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September 2018

Jane Mayer: Accuser Told Ronan Farrow She Wasn’t Sure of Story By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/jane-meyer-accuser-told-ronan-farrow-she-wasnt-sure-of-story/

Jane Mayer said on Monday that Deborah Ramirez, who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually harassing her, told her New Yorker colleague Ronan Farrow that she couldn’t be sure of the Supreme Court nominee’s guilt.

Confronted with a New York Times report indicating Ramirez expressed doubts about Kavanaugh’s guilt to former Yale classmates, Mayer said Ramirez shared those doubts before they published their bombshell report on Sunday.

“To Ronan she said she wasn’t absolutely certain, she needed to make certain before she was going to say anything publicly. She remembered the specifics, the graphic specifics, and she tried to remember for sure who that man was who was in her face,” she told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.“With all due respect to the New York Times, which is the best paper in America, just because they couldn’t get the story and speak to her or find the person that we found, who remembered it from back then, doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Ramirez, who opted to come forward after learning Senate Democrats were independently investigating the incident, claims Kavanaugh drunkenly thrust his penis in her face during a dorm party at Yale when he was a freshman.

Who Will Lead the Tories Next? By Madeleine Kearns

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/tory-leadership-candidates-theresa-may-replacement/

A look at the likeliest contenders to replace Prime Minister Theresa May should conservative discontent spark a battle for her job

Speaking at the E.U. summit in Salzburg last week, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, humiliated Prime Minister Theresa May by saying that her Brexit plan “will not work” because it “risks undermining the single market.” To many conservatives, this was further proof of the E.U.’s uncompromising approach to the Brexit negotiations, and of the need for the cleaner break with Europe favored by the Vote Leave campaign.

In other words, the E.U.’s rejection of May’s plan was welcome news to many pro-Brexit Tories. The so-called Chequers deal, which May announced in July, offers a strikingly diluted version of the Brexit the country voted for. When it was unveiled, then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson called it a “turd” and resigned along with some lesser-known ministers.

Nevertheless, Britain must reach a deal with the E.U. by March 29 or else leave without one – and with the clock ticking, even some Brexiteers now favor a more “pragmatic” approach. For instance, Michael Gove, the environment secretary, a self-described “realist” who worked with Johnson on the Vote Leave campaign, has since defended the Chequers deal as “the right one for now,” saying it can be adapted later.

But not everyone within the Conservative party is happy with May’s proposal. In Westminster there are rumors of an imminent leadership challenge. Earlier this month, the London Times revealed that 50 Tory MPs had recently met to discuss getting rid of her. Those party insiders who remain loyal to the prime minister fiercely deny the rumors of an impending no-confidence vote. One told National Review that this story is “categorical bollocks.” Likewise, Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg oftentimes deny these claims, reiterating that it is Chequers, and not the Prime Minister, that they wish to “chuck.”

Still, given May’s political struggles and the discontent with Chequers brewing to her right, one wonders how many Tory MPs are quietly hoping to force her out. Referring to a leadership challenge, one Conservative MP told National Review, “If her policy doesn’t change, we’d end up with a very bad deal for Britain. Then the unthinkable [getting rid of her sooner rather than later] might become the essential.”

Whether or not a leadership challenge is upcoming, conservatives will likely not want Theresa May to run in the next election. They need someone who is capable of leading in decisive times, but also someone with enough grassroots appeal to win a general election. Who might this person be? In no particular order, here are some names being floated around the House of Commons.

University Researcher: ‘Kinky’ People Should Be a Protected Class By Katherine Timpf

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/researcher-kinky-people-should-be-protected-class/Should other groups, like people who curse, get special treatment, too?

A researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, recently argued that “kinky” should be a protected class of people.

Sam Hughes made the argument during an interview with City on a Phil Media. According to Hughes, “kinky” people deserve protection because they are often discriminated against in many of the same ways that people in the LGBT community are discriminated against. They therefore need the legal protection against employment or housing discrimination that comes with being a member of a protected class.

As evidence for his argument, Hughes referenced a study he had conducted on the subject, in which he had apparently found that kinky people were “terrified about losing their jobs over their boss finding out if they were kinky.”

“I want to be clear, if you show up to your job in a latex catsuit, you can be fired for that,” Hughes said. “Not because you’re kinky, but because it’s not the uniform of the job, because it’s disruptive, that sort of thing.”

