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In this mailing:
* Gordon G. Chang: The World Is at War
* Amir Taheri: Global Warming and 'Big Bad Oil'


** The World Is at War ([link removed])
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by Gordon G. Chang • December 17, 2023 at 5:00 am
* [Senator JD] Vance has apparently not heard of World War II, which did not end with a negotiation either in Europe or the Pacific.
* Leaders, officials, and legislators across the political spectrum have gone crazy, thinking their crowd-pleasing but truly awful ideas, if implemented, will have no consequences.
* [Biden] is far more interested in avoiding escalation than in winning, and not angering the totalitarians in Beijing and Tehran has apparently become his primary goal... That is a grave strategic mistake.
* [Putin] is unlikely to stop with just that embattled state. By explicitly adopting the language of Peter the Great, Putin has made it clear that Russia has the right to expand to areas now in NATO states. The Baltics, for instance, are obviously at risk. So is much of Eastern Europe.
* Many in the West say that Putin would not dare to attack a NATO country, yet a failure of the West to defend Ukraine, a country protected by the guarantees of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, could convince Putin that he does not have to worry about the trans-Atlantic alliance or its most important member, the United States of America.

President Joe Biden is trying to manage the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and is far more interested in avoiding escalation than in winning. Not angering the totalitarians in Beijing and Tehran has apparently become his primary goal. Pictured: Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on January 23, 2016. (Image source: khamenei.ir)

Senator JD Vance on December 11 suggested that Ukraine surrender land in order to obtain a peace settlement with Russia.

"It ends the way nearly every single war has ever ended: when people negotiate and each side gives up something that it doesn't want to give up," the Ohio Republican said to reporters. "No one can explain to me how this ends without some territorial concessions relative to the 1991 boundaries."

Vance has apparently not heard of World War II, which did not end with a negotiation either in Europe or the Pacific. Moreover, given what he just said about a peace-for-land agreement with Russia, Vance also apparently knows nothing about the Munich Pact of 1938. I suspect he may not be able to locate the Sudetenland on a map.

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** Global Warming and 'Big Bad Oil' ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • December 17, 2023 at 4:00 am
* [H]istory shows that civilizations based on recycling and no growth end up disappearing, the most glaring example being ancient Sumer.
* 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.
* 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...

(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.

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