Is Syria Already Going Down The Road To Being An Islamist Extremist Country?

By William Teach December 11, 2024 – 10:30 am

The leaders who deposed Assad and forced him to flee to Moscow made noises about being respectful and not extremist, but, already

Report: Syrian Rebels Execute Opponents, Impose Sharia, Threaten Kurds

Syrian rebels who overthrew the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad on Sunday are reportedly executing their opponents, imposing Islamic sharia law, and threatening non-Muslim minorities, including the Kurdish population in the north.

Videos are circulating on social media showing Syrian rebels killing people associated with the regime — some of whom may have been part of the state security services, and others who appear to have been ordinary employees.

The New York Times reported Tuesday:

Islamic State forces on Tuesday killed 54 people in the Homs region in central Syria who had been part of the Syrian government’s military and fled during the collapse of the Assad regime, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group. The killings highlight the chaos in Syria as various rebel factions operate in different regions.

One video also shows thousands of smashed bottles of liquor at the duty free store of the Damascus airport, where Islamist rebels apparently enforced the Islamic ban on alcohol by force, as Islamists did in Lebanon in the 1980s.

How much further will this go? Time will tell. Will they dive down into being a fundamentalist nation like Iran? Or further like Afghanistan? Will they be a threat to the region like we see from the Palestinians and Houthi? Will they be more open like many of the Gulf nations?

Western nations should softly work to make inroads with Syria, limiting their Islamist impulses, driving them from China and Russia and Iran.

Meanwhile, the Times is also reporting

Fierce fighting was underway on Tuesday between rebels supported by Turkey and U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces near Kobani, a town in northern Syria with historic and symbolic significance for American involvement in the region.

The fight illustrates how, even as rebels try to build a government after taking Damascus, armed groups with competing interests are still fighting for territory and power, trying to fill the vacuum left by a collapsed regime and, in this case, pitting proxies of the United States and Turkey against each other.

So, our NATO ally is working against the interests of the U.S., trying to kill Kurds. Why is Turkey still in NATO?

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The Climate Cult Is Changing Tactics Because Trump

By William Teach December 11, 2024 – 7:00 am

The NY Times is super excited about this. Let’s see what the doomsday cultists are doing. It must be that they’re all going to stop using fossil fuels, go meatless, stop buying fast fashion, and make their lives carbon neutral, right?

How the Climate Movement Is Changing Tactics After Trump’s Win

With about a month and a half left until the Trump administration takes over the White House, I called Bill McKibben, a journalist, author and activist, to ask where the climate movement goes next.

The outlook for the movement that McKibben has helped lead for more than three decades may seem grim. Donald Trump, who has called global warming a “scam,” is likely to reverse many of President Biden’s climate policies. Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, dismantle regulations and target Biden’s signature climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.

But the climate movement also plans to spend the next four years hunkering down at the local level. McKibben’s newest organization, Third Act, a nonprofit group for climate activists older than 60 that he started about three years ago, is highlighting the push for change at the community and state level. Over the past 18 months, they’ve begun a new strategy: attending the meetings of obscure state agencies or commissions that hold a lot of power over the energy transition.

Um, how does that have anything to do with Trump? Did they know he was going to win 18 months ago? #TDS

Youth climate groups have also said they’re pivoting from a national to a local stage, pushing for state-level laws like the Climate Change Superfund Act in New York, which could hold polluters accountable for climate change.

Well, really, that’s where it should be. All powers not directly assigned to the federal government are reserved to the States and The People. And, hey, we need experimental groups for every experiment. Though, we have the People’s Republik Of California already. But, there needs to be more than one.

It’s still too early to tell how Trump’s win will affect the climate movement, but McKibben said these were “uncharted waters.” While some parts of the movement are refining their economic arguments, other climate leaders hope to center their message on people that have been disproportionately affected by environmental harms or climate disasters. As I reported today, the youth climate movement has largely reframed itself as the youth climate justice movement.

They’ve been doing that for the last 15 years, so, nothing new. So, what, exactly, are the plans? Seems like a lot of ado over nothing. No need for an article except that the climate cult requires a certain amount of space in every NY Times edition.

