Source; by Amir Taheri December 17, 2023 at 4:00 am

 (Image source: iStock)

Even before it started, it was evident that the COP28 jamboree to "save the planet" would not satisfy the high expectations, some of them contradictory, of the 198 nations and dozens of non-governmental organizations attending the event with different agendas, including some hidden ones.

It is, therefore no surprise that some participants pronounced the event "a big failure" even before the conference president, the UAE's Sheikh Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, struck the final gavel.

The next move was to blame "the Arabs" and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as a whole.

The fact, however, is that OPEC as a whole accounts for just over a third of global oil production.

Of the top oil producers, only two Saudi Arabia and Iraq are Arab states. The United States, Russia and Canada claim first, third and fourth slots as largest producers. Of the top 20 consumers of crude, oil only two, Indonesia and Iran, are OPEC members.

If the "Big Bad Oil" octopus exists, its tentacles reach beyond Arabs and OPEC, from China and India to the European Union, the United States, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

But why did "Big Bad Oil" come into being in the first place?

Oil became the indispensable element for building what was to become known as "the modern world" that promised a lifestyle of movement and speed in the service of free global trade based on the comparative advantage theory.

From the start, that is to say sometime in the 19th century, the oil business has been dominated by a handful of Western nations that, except the United States, all had state-owned oil companies and a military machine to protect and expand their oil interests.

The "modern world" meant rapid urbanization, growing distances between places of work and of abode that necessitated transport, including automobiles, hailed as the latest symbol of individual freedom.

The new lifestyle also meant building energy-devouring vertical mega-cities seen as the most effective symbols of wealth and power.

Even today, building skyscrapers is regarded as the entry ticket to the "modern world". Cheap oil also made unprecedented mobility of labor and immigration possible.

Ironically, many Western eco-warriors who blame the "Big Bad Oil" forget all that and a few more facts.

The first is that Western governments earn more money from taxes on oil and its byproducts than the average OPEC member.

At the same time, the bulk of investment in exploring and producing new oil reserves comes from Western and to a lesser extent Russian and Chinese companies.

While Western eco-warriors speak of the need to end oil, hardly a year passes without their own companies cutting the ribbons on new oilfields in the Mediterranean, the Gulf of Guinea, the Black Sea and even the Arctic Circle and Antarctica.

If global warming is a real threat to the planet it should not be treated as a technical problem to be solved by technocrats. It is a civilizational problem that can only be dealt with if we are prepared to contemplate and start working for an alternative lifestyle less dependent on speed, movement, mega-cities and consumer-led economic growth.

The alternatives offered so far lack credibility.

Keeping the present lifestyle, which incidentally is expanding into China, India and many more "emerging nations" while trying to replace oil with alternatives, involves a number of unknowns not to mention the unknown unknowns.

Nuclear energy may sound attractive. But the fact is that we still know little about its impact in the long run, especially when it comes to disposing of the waste it produces.

The reopening of long-abandoned coal mines in Australia, the US, Poland, Germany and the UK, among others, amounts to trying to use a bigger evil to deal with a lesser one.

Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and others are still in their infancy and, provided current levels of investment and technological progress are maintained, could take decades to sustain the "modern world" as we know it.

Such radical ideas as "the end of obsession with economic growth" and a new culture of recycling are unlikely to secure the public support needed for a serious transition from one way of being to another.

In any case, history shows that civilizations based on recycling and no growth end up disappearing, the most glaring example being ancient Sumer.

Blaming the "big bad oil" may provide a ready excuse for the failure of political leadership, especially in the more powerful countries, to present the problem as one of building a different, hopefully more sustainable global lifestyle and not a collection of discrete issues such as the submersion of ocean islands and the spread of air pollution beyond the 300 or so mega-cities that are already poisoning their inhabitants.

Since the currently popular model took almost two centuries to take shape it would be naïve to expect an alternative to emerge with a few COP28-like gatherings and duplicitous pseudo-solutions such as the sale of "carbon offsets" by some nations to others.

Since the Paris Conference of 2015, those leading the "save the planet" crusade have opted for a piecemeal approach to a problem that, if it exists, cannot be solved by diplomatic gimmicks, fixing sectorial targets such as a maximum of 2 degrees increase in global warming by an arbitrary date, and the inevitable passing-of-the-buck game.

At the other end of the spectrum, eco-warriors are struck by short-termism by pretending that throwing paint at a Van Gogh in the National Gallery or blocking access to the metro in Paris are the best ways of inviting people to think of the transition that may have become inevitable.

