David Singer: European Union Acclaims Abbas Whilst Flogging Farage

Brexit proponent Nigel Farage has been branded a liar by the European Parliament (EUP) – but PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas can lie compulsively without the slightest EUP remonstration or rebuke.

Such hypocrisy and double standards surfaced during addresses by Abbas and Farage to the EUP within the last week. Farage told those assembled:

“The biggest problem you’ve got and the main reason the UK voted the way it did is because you have by stealth and deception, and without telling the truth to the rest of the peoples of Europe, you have imposed upon them a political union. When the people in 2005 in the Netherlands and France voted against that political union and rejected the constitution you simply ignored them and brought the Lisbon treaty in through the back door.

What happened last Thursday was a remarkable result – it was a seismic result. Not just for British politics, for European politics, but perhaps even for global politics too.”

Farage taunted the EUP Parliamentarians:

“What I’d like to see is a grownup and sensible attitude to how we negotiate a different relationship. I know that virtually none of you have never done a proper job in your lives, or worked in business, or worked in trade, or indeed ever created a job. But listen, just listen.”

Amid shouts of protest, the President of the EUP, Martin Schulz, interrupted Farage in full-flight with this rebuke:

“Mr Farage – I would say one thing to you. The fact that you’re claiming that no one has done a decent job in their life – you can’t really say that”.

Jean-Claude Juncker – President of the European Commission – put the boot into Farage amidst thunderous applause:

“You lied. You didn’t tell the truth. You fabricated reality.”

Palestinian Terrorism: why not?

http://edgar1981.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/palestinian-terrorism-why-not.html
Following the brutal murder of 13-year-old Jewish Israeli girl Hallel Yafi Ariel while she slept yesterday, today yet another Jewish family was destroyed when their car was attacked by a Palestinian terrorist.

The EU and USA could stop the terrorism immediately by simply cutting off their multi-billion dollar payments to the PA (which are used not just for incitement but also to pay the salaries of terrorists and their families). They won’t of course*. But while they refuse to provide any deterrents, I don’t understand why, for all his strong words, Netanyahu doesn’t either. All I can see – as far as the Palestinians are concerned – are incentives to keep it up.

America’s Founding Changed Human History Forever And we have no excuse for not passing on its singular importance to the next generation. By Charles C. W. Cooke

Today is my son’s first Independence Day.

He doesn’t know that, of course, because he’s only three-and-a-half months old. But my wife and I do, and we’ve attempted to mark the occasion nevertheless — in loco filius, if you will. As such, Jack will be dressed today in a special onesie (stylized picture of a milk bottle, “Come and Take It” tagline); he will wear his Old Glory sun hat; and he will be involved in all the festivities that the family has to offer. Naturally, none of this will make even the slightest bit of sense to him; as a matter of fact, today will be the same as is any other day in the life of a baby, just with more people around and a surfeit of BBQ. But you have to start somewhere, right?

Because Jack is three months old, it is acceptable for his parents to treat July Fourth as an excuse for the purchase of kitsch. But what about after that? What about when he is five? Or twelve? Or nineteen? As a native Brit, I am accustomed to the self-deprecating instincts that are the hallmark of British society, and I am acquainted, too, with the reflexive aversion to patriotism that is all-too customary in the birthplace of Western liberty. In consequence, I know that if I were to leave my son befuddled by America’s Independence Day proceedings, he would probably stay that way in perpetuity. And that would be a tremendous, unconscionable shame — a shame that, frankly, would reflect poorly on me.

Once they reach a certain age, we expect our children to know what is what. As soon as they start speaking, we begin to teach them right and wrong; once they are old enough to be trusted with responsibility, we monitor closely how it is being used; and, in a process that is hopefully never-ending, we make sure that they know as much about the world around them as they are capable of taking in. It is in pursuit of this lattermost goal that we designate national holidays. In May, we celebrate Memorial Day, lest we forget what we owe our ancestors. In January, we observe Martin Luther King Day, that we might bring to mind the most uncomfortable parts of our nation’s past. And on July Fourth we arrange an ostentatious display of patriotism, in resounding commemoration of the moment that a ragtag bunch of philosopher-king rebels set their revolutionary ideals before a candid world, and changed human history forever.

In certain quarters it is fashionable to disdain these occasions, and, in so doing, to treat the past as if it were wholly disconnected from the present. Indeed, staunch defenders of the American Founding are often told that to embrace modernity it is necessarily to jettison the antique. “Why,” it is asked, “do we celebrate these flawed men and their pieces of parchment? After all, John Adams couldn’t even have imagined Tinder.”

