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July 2018

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Independence Day and the Recovery of True Freedom Why we’re now in the best position since Reagan to make it happen. Bruce Thornton

By on July 4th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270626/independence-day-and-recovery-true-freedom-bruce-thornton

We are celebrating this Independence Day in the midst of a conflict over what freedom really means. Whatever the crisis du jour that dominates the news cycle, whatever the conflicting policies and clashing ideologies, look deep enough and you’ll find the ancient war between those who believe in true freedom and citizen autonomy, and those who have reduced it to just doing what one wants subject to the intrusive power of Big Government guardians.

Start with the origins of today’s holiday, which were the American Colonists’ desire for political freedom and autonomy. The thirteen colonies, their customary rights for self-rule violated by England, took the momentous step of creating an independent state that empowered citizens to debate and decide how they would collectively chart its course and pursue its aims. This political community would be free and sovereign because it would not be subjected to any earthly power beyond the collective consent of the citizens as expressed through laws and political institutions to which politicians could be held accountable.

Yet this idea of freedom was dependent on citizens’ knowing how to use this freedom responsibly and for the proper aims. For freedom is not “doing as one likes,” which is not true freedom, but what the 18th century called license, a selfish indulgence that cares nothing for the good of the state as a whole, but everything for the needs and ambitions of one faction or ideology. This selfishness breeds tyranny and the loss of freedom, for to act on whatever selfish appetites and passions that arise in one, is to enslave the soul to them and subject the self and the political community to their destructive effects. As Russell Kirk wrote, “The worst enemies of enduring freedom for all may be certain folk who demand incessantly more liberty for themselves.”

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Israel : The Humanitarian Aid Nation By Nurit Greenger

By on July 4th, 2018

https://newsblaze.com/world/israel/israel-added-value-humanitarian-aid-nation_1346

On July 2nd, 2018, a press release “Life & Hope Red Carpet Black Tie Event” was published in a great number of media publications gearing up to celebrate humanitarian Israeli doctors. The Life & Hope release can be found here.

Medicine can act as the antidote to animosity. The organizers of this special celebration believe that Israeli doctors have a chance to bring together people who otherwise will keep being alienated from each other and continue brewing enmity.

Israel is already fairly well known for being a ‘Start-Up nation.‘ The people of this country are acclaimed for many research and innovations in medicine, science, agriculture, technology, etc. Israel is not yet well known for the medical humanitarian aid delivered to 140 countries around the world since 1956.

In the United Nations Organization (UN) there is a NEW special classification for disaster response teams – rated from 1-to-4. In this classification Israel is the only country in the world that has received Type 3 Classification.

When catastrophe happens anywhere in the world, Israel Defense Force (IDF) Medical Corps’ emergency field hospital is the first to be called, and is the first to deploy to the disaster area. Israel is then required to create a triage partnership with 2 or 3 other countries to assist in her Aid mission. We heard the miraculous stories of Israel’s Field Hospital and IsraAid rescue missions to tsunami hit Haiti, to earthquake hit Mexico, and the like disaster phenomenon.

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Happy Birthday America! A July 4th Celebration of Unity and Separation Linda Goudsmit 7.4.18

By on July 4th, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com
http://lindagoudsmit.com

The birth of a nation like the birth of a child celebrates unity and separation simultaneously. The child is born and exists outside the mother’s body as a separate entity and at the same time becomes a part of an expanded family unit. So it is with countries. When America was born in 1776 she became a separate entity existing outside of Great Britain. America’s Declaration of Independence celebrated the country’s separateness at the same time it established the unity of an extended family of American citizenry.

Most discussions focus on the benefits of unity – few examine the advantages of separateness. Our country is young but our Founding Fathers had centuries of European history to teach them the value of separateness.

In trying to form a more perfect union our Founding Fathers examined the political systems of their day and rejected them all. They said NO to monarchies, NO to totalitarianism, NO to authoritarianism, NO to theocracies, and NO to every form of collectivism that prioritizes the group over the individuals in it.

