Mar 15, 2024

Charles Schumer on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and a two-state solution

Gaza is experiencing a humanitarian catastrophe.  Entire families wiped out, whole neighborhoods reduced to rubble, mass displacement, children suffering.  We should not let the complexities of this conflict stop us from stating the plain truth: Palestinian civilians do not deserve to suffer for the sins of Hamas and Israel has a moral obligation to do better.  The United States has an obligation to do better.  I believe the United States must provide robust humanitarian aid to Gaza and pressure the Israelis to let more of it get through to the people who need it.  

Jewish people throughout the centuries have empathized with those who are suffering and who are oppressed because we have known so much of that ourselves.  As the Torah teaches us, every human life is precious.  Every single innocent life lost, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a tragedy, as the scripture says, "destroys an entire world."  What horrifies so many Jews, especially, is our sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly Jewish values that we hold so dear.  We must be better than our enemies lest we become them.

[...]

And now, as a result of those inflamed tensions in both Israeli and Palestinian communities, people on all sides of this war are turning away from the two-state solution, including Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who in recent weeks has said out loud repeatedly what many have long suspected by outright rejecting the idea of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty.  As the highest ranking Jewish elected official in our government and as a staunch defender of Israel, I rise today to say unequivocally: this is a grave mistake, for Israel, for Palestinians, for the region and for the world.  The only real and sustainable solution to this decades-old conflict is a negotiated two-state solution, a demilitarized Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in equal measures of peace, security, prosperity, dignity and mutual recognition.

[...] 

Jews have a human right to their own state just as any other people do, Palestinians included.  As I have said, there are also some Israelis who oppose even a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state because they fear that it might tolerate or be a harbor for further terrorism against the Jewish state.  I understand these fears, but the bitter reality is that a single state, controlled by Israel, which they advocate, guarantees certain war forever and further isolation of the Jewish community in the world to the extent that its future would be jeopardized.  Let me elaborate.  They say the definition on insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  Is Israel were to not only maintain the status quo, but to go beyond that and tighten its control over Gaza and the West Bank, as some in the Netanyahu administration have suggested, in effect creating a de facto single state, then what reasonable expectation can we have that Hamas and their allies will lay down their arms?  It would mean constant war.  On top of that, Israel moving closer to a single state entirely under its control would further rupture its relationship with the rest of the world, including the United States.  Support for Israel has declined worldwide in the last few months, and this trend will only get worse if the Israeli government continues down its current path.

~ Sen. Charles Schumer, speech before Senate, March 14, 2024



The Economist: "You have to marvel at America’s economy"

You have to marvel at America’s economy.  Not long ago it was widely thought to be on the brink of recession.  Instead it ended 2023 nearly 3% larger than 12 months earlier, having enjoyed one of the boomier years of the century so far.  And it continues to defy expectations.  At the start of this year, economists had been forecasting annualised growth in the first quarter of 1%; that prediction has since doubled.  The labour market is in rude health, too.  The unemployment rate has been below 4% for 25 consecutive months, the longest such spell in over 50 years.  No wonder Uncle Sam is putting the rest of the world to shame.  Since the end of 2019 the economy has grown by nearly 8% in real terms, more than twice as fast as the euro zone’s and ten times as quickly as Japan’s.  Britain’s has barely grown at all.





Mar 14, 2024

John Tamny on conservative support for bill to force sale of TikTok

Contra crybaby conservatives, an app could never destroy the greatest country on earth.  On the other hand, the taking of freedom required to ban an app could destroy a country whose greatness is rooted in freedom.

~ John Tamny, tweet, March 14, 2024



Mar 12, 2024

Doug Casey on the green energy scam

Before the Industrial Revolution, the overwhelmingly major fuel source was wood.  After that, we went to coal, which was a big improvement in density of energy and economics.  Then, we went to oil, another huge improvement in energy density and economics.

These things happened not because of any government mandates but simply because they made both economic and technological sense.  If the market had been left alone, the world would undoubtedly be running on nuclear.  Nuclear is unquestionably the safest, cheapest, and cleanest type of mass power generation.  This isn’t the time to go into the numerous reasons that’s true.  But if nuclear had been left unregulated, we’d already be using small, self-contained, fifth-generation thorium reactors, generating power almost too cheap to meter.  The world would already be running on truly clean green electricity.

Instead, time, capital, and brainpower have been massively diverted to so-called “ecological” power sources—mainly wind and solar—strictly for ideological reasons.  The powers that be want to transition the whole world to phony green energy, like it or not.

I’m all for green energy in principle.  There’s no question that solar and wind are worthwhile and effective for select applications—generally small, isolated, special locations where conventional fuel is inconvenient or too costly.  The efficiency of solar has been tremendously improved over the last few decades, as has wind efficiency.  But neither make any sense for mass base-load power in industrial economies.

With further technological advances, they may become more economic someday.  Perhaps people will eventually put large collectors in high Earth orbit and microwave the power down to the surface.  There are all kinds of sci-fi possibilities.  But right now, “green” is just a nice word for “stupid,” “ideological,” or “government-sponsored.”

Doing things the green way takes power away from the markets, which is where people vote with their dollars. It instead places power in the hands of ideologues and bureaucrats.

In brief, wind and solar are being promoted at the very time, nuclear and fossil fuels are being damned.  It’s the opposite of what should be happening and a very bad trend from every point of view.

Put me down as liking the birds and the bunnies as much as anyone else, but I’m anti-green.  Anyway, ecofreaks don’t really care about the birds and the bunnies so much.  That’s just a veneer.  They actually just hate people and really want them to disappear.  At a minimum, they want to control them.  And the great global warming/anti-fossil-fuel hysteria is a great way to do it.




Rick Rule on natural resource investing

In terms of natural resource investing, you're either going to be a contrarian or you are going to be a victim.  There isn't much by way of middle ground.  Everybody wants to invest in commodities where the price action has already justified the narrative, but the price action takes the value-added out of the narrative.  You have to look for commodities that are in liquidation, where the price is so low that the industry is liquidating and where if the price of the commodity doesn't increase, the commodity will become unavailable to humankind.  And finally, humankind needs to need that commodity.

Another way to put that phrase, in terms of the time value of money, is that you need to invest in things that are inevitable, even if they aren't eminent.  And you have to need to know the difference between those two words.

~ Rick Rule, interview with Dan Ferris and McLaughlin, Stansberry Investor Hour, 60:30 mark, March 4, 2024



Mar 5, 2024

Lew Rockwell on anarchy

Is it possible that we have likewise assumed that the state is inevitable only because we are used to it, and can hardly imagine a world without it?  Just as the menial tasks once performed by slaves are now distributed differently among free men, perhaps, as anarchists argue, the functions of the state could be distributed among voluntary agencies.

The Renaissance philosopher Thomas Hobbes thought that anarchy — the “state of nature” — would be “a war of all against all,” making human life “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  His solution was the state, which would quell quarrels among men.  He didn’t foresee that the state itself might aggravate conflict and make social order far more miserable than anarchy could ever be.

Hobbes’s near-contemporary John Locke offered a more attractive alternative: the limited state, which would have the power to secure men’s natural rights but would lack the power to violate them.  But such a state has never existed for long.  Once a monopoly of power exists at all, it tends to degenerate into tyranny; anarchists argue that this decline is inevitable, because tyranny is inherent in the very nature of the state.

~ Lew Rockwell, "The Heroic Joe Sobran," LewRockwell.com, March 4, 2024



Mar 4, 2024

Joe Sobran on government intervention

If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. 
If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. 
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. 
If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

~ Joe Sobran, 1995