Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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#Brexit wins

Yes, Brexit wins.

Britain Votes to Leave the European Union

Not long after the vote tally was completed, Prime Minister David Cameron, who led the campaign to remain in the bloc, appeared in front of 10 Downing Street on Friday morning to announce that he planned to step down by October, saying the country deserved a leader committed to carrying out the will of the people.

A victory for independence,

The vote for Brexit (52 percent of Britons cast ballots to leave the EU) is a vote for sovereignty and self-determination. Britain will no longer be subject to European legislation, with Britain’s Parliament retaking control. British judges will no longer be overruled by the European Court of Justice, and British businesses will be liberated from mountains of EU regulations, which have undermined economic liberty.

For the second time in 80 years that little Island has bought the world a space in which others could rediscover their own hardihood.

The Tories should now strive to make the U.K. a pro-growth model.

Roger Kimball writes from London.

Memeorandum has a huge thread.

I’m going to celebrate by watching the third season of Peaky Blinders. Note: if you start watching PB, you may not be able to tear yourself off. (I watched the first season with subtitles, until I got used to the accents.)

For now, here’s fireworks,

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#Brexit referendum day

Richard North of EU Referendum is live blogging

14:36: I am not sure I can get my head round the idea of legions of clerks, armed with erasers, secretly rubbing out “leave” votes and replacing them with votes for the other side. However, when it comes to the use of pens, it was instructive to note that we were offered that option at our polling station.

Telegraph live coverage, latest headline: EU Referendum: Polling stations forced to close by floods, as final polls show race ‘too close to call’

Roger Kimball: Will There Always Be an England?

So long as Britain remains tethered to the European Union, Brussels will be able to impose all the regulations it wants via other treaties. Ultimately the debate over Brexit is a debate over sovereignty, which is a fancy word for freedom. Today’s vote is historic because on it rests the future freedom of Great Britain. Will it be absorbed still further into the (more or less) soft bureaucratic totalitarianism of the European Union, gradually extinguishing its common law traditions, or will it reassert its prerogatives of self rule? My record as a political prognosticator has been ostentatiously poor yet I venture, with some trepidation, to say that my reading of the tea leaves suggests that the spirit of independence has not been entirely bred out of the British electorate. There are apparently no exit polls for the referendum, so we won’t know until very late tonight whether (to end with another song) Britain will still be able to sing “Rule, Britannia” and its famous refrain “Britons never, never, never will be slaves.” That’s not the fate that David Cameron, to say nothing of his Continental masters, have in mind, but today, perhaps for the last time in a generation, the British voters have a choice.

Bookmaker.eu (a gambling site) sent me their link, which is not displaying live. See this note from the Telegraph:

“Punters have been waiting until the day of the vote to part with their cash and REMAIN is all they’re interested in. As a direct result LEAVE has drifted out to 7/1 and that could move out even further as the day goes on.”

Hmmmm . . .

Twitter #Brexit

Memeorandum threads:

Seth Barrett Tillman / THE NEW REFORM CLUB:

Alexander Hamilton on Brexit  —  After an unequivocal experience of the inefficiency of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America.  The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less …
RELATED:
Drudge Report:
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Today’s Cpt. Louis Renault moment brought to you by a UK inquiry

Litvinenko case: UK inquiry says Putin probably approved ex-spy’s killing.

For a fuller aroma, the NYT’s article, Putin ‘Probably Approved’ Litvinenko Poisoning, British Inquiry Says, quotes (emphasis added),

[British Home Secretary Teresa May] said that the British assets of the two Russian men suspected in the killing, Andrei K. Lugovoi and Dmitri V. Kovtun, would be frozen and that the Russian ambassador would be summoned to be told of Britain’s response.

Mr. Litvinenko died 22 days after ingesting green tea from a pot laced with polonium 210 — a rare and highly toxic isotope — in the company of Mr. Lugovoi and Mr. Kovtun. He was 43. The three men had met in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in London.