Separateness from Great Britain, separation of church and state, and the separateness of the individual were essential to American freedom, liberty, and upward mobility. On July 4, 1776 the Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence and declared their separateness as the United States of America.

For almost two centuries people came to America in search of religious freedom and the opportunity for upward mobility that was the American dream. Coming to America was a chance to be free of monarchies, theocracies, caste systems, and authoritarian, totalitarian political systems demanding subservience to the state. America was the land of opportunity because it was the land of individualism, the meritocracy, and upward mobility.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Persistent Protests More demonstrations as the regime scrambles to beat new sanctions.

By on July 4th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-persistent-protests-1530658241

Iranians are protesting in the streets again, only a few months after the regime crushed nationwide demonstrations over the country’s sagging economy and widespread corruption. The periodic eruptions are a sign of discontent that may spread as the pressure from renewed U.S. sanctions increases.

The latest upheavals centered in the southwestern city of Khorramshahr over the weekend, after brown fluid started running out of taps. Hundreds of residents gathered in a public space reserved for Friday prayers and blamed local officials for the lack of potable water, chanting such anti-government slogans as “in the name of religion, they plundered us.” Protests also broke out in nearby Abadan.

The weekend demonstrations are part of a larger pattern of discontent with the ruling theocracy in Tehran. In December and January, demonstrations erupted in more than 100 cities and towns over inflation, joblessness and graft. Women staged hijab protests, ripping off their veils. In March farmers from Isfahan province in central Iran protested long droughts. In May truckers went on a nationwide strike to protest stagnant wages and rising costs.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani promised that the 2015 nuclear deal, which funneled tens of billions in hard currency to Iran, would usher in better economic times. Instead, the regime used the money to finance its Quds Force operations and Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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Russia Abandons Southwest Syria Deal in Support of Assad & Iran By Matti Suomenaro and Kellen Comer

By on July 4th, 2018

http://iswresearch.blogspot.com/2018/07/russia-abandons-southwest-syria-deal-in.html

Russia is directly supporting an offensive by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in violation of the de-escalation zone in Southern Syria. Pro-Assad regime forces backed by Russia and Iran launched a major offensive against opposition-held terrain in Southern Syria on June 19. The offensive involves elite pro-regime units such as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Fourth Armored Division, Republican Guard, and Tiger Forces[1] as well as alleged participation by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)[2] and Iraqi Shia militias. Pro-regime forces seized – or forced the surrender of – most of opposition-held Eastern Dera’a Province by July 2. Russia supported these advances with a campaign of intense airstrikes targeting both military and civilian infrastructure across Eastern Dera’a Province starting on June 24. The Russian Foreign Ministry nonetheless claimed that Russia remains committed to the de-escalation zone in Southern Syria brokered by the U.S., Russia, and Jordan in July 2017. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stressed that the pro-regime offensive aims to fulfill the alleged obligation of the deal to “eradicate terrorists”[3] in Southern Syria. Zakharova noted that the Russian Armed Forces are present on the ground to facilitate negotiations between the regime and armed opposition groups in Southern Syria.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

History as Nothing Much at All By Victor Davis Hanson

By on July 4th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/nazi-comparisons-dumb-down-history/If everything is like the Nazis, then the Nazis of history are no different from an ICE officer, a White House staffer, or . . . you and me.

If you vote for Trump then you, the voter, you, not Donald Trump,
are standing at the border like Nazis, going: “You here, you here.”
— Donny Deutsche, MSNBC commentator

Former CIA director Michael Hayden recently tweeted a picture of a Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, with his commentary: “Other governments have separated mothers from children.” The suggestion was that industrialized death on an unprecedented scale was somehow similar to the temporary detention of children once their parents have been detained for violating federal law.

Actor Peter Fonda recently advised the following about Trump policy adviser Stephen Miller: “Don’t let the pedophile Stephen Goebbels Miller near those girls separated from their parents.” Comedian Kathy Griffin has asserted that the Trump administration is “quite pro-Nazi.”