Though narrow, this critique is indisputably correct. John Adams could not have imagined Tinder, and I daresay that he had no conception of high-frequency trading, of synthetic fibers, or of advanced robots either. But, ultimately, that is irrelevant. The beauty of the American Founding was not that it provided a detailed roadmap that could predict the minutiae of the future in glorious perpetuity, but that it laid out for all people a set of timeless and universal ideals, the veracity and applicability of which are contingent upon neither the transient mood of the mob nor the present state of technology. Among those ideals are that “all men are created equal,” and that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”; that “Governments are instituted among Men” in order to “secure” their “rights”; that legitimate power derives “from the consent of the governed”; and that if any such government is seized or corrupted by tyrants, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” At times, the United States has failed disastrously to live up to these principles, and, on at least one occasion, significant forces within the union have rejected them outright. But that an ideal has been violated in no way undermines its value, and it seems patently obvious to me that the country has been blessed by having had an eloquent North star to which its downtrodden could point from their moments of need.

AMEREXIT 1776

In a June 7 1776 session in the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall), Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a resolution with the famous words: “Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

On July 1, 1776, the Continental Congress reconvened, and on the following day, the Lee Resolution for independence was adopted by 12 of the 13 colonies, New York not voting. Discussions of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence resulted in some minor changes, but the spirit of the document was unchanged. The process of revision continued through all of July 3 and into the late afternoon of July 4, when the Declaration was officially adopted. Of the 13 colonies, nine voted in favor of the Declaration, two — Pennsylvania and South Carolina — voted No, Delaware was undecided and New York abstained. John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence. It is said that John Hancock’s signed his name “with a great flourish” so England’s “King George can read that without spectacles!”

Entebbe: Another reason to celebrate July 4 By Henry Oliner

On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139, in route from Tel Aviv to Paris, had a layover in Athens. There four terrorists, two from a German group and two from the Palestinian Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, hijacked the plane. After a stop in Benghazi, Libya, the flight continued to the airport in Entebbe, Uganda.

One hundred forty-eight non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers were separated in a process hauntingly familiar to the hostages and were released in two separate groups. Ninety-four passengers and the 12 crew members remained. The four hijackers were joined by three more, and demands were made for the release of 40 terrorists from Israeli prisons and 13 from other incarceration.

Israel’s policy of non-negotiation with terrorists was well known, but understandably, the families of the Israeli hostages begged for Israel’s leaders to comply with the hijackers’ demands.

On July 3, four C-130 Hercules jumbo planes left Israel with 190 elite troops plus 20 non-combatants to execute the most daring rescue operation in modern history. In six amazingly short days from the hijacking, the Israeli Defense Force assembled a crack team, collected intelligence from the released hostages and the Israeli construction firm that built the airport, quickly devised a complex plan, repeatedly rehearsed the rescue to precision, and argued the risks and mechanics of the rescue. Israeli officials entered into negotiations with the terrorists to buy much needed time.

The first C-130 landed at 1:00 AM at the Entebbe airport. Imitating Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who had visited the hostages, a black Mercedes with soldiers in blackface rolled out of the plane and toward the terminal with the hostages. As they pulled up to the terminal, the soldiers burst in, yelling in Hebrew and English for the hostages to remain on the ground. They quickly found and killed all of the hijackers and within six minutes were escorting the hostages out of the terminal to the additional planes that had just landed, precisely as planned.

Three hostages were killed in the crossfire: Jean Jacques Maimoni (19), Pasco Cohn (55), and Ida Borochovitch (56). A fourth, Dora Bloch (75), had been taken to a hospital and was killed by Ugandan soldiers after the raid. Ten hostages were wounded.

Soldiers from the additional planes engaged Ugandan soldiers, killing over thirty, and destroyed eleven Mig jets on the ground. Five soldiers were wounded, and only one was killed by a sniper in the terminal tower: Yonatan (Yoni) Netanyahu, brother of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The planes took off with the soldiers and hostages 58 minutes after arrival. In spite of the wounded and the losses, the rescue force was prepared for much worse, and the operation was considered a remarkable success.