Read: The Climate Cult Is Changing Tactics Because Trump »

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cBS Notes Americans Are Paying More For Health Insurance

By William Teach December 11, 2024 – 6:45 am

I’m sure this was meant to be a way of the moonbats at cBS giving a valid reason for Luigi Mangione murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but, it has gone so very, very wrong

From the link

Health insurance costs are far outpacing inflation, leaving more consumers on the hook each year for thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. At the same time, some insurers are rejecting nearly 1 in 5 claims. That double whammy is leaving Americans paying more for coverage yet sometimes feeling like they’re getting less in return, experts say.

Frustration over denials and medical costs has fueled an outpouring of vitriol against health insurance companies in the wake of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Also last week, a similar outcry led Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield to reverse a decision to limit anesthesia coverage during surgeries.

The anger may be rooted in fears that unexpected medical costs could prove financially ruinous, as well as concerns that essential care could be denied by an insurer, putting health and well-being at risk even for those who have health insurance.

See? He had Reasons.

In 2024, the average health insurance premium for families carried a price tag of $25,572 per year, while single workers paid an average of $8,951, representing a 6% and 7% increase from the year earlier, KFF data shows. Since 2000, the rise in health insurance premiums has outpaced inflation for all but a handful of years, the health policy research firm found.

Well, let’s see: “In 2012, the average annual premium for family health insurance was $15,745. This was a 4% increase from the previous year. On average, workers paid $4,316 toward the cost of their coverage. Say, what happened in 2012?

Read: cBS Notes Americans Are Paying More For Health Insurance »

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Warmists Are Very Upset People Have Free Speech On Social Media

By William Teach December 10, 2024 – 3:44 pm

See, everything that does not conform to doomsday cult doctrine is “misinformation”

Social Media Is a Growing Vehicle for Climate Misinformation

Green Climate Thought PoliceA few weeks ago, delegates from nearly 200 nations met for the 29th United Nations climate summit (COP29) in Azerbaijan, where they discussed how best to reduce emissions to slow dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, a separate global forum was playing out online, dedicated to undermining the conference, promoting oil and gas and denying humans’ role in climate change.

A new report, published on Friday by international nonprofit Global Witness, found that climate misinformation and disinformation spread unchecked on TikTok during COP29, mostly in user comments on videos. The users they identified denied man-made global warming and rebuked efforts to combat it, claiming that climate change is a “lie” or “hoax.”

Again, would those be the 40,000+ who took fossil fueled trips? You know they did not bike or walk there, and taking the train would be extremely arduous. If the current warm period is mostly/solely caused by mankind then why did all these people take fossil fueled trips? Anyway, how dare you peasants have the ability to speak your mind!

In recent years, social media platforms like X, Facebook and even LinkedIn have emerged as efficient vehicles to spread this type of inaccurate rhetoric as quickly as climate-fueled wildfires. Online influencers and prominent political figures, particularly President-elect Donald Trump, have fanned these flames on social media, a worrisome trend as trust in science and journalists continues in some communities to plummet, experts say.

It couldn’t be, bare with me here, that cult scientists have shown themselves to be in the tank for the cult, that their “findings” are more like Madam Zelda reading your palm, and that most of their prognostications fail, right? That pretty much everything they predict is utter doom, and it helps get them more government money, meaning this is government propaganda, right?

This tracks with my colleague Bob Berwyn’s recent reporting from the conference, during which U.N. officials launched an initiative to combat climate misinformation at an international scale. Berwyn pointed out that after Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, the tech mogul reinstated accounts that had been banned for spreading disinformation about climate and other topics. Since then, the number of accounts amplifying climate denial have proliferated, with high-profile users reaching millions of people per post.

Government that won’t let you have your say and tries to shut those guilty of Wrongthink down are what kinds of governments? If the climate cult’s “science” is so weak that they cannot rebut people with scientific facts than maybe this is a cult, not a science.

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 10, 2024 – 1:22 pm

…is an area flooding from too much carbon pollution bad weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Green Jihad, with a post on St. Greta continuing to dive down the Jew hating hole.

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Democrats Ask Biden To Protect Fake Asylum Seekers

By William Teach December 10, 2024 – 10:30 am

What is Biden really going to be able to do in a little over a month? And, anything Biden does can be undone by Trump

Democrats Urge President Biden to Protect Legally Present Migrants

Democrats are rallying nationwide to oppose President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial immigration policies, launching a wave of grassroots mobilization, legal challenges and legislative efforts aimed at protecting immigrant communities.

