UN Passes Up an Excellent Chance to Be Quiet

Then-French President Jackques Chirac, on the eave of the US dealing with a terrorist entity running Iraq, decried eastern European nations loudly supporting the upcoming US effort, saying,

It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.

Now comes this Wall Street Journal article talking about the Israeli response to the terrorist Hamas attack within Israel and yapping about a growing humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations, in the person of Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, speaks only of a generalized Gaza humanitarian crisis.

Lazzarini isn’t alone in this cynical spin. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wants to

discuss ways to stop the military operations that claimed the lives of innocent people….”

No. Military operations are not claim[ing] the lives of innocent people, Hamas’ terrorist operations are doing that.

The humanitarian crisis is in Israel, inflicted on Israelis by the terrorist Hamas with their assault into Israel where the terrorists butchered civilians, raped women, murdered babies—cutting off the heads of (too) many—and kidnapping 150, or so, more for the terrorists’ use in later atrocities.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is inflicted on Gazans by the terrorist Hamas with their use of Gazan civilians as human shields, and their use Gazans’ homes, schools, religious centers, hospitals, and on and on, as weapons caches, ammunition dumps, command and control centers. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is exacerbated by the terrorist Hamas’ refusal to allow Gaza’s civilians to evacuate northern Gaza as Israel has given them time to do. Beyond that, Lazzarini’s UNRWA is itself well known for allowing the terrorists to secrete their weapons in UNRWA facilities.

United Nations personnel, especially Lazzarini, and bin Salmon all are not engaging in really responsible behavior. [Theirs] is not well brought-up behavior. They missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.

They Don’t Know What They’re Doing?

Or is that they’re just riding the Climate Funding Industry Hobby Horse?

East Coast wind projects are in jeopardy after a decision by New York regulators Thursday to deny requests from renewable energy developers to charge customers billions of dollars more.
Offshore wind developers say they have been struggling against record inflation, supply chain issues, and interest rate hikes. Facing these pressures, Orsted, BP, and Equinor and other renewable developers requested that contracts for four offshore projects and 86 land-based projects be renegotiated, according to Reuters.
The offshore developers asked the New York Public Service Commission to alter its long term contracts and raise purchase prices to a level that would have let them collect an additional $38 billion from ratepayers.

They missed—badly—their initial financing and execution estimates, and they failed badly in their early adjustments following actual execution. The supply chain problems about which they complain have been extant since the depths of the Wuhan Virus situation. The inflation that has them in such an uproar has been a problem for the last three years. The rising interest rates have been an inevitable outcome of the inflation.

Do these guys—at the top of the top companies in their industry—really not know what they are doing?

Or are they just trying to rake in the money from their shadow industry of global warming hysteria funding, and some jurisdictions are starting to get tired of being taken for granted as cash cows?

Kasparov Screwed the Pooch

Garry Kasparov, Renew Democracy Initiative Chairman and Russian Action Committee Co-Founder has suggested, in his Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, that Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden move to decisively defeat[] Russia and Iran and their terrorist proxies, and then step out of the Presidential campaign. So far, so good.

Then, however, he suggested this—and he was dead serious:

[R]ather than proceed with an unpredictable rematch with Mr. Trump, the president could endorse a younger leader up to the challenge: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

Lloyd Austin, the Woke SecDef who’s severely damaging our military with his push for Woke Reeducation Programs in lieu of pushing for more weapons, ammunition, and combat training?

Wow.

Kasparov usually is better informed than this.

False Choices

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editors are correct that, as their subheadline says,

Helping Kyiv won’t rob weapons to fight Hamas or Hezbollah.

This is in response to some otherwise reasonably intelligent politicians insist on that false choice—that it’s either Ukraine or Israel. Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO), for instance:

Israel is facing existential threat. Any funding for Ukraine should be redirected to Israel immediately[.]

This is a foolishly false dichotomy, for all that, in Hawley’s case, it centers on his disdain for Ukraine and his lack of understanding of the threat the Russian barbarian hordes present.

The false choice representation is broader than that, though.

It’s also a false choice between either Israel or Ukraine, and our southern border, and it’s a false choice between any of those and supporting the Republic of China in deterring the People’s Republic of China or in fighting the PRC if they go ahead and invade.

What’s necessary—and more generally beneficial—is a reallocation of existing expenditures. That requires the Progressive-Democratic Party Representatives and Senators to either get out of the way or work with Republicans in a serious manner to do the reallocations.

It also requires timid Republican Senators to get out of the way or work seriously within their party and for the Republican House caucus to deal, with finality, with the Chaos Gang led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz and Texas’ Chip Roy and get serious about leading the House.

Because Of Course

The State Department, finally, is beginning to work on arranging charter flights for those Americans and their families currently trapped in Israel by American airlines’ timidity in flying into that nation.

But. But, but, but.

US law requires billing Americans for evacuations.

One of the first duties of government is to protect the citizens for whom it is responsible. But our government will send a bill to those for whom its exercising that responsibility. I’ll come back to this in a bit.

Meanwhile, illegal immigrants collect free assistance.

That’s actually illegal aliens; it’s disappointing that Just the News still acts like it doesn’t understand that. Anyway….

[T]he Biden administration’s generous financial support for the accommodation and relocation of illegal [aliens] to the United States.

Bill Americans, but pay the illegal aliens.

The law mandating requiring Americans to pay for their own evacuation needs to be changed. Americans who traveled in good faith—e.g., to Israel—should not have to pay to be saved from the dire circumstances that get inflicted on them by exogenous forces; that should be on the governments (yes, on us taxpayers’) nickel. Only those who foolishly, willfully travel to known danger zones—e.g., to Gaza, or Iran, or (today) the People’s Republic of China—should be required to pay for their ride out of the trouble they got themselves into. That’s long-term, though.

In the near-term, the Biden administration needs to stop flying—or transporting by any means—or providing any other form of financial support to illegal aliens. The only thing they should get at no further cost (they’ve already paid a high price to enter our nation illegally) is a ride back to their North American home countries or simply back into Mexico for non-New World illegal aliens. And that free ride should occur immediately on apprehension.

Full stop.