No, Loretta Lynch Was Not ‘Ambushed’ by Bill Clinton By Jonathan F. Keiler

“Had the meeting in Phoenix never come to light, which was clearly the intention of Lynch and Clinton, the fix with Hillary would have been in. As it stands, Hillary’s fate will depend on whether she escaped the FBI interview in good shape, the integrity of that agency’s director, and the utter indifference of many Americans to her criminal dishonesty. Finally, it will depend on the Obama administration’s tolerance for blatant political intrigues. If the past is any guide, that tolerance is quite high. ”

Sifting through the facts slowly emerging from the tattered veil of secrecy surrounding the tarmac meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton, it is likely that the popular narrative that the Attorney General was ambushed is false. In all likelihood, General Lynch had an important agenda that needed to be communicated immediately to Team Hillary.

Last week I wrote a piece reasonably speculating that Lynch’s meeting with Clinton meant that the FBI would shortly refer charges to Justice, and that Lynch met Clinton to break the bad news and reassure him that nothing would come of it under her watch. Since that article was published new information has come to light, but none that would undermine its central premise. That Hillary Clinton was finally interviewed by FBI agents on Saturday strongly suggests that not only was Lynch’s meeting with Clinton prearranged, but reinforces the idea that their discussion improperly focused on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary.

Coincidences are often the fodder of conspiracy theorists and for good reason should be evaluated carefully. But that doesn’t mean that stunning coincidences are not good evidence. Circumstantial evidence is essentially another name for coincidence, and properly presented is a good as any other kind of evidence and sufficient to decide a case.

The meeting of Clinton’s and Lynch’s planes in a Phoenix airport at the same time of day, far from their own home bases, with both of them following busy schedules is strangely coincidental in and of itself. That we now know the “chance” meeting occurring five days before Clinton was to be interviewed by the FBI (something that both parties to the Phoenix encounter already knew) is one coincidence too many. To believe this encounter happened purely by chance is either to discount logic, or to take a political side.

The mainstream media predictably are doing their best to avoid logical conclusions that hurt their candidate, and so predictably have spun a narrative to explain it. In this telling, the meeting was not only by chance, but forced upon Lynch by Clinton, who left his plane with his security detail and set upon her plane. This account appears to be backed by leaks that suggest Lynch’s FBI escort was surprised and upset by the encounter — not only because it presents inherent security problems when two groups of heavily armed agents approach each other without a prearranged plan, but because as FBI agents they understood that the encounter at least appeared improper.

When the Fourth of July Embraced Latin America Too In the 1800s, Americans cheered their neighbors’ drive for independence, inspired by the cosmopolitan founding vision of the U.S. By Caitlin Fitz

The sun blazed down on Norfolk’s old-fashioned fife-and-drum parade on July Fourth of 1822, but the weather deteriorated for the afternoon picnic. The skies of coastal Virginia turned heavy and black; the rain fell in sheets. Some guests ran for cover, while the rest dined on soggy food, sang above the howling wind and drank a toast to…Latin America?

Before the party started, the hosts had carefully hung the flags of Peru, Argentina, Chile and Colombia alongside the Stars and Stripes. The Mexican flag was probably there too, whipping and snapping in the wind.

There was nothing unusual about this interest in our hemispheric neighbors. Newspapers of the era printed long transcripts of holiday toasts every summer in the weeks after Independence Day. A sample of several hundred indicates that well over half of July Fourth gatherings in the decade following the War of 1812 raised their glasses to Latin America.

Why, on their most patriotic of holidays, were so many Americans looking south of the border, speaking not of walls but of brotherhood?

The answer lies in the cosmopolitan vision of the American founding. The audacity of the Revolution lay not simply in the fact that 13 disparate colonies had defied the mighty British Empire but in the conviction of Americans that the rest of the world should care. When Parisians stormed the Bastille in the summer of 1789, Americans exulted, thrilled to think that such a powerful country was following in their footsteps. (The ardor soon cooled as bloodied heads toppled in the streets of Paris and a slave rebellion erupted in Haiti.)
When another wave of rebellion swept across Latin America from 1810 to 1825, Americans erupted with joy once again. By the 50th anniversary of the U.S., most of the western hemisphere was independent, from the U.S. and Mexico to Venezuela and Brazil. It was a “jubilee of nations,” a Kentucky congressman crowed, “the birth-day of a hemisphere redeemed.” U.S. patriots hailed Latin America’s wars of independence as thrilling equatorial reprises of 1776.

The international ardor rang loudest on July Fourth, but it reverberated year-round. Appalachian farmers read poetry about Andean independence. Sailors wore cockades for revolutionary Montevideo. Parents even named their sons Bolivar, after Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan political and military leader sometimes called the “ George Washington of South America.”