Fonda perhaps lacks the subtlety of a Bill Kristol, who implies rather than sledgehammers the Nazi comparisons. When Michael Anton, a writer whose articles often appeared in The Weekly Standard, went to work for the Trump administration, Kristol reduced Anton to the status of an infamous Nazi lawyer: “Carl Schmitt to Mike Anton: First time tragedy, second time farce.”

Sounds slick, but Anton was working for an elected government in general and in particular for a National Security Council under Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster that was trying to reestablish U.S. deterrence. Stranger still, it is hard to understand how Carl Schmitt’s Nazi-party membership and advocacy (begun formally as early as 1933) were in any sense “tragic” rather than vile. And if the subordinate is supposedly Carl Schmitt, what then would Kristol call his boss, the iconic McMaster? Goebbels? Heydrich?

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians Beat Female Journalists; World “Sees No Evil” by Bassam Tawil

By on July 3rd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12634/palestinians-female-journalists

Had an Israeli soldier shouted at these female journalists, representatives of Western human rights organizations and major newspapers would have banged on their doors long ago, demanding that they justify physically abusing peaceful women who were just doing their job. It is harder, however, to make sense of the behavior of the foreign media and international human rights groups, who essentially champion Abbas’s fiefdom by ignoring its brutality.

The truth is that the Palestinian Authority is a body that has long been functioning as a dictatorship that suppresses freedom of speech and imposes a reign of terror and intimidation on Palestinian journalists and critics.

It is only a question of time before a Western journalist is beaten on the streets of a Palestinian city. When that happens, the international media and human rights groups can look to themselves and their own biased and unprofessional behavior for answers.

Two female Palestinian journalists were beaten during protests in the West Bank in the past week. The two women, Lara Kan’an and Majdoleen Hassona, were assaulted by Palestinian Authority security officers while covering Palestinian demonstrations calling on President Mahmoud Abbas to lift the economic sanctions he imposed last year on the Gaza Strip.

The physical assaults on Kan’an and Hassona are seen by Palestinians as part of the Palestinian Authority’s continued effort to silence critics and intimidate journalists who fail to “toe the line.” The beatings, which took place separately in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Tulkarem, mark a new high in the Palestinian leadership’s crackdown on pubic freedoms: assaulting an Arab woman on the street is considered a humiliation of the highest order to her and her clan.

While such assaults spark protests among Palestinians, the international community and Western correspondents covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continue to play their game of “See No Evil.” When the perpetrators are Palestinians, they can get away with — literally, murder — from the perspective of International human rights organizations and groups ostensibly concerned about freedom of the media. What would have been the response on the part of the international community and press, one wonders, had the two Palestinian women even been roughed up by Israeli soldiers.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Blasphemy Laws in Pakistan by A. Z. Mohamed

By on July 3rd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12576/blasphemy-laws-pakistan

Many extremist Muslims are aiming at even more government submission to sharia through intimidation and terror.

Christians and Ahmadis continue to raise concerns regarding the government’s failure to safeguard minority rights, as well as the government’s persistent discrimination against religious minorities.

Pakistan is also where Muslim militants, such as the Pakistani Taliban, carry out assassinations and terrorist attacks. It seems no one is there to stop them.

On May 6, Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s Minister of the Interior, was shot during a rally in his own constituency, in the province of Punjab. Fortunately, he survived the attack, but the bullet in his abdomen could not be removed. “The bullet lodged in my body… will keep reminding me of the impending need to remove the seeds of hatred sowed in the country,” Iqbal said.

An initial report suggested that the main suspect, Abid Hussain, 21, had carefully planned the attack; recently, Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Court issued an 8-day judicial remand of four possible accomplices.

According to other reports, Hussain is linked to Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) — also known as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (“Movement of the Prophet’s Followers”). TLP is a new Sunni extremist party known for aggressively calling for enforcing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which can carry the death penalty, and for opposing any relaxation of these laws.