On Tuesday morning, a letter signed by seven leading Democratic Party senators seen by Newsweek was sent to President Joe Biden, urging him to act now to protect current legal migrants.

Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation program in U.S. history, shut down the CBP One app, end the catch-and-release policy and reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” program as part of his hardline immigration agenda. He has also vowed to go after those admitted into the United States under programs established to protect migrants from certain countries.

So, what do they recommend?

Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto told Newsweek that she had spoken to the White House about her proposals for President Joe Biden to extend protections to citizens who are in the country through TPS.

“There are horrific conditions in these countries that satisfy the provisions of TPS and this is an opportunity now for this administration to extend that status or provide that status based on those horrific conditions in those countries, because I know the next administration, their immigration policy is chaotic and President Trump has basically said he’s going to engage in master deportation and nobody’s going to be safe,” Masto said.

Currently, 16 countries are included on the list, including Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, along with Afghanistan, Burma, El Salvador, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. The Biden administration did allow TPS to lapse for Venezuelans after two years in October, however.

That’s their plan? They do realize that courts have already ruled that TPS can be cancelled, right? If Biden does this the Trump admin should simply ship all the TPS folks to the neighborhoods of Biden and the senators.

In a withering critique, Padilla issued a stark warning that mass deportations will “rip” residents from their communities and lead to a “less prosperous” America, which would leave Americans paying “higher prices for everyday goods and services.”

“Trump’s threat to deport millions of people from the U.S. will rip longtime residents like DACA recipients, TPS holders, and immigrant essential workers away from their communities, leaving the American people to pay higher prices for everyday goods and services. Mass deportations will lead to a less prosperous America for all,” Padilla told Newsweek.

These are not their communities. Their communities are in different countries. TPS means they are here temporarily, not permanently. But, apparently, the 6 senators are upset that the people who clean their homes and cut their grass could be sent back home. And these same senators have protection from the crime and conditions the fake asylum seekers create.

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NOAA Says Sea Rise Doom For Coast Coming By 2050 Or Something

By William Teach December 10, 2024 – 7:15 am

Who gets fired when this doesn’t happen? Oh, right, they don’t expect anyone to remember their prognostication of doom, this is all meant to be scaremongering now

From the link

A map shows the growing threat to coastal cities across the United States due to rising sea levels.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s latest projections, sea levels along the U.S. coastlines are projected to rise, on average, around 10 to 12 inches by 2050.

Many communities along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts face significant risks of partial inundation in the future if current trends continue and mitigation efforts are not intensified.

NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer shows which cities may be impacted along each coast, with dark blue areas indicating significant projected sea level rises.

You can play with that sea level rise viewer if you want, but, consider the 10-12 inches of sea rise thing: sea rise during the 20th Century was exactly average, meaning 6-8 inches, when it should have been much higher for a Holocene warm period. And it has not accelerated for the 21st Century. Look at, say, Atlantic City, NJ: NOAA’s own actual data, not computer models, shows 1.38 feet per 100 years, which is what is expected during a Holocene warm period, and this is a gauge that goes back to 1911. There’s also land subsiding going on.

While it is highly unlikely that cities will go underwater in the near future, according to a NOAA oceanographer specialist, any rise that is two feet or more above the average high tide has the potential to be extremely disruptive and/or outright damaging.

Dr. William Sweet, an NOAA oceanographer spearheading efforts to track and predict changes in sea level and coastal flood risk, told Newsweek that while he did not believe any communities in the U.S. would be going underwater by 2050, though “episodic flooding could become extremely damaging and a major concern unless we do something.”

And there it is, the bet hedging. Anyhow, sea rise should be expected during a warm period, especially during an inter-glacial period, no need to bring in witchcraft, er, human caused reasons.

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Austria Already Looking To Deport Syrian Refugees

By William Teach December 10, 2024 – 7:00 am

Well, that was quick

Austria prepares to deport Syrian migrants after Assad regime falls
Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K. said they will halt Syrian asylum applications one day after rebel forces ousted the country’s dictator.

Austria has announced plans to deport Syrian migrants following the fall of the country’s dictator Bashar Assad to rebel forces after 13 years of civil war, while Belgium, France, Greece and Germany are pausing Syrian asylum applications.

“I have instructed the ministry to prepare an orderly return and deportation program to Syria,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told Austrian media, without clarifying which migration statuses would be targeted. Some 100,000 Syrians live in Austria, according to the country’s statistics agency.

