arabia can also sway the oil cartel OPEC to increase production.
Of course, America can produce its own fossil fuels. A few short years ago, this country was virtually energy independent. For purported environmental reasons, however, this president eschews domestic energy production. So long as that is true, Biden needs to rely on the foreign policy formula that has guided the U.S.-Saudi relationship for the better part of a century: a reliable supply of Saudi oil in exchange for American security and diplomatic backing.
In other words, after two years of unforced errors, the president has submitted to the superiority of the status quo. His forthcoming visit to Saudi Arabia next month is an acknowledgment of that fact.
But Biden's visit has an interesting wrinkle. He'll be flying to Saudi Arabia directly from Israel. The itinerary of his trip alone suggests extraordinary diplomatic opportunities, a chance to not merely embrace the success of Sunni-Israel cooperation but build on it.
The Saudis and Israelis have quietly grown closer over the last decade, due in large part to the mutual disdain for American-led nuclear diplomacy with their shared enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran. This disdain was a basis for the normalization agreements of 2020 brokered by the Trump administration between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
Saudi Arabia was rumored to be next in line if Trump won a second term. Remarkably, however, when Biden took office, he disavowed the momentum of his predecessor, despite the significant diplomatic achievements that suddenly appeared possible. Partisan politics was clearly at play. The State Department spokesman for a time would not even utter the words "Abraham Accords."
But there was more to Biden's ambivalence. He understood that America's dangerous diplomacy with the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism contributed significantly to the budding Saudi-Israeli alliance. He was vice president when the wrong-headed nuclear bargaining with Iran began under Barack Obama, and he continues to support a policy of enriching the clerical regime in exchange for fleeting nuclear concessions. This further strained ties with Riyadh, and to a lesser extent Israel.
Recently, however, the landscape has started to shift. The obstinance of Tehran has ground the recent nuclear talks to a halt. The U.S. team, despite embarrassing attempts to appease the regime, has seemingly run out of concessions, while the Iranian team refuses to budge. The White House is slowly adjusting to a new realization, namely that the regime in Iran may not want to join the community of responsible nations, as Obama and Biden naively believed.
Meanwhile, the Saudis and Israelis recently engaged in a diplomatic agreement that signaled mutual recognition. Egypt sought to hand control of two Red Sea islands — Tiran and Sanafir — to Saudi Arabia. However, the islands were subject to the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. In order for Egypt to complete the transfer, Israel was required to bless the deal. It did.
Suddenly, Biden was poised to take Saudi-Israeli normalization to the next level. He simply needed to embrace the policy of normalization that his predecessor had harnessed.
With the announcement of his Middle East trip next month, Biden made his pivot. But now, new complications loom. The Israeli political system is convulsing in the wake of a collapsed governing coalition. Elections are slated for October.
It's unclear whether Biden will seek to advance normalization with a caretaker government. On the one hand, any steps in this direction will unquestionably be respected and implemented by future Israeli governments. On the other hand, major diplomatic initiatives like this are rarely taken with caretaker governments, owing to America's stated policy of staying out of others' electoral politics. A U.S.-brokered agreement would likely provide a boost to the tandem leadership of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid as they fend off a challenge from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Whether Biden waits until the autumn or forges ahead now for a rare foreign policy win remains to be seen. Ironically, it may all hinge on decisions made by the royal court in Riyadh. Regardless of the outcome, the president's forthcoming Middle East visit is a course correction that was long overdue.
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Turkey Supports Hamas, Which Means an Alliance With Israel Isn't Going To Happen
by Jonathan Schanzer
Hay Eytan Cohen Yanarocak's excellent essay of June 7 asks three vital questions. First, can Israel and Turkey restore their alliance? Second, how do recent world events affect this effort? Lastly, is reconciliation desirable?
Let's work backwards. There is no doubt that reconciliation with Turkey is desirable, at least from Israel's perspective. The tensions with Turkey are unwanted across the security establishment. And normalization with Muslim states is broadly welcomed by the public. Turkey, for its part, is now also signaling that it wishes to reconcile after years of antagonizing the Jewish state and supporting its enemies. One might ask, however, whether Ankara's intentions are pure. The effort to draw Israel near appears to stem from the presumption that Jewish power is the key to realigning with Washington. That's not the ideal motivation. But rapprochement for any reason is probably preferable to open hostilities.
Regarding the second question, Yanarocak has done an admirable job examining the ways in which recent global crises and opportunities may impact decision-making in Ankara and Jerusalem. But the operative word is "may." These are unknowns.
The key question, in my view, is the author's first one: can Israel and Turkey restore their alliance? This is worth unpacking further.
I recently asked a senior Israeli diplomat what he believed would come of the recent efforts to reset relations. His answer was disheartening. He predicted that Turkey and Israel would at no time soon enjoy a warm peace akin to what Jerusalem now enjoys with the United Arab Emirates. Rather, he predicted that the relationship would look like the "cold peace" that has historically characterized ties between Israel and Egypt. As he then went on to clarify, he did not have in mind the current lukewarm relations with Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's Egypt, but rather the cold peace of the 1980s to early 2000s, when Hosni Mubarak was in power and—despite robust security cooperation—anti-Israel sentiment was effectively state policy. Such is the profoundly hostile atmosphere that the Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has carefully cultivated during his two-decade rule.