“But your boss should not be able to go search online, find photos of you somewhere wearing a latex catsuit, and then fire you because they think you’re a pervert,” Hughes continued.

Sorry, but this is completely and totally ridiculous. What’s more, I think it’s actually a little offensive to compare the supposed adversity that someone who is kinky may have to face with the adversity that people do face in the LGBT community. If you’re gay, you have to worry that your normal, everyday public life choices might result in discrimination. For example, you might worry about someone judging you for bringing your same-sex spouse to a company Christmas party. Kinky people don’t have to face issues like that in their everyday lives, because there would never be a situation — at least in any reasonably normal job — where their sexual fetish would come to light in their work environment.

We have a lot of rights in this country, including the right to do anything sexually as long as it’s with other consenting adult(s). This, of course, includes kink. We also have the freedom to post about our lives on the Internet. Yes — if you want to post about your kinky sex life online, you’re totally free to do so. This doesn’t mean that people aren’t going to judge you for what you’re doing. Should you be fired over it? I personally don’t think so, because I personally couldn’t care less what anyone in the world does in his or her sex life. But that doesn’t mean that “kinky” should be a protected class. After all, there are a whole host of other things that you could post online that someone might choose to fire you over — such as tweeting things with offensive words in them. Are we going to make “people who curse” a protected class, too? And, as far as strange sexual preferences go, why is “kink” the only variation that would get to be a protected class? Hell, a boss could easily fire someone over a video of him or her having normal, non-kinky sex online, depending on what that person’s profession was. Why should “kink” get this kind of special treatment? The only reasonable answer is that it shouldn’t and that this is totally insane.

Feminism’s Male Enablers By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/trending/feminisms-male-enablers/

It is hard not to feel a certain Schadenfreude for that community of men in the universities and professions who are feminism’s enablers, “femimen,” as we may call them. These “white knights” have jumped on the feminist bandwagon in an access of estrogen complicity, for a number of parallel reasons: career prospects, self-doubt, cultural acquiescence, fear of exclusion, docility of character, self-promotion, or sexual advantage. Some may even regard themselves as “survivors.” I give three notable instances of the pathology at work.

Michael Kimmel is the founder of the journal Men and Masculinities, the voice of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook, author of many popular books, and a committed feminist. His Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, described in his university bio as “a comparative study of the extreme right, White Supremacists, and neo-Nazis in the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia,” has acquired near-legendary status. His reputation in the field of gender studies is immense and, until recently, untouchable. Now, Kimmel has himself been accused of sexual harassment, a case of a strenuous advocate for women’s rights hoist on his own petard.

So far as I can tell, Kimmel is an unabashed and self-aggrandizing careerist who has never understood the lives of working men. He has thrived on his university authority, popular books and speaking engagements touting the need for understanding of and sensitivity to the plight of women on the part of men enslaved to their own raw and turbulent masculinity. Though he assumes the mantle of enlightened fairness, I regard him as a fraud who has done much harm in promoting the social and cultural dysfunction from which we now suffer. There is a kind of poetic justice in his recent troubles. Naturally, Kimmel immediately played the apology card and lobbied for survival by wishing to “make amends to those who believe I have injured them.” The creepy and patently insincere mawkishness of this star feminist is par for the course. Kimmel is not to be pitied, nor is the feminist sorority to be pardoned. They are equally complicit in acts of malfeasance.

On The New Yorker’s Grossly Irresponsible Story By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/on-the-new-yorkers-grossly-irresponsible-story/

Judge Kavanaugh labels The New Yorker’s report a “smear, plain and simple.” He should be applauded for his restraint. I am struggling to remember reading a less responsible piece of “journalism” in a major outlet.

The piece starts out not with a summary of the story, but with the news that Democrats in Washington are taking it seriously — a weaselly attempt to pass the buck if I ever saw one (“People are saying!”). After that throat clearing, it is acknowledged that the person making the accusation around which the piece revolves had not mentioned it until Kavanaugh was nominated, “was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty,” and agreed to make the charge on the record only after she had spent “six days [] carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney.”