One day after Syrian rebel factions, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the United Kingdom — took Damascus, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands are using the success of the rebels to revise their migration policies, with all six closing their doors to asylum seekers. The U.K. has also said it will stop processing asylum applications from Syrians.

The decisions to revise the asylum policies come as anti-immigrant far-right parties have surged in popularity across the European Union in recent months. Germany, for example, faces snap elections in February, with far-right parties currently performing strongly in the polls.

Obviously, Politico couldn’t leave that bit of moonbattery out. Maybe citizens in 1st World Countries are simply tired of being overrun with foreigners who do not share their values, their mores, their beliefs, their culture, and so much more, and refuse to assimilate to the host countries, all while being told that

  • Citizens of the host country must assimilate to the foreigners
  • Money and housing will go to the foreigners
  • Citizens just need to suck it up when it comes to things like crime, assault, sexual assault, and so much more from the foreigners
  • If citizens say or do anything Mean in person or on the Internet the citizens could go to jail

Seriously, it’s not like many of these Syrians are Islamic extremists, right, and, that most tend to be fighting age men, right?

(Washington Post) Some have been eager to return — as they felt the pull of family, faced the difficulty of building new lives in resistant host countries or found themselves in places even more unstable. As Lebanon emerged as the latest battleground in the Middle East, thousands of Syrians had begun streaming back across the border.

But for refugees who have spent more than a decade in the liberal democracies of Europe, returning to a Syria under an Islamist government, even one that has publicly pledged tolerance, could be a jarring change, particularly for children.

The problem here is that the Syrians are mostly keeping their own culture. They have not given up their Syrian ways.

If Biden-Harris want to attempt to bring Syrians they’d have to do it quickly, obviously. Be thankful Harris did not win, I could easily see her taking tens of thousands if not more Syrians in, all unvetted. Trump won’t. Trump will most likely look to send the ones here back.

Read: Austria Already Looking To Deport Syrian Refugees »

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Pink Is The Color Of Climate Doom Photography Or Something

By William Teach December 9, 2024 – 3:00 pm

But, we’re all going to die

‘This is all pink and attractive, but we are going to die’: Anastasia Samoylova on photographing Florida’s climate anxiety

Russian-born American photographer Anastasia Samoylova loves “Barbie.” Not only did she wear a hot pink suit to the opening of her own photography exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October, she also insisted on taking her teenage son to see Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film — considering it essential feminist viewing. “Is it perfect? No. But it addresses very complicated and divisive subjects,” Samoylova told CNN in a video call from her home in Florida. She recalls how Margot Robbie’s title character, Barbie, stops the euphoric dance floor in its tracks when she wonders aloud, “do you guys ever think about dying?” “That’s literally what I’ve been trying to communicate,” said Samoylova. “This is all pink and attractive, but we are going to die.”

Samoylova, whose work is currently on display at both the Met Museum in New York and the Saatchi Gallery in London, has garnered critical acclaim for her subtle, anxiety-inducing images of Florida’s collapsing pastel-pink landscapes. Her 2019 series “Flood Zone” — a nod to the unnervingly bureaucratic label that can often dictate life or death — is a surreal chronicle of an area decaying in real time. (snip)

The insidious, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it approach to her observational photography is intentional. Several years of capturing political extremism, gentrification and environmental disintegration has given Samoylova time to think about how to package disastrous messaging. “How do you communicate these very complex subjects and make them relatable?” she asks. “The trickiest part is to not make them off-putting.” Come for the pink sidewalks that characterize the streets of Miami — as many tourists do — and stay for the subsequent feelings of existential dread. It’s a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, she says. “(Climate change) is stigmatized, and it’s become divisive, at least where I live in the US, especially in Florida. And who knows, it’s likely going to be erased from the conversation again.”

There’s so much cult doom in the article it’s hard to know where to begin. And end. Apparently, a gator hanging in the swamps is climate doom. And

See, concrete never eroded in a low lying state with lots of water, both fresh and salt, with high humidity, and lots of storms, before you drove a fossil fueled vehicle.

Read: Pink Is The Color Of Climate Doom Photography Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach December 9, 2024 – 1:00 pm

…are horrible fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on the Monday morning stimulus.

Read: If All You See… »

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