Displaying posts published in

June 2018

MARK STEYN ON THE ARREST OF TOMMY ROBINSON

https://www.steynonline.com/8675/tommy-this-an-tommy-that-an-tommy-go-away

But, just before I came on (about 15 minutes in), Rowan and Ross addressed recent events in the United Kingdom and in particular the fate of, er, someone whose name they weren’t permitted to mention but who, um, had been gaoled for, er, something or other… This was somewhat astonishing to me, as I’d assumed empire-wide D-notices had lapsed with the passage of the Statute of Westminster. But mein hosts circled back, cautiously, to the topic toward the end of my interview – and I observed, as I have before, how in almost the entirety of the western world, whenever anyone draws attention to some of the more problematic aspects of Islam, the state cracks down not on the problematic aspects, but on the guy who draws attention thereto. In Britain and Europe, we are an incident or two away from literally “shooting the messenger”.

Rowan, Ross and I all knew we were referring to a gentleman by the name of Tommy Robinson. I expect many of you know that, too. But I doubt most Australian viewers had much of a clue about it, and I’m pretty certain the overwhelming majority of his fellow Englishmen are unaware of his fate. As readers may recall, I have met Mr Robinson just once, at an event at the European Parliament in Brussels. He is an engaging, charismatic fellow, albeit a bit rough-hewn for the refined sensibilities of the metropolitan media – although I thought he had the better of a rather somnolent Jeremy Paxman in this BBC interview.

On Friday, Robinson was livestreaming (from his telephone) outside Leeds Crown Court where last week’s Grooming Gang of the Week were on trial for “grooming” – the useless euphemism for industrial-scale child gang rape and sex slavery by large numbers of Muslim men with the active connivance (as I pointed out to the Sky guys) of every organ of the state: social workers, police, politicians. Oh, and also the media. Me last year, on my time in a certain municipality about thirty miles south of Leeds:

Tracking down the victims of Rotherham required a bit of elementary detective work on my part, but it’s not that difficult. What struck me, as my time in town proceeded, was how few members of the British media had been sufficiently interested to make the effort: The young ladies were unstoppably garrulous in part because, with a few honorable exceptions, so few of their countrymen have ever sought them out to hear their stories.

You can say a lot of things about Tommy Robinson, but he’s one of the embarrassingly small number of Britons who recognizes the horror inflicted on those young and vulnerable girls on the receiving end of “diversity” and seeks to do something about it.

So on Friday he was outside the Crown Court in Leeds. He was not demonstrating, or accosting or chanting, or even speaking. He was just pointing his mobile phone upon the scene from a distance. Within minutes, seven coppers showed up in whatever they use instead of a Black Maria these days, tossed him inside it and drove off. In other words, these were not “investigating officers” called to the scene: They showed up with the intent to take him away. Within hours, he was tried, convicted and gaoled – at HM Prison Hull, a Category B chokey, or one level below maximum security. The judge in the case, one Geoffrey Marson, spent all of four minutes on trying, convicting and sentencing Robinson. It is not clear whether that leisurely tribunal included his order expressly forbidding “any report on these proceedings” (the case is Regina vs Yaxley-Lennon because that’s Robinson’s real name).

Which is why, all the way over in Sydney, Messrs Dean and Cameron were being so vague and cautious. In Britain itself, early online reports at The Mirror, the Scottish Daily Record, The Birmingham Mail and elsewhere vanished instantly, and silence has been maintained, especially on radio and TV, ever since.

The Senate’s Nuclear Insurance Space sensors would be a game-changer in missile defense.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-senates-nuclear-insurance-1528661534

Whether or not President Trump strikes a nuclear deal at his summit with Kim Jong Un, the U.S. still needs to prepare for attacks on its homeland and abroad. China recently installed missile systems on artificial islands in the South China Sea, while economic backwaters like Russia and Iran invest heavily in missile tests and research. At least Congress is developing bipartisan support for missile defense.

The Senate this week is expected to vote on its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which the Armed Services Committee approved 25-2 in May. While missile defense can’t perfectly insulate the U.S. or its troops abroad, the new legislation includes notable improvements that would make America’s rivals think twice before striking.