The Israeli military brass is no less pessimistic. Under no foreseeable circumstance will the IDF restore the defense ties of the 1990s, when it shared some of its coveted technology with the Turkish military. Trust has been thoroughly eroded by Ankara's cooperation with the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda affiliate groups in Syria, and even Islamic State. Equally corrosive is the Erdoğan government's permissive attitude toward the presence of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on its soil, as recently revealed by the narrowly thwarted plots against Israelis.
More troubling still, perhaps, is the Turkish government's support for Hamas. The Islamist group's political activists, fundraisers, and even terrorist operatives roam freely throughout the country with the blessing of Erdoğan, who has frequently hosted its most senior leaders and posed for pictures with them. Take, for instance, Saleh Arouri, a top Hamas military commander, who planned and financed the 2014 kidnapping and killing of three teenagers in the West Bank, thus sparking that year's war in Gaza. Today, Arouri shuttles between Lebanon and Turkey, assembling Hamas rocket arsenals in Lebanon that are intended to draw the latter country into a two-front conflict with Israel at a later date. This was revealed in a letter to the UN submitted by the Israeli delegation in 2018.
Yes, the Turkish military has traditionally been a bastion of secularism to counter this kind of jihadist activity in Turkey. But that has simply ceased to be the case. Israel's defense establishment no longer trusts its Turkish counterparts to fulfill their historic role of anti-Islamist bulwark after years of watching jihadists of all stripes, Sunni and Shiite alike, enjoy a warm welcome in the country. Retired Israeli military figures have said as much to me in off-the-record conversations.
These concerns date back at least to the failed coup of June 2016, which gave Erdoğan a pretext to purge the defense establishment of loyalists of the Pennsylvania-based religious scholar Fethullah Gulen. Erdoğan proceeded to gut the military and rebuild it to his liking. Formerly the strongest check on the president's power, it is now a shell of what it once was, unable to safeguard the secular character of the Turkish state that had been the vision of the the founding father of the modern republic, Kamal Ataturk.
And the military is not the only institution that Erdoğan has gutted. The police, the judiciary, and the media are among the other pillars of Turkish society that he has slowly dismantled. The end result is a country under tight centralized control. For Israel, then, rapprochement is only as dependable as Erdoğan himself. And the Turkish strongman's antagonistic foreign policy has been consistently colored by populism and Islamism, both of which traditionally feed on anti-Israel sentiment in the Muslim world.
Those who still hold out hope for Turkey's future point to the elections slated to take place next year, which could theoretically topple Erdoğan. To be sure, there are liberal forces at work doing everything possible to bring that about. But at this point, with so many levers of control at his fingertips, pessimists (or perhaps realists) fear that Erdoğan will not allow that to happen.
Despite all of this, there are still those in Israel who suggest that the trade relationship alone justifies preserving the fiction of peace with Turkey. In 2020, Israeli exports to Turkey totaled some $1.5 billion, with Turkish exports to Israel exceeding $4.6 billion. Many Israelis enjoy vacations in nearby Turkey—a half million in 2019 alone. And many more like to transit the convenient Istanbul airport when flying to the Far East and Europe.
Yet after the recent revelations of Iranian operatives trying to kidnap Israelis in Turkey, Jerusalem is warning citizens not to travel there. Turkey, for its part, is already struggling with a burgeoning economic crisis, and can little afford to lose the influx of Israeli tourism dollars. It is also concerned that the news of Iranian terrorists roaming free in the country may deter other nationals from visiting. Sensitive to this, Israeli leaders—including President Isaac Herzog and Foreign Minister (and soon-to-be interim Prime Minister) Yair Lapid—have tried to work with the Turks to mitigate the damage, in a clear effort to keep rapprochement on track.
Whether these efforts are worthwhile remains to be seen. At best, reconciliation is a long-term investment—a bet on the future of Turkey, long after Erdoğan is gone. Until then, Israel can try to perpetuate the fiction of mending fences with a regime that is increasingly autocratic and consistently anti-Israel. Indeed, cold peace is an optimistic outcome for a government that still hosts a Hamas headquarters in the heart of Istanbul.
Will the government that follows be able to break meaningfully from Erdoğan's corrupted institutions and disgraceful policies? That remains to be seen. But I am not sanguine.
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China continues to own America. Japan tried and failed but they were not interested in destroying our nation. They did that when they attacked Pearl Harbor.
When it comes to China our open society plays into their hands and supports their goals. Wakeup America!
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China’s takeover by stealth. An interesting read!
It's too late for you and me, but you might consider encouraging your grandkids to study and learn Chinese!
Four reasons why China is fast becoming the dominant power in the world....
1. They have a very low tolerance for crime. The death sentence is swiftly and routinely used for terrorists, murderers, and drug traffickers.