There are no corroborating witnesses. None. Of the “dozens” of classmates The New Yorker contacted, all either failed “to respond to interview requests . . . declined to comment, or said they did not attend or remember the party.” Indeed, we learn late in the piece that the authors could not establish that Kavanaugh was even there. “The New Yorker,” the tenth paragraph begins, “has not confirmed with other eyewitnesses that Kavanaugh was present at the party.” The only “evidence” provided comes from a “classmate” who was not at the party, but is certain he heard about the incident, and from “another classmate” who thinks he heard about an incident that could vaguely resemble the one alleged, but doesn’t know to whom it was done, or by whom. Or, as we would traditionally put it: The only proof provided is rumor.

Two Big Takeaways From the Rosenstein Bombshell by Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/24/two_big_takeaways_from_the_rosenstein_bombshell_138146.html

What should we make of the New York Times’ shocking story that Rod Rosenstein, the second highest official in the Department of Justice, wanted to “wear a wire,” secretly record President Trump, and gather evidence to oust the president via the 25th Amendment? Rosenstein has effectively admitted that he did say something like that, but he has termed it scathing sarcasm, mocking colleagues who pushed him to investigate Trump more aggressively. All this happened when the administration was young and Rosenstein had only been in office a couple of weeks.

The Times’ story has huge implications, both for its substance and for its provenance (who leaked it and why). The two most important takeaways are these:

First, the insiders who tried to nail Trump before the election and afterwards are now turning on each other as they try to wriggle out of their own criminal exposure.
Second, the leak sets a dangerous trap for Trump. He is bound to be infuriated and might be tempted to fire Rosenstein before the Senate votes on Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court justice and before the American people vote in November. Walking into that trap would be political malpractice.

Let’s look closer at each implication. At this stage, we don’t know who leaked the damaging comments. But we do know they must have come from a top law-enforcement official present at a very contentious meeting with Rosenstein. Parts may have come from a one-on-one meeting between Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe, who was then the FBI’s second-in-command and whose boss, James Comey, had just been fired.

These are the same insiders from Loretta Lynch’s DOJ and Comey’s FBI who cleared the gonna-be-president Hillary Clinton of her legal liabilities and then tried to pin those liabilities on her opponent. Their weapon against Trump was America’s powerful counter-intelligence surveillance capabilities. Those are supposed to be used only against suspected spies and require warrants from a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (hence, FISA).

The safeguards broke down because they were deliberately—and cleverly—evaded. To get the court’s authorization, top DOJ and FBI officials relied on opposition research paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee without clearly informing the court about their biased source. Instead, they hid the vital information in an indirectly worded footnote. They failed to tell the court that key supporting evidence (a news article) actually came from the same source. It wasn’t additional evidence at all. Nor did they disclose that the FBI had officially severed its ties to this source for leaking but that the DOJ’s Bruce Ohr was still meeting with him and providing the bureau with his information. They apparently failed to tell the FISA court that the subject of the warrant, Carter Page, had willingly cooperated with U.S. authorities when they asked to interview him.

THE LONG REACH OF GEORGE SOROS

Kavanaugh’s accuser and the curious George Soros links By Cheryl K. Chumley
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/18/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-and-links-ge/

Look at what’s going on with Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation proceedings for the Supreme Court, and the fingerprints of George Soros are all over it.First there was a report from June in the Daily Caller that found “a new political advocacy group that vowed to put $5 million behind an effort to stop … Kavanaugh’s confirmation has significant ties to the liberal financier” Soros.

What are those ties?The group, Demand Justice, established in 2018, gets its money from the Sixteen Thirty Fund — and the Sixteen Thirty Fund received roughly $2.2 million from the Open Society Policy Center, one of Soros’ outlets, between the years of 2012 and 2016.
Who is Christine Blasey Ford, Part II: The Soros connection
https://www.worldtribune.com/who-is-christine-blasey-ford-part-

The lawyer representing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser is a leader in an organization that has been directly funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, reports say.Debra Katz, who is representing Christine Blasey Ford, is vice chair of the Project on Government Oversight. Last month, Katz’s organization, along with several other left-leaning groups, co-signed a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Charles Grassley demanding Kavanaugh records. Katz has also donated thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.Fox News noted that Katz “also has a history of downplaying or dismissing accusations made by women against Democratic politicians – including former President Bill Clinton and former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken.”In June, the Daily Caller found “a new political advocacy group that vowed to put $5 million behind an effort to stop … Kavanaugh’s confirmation has significant ties” to Soros.
FORD’S ATTORNEY DEBRA KATZ HAS CLOSE TIES TO GEORGE SOROS https://davidharrisjr.com/politics/fords-attorney-debra-katz-has-close-ties-to-george-soros/

Debra Katz, who is the lawyer for Christine Ford, is a long-time political activist, with strong ties to George Soros, also known as “The Evil One”. Even though the Democrats insist that Ford is not political, she has marched in several anti-Trump demonstrations, works for a company that makes the abortion pill, has a lawyer with ties to Soros and has an adviser who has worked for Biden, Clinton and Obama. She is also the one that brought Anita Hill to the spotlight.