The U.S. fields several missile-defense systems around the world, but each has its own radar. The Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense is deployed at sea and can bring down regional threats inside the atmosphere. The Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) protects the U.S. homeland by targeting long-range missiles in space. But the systems don’t communicate and coordinate well.

To Jerusalem And Back / Alex Ryvchin

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/to-jerusalem-and-back/

I land at Ben-Gurion Airport just before midnight and begin the long ascent to Jerusalem. The headiness hits me immediately and will remain until I depart 10 days later. A few hours later I sit bleary-eyed at breakfast ahead of a day spent trading ideas with some of Israel’s finest intellects from diplomacy, journalism and academia. I take lunch with the Director-General of the Foreign Ministry, Yuval Rotem, former Ambassador to Australia. A perfect specimen of energy meeting acumen, sneeringly called ‘cunning’ by Bob Carr in his diaries, Yuval at once sees the big picture while recalling the smallest detail. In the evening, I dine on Kurdish dumplings and hummus while discussing war and peace with a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister.

The following morning I depart for the Palestinian Territories to visit a Palestinian refugee camp, meet the Mayor of Bethlehem, and venture into darkest Hebron. I enter the camp, really just a common village of paved roads and stone houses, the entrance to which is adorned by an enormous key symbolising the Palestinian quest to return to what is now Israel. The enormity of the key aptly captures the degree to which the Palestinians are anchored in the past, unable to conceive of a future. Everywhere I turn I see the images of their ‘martyrs’. A corflute shows a young man with a Hamas headband and the smouldering wreck of an Israeli passenger bus he detonated. Where I come from such people are considered the lowest of cowards whose names should be blotted out. Here their names are exalted.

Meet Virginia Hall, One Of The Unsung Heroes Of D-Day Hall had a rather unorthodox origin for a spy. She was a socialite from Baltimore, who had a penchant for writing, and the means to live any life she wanted. By Ellie Bufkin

http://thefederalist.com/2018/06/09/meet-virginia-hall-one-of-the-unsung-heroes-of-d-day/

In the spring of 1944, behind enemy lines in occupied France, members of the French Resistance stayed close to their wireless devices, awaiting their call to action. Broadcasting from London, announcers at Radio Londres sent coded instructions to various Resistance factions, disguised as “Personal Messages.” The messages were specifically designed to sound silly but familiar, and as they weren’t a cipher, they drove the Axis powers mad trying to break their code.

Allied forces inundated the broadcasters with codes to send out, knowing that the invasion was in the planning stages, but coming soon. The Allies were depending on the Resistance to choke the German supply lines on the French railroad, and clear the way for their entry into France.

On June 5, as the allies prepared to launch Operation Overlord, a poem familiar to every French man and woman crackled over the airwaves, “Chanson d’automne.” The Resistance had been waiting for months to hear the prose of Paul Verlaine’s 1860 poem.

“Les sanglots longs

Des violons

De l’automne”

The first three lines served as a warning that the invasion would begin within 2 weeks

“Blessent mon cœur

D’une languer

Monotone”

The final part of the message indicated that the invasion would reach France in 48 hours. It was time. This was their official call to action. Plans to sabotage the German supply lines were to be enacted at once.

Outside of the Resistance, there were already members of the Allied Forces behind enemy lines, assisting the Resistance and paving the way for victory in France. Among them, Virginia Hall, a young American woman. Hall had already spent years living in occupied France, gathering information for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). Early in her assignment, she lived openly as an American, though with a code name, masquerading as a journalist, while actually wreaking havoc on the Germans as an Allied spy. When The United States entered the war in 1942, and Germany officially seized the remainder of France, Hall was forced to flee the country — but she wouldn’t stay away for long.

State Democratic Parties Accused of ‘Unprecedented’ Conspiracy to Violate Campaign Laws By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/state-democratic-parties-accused-of-unprecedented-conspiracy-to-violate-campaign-laws/

A federal lawsuit filed by the Federal Election Commission alleges “an unprecedented, massive, nationwide multi-million dollar conspiracy”involving 40 state Democratic parties who illegally funneled $84 million dollars into the Hillary Clinton campaign for president in 2016.

