Hamas today taunted the families of the six Israeli and American hostages executed by Hamas in a Gaza tunnel by releasing haunting new footage of the victims — and warning that the gut-wrenching clips were only a teaser to their “last messages.” NY Post (h/t Nita) The hostages, looking gaunt and exhausted, identify themselves for […]

Foreign Secretary David Lammy told the House of Commons that the British government will be suspending 30 of its 350 arms export licences to Israel, including UK-made components used in military drones, helicopters, and aircraft, including fighter jets used by the Israelis. Breitbart The move comes after months of protests by left-wing activists and a […]

How universities are churning out graduates that are contributing to a national crisis. The post Victor Davis Hanson Video: “I Told You Something is Coming & Now It’s Here” appeared first on Frontpage Mag.

You know that Boeing Starliner that stranded our astronauts on the space station? The one that has numerous problems? NASA is planning to send it home without the astronauts, but now it’s making strange noises. Listen, the noises are strange: FOX NEWS: NASA astronaut records sounds from Starliner pic.twitter.com/JwIy7u8rD7 — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) September […] The post The Latest from the Boeing Starliner Is It’s Making Strange Noises appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

During this interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “There still has to be a reckoning” for COVID. The mainstream media hasn’t caught up with the science, but the science is out there now, and it’s devastating.” “Yesterday, the chief attorney for FDA admitted, because he lost a case in court against a doctor, that there […] The post RFK Jr.: “There still has to be a reckoning” for COVID appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unloaded on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for once again urging Israel to show restraint — even in the immediate aftermath of Hamas terrorists executing six more hostages in Rafah. Upon receiving the news that 23-year-old American Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among the hostages — who were reportedly executed just a short time before their bodies were discovered by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — Biden and Harris each released statements condemning Hamas. But then Biden lashed out directly at Netanyahu, saying that he did not believe the Israeli Prime Minister was “doing enough” to help secure a deal with Hamas for the release of all remaining hostages. Netanyahu argued that since the unprovoked attacks visited upon Israel by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, Israel had made concessions. Israel had exercised restraint. And Israel had done much of that at the request of the Biden-Harris administration, even when Hamas repeatedly refused to make reciprocal concessions. WATCH: Must Watch Video Remarks from @IsraeliPM @netanyahu: “I was asked whether I am not doing enough to the release of hostages. Well, I want to set the record straight. On April 27th, Secretary of State Blinken said that, ‘Israel made an extraordinary, generous offer for a hostage… pic.twitter.com/yT1rHKbOCJ — David Milstein (@davidamilstein) September 2, 2024 “I was asked whether I am not doing enough to the release of hostages,” Netanyahu said in response to Biden’s claim, listing a number of times that Israel had been prepared to move forward with a deal to get the hostages back and noting that it was always Hamas that ultimately ended negotiations: “On August 28th — that’s five days ago — five days ago — Deputy CIA Director said that ‘Israel shows seriousness in the negotiations. Now Hamas must show the same seriousness.’” “I want to ask you something. What has changed in the last five days? What has changed?” Netanyahu asked, and then answered. “One thing: these murderers executed six of our hostages. They shot them in the back of the head. That’s what changed! And now after this, we’re asked to show seriousness?! We’re asked to make concessions?! What message does this send Hamas?! It says, kill more hostages. Murder more hostages and you will get more concessions.” “The pressure internationally must be directed at these killers! At Hamas. Not at Israel. We say ‘yes.’ They say ‘no’ all the time but they also murdered these people. And we now we need maximum pressure on Hamas,” Netanyahu concluded, arguing that it was the Biden-Harris administration that was not truly serious about ending the carnage and saving the hostages. “I don’t believe that either President Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace and achieving the release would seriously ask Israel, Israel to make these concessions. We’ve already made them. Hamas has to make the concessions. Thank you very much.”