2. Very low tolerance for Religion. They do not believe there is a magic man in the sky. No such thing as a God. Almost no religious killings, and getting rid of the Indigenous Chinese Muslim population as fast as they can.
3. They have not been involved in any expensive wars or invaded any country for the last seventy years
4. Their primary weapon of choice to conquer the world is Finance, and countries around the world are falling fast.
Not just the USA but all world is in trouble?
In the near future, China will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small communities all over the United States. Chinese acquisition of US businesses set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to shatter that record this year.
The Smithfield Foods acquisition is a great example. Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world. It has facilities in 26 US states, and it employs tens of thousands of Americans. It directly owns 460 farms and has contracts with about 2,100 others. But now a Chinese company has bought it for $ 4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural communities all over America.
Thanks in part to our massively bloated trade deficit with China, the Chinese have trillions of dollars to spend. They are only just starting to exercise their economic muscle.
It is important to keep in mind that there is often not much of a difference between "the Chinese government" and "the Chinese corporations". In 2011, 43 percent of all profits in China were produced by companies where the Chinese government had a controlling interest
Last year a Chinese company spent $2.6B to purchase AMC entertainment, one of the largest movie theater chains in the United States. Chinese companies control more movie ticket sales than anyone else in the world.
But China is not just relying on acquisitions to expand its economic power.
"Economic beachheads" are being established all over America. For example, Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, Inc. recently broke ground on a $100M plant in Thomasville, Alabama. Many of the residents of Thomasville, Alabama will be glad to have jobs, but it will also become yet another community that will now be heavily dependent on Communist China.
And guess where else Chinese companies are putting down roots? DETROIT.
Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology, selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.
If you recently purchased an "American-made" vehicle, there is a really good chance that it has a number of Chinese parts in it. Industry analysts are hard-pressed to put a number on the Chinese suppliers in the United States.
China is very interested in acquiring energy resources in the United States.
For example, China is actually mining for coal in the mountains of Tennessee. Guizhou Gouchuang Energy Holdings Group spent 616 million dollars to acquire Triple H Coal Co. in Jacksboro, Tennessee.
At the time, that acquisition really didn't make much news, but now a group of conservatives in Tennessee is trying to stop the Chinese from blowing up their mountains and taking their coal.
And pretty soon China may want to build entire cities in the United States just like they have been doing in other countries. Right now China is actually building a city larger than Manhattan just outside Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Are you starting to get the picture yet? China is on the rise and has been for a long time while America plays political games
If you doubt this, just read the following:
When you total up all imports and exports, China is now the number one trading nation on the entire planet.
# Overall, the US has run a trade deficit with China over the past decade that comes to more than 23 trillion dollars.
# China has more foreign currency reserves than anyone else on the planet.
# China now has the largest new car market in the entire world.
# China now produces more than twice as many automobiles as does the United States.
# After being bailed out by US taxpayers, GM is involved in 11 joint ventures with Chinese companies.
# China is the number one gold producer in the world.
# The uniforms for the US Olympic team were made in China (not since 2008)
# 85% of all artificial Christmas trees the world over are made in China.
# The new World Trade Center tower in New York includes glass imported from China.
# China now consumes more energy than does the United States.
# China is now in aggregate the leading manufacturer of goods in the entire world.
# China uses more cement than the rest of the world combined.
# China is now the number one producer of wind and solar power on the entire globe.
# China produces 3 times as much coal and 11 times as much steel as the United States does.
# China produces more than 90 percent of the global supply of rare earth elements.
# China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of any national defense system.
# In published scientific research articles, China will become number one in the world very shortly. And what we have seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.
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Whitey snookered again. Is it Pearl Harbor all over again but this time by a more subtle method?
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BLM Leader Says White People Need To Come To Their BBQ Event
(NewsGlobal.com)- This weekend was the first official Juneteenth National holiday after President Biden signed the bill making it a federal holiday last year. But not all black activists want Juneteenth to be celebrated nationally.
Sure, they want it to be a national holiday. Some of them just prefer white people stay out of it.
In a tweet last Monday, Cal State LA Pan-African Studies professor Melina Abdullah instructed all white people not to ask if they can attend a Juneteenth cookout. Abdullah said the national holiday is only for blacks. White people, she “black-splained,” should consider June 19 Reparations day.
How about white people do what they want?
Considering Washington DC’s Juneteenth celebration ended up in a shootout, maybe steering clear was a good idea for everybody, not just white people.
It is rather ironic that black activists demanded Juneteenth become a national holiday while at the same time demanding white people not celebrate it.
National holidays are supposed to be something Americans share. But not anymore.
Then again, Congress only voted to make this a holiday as a way to placate the radical Black Lives Matter activists who burned cities to the ground in the summer of 2020.
Abdullah is the co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. How much do you want to bet her Juneteenth cookout was held at the multi-million-dollar LA mansion purchased by BLM?
Having it there certainly would’ve been safer.
On Sunday, a Juneteenth music festival in Washington DC devolved into chaos after a shooting left a 15-year-old boy dead and three others injured, including a police officer.
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