New York Post:

A federal lawsuit says the Clinton team and the Democratic National Committee went around campaign finance laws by pouring money into state parties that then sent the funds back to the DNC to help Clinton, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The Committee to Defend the President, a pro-President Trump PAC, first filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission in December. But the authorities didn’t take action before a required deadline, the group’s campaign finance attorney, who filed the federal lawsuit, told the Review-Journal.

The FEC complaint alleges “an unprecedented, massive, nationwide multi-million dollar conspiracy” in which Dems and Clinton’s camp were “effectively laundering nearly all contributions” given to the Hillary Victory Fund.

That fund is a so-called joint fundraising committee that allowed Clinton to raise money for her campaign and local state parties simultaneously. Possible due to looser campaign finance rules, this type of fund meant Clinton could raise $350,000 or more from a single rich donor.

Backer said most money raised for state parties by the Hillary Victory Fund were then passed back to the DNC and on to Clinton’s campaign.

How very clever of them. Not that it mattered — Clinton lost. CONTINUE AT SITE

INDOCTRINATION BY MARILYN PENN

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2018/06/10/indoctrination/?print=1

In its ongoing mission to “epater le bourgeois,” the NYT Style section features an essay by a woman who decides to give sado-masochism a try. (Wanting to Be Dominated, But Not Quite Like That, Aly Tadros 6/10) She tells us about her previous travails – boiler-plate issues with an immigrant father who didn’t understand her, his illness and death, her drinking and her rejection by a previous boyfriend – none of these either extraordinary or interesting. The woman claims not to be a masochist yet she is willing to be bitten hard, whipped with a belt and treated as just one of this man’s submissive playthings outside of his relationship with the woman he lives with and presumably loves. Part of it is explained by her having the freedom to scream, cry and release all the emotions she previously hid or submerged in alcohol, but part is also the titillation of Fifty Shades of Gray and the ongoing acceptance of deviancy as a suitable subject for mainstream media. The subtext is that it’s restorative to behave like a child whose tantrums will be tolerated rather than a grown woman who is expected to control emotional outbursts and deal with common life situations.

It’s not important to know whether this story is real or fabricated because on its own, it doesn’t merit a second thought. It’s only worth noting as part of the Times’ determination to force recognition and acceptance of all sorts of what used to be called “perverse behavior.” How much of its newsprint is devoted to transgender issues – in education, the military, the arts – how much respectful attention it gave to porn star Stormy Daniels, the front page review a year ago by critic Alistair Macaulay of dance that included anal penetration as part of its choreography. All this from the old grey lady that used to be called the newspaper of record.

Italy’s “Populist” Government, by S. Trifkovic

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/italys-populist-government/

In Italy’s general election on March 4, two parties routinely derided by the corporate media as “populist” won almost 70 percent of the votes cast. A coalition led by Matteo Salvini’s League(Lega, formerly known as Lega Nord, LN) won 37 percent of the vote and a plurality of seats both in the Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate; the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Luigi Di Maio came second with just over 32 percent. The centre-left coalition, strongly pro-EU and led by former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, came a distant third with 23 percent.

On May 31, after 88 days of negotiations and several impasses, Giuseppe Conte was appointed prime minister, with Salvini of the League and Di Maio of the M5S as vice premiers. The news of this unlikely coalition has been greeted with dismay by les bien pensants on both sides of the Atlantic. The German magazine Der Spiegel published a deeply offensive cover (“Ciao, amore!”)which featured a fork of spaghetti with one piece dangling as a noose. “Italy is destroying itself—and dragging down Europe with it,” was the headline. “At a time when the EU could be proving itself as an alternative to Trump’s unilateralism,” it wrote, Europe may instead be facing months, if not years, of squabbling:

“If the populists now govern in Italy, the country could steer itself on a course of constant confrontation with Brussels—by for example, expressing its solidarity on key issues with right-wing populists in France, Austria or Finland or with the EU-critical governments in Hungary and Poland. Or it could take the side of half or full-on autocrats like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and undermine European unity in the process.”

