If you only watch one Youtube video today….

….please watch this one….

The complete Eurobarometer survey, “Public opinion in the European Union”, sponsored by the EU’s own General Communication Directorate, can be found here.

@Nigel_Farage – “We are the Opposition”

Also, a couple of letters in today’s Telegraph, one from Nigel himself, highlight the rank hypocrisy of the Tory Party (who’s leader, the EU Viceroy in Downing Street, is proud to belong to its euro skeptic wing) on British foreign policy, human rights and the European Arrest Warrant….

Alien rule of law

SIR – William Hague (Comment, August 31) says that strong institutions and the rule of law “take a long time to build and must be constantly nurtured”.

Should he not, therefore, express concern that more than 1,000 British citizens have been sent abroad under the European Arrest Warrant?

He must also be aware of the extent to which British sovereignty was signed away in the Lisbon Treaty, how our rule of law, the great British tradition of habeas corpus, has gone and how, as EU citizens, we are now subject to European law, the Code Napoleon.

If this is what being an EU citizen means, I for one would rather be out of it.

Michael Gardner
Tadcaster, North Yorkshire

SIR – William Hague shows his keen sense of irony by saying that human rights are key to British foreign policy, one week after cutting the budget on human rights monitoring by £560,000.

“Foreign policy is domestic policy written large,” he suggests. Yes, but to a large extent, foreign policy is now written by the European Union, and Mr Hague supports the funding of the EU’s External Action Service in which 100 EU diplomats earn more each year than he does.

While the Government cheer-leads the closure of British embassies around the globe (accompanied by the opening of EU embassies in their place), and supports an EU voice at the UN to the detriment of British interests, Mr Hague cannot speak of defending a British foreign policy, nor a British domestic policy, while such a huge proportion of laws are made in Brussels and rubber-stamped by his Government.

Nigel Farage MEP (UKIP)
Brussels

Please click on the No To The EAW! link in the sidebar and join the campaign for Britain to opt out.

Statement by the family of Franklin Brito

Following the tragic and wasteful death on Monday of Venezuelan hunger-striker, Franklin Brito, his family issued a statement which this blog would like to see publicly branded on the foreheads of Messrs Chomsky, Pilger, Stone and Penn.

It follows in full….

It is with immense sorrow that we inform the Venezuelan people and the world of the following:

Today, August 30, 2010, the exhausted body of our husband and father, Franklin Brito, stopped breathing. After a struggle of more than six years, more than eight hunger strikes, the mutilation of a finger and unlawful deprivation of liberty, the body of Franklin Brito today ceased to perform its vital functions.

All this does not mean, however, that Franklin Brito has died. Franklin lives on in the struggle of the Venezuelan people for property rights, access to justice, for life in liberty and respect by government for collective and individual human rights. Franklin Brito, no longer flesh, becomes a symbol, a banner for all who are trampled by abuse of power, for those offended by the arrogance of their rulers, for those who believe that truth and justice are always above circumstance and convenience.

The body of Franklin Brito died in a military institution where he was kept detained against his will. The government of President Hugo Chávez ignored Franklin’s petitions, the cries of his family and the pleas by international agencies to allow access to trustworthy medical care of his own choosing. Therefore, the Brito family at this time abstains from issuing opinions about the direct cause of death because of the unusual and inhumane circumstances surrounding it.

However, what we can say with certainty is that Franklin Brito’s struggle continues. We, his family, will fight for his children’s heritage. His conscious sacrifice will not have been in vain while the children of Venezuela are also willing to defend the moral and physical heritage of the nation.

At a later date, when the pain permits, we will issue a new statement. For now, know, Venezuela, that violence could not defeat Franklin Brito, could not frighten him, could not threaten, bend or corrupt him. For this and much more in these times of death and pain, Franklin Brito is a symbol of decency in life.

We are certain that Franklin’s soul, through the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, will follow us in light, because his struggle, which should be the fight of everyone, CONTINUES!

Elena Rodriguez de Brito
Ángela Rodríguez Brito
Brito Rodríguez Francia
Franklin Brito Rodríguez
Franklin Jose Brito Rodríguez

Hospital Militar, Caracas

Monday, August 30, 2010. 10:20 PM.

Absolutely nothing to add.

Franklin Brito….another victim of Oliver Stone’s ego

Today this blog would like to tell you about Franklin Brito, someone whose name most of you will almost certainly have never heard.

For those who are unfamiliar with Brito’s story, he had a productive livestock farm in Venezuela until a certain Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías decided to “expropriate” it, declaring property rights to be at an end at that henceforth, “all Venezuelan land (would) belong to the people.”

Brito tried to recover his property through the legal system, a herculean task in Latin America generally and all but impossible in Venezuela, where matters of right have been settled at the whim of the regime for years. He was unable to get an explanation, let alone a hearing.  So, in desperation, Brito resorted to a  hunger strike, which until yesterday had lasted nine months. I say until yesterday because that’s when his body and spirit gave up the unequal struggle for justice.

Franklin Brito

The poor fellow really should have known better than to expect a dictator to pay the slightest attention to a hunger-striker. No doubt we’ll be hearing more weasel words about “bandits” today from Mr Chávez’s friend, President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, who, as the crocodile tears cascade down his cheeks like the Iguaçu Falls, will doubtless also be fielding further awkward questions about his Workers Party’s support of the FARC in Colombia.

This blog would be particularly intrigued to know the thoughts of Noam Chomsky, John Pilger Sean Penn and Oliver Stone, four men who would no sooner live in Chávez’s Venezuela than they would on Jupiter (but are quite happy, it seems, for others to do so) on this most Latin American of outrages.

Brazil has a presidential election in October. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone with more than two functioning synapses that Lula’s anointed successor is Dilma Roussef….

Before....after....

You got that, right? Sean Penn thinks people who refer to Chávez as a dictator should be jailed.

*UPDATE*

No prizes for guessing whose side the MercoPress Agency is on in the Brazilian election….

José Serra

Wheat, weed and Obamacare

The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to….

“regulate commerce . . . .among the several States,”

….and for more than 100 years federal lawmakers invoked it for a very narrow purpose; to prevent states from imposing trade barriers on each other. But today members of Congress act as if it gives them the authority to do just about anything, including forcing Americans to eat their greens.

During her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Elena Kagan seemed to accept that the Commerce Clause could, in theory, give Congress the power to dictate what Americans eat. And what about ObamaCare’s “individual mandate,” which forces Americans to purchase health insurance? ObamaCare opponents are lining up to challenge its constitutionality, but supporters say it’s justified, you guessed it, under the Commerce Clause.

How did a clause intended as a restriction on states wind up giving Congress a green light to regulate non-commercial, local, and purely private behaviour? How will ObamaCare stand up against the legal challenges brought by the states? Legal titans John Eastman (Chapman University Law Professor) and Erwin Chemerinsky (Founding Dean, University of California, Irvine School of Law) slug it out to to determine whether or not Congress has been abusing the commerce clause.

If the words no longer mean anything, then we don’t have a constitution that binds and limits the power of government, and the Government can do whatever they want….

Comment of the week

Off to France this weekend, here’s hoping it’s the last time I touch a Euro, other than to fix one to my fridge next to the Zimbabwean dollar alrerady (sic) there.