Mr. Lugovoi, now a member of Parliament in Russia and the recipient of a medal from Mr. Putin, said the accusation that he murdered Mr. Litvinenko was “absurd,” Interfax reported, and a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry S. Peskov, said the Litvinenko case “is not among the topics that interest us.“

Take it away, Louis!

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Uruguay: Gitmo alumni go free

They can travel out of the country, too,
Guantanamo Inmates Get Rights in Uruguay
Six former prisoners in the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba were set to begin their lives as free men in Uruguay on Monday, as President José Mujica said they could travel in and out of the country.

Six former prisoners in the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba were set to begin their lives as free men in Uruguay on Monday, as President José Mujica said they could travel in and out of the country.

Under what country’s passports?, you would ask. Once they get (Uruguayan?) passports, where will they go?

Most of the men—a Palestinian, four Syrians and a Tunisian—were likely to leave the hospital on Tuesday once they cleared extensive physical and mental tests and move into temporary housing, officials said.

“They will be able to bring their families here if they want,” Uruguay’s defense minister, Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, told a local news station. “They will be accompanied by people to help them adjust to the language and other things. They will have to find jobs.”

Ah-hum.

It’s all about the empathy,

In a televised interview on Friday, Mr. Mujica—a former guerrilla who was imprisoned for 14 years—said that while he had long criticized the U.S. for its “interventions and abuses,” he couldn’t decline a request by Mr. Obama to accept the men.

in other empathy news,

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Annals of Papal gift-giving, UPDATED

Obama’s gift to the Pope: a seed sampler

Queen Elizabeth’s gift to the Pope: a huge picnic hamper

The hamper contained 18 items from Buckingham Palace, Windsor, Sandringham and Balmoral including two types of honey, a bottle of whiskey, ‘Coronation Best Bitter, ‘Grandad’s chutney’ and ‘Sandringham handmade aromatherapy soaps’.

Purists want to know, Irish whiskey, or Scotch (whisky)?

Look at the size of the thing:

In exchange, Obama received a copy of Evangelii Gaudium, and the Queen was presented with a lapis lazuli orb for Prince George, inscribed with ‘Pope Francis, to His Royal Highness Prince George of Cambridge’

with a silver cross of Edward the Confessor, the 11th Century English King who was made a saint,
…
The royal couple were also presented with a reproduction of a decree by Pope Innocent XI issued in 1679 which elevated Edward the Confessor into a saint for the Catholic Church.

The Vatican chief of protocol was spot-on in both counts.

Read about what it all means at POTUS and the Pope
The Vatican’s symbolic messaging v. the White House spin, by George Weigel.

Note to self: Have the Queen over.

Prior papal gifts here.

UPDATE:
Monica Showalter adds,

A nice exchange of gifts. The article doesn’t mention it, but lapis lazuli is found only in Argentina, Chile, Afghanistan and maybe one or two other places on earth. It was an Argentine gift the Pope gave to the Queen. Lapis Lazuli is the basis for the artists’ pigment Ultramarine Blue.

Vatican chief of protocol rocks!

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Argentina: Cristina trusts Iran

The largest terrorism attack in our hemisphere prior to 9/11/2001 was the explosion at the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds. It was masterminded by Mohsen Rabbani, who presently is actively recruiting converts in Latin America, and Ahmad Vahidi, now Iran’s Defense Minister.

Where do things stand now?

Cristina Fernandez trusts Teheran and hopes for cooperation in the AMIA case
President Cristina Fernandez during her speech to the UN General Assembly said she hoped that the new Government in Iran would cooperate with Argentina in relation to the clarification of the attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in Buenos Aires in 1994.
(emphasis added)

The Argentina/Iran project, which commits both countries to commit to an investigation into the perpetrators of the deadly bombing, is subject to uncertainty in Iran where it remains in legal limbo.

Funny wording, that, “commits both countries to commit to an investigation”.

Having received the equivalent of a pre-engagement ring, Cristina went on and asked for “a date to send an Argentine magistrate to Teheran”.

Don’t hold your breath, Cristina.

While at the, she took time to condemn the UK government for deploying nuclear-armed submarines around the Falklands.

Priorities, priorities.


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