The Philadelphia Eagles responded to fake posters that had surfaced in the city alleging that the NFL team had endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. On Monday on X from the team’s official social media account, the Eagles’ team wrote that, “We are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed.” The post has since gone viral with nearly 5 million views at the time of this publication. We are aware counterfeit political ads are being circulated and are working with our advertising partner to have them removed. — Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) September 2, 2024 The response online came after images of several posters in Philly surfaced showing Harris wearing an Eagle’s helmet, black jersey, and holding a football. The fake poster read, “Kamala. The official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles,” CBS News reported.  The fake posters were seen at bus shelters at 16th and Spring Garden streets, 18th Street and JFK Boulevard, and 34th and Walnut streets in Philadelphia, the outlet noted.  The posters also included a URL philadelphiaeagles.com/vote printed underneath the caption. The website is still active at the time of this piece and gives outdated details about voting in the primaries. A reporter for Fox 29 News posted on X that a spokesperson for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) said that “The bus shelters are owned by the city. So far, we have not heard anything about ads like this appearing on SEPTA property.” The reporter also posted a video now showing a blank space where one of the ads was previously seen. However, another reporter noted that the posters were seen inside an enclosed case at a @SEPTA bus stop. “Seen today at 34th and Walnut in Philadelphia, on the University of Pennsylvania campus,” the reporter noted. “I can’t imagine this was authorized by @Eagles,” the person added. “However the fact that it is in an enclosed case at a @SEPTA bus stop raises all kinds of flags and eyebrows.” Some on social media have compared the images to that of street artist Winston Tseng, but there’s been no confirmation, at the time of this publication, that the artist had anything to do with the Kamala posters. Tseng previously created a poster about President Joe Biden’s presidency. It used a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream branding with the message, “Rocky Road to Democracy,” while showing Biden eating ice cream. He captioned the post, “put out to pasture.” It was also seen at a SEPTA stop in Philadelphia, CBS noted.  The street artist also made a poster about former President Donald Trump’s presidency with Pepto Bismol branding. The message read, “Nausea, heartburn, insurrection, upset stomach, diarrhea,” with an image of Trump wearing a red MAGA [Make America Great Again] hat.

Abundant and affordable energy drives America’s powerful and productive economy. That’s been true throughout our nation’s history, and America’s recent achievement of energy independence provides the most concrete illustration of that fact.But to keep our nation firing on all eight cylinders, we need government policies that prioritize providing adequate, reliable, and secure domestic energy supplies.Energy affordability and independence are the new keys to American prosperity. Our recently published report, “Grading the Grid,” reviewed a variety of potential energy sources. Two — natural gas and nuclear — stood out as the most sensible energy options for the future.No other energy source fits the abundant, affordable, and secure prescription as well as American natural gas. Despite increased use, new drilling technologies, such as fracking, produced a 79% increase in annual natural gas production in the U.S. from 2007 to 2021.As we produce more of it, prices are dropping. American families saved $147 billion over the last decade because of more affordable natural gas. American Gas Association testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability indicated that households that use natural gas for heating, cooking, and other appliances save an average of $1,068 per year compared to homes using electricity for such appliances. Natural gas powered 36% of America’s total energy needs in 2023 and 43% of U.S. electricity generation. Natural gas also helps improve air quality. Americans are enjoying 78% cleaner air since 1970. The transition from older coal-fueled technologies to more efficient natural gas turbines for electricity generation is the primary reason that the U.S. is a world leader in lowering carbon emissions. Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have decreased by more than 18% since 2007, while electricity generation from natural gas increased over 88%. Natural gas, with its distinctive blue flame, has cleanly powered American homes and industry for many decades.Natural gas should be the standard by which other hydrocarbon energy sources are measured, such as fuel oil, kerosene, petroleum, and coal. Pipeline-quality natural gas — gas that has been processed to remove contaminants and to meet specific quality standards — sets a high but reasonable bar for clean energy. Policymakers in Washington, D.C., and state capitals should craft legislation that targets these standards of affordability, reliability, and cleanliness that natural gas achieves.Using natural gas as the standard could encourage the development of technologies, like catalysts or formate, that allow us to continue using hydrocarbons, like fuel oil, kerosene, diesel, or coal, to produce energy and then use captured greenhouse gas emissions associated with their combustion to generate useable fuels.These are engineering challenges that are both economically feasible and technologically sound. They are also exactly the kind of groundbreaking idea that the United States, the most innovative society on earth, is known for. There is no reason to take affordable and reliable energy sources off the table when we can rely on American ingenuity to produce clean electricity from what has traditionally been allowed to escape into the air as a waste product.Nuclear power is the second most promising energy source. It is also affordable like natural gas, but even cleaner and more reliable. American nuclear plants produce effectively emission-free electricity and can do so 24-7-365 for many decades.Nuclear power has supplied about 20% of the electricity needed in the United States since the 1990s. However, a combination of misinformation and government overregulation of nuclear power limits its expansion. It can, and should, be America’s largest source of baseload grid-scale electricity generation.America’s increasing population will need more electricity in the future. As data centers and artificial intelligence become more prevalent, nuclear and natural gas become even more important. Former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz highlighted how the expansion of artificial intelligence and data centers is rapidly growing electricity demand.If America is to maintain and grow its economic prosperity, Moniz explained at the 2024 CERAWeek meeting in Houston, it needs a far more reliable electricity supply — what nuclear and natural gas provide. “Utilities will have to lean more heavily on natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants and perhaps support the construction of new gas plants to help meet spikes in demand," he said. “We’re not going to build 100 gigawatts of new renewables in a few years.”Energy affordability and independence are the new keys to American prosperity. Nearly 60 million Americans consider energy affordability a factor when they decide who they will support in an election. Hardworking Americans deserve a sensible energy strategy that maximizes the use of our existing nuclear plants and our abundant supplies of natural gas. Energy policy must also encourage private investments in innovation that can help other energy sources meet the pricing, reliability, and cleanliness standards of American natural gas.Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.