CHARACTER ASSASSINATION IS A TACTIC OF WAR DARRELL CASTLE

http://www.conservativenewsandviews.com/2018/09/23/constitution/character-assassination-tactic-war/
Casualties of war

War normally brings casualties and lots of them, and this one is no different. One of the casualties is Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court. Today’s Report will use the battle surrounding Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination as an opportunity to discuss the war itself. Please keep in mind that the real issue is not how Judge Kavanaugh treated women when he was in high school 36 years ago. The real issue is Judge Kavanaugh’s conservative view of the Constitution when he is on the bench today.

A war of survival is a war of desperation, and the closer one side comes to losing the more desperate that side will be. Both sides might respect a set of rules for “civilized warfare”, such as the Geneva Convention, until one starts to prevail and then its gloves off for the other. Losing means the loss of everything that side holds dear for itself and for future generations, so the rules no longer apply.

The Democrats have tried very hard to destroy freedom in America. I say that with some doubt but it is true from at least one standpoint; we are no longer free to say or even think whatever we want without suffering the most dire consequences. That seems to be one of the Democrat goals then, to make only expression and thought that they agree with legally and socially possible.
Weakening of control

Despite holding all the high ground in the battlefront, such as the media high ground, the education high ground, the Silicon Valley high ground, and the high ground of Hollywood, they can see that they do not yet control a majority of America and their control of America’s future is weakening. This slipping of their control came about because of the election of Donald Trump and his unique opportunity to appoint two and possibly more Supreme Court Justices, thus swinging the ideological scale back toward the side that elected Trump to do just that.

Since there is no honest reason to reject Judge Kavanaugh, dishonest ones must be devised. Character assassination is one dishonest tactic that should be expected, after all, in war it’s quite a common tactic to use. When one has no ammunition to win a debate honestly, then one will usually resort to a personal attack against the opponent. Should we be surprised then when Judge Kavanaugh has his character assassinated, and his reputation damaged or destroyed by people who have no character but do have a lot to lose.
The character assassination campaign

A Month of Multiculturalism in Britain: by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13015/multiculturalism-britain-august

When the rape charge was put to him, Al-Noor, through his interpreter, told Hull Crown Court: “Guilty. Yes, I did that. Why not?”

A police officer phoned a charity to ask whether it was “culturally acceptable” for an Iraqi pedophile [whom he had just arrested] to have a 12-year-old girlfriend.

Officials received dozens of reports last year that women wanted to block visas to the UK for men they had been made to marry in countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

August 1. In a landmark ruling, a high court judge declared that a Muslim wife could divorce her husband and claim his assets, despite the fact that they married in an Islamic ceremony called a nikah, which is not legally recognized in Britain. In a written ruling, Mr. Justice Williams, who heard the case in the family division of the high court in London, concluded that the marriage fell within the scope of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act because the couple had expectations similar to those of a British marriage contract. The decision came after Nasreen Akhter divorced her husband, Mohammed Shabaz Khan, who attempted to block her separation on the basis that they were not legally married according to English law and only under Sharia law. Previous cases involving nikah marriages concluded that they were legally non-existent, meaning that spouses had no redress to the courts for a division of matrimonial assets if a marriage broke down. The ruling will make it easier for women who are married under Sharia law to divorce their husbands and split their assets. The ruling also appears to enshrine two parallel justice systems — British law and Sharia law — in Britain.

August 2. British teenagers are being forced to marry abroad and are therefore effectively raped and often impregnated while the Home Office “turns a blind eye” by handing visas to their husbands, according to The Times. Officials received dozens of reports last year that women wanted to block visas to the UK for men they had been made to marry in countries Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates. In almost half of the cases, records show, the visas were approved. Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the home affairs select committee, said that she would demand answers from the Home Office over the findings. Experts believe there are thousands of victims in Britain, but that the vast majority are too afraid to come forward.

