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July 2021

MY SAY: BASTILLE DAY

On July 14, 1789, Parisians  attacked the Bastille, a political prison, and symbol of the monarchy. Thousands of French people converged to attend a political and military parade with the taking of oaths and rousing speeches from King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette who would slip their mortal coils by guillotine three years later.

The temporary spirit was followed by a “Reign of Terror” (September 5, 1793-July 28th 1794 )when chaos and revolution resulted in the execution of 17,000 “enemies” of the Revolution.

In America during 1789 our founding fathers were crafting the Constitution of the United States whose preamble is:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Just a reminder of the glorious history of America which the progressives are trying to erase.   rsk

Voter Integrity Group in Georgia Says 2020 Election in Fulton County ‘Riddled With Massive Errors and Provable Fraud’ By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/13/voter-integrity-group-in-georgia-says-2020-election-in-fulton-county-riddled-with-massive-errors-and-provable-fraud/

The 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia was “riddled with massive errors and provable fraud,” a voter integrity group alleged Tuesday reviewing ballot data.

Data analysts working for VoterGA, a voter integrity non-profit led by co-founder Garland Favorito, have determined that an astounding 923 of 1539 mail-in ballot batch files contained votes incorrectly
reported in Fulton’s official November 3rd 2020 results.

The mail-in ballot images—like the ones seen in the video below—were made public after petitioners won a court order on April 13. An analyst showed how ballots were re-fed into the system, and counted again.

As American Greatness reported last week, the Keystone State is preparing to launch a forensic audit of its own highly suspect 2020 election. Former President Donald Trump said in a recent interview that it would be “up to the public” to decide what happens if forensic audits in multiple battleground states prove that the election was stolen.

The Old Moral Idiocy of Anti-Patriotism No country can survive if its citizens don’t believe it’s worth fighting and dying for. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/old-moral-idiocy-anti-patriotism-bruce-thornton/

This year’s Fourth of July celebrations brought out the predictable snarky dudgeon of the “woke” left. Major propaganda organs like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR featured stories trashing the Statue of Liberty, the Declaration of Independence, and the displaying and waving of the flag, to the Left a fascist dog-whistle.

For the “woke,” celebrating patriotism on Independence Day is dangerous low-brow kitsch at best, and an equivalent of a Nazi Nuremberg Party Rally at worst. Such attitudes bespeak not a cosmopolitan, sophisticated intellect, but rather a shameless moral idiocy, as well as a mind filled with ideological clichés and stale received wisdom.

More important, despising one’s own country is dangerous, for the Marxist bacillus is still infecting our body politic and attacking patriotism, which is the immune system of a healthy state that can resist a murderous ideology.

Hatred of America both domestic and foreign reflects Marxists’ long resentment of the U.S. and its success in ushering their biggest achievement, the Soviet Union, into the trash-can of history. But this obvious superiority of capitalism to Marxism was obvious decades before the Soviet Union’s collapse. As French political philosopher Raymond Aron wrote in 1957, leftists have “a grudge against the United States mainly because the latter had succeeded by means which were not laid down in the revolutionary code. Prosperity, power, the tendency toward uniformity of economic conditions––these results have been achieved by private initiative, by competition rather than State intervention, in other words by capitalism, which every well-brought up intellectual has been taught to despise.” In other words, it was the capitalist U.S. that delivered prosperity and equality, while the Marxist U.S.S.R. produced misery and corpses.

But historical failure could not dampen Marxism’s appeal, which fed Western anti-patriotism even before the early 20th century. Whether from genteel Fabian socialists, or hardcore communists activists, disillusionment with, and disaffection from one’s nation was the mark of sophistication and progress. Attacks on patriotism, moreover, had already followed the growing dislike of the British Empire, a distaste that started accelerating after the gruesome Boer War (1899-1902). The industrialized carnage of World War I further eroded pride in, and affection for one’s own country. Both causes, anti-imperialism and Marxism, were combined in Vladimir Lenin’s 1916 Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, which substituted colonial subjects for the industrial proletariat that had become middle class instead of violent revolutionaries.

Blinken invites UN racism investigators to inspect the U.S. By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/blinken_invites_un_racism_investigators_to_inspect_the_us.html

Joe Biden’s secretary of state, Tony Blinken, has invited the United Nations’s racism investigators to come inspect the U.S.

