{"id":175139,"date":"2025-10-13T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=175139"},"modified":"2025-10-14T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T22:22:11","slug":"it-seemed-like-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=175139","title":{"rendered":"It SEEMED Like a Good Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MSF in Haiti<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gonna lead off the week with a couple of unsurprising items.<\/p>\n

Doctors without<\/em> Borders. M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res (MSF) officially – well known for going into areas sometimes that even troops don’t want to visit. Sometimes called out for helping folks we don’t necessarily want to help, but they have in many cases been a cause of good works.<\/p>\n

But not always, and not any more in Gaza, according to someone with pretty deep knowledge of the organization. Meet\u00a0 Alain Destexhe, who both worked as a doctor for them in the 1980s and was their secretary-general (just call him their former HMIC) in the 1990s. His opinion is a bit more jaundiced:<\/p>\n

We were defining ourselves as a neutral, impartial and humanitarian organization,” Destexhe told Fox News Digital. “I think now MSF in Gaza is really taking the side [of] Hamas and against Israel.<\/p>\n

“Americans need to know that Doctors Without Borders is not anymore the organization that it was 15 or 20 years ago. It has become a biased, partial and militant organization.”<\/p>\n

On Oct. 12, 2023, less than a week after Hamas carried out its brutal massacre and took more than 250 people hostage, MSF condemned the slaughter but also called for an end to Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza, making no mention of the hostages.<\/p>\n

Destexhe explained to Fox News Digital that much of MSF\u2019s staff in the Gaza Strip are Palestinians, not foreign workers.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, MSF launched ads against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a U.S.- and Israel-backed organization. MSF accused GHF of partaking in “systemized violence.”<\/p>\n

This included the swift condemnation of a blast that occurred at Al-Ahli Hospital.<\/p>\n

While it was later discovered that the explosion was caused by a Palestinian Islamic jihad rocket that misfired, MSF neither corrected nor deleted its condemnation, which is still available on X but has a community note.<\/p>\n

“MSF is lying, MSF is partial, MS is biased and MSF are accomplices of Hamas,” Destexhe said.\u00a0\u00a0Fox News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Having to work with a group like Hamas because hey control the area is one thing, being their willing sycophant is totally another.<\/p>\n

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Today’s entry\u00a0 for schadenfreude is, to no one’s surprise, California. Remember how their air would smell of uniform farts, the skies would be clear and sunny blue, if they just quit driving their nasty petrochemically-fueled\u00a0 cars and relied on ‘green’ energy? Nope, no in the real world…<\/p>\n

The upcoming closures by refining giants Phillips 66 and Valero Energy have triggered an about-face from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state regulators to try to keep the fuel complexes open after years of rules that cut into their bottom lines. It\u2019s too late to save Phillips 66\u2019s Los Angeles refinery, but there\u2019s at least an inkling of hope to cut a deal to salvage Valero\u2019s Benicia refinery just north of San Francisco. Losing both cuts off nearly 20% of the state\u2019s refining capacity and makes California susceptible to potential shortages if there are disruptions to foreign, waterborne supplies.<\/p>\n

While California is a leader in renewable power and electric vehicle adoption, it still relies on lots of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. California consumes almost 900,000 barrels of gasoline a day, down from a 2017 peak of nearly 1 million barrels daily. Refiners don\u2019t want to invest in California because of expensive regulatory burdens in a declining market, but the refineries are closing more rapidly than demand is falling, putting the pinch on the state and its motorists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And note that all that pain has achieved a reduction of only 10%, from 1,000,000 to 900,000 barrels a day.<\/p>\n

And it didn\u2019t help when Chevron\u2019s huge El Segundo refinery outside of Los Angeles suffered an explosion on Oct. 2. The fire was put out a day later, primarily harming a large, jet fuel\u2013producing unit.<\/p>\n

In 40 years, the number of California refineries has plunged from 40 to 14 amid closures, consolidation, and expansions of the surviving facilities.<\/p>\n

Looking at the numbers, California\u2019s gasoline demand of 874,000 barrels a day is already overwhelming the state\u2019s refining capacity that falls to 740,000 barrels daily after the Phillips 66 closure. Next year, capacity would dip to 668,000 barrels daily, well below consumption, according to Wood Mackenzie estimates.\u00a0Fortune<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Seems there is even talk of Newsom’s California paying<\/em> to help keep some of the refineries open. Damn, it HURTS when you shoot yourself in the foot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gonna lead off the week with a couple of unsurprising items. Doctors without Borders. M\u00e9decins Sans … It SEEMED Like a Good Idea<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,98,706],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-global-warming","category-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}