August 3. Safaa Boular, 18, of Vauxhall, London, was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum 13-year term, for plotting a jihadi attack on British soil. Alongside her mother and sister, who were imprisoned in June, Boular was part of Britain’s first all-female ISIS cell. Boular presented herself at the trial in Western clothing and declared herself deradicalized, but Judge Mark Dennis QC warned that she posed an ongoing threat: “There is insufficient evidence…to conclude at this stage that the defendant is a truly transformed individual.”

August 4. A police officer phoned a charity to ask whether it was “culturally acceptable” for an Iraqi pedophile to have a 12-year-old girlfriend, according to an investigation carried out by The Times. The officer had arrested the 26-year-old man but wanted to be “culturally sensitive” after the suspect said the relationship was acceptable in his community. The charity that took the call, Karma Nirvana, told the officer to deal with the man as he would any other suspected child abuser. The charity, which works with victims of forced marriage, said the case showed the danger of officers whose professional judgment was clouded by fear of being called racist.

August 5. Former foreign secretary (and possible future prime minister) Boris Johnson sparked a political firestorm after making politically incorrect comments about the burka and the niqab, the face-covering garments worn by some Muslim women. He compared Muslim women wearing burkas to bank robbers and letter boxes, but added, “that’s still no reason to ban it.” The ensuing debate over Islamophobia revealed the extent to which political correctness is stifling free speech in Britain. It also exposed deep fissures within the Conservative Party over its future direction and leadership. London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said that Johnson’s remarks did not “reach the bar” to be a criminal offense.

August 6. The Daily Mail removed a report from its website that described the French capital as “Powder Keg Paris” after a French activist, Marwan Muhammad, complained that the report was Islamophobic. The article reported that 300,000 illegal migrants were living in the suburb of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, where drug dealing, crime and poverty were rising due to “immigration on a mammoth scale.”

August 6. Muhammed Mucahid, a 57-year-old a Turkish migrant living in London, was arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in the restroom of a McDonald’s restaurant in Southend-on-Sea. Mucahid was accused of watching the boy attempt to use a urinal, then ushered or pushed him into an empty cubicle. It is alleged he kissed him on the cheek before the boy managed to escape and get back to his father, who had been waiting in line to order food.

August 7. Ishaq Al-Noor, a 21-yer-old Sudanese asylum seeker, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping a 17-year-old student in a cemetery in Spring Bank in Hull, East Yorkshire. When the rape charge was put to him, Al-Noor, through his interpreter, told Hull Crown Court: “Guilty. Yes, I did that. Why not?” Al-Noor, of West Hill, needed the services of one of the few interpreters in Britain who could speak his particular Sudanese dialect.

August 8. A Sky Data Poll found that 60% of Britons surveyed said that it is not racist to compare Muslim women wearing burkas to bank robbers and letter boxes, while 59% were in favor of a burka ban.

August 9. Three members of a Rochdale pedophile grooming gang were stripped of their British citizenship and now face possible deportation to Pakistan. Taxi drivers Adil Khan, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rauf were among nine men imprisoned for gang raping teenage girls in 2012. In 2016, Theresa May, Home Secretary at the time, ruled that the three should have their names deleted from the roll of British citizens. The trio, all of whom have British children, challenged the decision. They claimed it violated their human right to a family life. Senior judges at the Court of Appeal ruled that stripping them of citizenship is “conducive to the public good.”

August 10. A bus driver in Bristol was disciplined after asking a Muslim woman to remove her face veil. “This world is dangerous,” he told her. The 20-year-old woman was with her two-month-old baby when the driver of a bus destined for Bristol’s city center explained that if he could not see her face, he did not know what she was capable of doing. “I’ve been humiliated in public, and I’m disappointed,” the woman said. “It’s 2018, we shouldn’t be like that. I’m being stereotyped.” The bus company apologized for the driver’s actions and said they took action against him.

August 10. Lewis Ludlow, a 26-year-old convert to Islam from Rochester, Kent, pled guilty to plotting a terror attack on London’s Oxford Street. Ludlow, who also used the name Ali Hussain, planned to rent a van and hit pedestrians. He also targeted Madame Tussauds and St Paul’s Cathedral, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said. Ludlow said that he had hoped to kill up to 100 people.

August 10. Prime Minister Theresa May was accused of trying to censor photos of her at a halal butcher for fear of alienating voters. The photo was taken during a campaign stop at London’s Smithfield Market, but her aides begged photographers not to use it, according to the Sun. The source said: “Her staff pleaded with us. They were terrified it would alienate people. Her team were petrified.” The Prime Minister’s office insisted that there were no restrictions on photos.

