#helpless OPEC

[mightyflamethrower]

Do not expect the radical left to survey the wreckage of socialism and communism in history and accept that statism impoverishes people and erodes their freedoms.

There will never be admissions by our elite that progressivism exists mainly for the acquisition of power by the utopian and virtue-signaling few, who ensure that they are never subject to the baleful implementation of their ideological agendas on the rest of us.

Still, leftists look around at what they have done to America in the last four years and implicitly know that the plan did not work, the people detested it, or both.

How do we know this? By a variety of barometers.

None of the major Biden “achievements”—10 million illegal aliens across a nonexistent border, key components of the cost of living 25-30 percent higher than in 2020, wars and chaos abroad, DEI racial and tribal obsessions, wars on fossil fuels—poll at even 40-45 percent. Biden’s own approval ratings, as the nominal architect of the most left-wing agenda since the Roosevelt administration, hover between 36 and 34 percent.

But most importantly, the left is not running on its record of the last three-and-a-half years but instead studiously ignoring it, at least temporarily through November. Suddenly, we aren’t hearing so much about cancelling pipelines and freezing federal oil leases, or so much demonization of the “greedy” oil companies. Instead, Biden is further draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging OPEC in general and the no-longer-demonized Saudi Arabia in particular to pump oil as fast as possible.

We were lied to for nearly four years that the border was “secure,” as 10 million foreign nationals flooded across. Then we were told Biden was helpless to stop the deluge since he had no legal right to enforce federal immigration law through executive orders—a ridiculous excuse that even he would soon drop. Despite their eagerness for new constituencies, no one on the left dares to openly praise the influx of the last four years, much less demand more illegal immigration.

Instead, as November looms, Biden is suddenly reinstating the very Trump executive orders that once, despite deep state and court obstruction, finally closed the border—and which Biden himself had originally overturned. Note that Biden is now partnering with the Mexican government—which terribly fears another Trump presidency endangering Mexico’s annual $60 billion in remittances from mostly illegal aliens in the United States—to curb some of the illegal immigration before the November election.

The administration’s pandering at election time is a de facto admission that its agendas did not work, permanently alienated the people they hurt, and are now being forgotten or reversed—albeit temporarily—to retain power at all costs.

Few on the left praise the disastrous COVID lockdown, the canonization of Dr. Fauci, the mask and social-distancing craze, and the gospel that endless boosters were necessary to protect Americans. Even the left, although again quietly, assumes that the lockdowns did more damage than the virus, that Dr. Fauci repeatedly lied when he swore he did not subsidize gain-of-function viral research at the Chinese top-security virology lab at Wuhan, and that the virus came not from the lab but from a wandering pangolin or errant bat.

Biden and his supporters are no longer blaming or firing the police but rather trying (albeit quietly) to get more law-enforcement officers to serve—given the predictable crime wave that followed the George Floyd riots.

Ditto for all the left-wing hysterias of the last eight years. No one any longer claims that Christopher Steele’s dossier was factual. No one insists that Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely “Russian disinformation”, or that “Anonymous” was a courageous “top-ranking” administration official. All these hysterias, it is tacitly admitted, were cooked-up left-wing canards to emasculate the Trump candidacy and presidency.

Outside of politics, leftists are quiet as their failed bromides are being undone. The idea of the FBI partnering with social media to suppress politically-dangerous news is something the left is not eager to repeat.

The same recognition is beginning to apply to the lawfare waged against Donald Trump. Jack Smith’s crusade to get Trump is undermined by prosecutorial misbehavior concerning the evidence seized at Mar-a-Lago and by the asymmetrical treatment by another special counsel accorded Biden in comparison with Trump. Smith’s efforts to speed up the trial before the election only made his persecution more politically transparent.

Fani Willis’s outrageous behavior will likely delay indefinitely her weaponized indictments. The James and Bragg convictions will likely be overturned and were intended mostly to embarrass Trump, bankrupt him, and harm his presidential campaign.

All of the left’s once-grandiose ideas of packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, admitting two new states to win four more liberal senators, and destroying the Electoral College have little public support and will go nowhere. Corporations like Disney, Target, and Anheuser-Busch have all begun backtracking on their money-losing, market-share-eroding woke/DEI agendas.

Universities are terrified that their endowment income is either static or in decline, given a rising drop-off in public and alumni giving. They know their race-based, non-meritocratic admissions and hiring are increasingly destroying their brand names. To accommodate their new non-meritocratic student bodies, they have variously inflated their grades to the point of parody, watered down work requirements, or introduced gut courses—and as a result, they are quickly losing their once-coveted prestige. Some campuses are already reinstating the SAT and ACT requirements that were thrown out in 2020-21 in the hysteria that followed the death of George Floyd. Harvard and Stanford aren’t boasting that the erasure of the SAT created a more competitive student body and raised standards to new levels.