Tommy Robinson supporters arrested after London protest Demonstrators hoping to secure the former EDL leader’s release from jail blocked off a major road in London

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/09/tommy-robinson-supporters-arrested-after-clash-with-police

A group of Tommy Robinson supporters has blocked off a major road in central London in a tense stand-off with police, who made several arrests.

Hundreds of demonstrators descended on the capital and blocked off the road around Trafalgar Square.

Rows of riot police blocked the gate down the Mall leading to Buckingham Palace, where the Royal Family has gathered on the balcony after celebrating Trooping the Colour just hours earlier.

The protest on Saturday afternoon was the latest in what appears to be a bid to secure the release from jail of the former leader of the English Defence League (EDL).

Supporters chanted “Free Tommy Robinson” and hurled missiles and smoke bombs at police.

Hundreds of supporters crowded on to an open-top sightseeing bus, waving union flags, while one supporter posed on the roof in a Donald Trump mask.

By 6pm, officers had removed protesters from the bus and had kettled many of the remaining protesters on the traffic island overhead.

Other Robinson supporters crowded on to the steps of Nelson’s Column and continued to chant slogans.

A spokesperson for megasightseeing.com said: “Our London sightseeing bus was on its normal route when it got caught up in the demonstrations. The bus was stormed by demonstrators, and the driver and a small number of customers got off.

The End of Irish Exceptionalism By John O’Sullivan

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/ireland-abortion-referendum-irish-exceptionalism-ending-european-identity/

The long experiment in cultural transformation has proved to be a mere detour on the way to becoming West Britain.

In Bernard Shaw’s great play John Bull’s Other Island, an English liberal character who at first seems a silly-ass Englishman but who later emerges as a more Machiavellian one, exclaims enthusiastically at one point: “Home Rule will work wonders under English guidance.” This is a surefire laugh line in the theater. It is also a prediction of something that finally happened on Friday, May 25, with the landslide passage of the referendum to liberalize Ireland’s abortion law more or less in line with English precedents. And it symbolizes the end of a 100-year diversion in Irish history from West Britain to a prickly independent Catholic Republic back to West Britain again.

That something this important was at stake was realized very early by William Butler Yeats, who had commissioned the play from George Bernard Shaw to open Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Yeats rejected the play and gave several reasons for doing so, but his main motive was almost certainly that it was alien, both politically and in literary form, to the kind of Irish national theater that Yeats was trying to establish. Shaw thought so and many years later described the incident as follows: “Like most people who have asked me to write plays, Mr Yeats got rather more than he bargained for. . . . It was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland.”

Exposing BDS By Ariel Y. Kramer

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/exposing_bds.html

A lot can be said about the evil intentions of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and there is ample evidence showing BDS leaders’ hypocrisy and philosophical alignment with malicious actors with genocidal ambitions. One could readily find volumes of incriminating documentation about the group’s actions and alliances. And while it should be clear that a solid knowledge base is essential, we believe that it is just as important for the informed reader to take the next step and to educate others about the true nature of BDS. It is with this goal in mind that I provide an educational framework toward the end of this missive.

Firstly, we want to underline the importance of combating BDS because of the danger to Israelis and Jews worldwide allowing it to operate unchallenged presents, but also because its actions and goals should be unacceptable to all people of sound moral standing. While BDS tries to present itself as a human rights movement, it is precisely the opposite – an entity in pursuit of the destruction of the Jewish State by any means necessary, one that routinely violates personal liberties and treats individuals (including Arabs) as collateral damage. Boycotts of the Jews were practiced by some of the worst regimes in history, and BDS is a faux “grassroots” outgrowth of the Arab states’ seventy-year campaign to strangle Israel economically. As such, while BDS would like to be considered a “movement,” it may be more accurately perceived as an underhanded tactic.

Let us focus ever so briefly on the three BDS demands. The first BDS demand is for Israel to “end its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.” The phrasing is ambiguous, as many Israel-haters consider every inch of Israel, and not just the territories won by Israel in 1967, to be Arab land. Hence, the above can be interpreted as a call for the destruction of Israel. “The Wall” is actually a life-saving security barrier that was built in order to stem the waves of Palestinian suicide bombers that were marching into Israeli cities in the early 2000s.