August 11. Liam Bradley, a 48-year-old motorcycle instructor, accused a Shell gasoline station in Blackburn of “racism” after he was told to remove his helmet while a woman in a burka was refueling her vehicle next to him. Venting his frustration on Facebook, Liam branded the different treatment as “racism at work in Britain,” and urged people to share his post so as to not “let them get away with it.” The post quickly went viral.

August 13. Razwan Faraz, a former deputy head teacher at the Nansen Primary School in Birmingham, lost an appeal to get his job back. Faraz, who was fired after saying that homosexuals should be “eradicated,” had alleged that he was the victim of religious discrimination, but a judge threw out his claim for unfair dismissal. Nansen Primary was embroiled in the “Trojan horse” scandal, in which an anonymous letter exposed an alleged plot by a group of conservative Muslims to take over several Birmingham schools and impose an Islamist ethos there.

August 14. Salih Khater, a 29-year-old British citizen of Sudanese origin, swerved his car into cyclists and pedestrians before driving towards police and crashing into a barrier outside the Houses of Parliament. Police said his case was being treated as terrorism due to the location, methods and alleged targeting of civilians and police officers.

August 15. Thirty-two members of a Muslim sex gang were charged with offenses including rape and trafficking after an investigation into sex crimes against children in Huddersfield. Police in West Yorkshire said the five alleged victims were girls aged between 12 and 18, with the offenses said to have occurred between 2005 and 2012. Those charged include: Banaras Hussain, 37; Banaris Hussain, 35; Mohammed Suhail Arif, 30; Iftikar Ali, 37; Mohammed Sajjad, 31; Fehreen Rafiq, 38; Umar Zaman, 30; Basharat Hussain, 31; Amin Ali Choli, 36; Shaqeel Hussain, 35; Mubasher Hussain, 35; Abdul Majid, 34; Mohammed Dogar, 35; Usman Ali, 32; Mohammed Waqas Anwar, 29; Gul Riaz, 42; Mohammed Akram, 41; Manzoor Akhtar, 29; and Samuel Fikru, 30. A further 12 men who were not named for legal reasons were charged with “numerous offenses in connection with the same investigation.”

August 16. A sermon at the Didsbury Mosque, where the Manchester bomber worshipped, called for the support of armed jihadist fighters, according to the BBC. In December 2016, an imam at the mosque was recorded praying for “victory” for “our brothers and sisters right now in Aleppo and Syria and Iraq.” The imam, Mustafa Graf, said that his sermon did not call for armed jihad and he has never preached radical Islam. The recording the BBC obtained is of Friday prayers at the mosque six months before Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb after an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in May 2017. Abedi and his family regularly attended the mosque and his father sometimes led the call to prayer. The family’s whereabouts on the day of the sermon are not known, but the BBC reported that Abedi bought a ticket for the concert 10 days later. The bomb killed 22 people as well as the attacker, and injured hundreds of others.

August 17. A three-year-old girl was hospitalized after allegedly being subjected to female genital mutilation, which left her severely wounded. A London couple — the man, 42, and woman, 36, of African heritage — was accused of carrying out the procedure. The case is only the third time that charges of FGM have been brought to court. The two previous cases both resulted in acquittals, meaning that there has not been a single FGM conviction in the UK despite its being illegal in the country since 1985.

August 19. The number of girls being forced into marriage ahead of the summer holiday period has increased by more than a third in recent years, according to the national charity Karma Nirvana, which provides training to the police, National Health Service and social services. The group condemned the Home Office for shelving a campaign to raise awareness of the practice of girls taken abroad to be married off to strangers during the “critical” run-up to the summer break — the time of the year when the problem is at its peak. Speaking to The Independent, Karma Nirvana revealed that it had learned of 150 new cases of forced marriage from May to July, an increase of more than a third compared to the same period in 2015, when it received 99 new cases. The charity also found that cases of forced marriage had soared by 40% at the start of the school holidays in 2018. The charity also said that in July, it was receiving reports of cases at a rate of two a day, more than double the average of 25 seen in the first four months of the year, with 44 cases reported in May and June. Karma Nirvana’s founder, Jasvinder Sanghera, warned that thousands of girls would not be returning to school in September, having had their educations cut off and, in many cases, been left trapped in a cycle of poverty after falling victim to the crime.