The twin ideas of foreign-funded Middle-Eastern-studies centers and of admitting tens of thousands of affluent, full-tuition-paying Middle-Eastern students led to institutionalized anti-Semitism on campus and eliminationist rhetoric right out the old Klan playbook. The appeasement by university presidencies only whets the appetites of those who unlawfully occupy, vandalize, deface, and disrupt. Their pro-terrorist chants and emblems are bleeding the universities of billions of dollars in lost donations.

In short, the policies that the left has given us over the last years—hyperinflation, spiking staple and gas prices, racial and tribal chauvinism, dangerous streets, an emasculated and politicized military, and wars abroad—did not work, and are now being masked to retain power, put on hold, or even reversed.

The reasons for the failure are ancient, given that socialism and progressivism are contrary to human nature.

Borders are essential to national sovereignty and confidence and delineate the unique values, traditions, and customs of a people, without which they revert to mere tribes without social commonalities and political cohesion. No society can pick and choose which national laws are enforced and which ignored—and still remain a nation of laws.

People obey laws because, in a cost-benefit analysis, they fear the consequences of lawbreaking. Otherwise, the laws of the wild prevail and the strongest dictate to the weaker. Citizens must be discouraged, not encouraged, from favoring their own tribe and race, tribalism being the oldest of human biases. Money is not a construct but represents the real value of capital and labor and cannot be printed into national wealth. Abroad, most nations are illiberal and their aggressiveness is deterred only through guarantees that they will lose more than they will gain through war.

We sometimes forget all that unpleasant human baggage, due to irrelevant distractions, or the utopianism that is the handmaiden of affluence and leisure. Often, the opulence and freedom arising from free-market economies and limited constitutional government create so much prosperity and liberty that its beneficiaries believe such good fortune to be their natural and commonplace birthright and so begin destroying the very system that blessed them.

But if Biden and his handlers have taught us anything, human nature cannot be fooled, and the current four-year experiment will have to end before it ends us—and soon.

[my-shakir-mumtaz]

Pakistan Oil and Gas Exploration Torpedoed!

Pakistan Oil and Gas Exploration Torpedoed!

Pakistan’s oil and gas exploration has been torpedoed by the alien interests for fear of uncontrollably boosting Pakistan’s strategic, economic military position on top of mega-project CPEC and giving a free pass to its obvious beneficiary China becoming secure and economically efficient with regards to its oil and gas needs; hence becoming more aggressive and pronounced, in its counter-weight…

[enubus]

Why is Biden selling our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to Asia?

Nov 18, 2021 by

American Thinker

By Andrea Widburg It’s no secret that Americans are paying record prices at the gas pumps. Rapidly ascending prices also affect the cost of all the goods and services that are an integral part of the American economy. Farmers, manufacturers, delivery companies, repair people…you name it: They’re paying more to do their jobs and they’re passing those costs to consumers. So why now, of all times, is the Biden administration selling off America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (“SPR”) to Asia?As the name suggests, the SPR is America’s emergency backup supply of oil. The reason we have it is because of the energy crisis in the early 1970s. According to Wikipedia, which is probably accurate about this, “The United States started the petroleum reserve in 1975 after oil supplies were interrupted during the 1973-1974 oil embargo, to mitigate future supply disruptions.

”Fast forward to 2021. Upon entering the Oval Office, one of the first things Biden did was to shut down the Keystone XL pipeline. Henceforth, rather than flowing safely through a pipeline, Canadian oil will come the expensive way, over land, whether in trucks (which are in short supply) or on trains. At the same time, Biden halted new oil, gas, and coal leases on federal lands, something that’s being fought in the courts. As long as the suit continues, though, no sane business would start to drill.Biden’s also on the verge of ending all new oil and gas leases around major Native American cultural sites, which will shut down massive amounts of exploration and drilling in New Mexico. And following initial denials, the administration admitted that it plans to close a major Michigan pipeline. No wonder gas pumps across America are blooming with Biden stickers like this one:📷Image: Internet meme. Source unknow n. Practically overnight, America went from oil independence and being a net oil importer, to suffering shortages and, as noted, rising prices. When asked about the problem, Biden risibly blamed OPEC and Russia. Meanwhile, Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, simply cackled maniacally and claimed the administration was helpless. Biden is now under pressure to tap the SPR to relieve some of the pressure on fuel prices. (Again, remember that Biden birthed this problem by squashing American fuel production, thereby creating the shortage. There’s also the little matter of his administration working with Congress to print money like rolls of toilet paper—except that toilet paper is more useful than inflationary dollars.) Even Chuckie Schumer wants to lower prices by chipping away at our SPR emergency supply, despite our having vast, untapped resources beneath American land. It turns out, though, that Biden is already tapping into the SPR; he’s just not doing it to help Americans. A report in investment circles is finally trickling down into the mainstream news: Biden is selling massive amounts of SPR oil…to Asia! According to Bloomberg/Quint: About 1.6 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve — a monthly record — was shipped out in October, according to data from market intelligence firm Kpler. All three supertankers went to Asia.“ Given the ongoing pace of the current SPR release — 12 million barrels in the last two months and the biggest weekly release so far last week at 3.1 million barrels — it’s fair to assume more SPR barrels are going to leave U.S. shores in the weeks ahead,” said Matt Smith, an oil analyst at Kpler. As far as I can tell, the administration has not explained why, with Americans struggling to keep up with rising fuel prices, it’s shipping our SPR to Asia. During the virtual meeting between Biden and Xi Jinping, the two men allegedly discussed releasing oil from both countries’ petroleum reserves but made no mention of the sales to Asia that already took place.It’s becoming clearer daily that there is a clown in the White House, but it’s not a cute, loving clown like Bozo (although I always found him kind of creepy). Instead, we’re being led by the political equivalent of the Joker from the D.C. Comics, a mad man who wants to burn it all down.