Jihadists Trying to Dislodge Bangladesh’s Secular Government by Lawrence A. Franklin

It seems that either al-Qaeda, with or without the Islamic State, has been linking up with Bangladesh’s indigenous radical networks.

If the Hasina government cannot restore a sense of normalcy, the booming Bangladeshi economy is likely to stagnate, Western corporate investment may dry up, and liberal technocrats probably will seek security elsewhere. If this happens, Bangladesh’s minorities will feel even further isolated.

“They believe that we are all going to hell, and no matter how they treat us, that they will all go to heaven.” — Former Catholic seminarian.

Friday’s Islamic terrorist attack in the swankiest section of the Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka, in which 20 people were murdered, had been expected by the country’s law enforcement services. When this attack took place, the government had been in the midst of a nationwide crackdown on known terrorist sympathizers. The police had made hundreds — some reports claim thousands — of arrests. They had also seized explosives, firearms, machetes and jihadi tracts. Most of the arrests consisted of members of indigenous, outlawed jihadist groups such as the Jamaatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Harakat-ul Jihad-al Islami Bangladesh (HuJI-B), and Ansarullah Team.

MY SAY: IN PRAISE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

Alexander Hamilton is all the rage now for the musical “Hamilton” which has deservedly won so many awards. I saw it and loved it and admire the book and author that inspired it.

“Alexander Hamilton” by Ron Chernow. 2005

Ron Chernow is an excellent writer and biographer. In 2011 Chernow wrote an inspiring biography of our magnificent first president George Washington who comes to mind as we celebrate Independence day. It is great reading in any season.
Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Product Details

General Washington’s Standard ‘To which the wise and honest can repair’ By Kevin D. Williamson

‘Does not, then, the Almighty clearly impress an awe of the persons and authority of Kings upon the minds of their subjects, hereby proving Government of Divine origin?” So asked the Reverend J. R. Walsh in a pamphlet printed in 1829. “For, otherwise, by what principle could any one mortal command subjection from so many millions of fellow creatures”?

That was a question very much upon the mind of King George IV, whose coronation provided the inspiration for the Reverend Walsh’s essay: That king’s father, George III, had been treated with a notable lack of awe by his American subjects, who gave him the shoe and set up their own republic, without any king at all. This experiment in awelessness, all the smart people of the late 18th century assured one another, was doomed to failure: Awelessness was next to lawlessness, they believed, and a people without a king to tell them how to behave or a king’s church to tell them why to behave were doomed to anarchy.

Here’s to 240 years of glorious anarchy.

Awe was very much on the minds of those early republicans. George Washington, whose name appears frequently in sentences containing the word “awe,” wrote that one of the purposes of our northern fortifications was to “awe the Indians.” Thomas Paine, who had no great awe of the state, wrote of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms: “Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property.” You’ll find a man’s heart where you find his awe: Walter Bagehot, founder of (that other) National Review and later editor of The Economist, lived to learn: “A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe,” he wrote, “and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.” Edmund Burke believed that even when addressing the defects of the state, we should treat it “with pious awe and trembling solicitude,” hence his hesitancy about the American Revolution and his detestation of the French one. The libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard would later argue the opposite, that failed revolutions are valuable to the extent that they “decrease the awe in which the constituted authority is held by the populace, and in that way will increase the chance of a later revolt against tyranny.”

When the Reverend Walsh connected awe with divinity in government, he had in mind Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” Burke had in mind a kind of holy terror, too, though one that less closely resembled the apostle’s fear of the Almighty than it did Thomas Hobbes’s fear of bellum omnium contra omnes. But in many ways those come down to the same thing: Without someone to keep them in line — to keep them in awe — what’s to keep the people from running amok?

The American Founders did not contemplate a world without awe of government, but they did intuit that a free, self-governing, democratic republic could get by with a good deal less of it. George Washington famously rejected an offer to make him king and thought that calling the president “Your Excellency” might be a bit much, too. We hear a great deal now about the “dignity of the office” and the need to have “respect for the presidency,” if not for the president himself, but nobody ever really says why. Why should we be awed at the chief bureaucrat of the federal administrative apparatus? Why should we hold in awe our employee? “Only I can fix” is Donald Trump’s illiterate shorthand for the idea that presidents are, like kings, products of divine election. George Washington never said anything like that; he didn’t need to convince anybody that he was the man for the job, and he knew that the job was governing, not ruling.