August 20. Senior politicians and animal welfare groups condemned the British government over a deal that allows meat from lambs slaughtered without being stunned to be exported to Saudi Arabia. They said that the deal, estimated by the government to be worth £25 million ($33 million; €28 million) over the next five years, showed a disregard for animal welfare.

August 22. Abdul Jalil, a 64-year-old migrant from Bangladesh, was found guilty of cheating the British welfare system out of £28,000 ($37,000; €32,000) over a period of eight years. Jalil was spared time in jail after he told probation officers that “he would do unpaid work as long as it’s light work.” The judge ordered him to complete 120 hours.

August 24. A Muslim family was filmed butchering animal carcasses on a patio in public housing in Dagenham, Essex. The footage sparked a hygiene probe from the local council but a woman at the property denied any wrongdoing. It was not known if the family — celebrating Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice — slaughtered the animals at home or were simply butchering them. A columnist, for the Sun, Anila Baig, said that Muslim families traditionally sacrifice a goat or sheep and divide it into portions for Eid al-Adha, but added: “In this day and age, it’s extremely unusual for someone to do this themselves at home.” Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, insisted the family had done nothing wrong in practicing their religion.

August 24. The Lancashire County Council temporarily suspended its ban on beef and lamb from animals that are not stunned, as is required before Islamic religious slaughter. The move is aimed at giving all of Lancashire’s county councilors the chance to reconsider the authority’s ban on halal meat from unstunned animals. The county council’s cabinet decided in July to provide only stunned halal meat, except poultry, to schools. But the Lancashire Council of Mosques objected and threatened to ask Muslim families across the county to boycott all school meals.

August 25. Yusuf Aka, a 22-year-old man from Grovebury Walk, Leicester, was sentenced to five years in prison for randomly stabbing a man during a violent rampage at a hospital in the city. Aka, on parole from a seven-year sentence for armed robberies when the incident happened, told the Leicester Crown Court that he did what he did because he wanted “attention.”

August 26. British Somali teenagers are being taken back to their parents’ homeland under the pretense of a holiday vacation and then kept in detention centers before being forced into marriages, according to the Guardian. The latest government figures showed a 100% year-on-year increase in the number of forced marriage cases handled by Home Office involving Somali children and teenagers. In 2017, the figure rose to 91. There were calls from 65 females and 26 males. Of those, 23 were under the age of 15. London had the highest number of victims at 64. When the Guardian contacted several UK-based Somali community organizations and charities, most said they had not heard of the practice or denied that forced marriage involving British Somali nationals was taking place.

August 30. Mohammed Hamza Siddiq, a 37-year-old convert to Islam, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on charges of encouraging terrorism on Facebook. Siddiq, formerly known as Andrew Calladine, did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody.

August 30. Abubaker Deghayes, 50, a former leader of the al-Quds Mosque in Brighton and brother of Guantanamo detainee Omar Deghayes, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Blackfriars Crown Court in London heard how Deghayes, who arrived in Britain from Libya in 1991 and is the father of two jihadis killed in Syria, threatened to have his wife shot if she gave evidence against him in a separate trial. In it, he was accused of assaulting his wife and children in what was described as an exorcism. Judge Rajeev Shetty reprimanded Deghayes for refusing to stand for the court: “You appear rather arrogant with no respect for the secular nature of our laws. You have refused to stand with the court opening and closing. This does not insult me but insults our proud legal system.”

August 31. Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, a 21-year-old jihadi from Finchley, north London, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to kill Prime Minister Theresa May. Rahman, who pledged allegiance to ISIS, had planned to bomb the gates of 10 Downing Street, kill guards and then attack the prime minister with a knife or gun. His plan was discovered by a network of undercover counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan police, the FBI and MI5. Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said that Rahman was “a very dangerous individual” and that it was “difficult to predict when, if ever, he will become deradicalized and no longer be a danger to society.”

Mark Steyn “These Two Battlegrounds Are Part of the Same Story” (video)

An incisive and sobering look at the West since 9/11 by Mark Steyn, pointing out that since 9/11 Muslim immigration to the western world has doubled, leading to “a great demographic transformation” that has empowered Islamic extremism in Europe’s heartland while the West has spent 17 years “dithering around in the Hindu Kush”. A very worthwhile, if disturbing, view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Ua8KIbPuGtc