According to Reuters:

The U.S. State Department has invited U.N. experts who investigate racism and minority issues to conduct an official visit to the United States, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday.

“Responsible nations must not shrink from scrutiny of their human rights record; rather, they should acknowledge it with the intent to improve,” Blinken said in a statement.

“I urge all U.N. member states to join the United States in this effort, and confront the scourge of racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia,” he said.

Blinken said the United States welcomed the U.N. Human Rights Council’s adoption on Tuesday of a resolution to address systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent in the context of law enforcement.

That’ll fix ‘er. They’ll get to the bottom of all this systemic racism in the U.S. and hold up America’s sins for all to see. We can’t do this ourselves. So, Blinken’s called the United Nations in.

None of these members of the vaunted United Nations Human Rights Council involved in this resolution that led to this “inspection” would have an agenda, would they? Who are their members?

According to the UN, they’re:

Bolivia, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, France, Gabon, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Russian Federation, Senegal, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan.

They wouldn’t have a need to cut the U.S. down a peg, now would they? They wouldn’t profit from holding up the U.S. as a racist hellhole and passing some cockamamie resolution condemning the states or issuing a stern warning to us for the cameras, now would they?

Who better to judge us than communist Cuba? Let’s have China weigh in on U.S. human rights. Pakistan will judge the U.S. best. So will Russia.

Shocking report finds Navy far more interested in diversity than winning wars By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/shocking_report_finds_navy_far_more_interested_in_diversity_than_winning_wars.html

The signs are clear that the United States Navy is in crisis. A series of ship disasters, including the scrapping of ¾ billion dollar carrier, The Bonhomme Richard, after a fire, and the fatal seaborne collision of the guided missile destroyer Fitzgerald that killed 7 sailors have revealed problems with training and readiness.

China, which now has more ships in its navy than we do, is boasting of having “chased” as US warship out of disputed waters. The AP reports:

China’s military said it chased a U.S. warship out of a disputed area of the South China Sea on Monday after Washington warned an attack on the Philippines might activate a mutual defense treaty.

Beijing affirmed its claims to portions of the sea that also are claimed by Southeast Asia governments. It rejected the Biden administration’s declaration of support Sunday for an international tribunal ruling in favor of the Philippines that threw out most of them.

China is increasingly assertive about pressing its territorial claims, which are fueling tension with neighbors including Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines.

The People’s Liberation Army said it sent ships and planes after the U.S.S. Benfold entered waters claimed by Beijing around the Paracel Islands.

When ‘Woke’ is More Sacred than Old Glory By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/when_woke_is_more_sacred_than_old_glory.html

On my desk is a framed political cartoon with the caption: “Burning the American Flag is a form of free speech? Try burning a rainbow flag and see if that too is considered a form of free speech?” You could replace “rainbow flag” with “BLM flag,” or even “Antifa flag.” The cartoon lances the recent rise in free-speech hypocrisy that promptly abandons the First Amendment and drums up hysterical charges of “hate speech” when certain sacred cows du jour are so much as mildly criticized.

In the Left’s campaign to “fundamentally transform” America and rid it of soi-disant racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other perceived ills, certain symbols — the American flag, and a panoply of images of western culture — have been isolated as representative of “the white patriarchy,” deserving of derision and destruction. Therefore, it has become perfectly acceptable to desecrate them. At the same time, it has become hateful to even give a disapproving look to banners or murals representing the LGBTQ+, militant black groups, or anything remotely leftist. “Woke” symbols are untouchable; free speech be damned.

Quite a few incidents point to this bizarre dual trend, which aims to crush American ideals underfoot and ridicule — even eradicate — the patriotic emotions true Americans have honestly felt and nurtured in their hearts while forcing them by propaganda and law to embrace ideas their hearts have always militated against. The U.S. flag has been a symbol of freedom and justice for over 225 years and represents the American people in vibrant plurality: e pluribus unum, not one constituency or point of view. It also honors all those who fought and died to preserve our freedom and liberty. So, it has obviously been a prime target of America’s enemies within.

On Memorial Day in 2016, veteran Robert Rosebrock was criminally charged for displaying two four-by-six American flags on the fence outside a Veteran Affairs facility in West Los Angeles and faced up to six months in jail. Says Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which successfully defended Rosebrock, “Why in the world would the feds prosecute a 74-year-old veteran over the placement of two small American flags at the entrance to a park honoring veterans on Memorial Day?”