Although Labor Day was conceived and established as a way of honoring and promoting the interests of the organized labor movement and the unions that control it, the day can have a much more important meaning than that, if we choose to see it as commemorating the fundamental importance of work as an element of the human condition.In “The Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith noted that work is essential to the creation of wealth, calling labor “the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” Karl Marx turned this “labor theory of value” into a very different concept, the theory of surplus value, arguing that human labor is the source of all economic value, ignoring the contribution of other resources. That fallacy is the cornerstone of Marx’s thinking and the basis of communism, socialism, and many other authoritarian schemes for controlling humanity.Property ownership is a social good. While work creates wealth, wealth also creates work.Economists of the Austrian School recognized the flaw in Marx’s thought. Austrian economists observed that value is subjective, as Smith intuited but could not fully explain (the “diamonds and water paradox”), and that the value of a good or service is established by its marginal utility, “the additional satisfaction or benefit (utility) that a consumer derives from buying an additional unit of a commodity or service,” as Brittanica.com puts it.“Utility” is the important concept here. It refers not only to practical returns on spending but to all “satisfaction or benefit” one may derive from a product or service. That makes the theory applicable to production activities and consumer expenditures alike. It also accommodates all contributions to value, regardless of the source.Those refinements enable us to see the true value of human labor and appreciate its full importance in human endeavor. All wealth comes from work. All work is applied to property. That includes “intellectual property,” of course. Without property, there is nothing to which to apply our work and nothing to consume. Humanity would die out.Even animals work for their food, acting on the “properties” around them (plants, other animals, water, etc.) in accordance with instinct. The same is true of plants and all other forms of life. Work is essential to life.The Marxian fallacy of valuing labor to the exclusion of all other factors tempts its adherents to view humans as no different from animals. As nearly two centuries of history have shown, Marxism creates an unstoppable urge to denigrate property owners. They do not “work,” Marxists claim. Property owners are parasites, according to Marxist theory. Communist governments have commonly gone to the extremes of eliminating property owners — such as the kulaks and mid-century Chinese rural landowners — justifying it by this dehumanization.The claim that property owners do not work is false and scurrilous. Even if they do nothing else in creating goods and services, property owners perform essential work by directing human efforts toward activities that most enhance human welfare. They do this because they naturally seek to maximize the value of their holdings, increasing their own wealth by focusing on what others value most. This strategy pays off because providing what people want most yields the best returns.Adam Smith’s observation about the butcher, brewer, and baker applies equally to property owners. Just as we receive our dinner from food merchants through “their regard to their own interest,” which we serve by paying them for their wares, so too do we receive capital by serving the interests of its owners.This system is entirely beneficial. Property owners, seeking to maximize the value of their assets, will use them in the most valuable ways. If consuming the property brings the owner the most satisfaction, he will do so. If selling the property, using it in a wealth-producing activity like a business, or saving it for future use offers greater returns, the owner will choose that course.Of course this might seem like easy work, and maybe it is — I haven’t enough wealth to know from experience. Value, however, is measured not by the amount of work put into something but by the quantity and quality of satisfaction the end product or service brings. You could put a massive amount of work into stacking rocks in a pile, but you will not get much money for it if nobody benefits from it.Property ownership is a social good. While work creates wealth, wealth also creates work. Property owners direct work toward resources and activities that most improve human well-being because it benefits them to do so.Marxists and the American left argue that property ownership is unnecessary for producing goods and services and that it hinders the fair distribution of wealth. Governments, however, enforce this so-called fair distribution by forcibly taking property from some and giving it to others. This practice undermines the pillars of human achievement: It rewards people who receive benefits without working for them, reducing the incentive to produce goods and services, and it deprives those who would use their property in socially beneficial ways, diminishing the ability to create wealth.With Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris suggesting imposition of a nationwide wealth tax, this is a critical time to understand, acknowledge, and share the truth that property ownership is a social good and is in fact the foundation for the value of all human labor. As we celebrate the work of our neighbors across the land, we should also acknowledge the great and vital work that property owners do.