[moonchronicles-blog]

Why Modi’s Israel Visit Is a Blunder

On July 4, 2017, Narendra Modi became the first Indian PM to visit Israel since 1947. Although this should’ve been considered an achievement, I still consider it a blunder, without including other foreign policy blunders committed by the Modi government. This post is dedicated to finding out why.

Modi doing what he does best. Serious personal space issues, as Iyad El-Baghdadi says.

Back to the topic. Since 2014, the BJP has committed blunder after blunder in its foreign policy, and this in itself has relieved China and also given leverage to Pakistan which it never had over India since 1947. 

Jammu & Kashmir: India had the upper hand in Kashmir over Pakistan till 2014 and also maintained it as a bilateral issue despite Pakistan vainly attempting to internationalize the issue. Elements like Hurriyat were sidelined under the MMS years. Militancy broke out in 2010, but quickly calmed down and was returning to peace after a very long time. The number of deaths and those joining militancy in the valley was coming down quite drastically. Today, Kashmir is more or less a lost cause. Modi not just converted Kashmir into a trilateral issue with China butting in, but also made it international to the extent that Turkey, Iran and USA talked about Kashmir like it’s occupied by India. All for merely gaining Hindu votes in UP, Bihar, Gujarat, Uttarakhand and other cow belt states. Even at the extent of India’s integrity.

Pakistan: Before 2014, India had the upper hand over Pakistan and managed to get several groups and individuals backed by Pakistan designated as terrorists by the United States. Modi in his PR pursuit committed so many blunders that not only expanded Pakistan’s global outreach to Iran, Russia, China, USA and other countries, but also crippled India’s. Intrusions and attacks from Pakistan have increased in the past 3 years to the extent that even our own army men aren’t safe any longer.

China: The first major blunder was his veiled attack on China in 2014 during his Japan visit. This in itself soured the already uneasy relationship India had with China during Dr. Manmohan Singh’s years. China responded by mobilizing its military in late 2014. China didn’t escalate the matter further, till Modi wreaked the control of the Ministry of External Affairs for his own aggrandizing. Modi and NSA Ajit Doval are the actual ones in charge of the foreign ministry and not Sushma Swaraj. Back to China. Inviting the then US President Barack Obama to Republic Day 2015 irked both China and Russia. By opposing China and supporting the Philippines and Viet Nam over the South China Sea dispute in 2015-16, Modi made matters worse. China used this to extract revenge and block India’s NSG bid. Turkey, New Zealand, Mexico, South Africa and Switzerland also opposed India’s NSG bid. China said if India was to be included, Pakistan must also be included. While Pakistan rejoiced over this, the govt of India responded by saying they were okay with Pakistan’s bid. China also blocked India’s attempt to designate Masood Azhar as an international terrorist. Permitting Uighur dissident Dolkun Isa followed by massive PR from his minions on social media, then canceling it again in order not to irk China, is another instance which show what a colossal failure Modi has been on this front. In 2017, China invaded and renamed several villages in Arunachal Pradesh with silence as the only response by the MEA and Modi. In 1966, Indira Gandhi vowed to protect Bhutan, but now, China is not only invading Bhutan, but also cutting at India’s chicken neck that links the mainland to the North East. China is threatening war. Once again, silence is the only response from India.

Russia: Russian President Vladimir Putin was visibly not impressed by Modi’s PR shows, and since 2014, started to directly export weapons to Pakistan. Modi’s PR gave Pakistan enough time to warm up to Russia. Signing the LEMOA by Manohar Parrikar was too much to take. It’s worthy to note that India before Modi had the Irkut license to manufacture Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter jets in India. In 2016, Russia conducted its first joint military exercise with Pakistan. Russia - China - Pakistan relations have been silently growing for the past one year thanks to Modi’s failed and haphazard policies.

