h/t Instapundit
Buried in all of the other international news is the following tidbit: the Spanish "autonomous region" of Catalonia held a referendum on independence from Spain, in which some 90% of participants voted for independence.
Catalonia is located in the northeastern corner of Spain, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. Its capital is Barcelona, a major industrial and tourist center, and the region has a long history of off-again, on-again independence dating back at least to the Eighth Century. The Catalan people speak a unique Romance language which has more in common with the Occitan language of southern France than it does with Spanish and, obviously, they have not lost their sense of distinctiveness from the Spanish.
The Spanish government in Madrid reacted to this latest attempt to apply the Wilsonian principle of self-determination for small peoples in much the same way that the Baghdad government reacted to the recent referendum on Kurdish independence. It first declared the referendum unconstitutional, then demanded it be withdrawn when it became obvious that the referendum had gone against continued union with the Spanish state. In other words, the "autonomous region" is demonstrating a little too much autonomy.
...Given the European Union’s penchant for meddling in conflicts elsewhere in the world, such as the Middle East, perhaps I can make a friendly suggestion. Israel ought to offer her services to Spain and the EU as an "honest broker," and negotiate an end to the Catalonian crisis on the basis of "land for peace."
The Catalan people, with their distinctive language and culture, surely have a much better claim than the "Palestinians," artificially created by Yasser Arafat in 1964, who are in no way different from the Arabs of Israel’s neighbors. They speak essentially the same dialects of Arabic as are spoken in those countries, and possess no distinctive culture of their own.
[PHILSTAR] The Department of Justice has started processing a request from its US counterpart for the extradition of a physician enjugged Book 'im, Mahmoud! in connection with a jihadist plot to attack several targets in New York. Russell Salic, according to the US Justice Department, described the Philippines as "a breeding ground for terrorists."
The statement is not entirely an empty boast. Foreign governments have raised concern about the growth of Islamist extremism in the Philippines and its Southeast Asian neighbors particularly Indonesia and Malaysia. The man convicted of organizing the first attack on the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan, in which a truck bomb was set off beneath the North Tower in February 1993, plotted the attack partly in Manila. Al Qaeda chieftain the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now neither a strong horse nor a weak horse, but a dead horse... ’s brother-in-law was suspected of using an Widows & Orphans Ammunition Fund in Mindanao for terrorist financing.
Today the military is battling Maute Lions of Islam linked to the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... in Marawi. With ISIS on the run from its former strongholds in Iraq and Syria, there are concerns that the group may try to relocate to Southeast Asia, where the Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah operates together with the Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters ...a MILF splinter group aligned with the Islamic State... The Philippine government must reassure the world that this will not happen. Salic, according to the US Justice Department, had reportedly said terror laws in the Philippines are "not strict" compared to countries such as Australia and the UK.
"Terrorists from all over the world usually come here as a breeding ground for Lions of Islam ... hahahaha... But no worry here in Philippines. They dont care bout IS ... Only in west," Salic was quoted as saying.
Salic is not entirely off the mark; JI bomb makers have conducted training in Mindanao, and several foreign jihadis have been killed in the fighting in Marawi. The Philippines has a law against terrorism, but it includes safeguards against human rights When they're defined by the state or an NGO they don't mean much... violations so stringent that law enforcers can go to prison for many years even for honest mistakes.
Not surprisingly, the Human Security Act has remained largely unenforced. It needs a review by Congress if the terrorist threat is to be contained. All countries face the threat of terrorism these days. What sets countries apart ‐ and reassures citizens, foreign travelers and investors ‐ is the state’s capability to deal with the threat. The Philippines cannot afford to be found wanting.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/10/2017 00:00 ||
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[Family Security Matters] An Army recruit starts off with a salary under $20,000. Thousands of active duty military personnel are on food stamps. Millions of veterans rely on them to feed their families and themselves.
That's how we treat the best of us. Here's how we treat the worst of us.
An NFL rookie's minimum salary is $465,000. And the majority of NFL players are usually bankrupt a few years after retirement because they blew through most of their money. Dozens of NFL players are arrested every year on charges ranging from murder to rape to animal abuse.