Guess which industrial nation has had more success in reducing its carbon footprint, mainly by replacing classical cars with electric ones.

The answer is Norway. But it is also the world's fifth-largest exporter of oil and third-largest exporter of gas.

And, which country has the biggest solar-energy production? The answer is China, which is also the world's number one importer of oil.

Gauging the impact of "Big Bad Oil" isn't that simple.

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Source; Sent from a friend.... SNGLR

"[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington

“When studied with any degree of thoroughness, the economic problem will be found to run into the political problem, the political problem in turn into the philosophical problem, and the philosophical problem itself to be almost indissolubly bound up at last with the religious problem…Religion and politics are inseparable, the decay of one most produce the decay of the other.”  

Dan Bell said: “Changes in moral temper and culture are not amendable to social engineering or political control. The ultimate sources are the religious conceptions which undergird a society.”  So, should our government be devoid of its traditional and historical religious influences. To do so would ignore that government consisting only of secular influences (or conversely also only religious ones) is not what the Establishment Clause in our founding documents wisely intended. Those documents recognized and understood that such an unequal mix is an aberration that leads to catastrophic results. The Clause intended only to “…make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” meaning only to prevent a particular denomination from achieving official sanction. It didn't preclude specific, proven and sound, religious principles, influences “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” in government.  

Religion has been central to people’s lives for all of recorded history. This tangential relationship occasionally makes it appear that religion is the source of bad acts or results. It must be remembered that religion’s correlation to society is not proof of causations that occur in it. Rather, that correlation should point to the idea that the secular faith in democracy and material wealth is too weak, too vague, too societally enervating, to provide the post-Christian West with the spiritual steel it requires for survival. Democracy’s failures tend to prove that Enlightment ideals are not sufficient for the task.

Sound religion’s influence provides a primary safeguard for the commitment to the principles of freedom reached by reason. Without such a safeguard government too easily can alter, abrogate or destroy. Only such transcendent can insure our inalienable rights against the ever-changing tempest of human political will and fortune. Remove those religious influences and human nature fills the vacuum with a replacement religion of secularism, dangerous because it ultimate has no limits on the boundaries of its actions, other than the will and whim of those in power. Atheism’s unprecedented wars, both within and between nations, against religion during the 20th century alone stand as proof. Its predominant secular-based ideology resulted in 150 million killed, primarily by their own governments; billions enslaved, ecosystems polluted and whole nations plundered. Some alternative!

"Again and again, Americans find themselves at war with each other over public schooling. Yet furious conflict over religion in this country is almost unheard-of. ... So why does the endless variety of religious life in the United States lead to so little strife, while the strife over public schooling never seems to end? The answer is no mystery. America is a land of religious freedom, in which people decide for themselves what to believe and how to worship. No religion is funded by government. No church or synagogue has a state-supported monopoly. Elected officials have no say in the doctrines of any faith or the content of any religious service. Religion flourishes in America because church and state are separate. And it flourishes so peacefully because no one is forced to support anyone else's faith, or to attend a church he isn't happy with, or to bring up children according to the religious views of whichever faction has the most votes. Religion is peaceful because it is government-free. Liberate the schools, and they too would be at peace. Taxpayer-funded, one-curriculum-fits-all schooling makes conflict inevitable. There would be far less animosity if parents were as free to choose how and where their children learn as they are to choose how and where they worship. Separation of church and state has made America an exemplar of religious pluralism and tolerance. Imagine what separation of school and state could do for education." -- Jeff Jacoby

“Remember that the struggle against religion is a struggle for socialism”—Emilian Yaroslavsky (Pravada)

"Socialism, which cannot be established without a political police force, and not without stopping any form of dissent, is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the state…Socialism is, in its essence, and attack upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths, nostrils, and throats."--Winston Churchill

Source; American Thinker https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/12/two_weeks_that_changed_america.html?fbclid=IwAR2bfEEqcBmjPOrKYgXgaDYwykmigKeHALh1SL081YjsrmBytasrw6v0NAs

Two Weeks That Changed America

I was recently asked if there was a defining moment that dramatically accelerated and perhaps made permanent the chaos this nation is presently facing. My answer: the two weeks between March 16 and March 30, 2020.

On March 16th, Donald Trump declared a National Emergency for COVID-19 and effectively shut down the nation for “15 days to slow the spread”. At a press conference announcing the temporary shutdown he said: “With several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner, and turn it quickly.”