Iran: Dr. MMS supported Iran despite US sanctions and threats from US & EU over Iran. He also stopped Iran and Saudi Arabia from a potential war and called for cooperation. Despite being pro US, Dr. MMS put India’s interests first. Modi’s first blunder here was not giving Iranian President Hassan Rouhani any meeting time during his first US visit, and instead, meeting Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. This irked Iran, who retaliated by blocking India’s wheat. Consistent steps like this forced the Supreme Leader of Iran to open up the Chabahar port, which was confirmed by India during the MMS years, additionally to Turkey and China. Later in 2015 and early 2016, Iran proposed linking the Chabahar port with Pakistan’s Gwadar port (built by China). Till 2014, MMS despite being US friendly had Iran very close to India despite warning from the US and the EU. Modi turned this upside down. In Eid 2017, Iran’s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prayed that peace should return to Kashmir. Something Iran never talked about has now received sharp focus.

Syria: In 2013, the then Indian PM Dr. MMS opposed US’ bid to militarily enter the war. Modi maintains a stoic silence as Syria is shred into pieces.

Gulf: Part 1: While crude prices were as high as $140, Dr. MMS maintained gasoline/diesel prices at around 70-75 Rupees/liter. Even as crude prices are as low as $50, Modi maintains the price at 67-70 Rupees/liter and doesn’t even have the basic courtesy or an iota of shame to say what he’s doing with all the collected money. The Gulf embarks on a nationalization drive and sends back Indians. What has Modi done to solve the job crisis that will only get worse in the near future? Till date, nothing. Even the shameless PR seems to fall apart now. Part 2: Qatar has been sanctioned by its Gulf Arab neighbors since June 2017 for “sponsoring terrorism”. Turkey has stepped in to help Qatar. Modi maintains deafening silence, even as India has an army base in Qatar.

USA: Despite visiting USA as frequently as the restroom, USA continues selling arms to Pakistan and also increasing its aid. Donald Trump modified H-1B visas that made it harder for Indian techies to work in US companies. Modi’s response? Silence. Even his much trumpeted visit to USA under President Donald Trump yielded little results with Modi being silent over the matter.

Singapore: Singapore in April 2017 revoked its visa program thus preventing Indian techies from getting jobs there. Modi’s response? Silence.

Australia: Adani’s coal mine caused a lot of damage in Abbot Point at Australia’s Queensland province. Australia revoked its 457 visa program thus blocking Indian techies. Modi’s response? Silence.

New Zealand: The next day after Australia revoked its skilled workers visa program, New Zealand followed suit. Modi’s response? Silence.

Sri Lanka: I can say, this is the only nation where Modi topped MMS. This he achieved by toppling Mahinda Rajapaksa’s SL Freedom Party early in 2015 and ensuring Mathripala Sirisena became SL President. However Modi has remained silent since. For once, let’s give credit to the shameless joker and clumsy buffoon.

Nepal: Nepal has gone firmly into Chinese hands, and earlier this year, stone pelting was reported from the Nepalese border. This wasn’t the case during the MMS years.

Israel: There was a reason why Indian PMs before Modi never visited Israel. India is dependent on the OPEC nations for oil, all of whom have banned Israeli citizens from entering their nations for not following the 1967 Israel-Palestine resolution and also for the sudden formation of Israel over Palestine in 1948. Even as Indian PMs maintained clandestine relations with Israel, they never directly went there because they needed the Islamic nations to supply crude oil and employment, direct and indirect. With Modi openly trumpeting his anti Muslim hate back home in India and supporting India outside, he has antagonized the Islamic world with whom India built careful relations till 2014.

Further notes: It’s becoming an increasingly known fact that China tramples its Muslim minority with impunity, with Islamic nations and people maintaining helpless silence. Modi could’ve scaled back on his Israel love, mishandling of Kashmir and hatred of Muslims, and instead increased relations with OPEC nations. He could’ve highlighted this matter too. Indeed, China’s economic instability and market crash in 2015-16 was an indicator that something was wrong. Instead of openly promoting Chinese brands like Jio (Made in China) and PayTM and giving them more breathing space, Modi could’ve done something better. He could’ve cornered China on its abuse of Muslims. He could’ve used that as a board to attack Pakistan for its silence over this matter. He had the biggest advantage in 2014 when Chinese citizens were boycotting everything Malaysian over the disappearance of MH370. He could’ve also attacked Pakistan and then finally given the Baluchistan issue a big international boost. All of them wasted in shameless pursuit of PR.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are more blunders committed by the Modi regime which would require me to write a novel!

Thank you all for reading. Have a good day.