In 2019, air force veteran Robert Huey was denied permission by his homeowners association (HOA) to fly an American flag at his residence in South Carolina. Huey, who is suing the HOA, had researched the association’s rules before buying the house and found no prohibitions against displaying the American flag. He is now fighting a case for the freedom to broadcast his love for the country.

Afghan Withdrawal Opens the Way for China by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17565/afghanistan-withdrawal-china

China, which shares a tiny 47-mile-long border with Afghanistan, has long coveted developing closer ties with Kabul, not least because of the large, untapped reserves of mineral wealth that Afghanistan possesses.

Rich in copper, lithium, marble, gold and uranium, Afghanistan’s mineral wealth has been estimated to exceed in excess of $1 trillion….

Beijing already enjoys good relations with neighbouring Pakistan, where the country’s charismatic prime minister, Imran Khan, was once dubbed “Taliban Khan” for supporting the Islamist movement.

As part of Beijing’s efforts to deepen and broaden its ties in Central Asia, Beijing is also concentrating its efforts on expanding its influence in Afghanistan, a policy it expects will bear fruit if the Taliban achieve their goal of seizing control of the entire country.

Mr Biden, judging by his spirited defence of his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, clearly believes that it is in America’s interests to end its two-decade-long involvement in the country. But if the US withdrawal simply opens the way for China to become the new dominant power in Afghanistan, then Mr Biden will be responsible for causing, so far as the West is concerned, a strategic disaster of epic proportions.

The indecent haste with which the Biden administration has undertaken its military withdrawal from Afghanistan not only raises the prospect of handing control of the country over to the hardline Islamist Taliban movement. It also presents China with a golden opportunity to extend its influence over this strategically important Central Asian country.

China, which shares a tiny 47-mile-long border with Afghanistan, has long coveted developing closer ties with Kabul, not least because of the large, untapped reserves of mineral wealth that Afghanistan possesses.

Rich in copper, lithium, marble, gold and uranium, Afghanistan’s mineral wealth has been estimated to exceed in excess of $1 trillion, resources that could easily make the country economically self-sufficient if ever they were to be fully developed.

From China’s perspective, access to Afghanistan’s mineral riches would provide it with a ready supply of valuable minerals that are deemed vital to the ruling Communist party’s long-term aim of becoming the world’s pre-eminent economic power.

The ADL chief’s disingenuous epiphany about left-wing anti-Semitism… Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-adl-chiefs-disingenuous-epiphany-about-left-wing-anti-semitism/

(July 13, 2021 / JNS) It’s a sad day when the head of the Anti-Defamation League receives accolades for acknowledging that anti-Semitism “also” hails from the left. If the person in question had been living in a cave until last week—when he published an op-ed in Newsweek called “It’s Time to Admit It: The Left Has an Anti-Semitism Problem”—he might be excused for having an epiphany about a phenomenon that has been obvious for decades.
But Jonathan Greenblatt hasn’t been in isolation for the past six years, when he replaced Abraham Foxman as CEO of the Jewish organization, established in 1913 by B’nai B’rith. On the contrary, he’s been as active a participant in American political culture throughout his current tenure as he was during his term in the White House as special assistant to former President Barack Obama.

It is thus that Jews across the spectrum viewed the ADL’s announcement in November 2014 that he would be taking over the reins from Foxman in July 2015 as “dramatic.” Unlike Foxman, a liberal but an indefatigable defender of Israel, Greenblatt’s love for the Jewish state was and still is conditional on its policies—particularly those of the government under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
His attitude is par for an ardent Democrat whose subsequent loathing for former President Donald Trump made his feelings about Netanyahu pale in comparison. Nor was his mission to transform the ADL into an NGO devoted to a distorted version of tikkun olam, a Jewish concept of making the world a better place that morphed over the years into a branch of “woke-ism” that bears no resemblance to its original meaning.
Nor was combating the globe’s evils the founding purpose of the ADL. That emerged during the trial of American Jewish factory superintendent Leo Frank, who was lynched by an angry mob two years after he was wrongly convicted of murdering 13-year-old Mary Phagan in Atlanta.
At the time, the severe anti-Semitism that gripped the U.S. South emanated particularly from white racists who hated Jews and blacks in equal measure. They saw the Jewish community and members of the press mobilize on behalf of Frank as proof that Jews control the world and certainly the media.
The irony is inescapable here since Frank’s key champion was The New York Times. And the idea behind the ADL was that when anti-Semitism is allowed to thrive, the rest of society is in trouble—not that Jew-hatred is one among many forms of racism.