Regardless of the severity, never throughout the annals of mankind has a nation been shut down to combat a pandemic. However, the politically compromised and dishonest medical advisors to Trump (including Drs. Fauci and Birx) advised him to declare a National Emergency and agree to a shutdown and social distancing by pointing to the supposed success of China’s choreographed lockdowns.

Soon thereafter, Trump allied with Mitch McConnell and the Democrats to structure an unprecedented economic relief package which was passed by Congress on March 27, 2020. Trump signed the $2.2 Trillion Coronavirus relief bill or the CARES Act on the same day. This was the largest single spending bill in human history and equivalent to the annual Gross Domestic Product of Russia.

Within the voluminous CARES Act was $400 million to the states to legitimize, promote, and underwrite mass mail-in voting and by default, ballot harvesting. By including this spending in the relief package, both political parties and the White House gave their stamp of approval for mass mail-in voting and the inevitable attendant abuse and manipulation.

The announced initial 15 days to slow the spread of COVID-19 days became 45 days as Donald Trump, on March 30, 2020, reluctantly extended the de facto national shutdown for an additional 30 days after acquiescing to the so-called public health experts in the government.

Once that extension was announced, Trump lost control of events and it became impossible for him to reverse course. He was mercilessly mocked whenever he talked about ending the lockdowns toward the end of the 45-day period as the legacy media and the Democrats were incessantly fearmongering and the federal medical bureaucracy was deliberately inflating the infection and fatality numbers.

This cabal was secure in the knowledge that the measures outlined by Trump and the White House Covid Task Force would sink the economy and open the door to mass mail-in voting and voter fraud. Which would also be the catalyst to defeat Trump in the general election. Accordingly, the political opposition and legacy media unrelentingly wallowed in alarmism and championed draconian lockdowns, masking and social distancing while also promoting mass mail-in voting.

Thus, the extension issued on March 30th inevitably led to long-term lockdowns, massive economic dislocation, protracted school closures as the various state governors, pointing to Trump’s decisions as their justification, initiated their own lockdown regimens. Trump was confronted with the reality that a president has no legal basis to intervene in the shutdown policies of the individual states.

Instinctively, Trump knew he had made a mistake as he watched the economy implode. However, due to the upcoming election, he hesitated to remove those around him, such as the duplicitous Drs. Fauci and Birx, who were not only incompetent but in league with the Democrat/Legacy Media axis.

Trump, in his speeches, did attempt to convince the governors and federal bureaucrats to alter course, but it was too late as the damage to his presidency, the nation, and the citizenry was a fait accompli. Further, with donor and federal government funding combined with insouciance on the part of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, the Democrat war machine relentlessly, and in some cases unconstitutionally, succeeded in changing election laws in numerous states prior to November 3, 2020.

The decisions and actions between March 16th and March 30, 2020 were the primary factor in the election of Joe Biden and the Obama-led Marxist takeover of the presidency and the Executive Branch, which has eventuated in the following:

• A de facto open border resulting in over 10 million illegal immigrants and an untold number of potential terrorists flooding the nation,
• $10.3 Trillion in new national debt since March of 2020 (in 2008 the total national debt was $10.0 Trillion),
• A potentially permanent stagnant economy and ongoing inflation resulting in one dollar in November of 2023 buying only 82% of what it did in March of 2020, while real disposable income is down 7.5%,
• A politically weaponized justice system and federal police force (FBI) targeting Trump and other political adversaries as well as everyday Americans,
• Permanent uncontrolled mail-in voting in 34 of the 50 states,
• The massive expansion of the government-sponsored censorship and domestic spying industry,
• An overwhelming erosion of confidence in the Federal health bureaucracy due to manipulating data, promoting lockdowns, and the haphazard approval and mandating of the COVID-19 vaccine,
• The funding of a never-ending and unnecessary war in Ukraine, the enriching of Iran, and the greenlighting of Chinese expansion and belligerency.

Donald Trump deserves to be recognized as an indispensable man who was the right president at the right time and prior to March of 2020 had one of the most successful presidencies in the modern era. However, when confronted by his adversaries and their manipulation of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Trump’s acquiescence and decision-making process was out of character as he was far too fixated on the upcoming election.

The decisions a president makes in times of national crises oftentimes have enormous implications for the future of the country. The decisions made in those fateful two weeks between March 16 and March 30, 2020 are the backdrop to the chaos this nation is presently experiencing.

Source; Sent from a friend...............  This is how they overcome us...... BEWARE!!!!!

What they do!