Many fear that this assault is not an isolated incident and that other members of the cabinet are on the TLP’s hit list. This apprehension, however, does not mean that the government is against sharia or blasphemy laws, or is even thinking of reforming them. Many extremist Muslims are aiming at even more government submission to sharia through intimidation and terror.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The “Peace Plan” is Coming Shoshana Bryen

By on July 3rd, 2018

http://dailycaller.com/2018/06/30/middle-east-peace-plan-is-coming/

A new Middle East “peace plan” is gestating and, according to the Trump administration itself, nearly ready to hatch.

It is easy to be cynical. Peace plans have been produced by various administrations and yet, there is no peace.

On the other hand, the Trump administration — as it has on other issues — is laying the groundwork differently. The refusal of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to engage with the president’s envoys, interestingly, has not stopped the shuttle with Israel and Arab States (including a reported joint meeting between Israeli, American and Arab intelligence chiefs), and decisively telling the Palestinians that they will not be paid for attending — and in fact, have assets to lose by not participating.

We don’t, of course, know the American endgame nor its likelihood of success, but there are basically only two possibilities:

The establishment of a Palestinian state with “security guarantees” for Israel; or
Recognition by the Arab States and Palestinians of Israel as a legitimate and permanent state in the region.

If it is the former, it is doomed.

Current Palestinian leadership believes — and encourages people to kill and die for — the principle that Jews are running a country on Palestinian land. That the Galilee, Haifa, Jaffa, Ashkelon, and Beer Sheva belong in the Palestinian Arab State. Not to mention Jerusalem. Given that, why would anyone expect the Palestinians to agree to accept a truncated state separated and squeezed by Israel, Jordan and Egypt? They have their “narrative” and want what they say is theirs.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Democrats Bow to the Left’s Demands to Abolish ICE Is law enforcement against illegal immigrants really an act of terrorism? Joseph Klein

By on July 3rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270622/democrats-bow-lefts-demands-abolish-ice-joseph-klein

Left wing open borders activists are demanding the dismantling or defunding of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which was established in 2003 under the Department of Homeland Security to enforce federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration. The whole purpose for establishing ICE was to promote a more coordinated approach to homeland security and public safety than had existed prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The leftist base of the Democratic Party could not care less about Americans’ safety, however. They are pushing a radical anti-law enforcement agenda on immigration, mirroring the Black Lives Matter movement that reviled the police. The left’s rallying cry is “Abolish ICE.” It is reminiscent of the call by a Black Lives Matter activist during a Fox News interview two years ago to “abolish the police, period.”

The left’s rhetoric is becoming increasingly insane, as they live in a world where up is down and down is up. For example, according to Cynthia Nixon, the Sex and the City actress who is challenging Governor Andrew Cuomo in the New York gubernatorial primary this year, ICE, which was granted civil and criminal authority to better protect national security and public safety in response to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, is itself a “terrorist organization.” She launched her very own “Abolish ICE” petition.

A protestor in Los Angeles from a “woman’s peace organization” felt that simply calling ICE a terrorist organization did not go far enough. She told MSNBC on Saturday, as protests against President Trump’s zero-tolerance law enforcement policies took place across the country, that ICE is “beyond a terrorist organization.” Then she blamed the whole immigration problem on U.S. economic and foreign policies. “We’re a woman’s peace organization,” she exclaimed, “and it is the violence of the United States government, and it is the 60% of the tax dollars that’s spent on the weapons and war that creates the immigration and refugees and our, you know, economic policies. So we have to be responsible. We have to bring them in and hold them and, not violate them farther than our policies have violated them.” Under this “reasoning,” the vicious animals of MS-13 who have illegally infiltrated our country became that way because of the U.S. government’s policies. Therefore, we are asked to make sure we do “not violate them farther than our policies have violated them.” Such is the thinking of the looney left.

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