What a difference a century makes.

Today, it’s not white supremacists who pose a threat to Jews in particular and society as a whole, but rather movements like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Students for Justice in Palestine. There’s a simple reason for this, and it has nothing to do with the identity of the targets of abhorrent positions and behavior. It is, rather, the fact that the former is on the fringe, while the latter is completely mainstream.

Greenblatt’s piece on Thursday, then, was more deserving of ridicule than praise.

Biden delivers But for whom? Gifts to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas for terror against Israel don’t benefit anyone except the terrorists. Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jns.org/opinion/biden-delivers/

Seeing the region through the lens of the “Palestinian-Israeli peace process,” President Joe Biden and the U.S. State Department are backing the Palestinian Authority under oppressive octogenarian Mahmoud Abbas—in the 17th year of his four year term as president—as America’s partner.

Abbas canceled the announced Palestinian election scheduled in May, understanding that years of his corruption and heavy hand might actually cause him to lose. Since then, P.A. critic Nizar Banat died in custody after his arrest by P.A. “police,” dozens of activists have been arrested and social-media accounts by those who posted the “wrong thing” keep disappearing. But the administration appears to believe that the P.A. needs only some enticement from the United States and concession from Israel to show its true—if hidden—liberal, Western, political credentials.

So off the administration delivers.

In early April, the administration rolled out a pledge to deliver $75 million to Palestinian areas; plus $40 million for security assistance; $150 million to UNRWA; and $15 million for COVID assistance (one might assume that money will not be delivered, as the P.A. rejected 700,000 vaccine doses from Israel); and $10 million for Palestinian-Israeli people-to-people programs.

OK, you say, but they’re not Hamas. True enough, but a month before the launching of more than 4,000 Hamas rockets, official P.A. media was openly inciting violence. Abbas’s religious affairs adviser told PA-TV viewers, “Islam does not want you to be submissive to others,” and “If you die fighting, you go to paradise; if you kill the enemies, they go to hell.” Did that spark the shooting of three Israeli students, including the murder of 19-year-old Yehuda Guetta?

Images of Palestinians beating Orthodox Jews were posted to the social media site TikTok seeking “likes” and “approvals,” and engendering the name “TikTok Intifada” for the activity; Abbas called to “defend the mosque”—a historic call for violence against Jews in Jerusalem; and the ever-popular song on PA-TV, “I fired my shots, I threw my bomb, I detonated, detonated, detonated my [explosive] belts. … My brother, throw my blood on the enemy like bullets.”

But never mind.

References to Palestinian incitement to violence against Jews and Israelis over the past seven months have been deleted from the State Department’s mandated report to Congress on Palestinian violence.

NGOs call for UN version of Taylor Force Act to curb terror financing David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/taylor-force-act-needed-for-un-says-new-report-exposing-funding-to-terror-linked-ngos/

The United States is the largest financial supporter of the United Nations, providing 22 percent of its financial support (China is a distant second with 12 percent). “Americans should know what their money is going toward,” said Eytan Meir of Im Tirtzu.

 A new report by pro-Israel NGO Im Tirtzu reveals that over the last five years, U.N. agencies have funneled at least $40 million to radical anti-Israel groups, some with terror ties. It also offers a prescription: a Taylor Force Act applied to the United Nations.

Passed by Congress in 2018, the Taylor Force Act, named after a U.S. war veteran and graduate student killed by a terrorist while visiting Israel, conditions U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority on its halting payments to terrorists. The P.A. puts such a high premium on these payments that its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, said in July 2018: “If we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs.”

The law led the Trump administration to cut more than $200 million to the P.A.

Eytan Meir, Im Tirtzu’s director of external relations and development, tells JNS that a U.S. law holding the U.N. accountable for funding malevolent NGOs will lead the United Nations to become more transparent and take greater care in its review of its “implementing partners,” the U.N.’s term of art for organizations to which it channels funds to carry out in-country projects.

The United States is the largest financial supporter of the United Nations, providing 22 percent of its financial support (China is a distant second with 12 percent). “Americans should know what their money is going toward. I think it would shock most Americans to learn that their tax dollars are going to terror-linked organizations,” said Meir.

Ties to terrorism and the BDS movement