2017 was a banner year for the NFL with three times as many arrests as last year.
Along with the usual drunk driving and disorderly conduct arrests, there were 7 arrests for assault/battery, 6 for drugs and 5 for domestic violence.
The Seattle Seahawks announced that they weren't going to "participate in the national anthem" because of the "injustice that has plagued people of color in this country". While they lost that game, they are one of the top ranked teams in arrests. Alongside the Los Angeles Rams, the Green Bay Packers and the New York Jets, all of whom showed some solidarity with the anti-American protests, these top NFL criminal teams have racked up arrests for domestic violence, drugs, DUI and assault and battery.
It's no wonder that so many of the NFL's millionaire scumbags are eager to join Colin Kaepernick's protests against the justice system by degrading our anthem.
It's because they're criminals.
And it's no wonder that the NFL stands behind its thugs. If a team can shrug at abusing women, what's a little anti-American tantrum by a prize property that makes them millions of dollars?
The only question is why are the rest of us subsidizing it?
NFL teams loot millions from taxpayers to fund their stadiums. The Seahawks have a point about injustice. And the injustice is that taxpayers had to spend $390 million on their stadium.
Who will let Washington taxpayers take a knee and opt out of being exploited by the Seahawks?
Ten New Orleans Saints players sat out the anthem. New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton expressed pride in the players who rejected the United States of America. The Saints not only enjoy a stadium paid for by a billion in taxpayer money in a city with one of the highest poverty rates in the country, but are exempt from sales tax. And receive millions every year in "inducement payments" to stay put.
Sweetheart deals like these are not uncommon. The NFL comes with a pass on property taxes (those are for little people) and taxes in general. Until 2015, the NFL was a non-profit. "Professional football leagues" was actually inserted into the Internal Revenue Code to provide a special non-profit status. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell got paid $44 million in one year. That made him the highest paid non-profit exec in the country.
#1
An Army recruit starts off with a salary under $20,000
You see it too many times. Married to a high school sweetheart with 1.5 or 2 children that follow him/her out of boot and live offbase in a rented trailer while the soldier lives onbase in the barracks and eats at the mess. They can afford diapers and formula, food, rent or gas.
The editorial, "Christopher Columbus" (9 Oct, 2017), reminded me of the 500th Anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of the New World in 1992. I asked my daughter in the second grade what she had learned. The only thing that made an impression was that he was a bad man because made slaves of Indians. There appeared to be no emphasis on his enormous achievement in knitting the world together for the first time. Nor was there any mention of the fact that Indians made slave of other Indians throughout the Americas. As to genocide, the Indians needed no lessons in that. Read about the Houses of Tragedy near Flagstaff, Arizona, where entire tribes were wiped out in the 11th century with the most hideous cruelty. the Aztecs were also pretty good at that, too. In 1487, five years before Columbus, the emperor Ahuitzol wiped out two city states and dragged 80,400 captives back to Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City) where in four days they were all sacrificed by having their hearts cut out. The Aztecs like the Nazis found out that the biggest problem with genocide was body disposal. Amazingly, there was not a single European involved in that atrocity. The real killers of the vast majority of Indians were Old World diseases. They would have been brought to the Americas by the Africans, Arabs, or Chinese had they discovered the New World. That was simply an unavoidable and inevitable tragedy. Of course, these are all inconvenient facts to those whose ulterior motive is the destruction of western civilization.
PS I would have submitted this to the Washington Post since I live just outside DC, but that would have been, in Sun Tzu’s words, like throwing eggs against a millstone. These days the WP is becoming more and more like the Daily Worker. I only read it only for the local news, but subscribe now to the WSJ to get serious news reporting and thoughtful editorials.
The above is a response to the WSJ, with permission.
#3
In the collective idiocy of the day, there will soon be a push for a name change of Columbus, OH.
Do you suppose that much of the bad rap given to Columbus might be due to Black Legend bias in historical accounts? More recently, Howard Zinn has indulged in this hysterical history.
Are there any movements or discoveries in history that cannot be criticized? For example, the darlings of left-wing causes such as Progressivism, Socialism, Communism and AntiFa could be criticized for excesses.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
