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Burkina Faso: Losing Sovereignty to Terrorists by Lawrence A. Franklin

BURKINA FASO USED TO BE NAMED UPPER VOLTA BEFORE GAINING INDEPENDENCE FROM FRANCE IN 1960.THE NAME ADOPTED IN 1984 MEANS “THE LAND OF INCORRUPTIBLE PEOPLE” HMMMM…RSK

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14504/burkina-faso-terrorists

The progression of terrorist advances in Burkina Faso has reached such major proportions that in January, a state of emergency was imposed on 14 of its provinces, where the situation is so bad that it is too dangerous for children to go to school for fear of attack.

Unless international and NATO efforts are successful in transforming Burkina Faso’s army into a more adequate defense force, the country is likely to succumb to ungovernable chaos.

Burkina Faso’s army desperately needs to begin instituting political and social reforms. This, in tandem with complementary efforts by the U.S. State Department and European foreign ministries, is a necessary step towards retarding the onslaught of terrorist networks.

If Burkina Faso does dissolve into total chaos and loses its sovereignty to terrorists, its equally vulnerable neighbors will surely soon follow.

The West African country of Burkina Faso continues to be plagued by terrorist attacks committed by groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and ISIS. The attacks — on churches, restaurants, embassies and military outposts — not only highlight the inadequacy of the country’s security forces, but threaten the sovereignty of the landlocked former French colony, located on the southern edge of the sub-Saharan Sahel region.

In June 2017, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2359, “affirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, [and] expressing its continued concern over the transnational dimension of the terrorist threat in the Sahel region.”

When British Justice Died Another guilty verdict for Tommy. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274221/when-british-justice-died-bruce-bawer

Trial by trial, imprisonment by imprisonment, dishonest news report by dishonest news report, the miserable bastards who make up the British establishment are steadily transforming Tommy Robinson, a working-class husband and father from Leeds, into an imperishable symbol of the quiet determination, indomitable courage, and love of liberty for which Britain used to be known but which that selfsame establishment has labored effortfully to stamp out during these opening chapters of the Islamization of that once-great nation.

Even those of us who have been closely following Tommy’s treatment by the British courts during the past couple of years – and who, perusing the charges against him, have recognized just how outrageously he has been treated by a judiciary committed not to justice but to the silencing, and if possible personal destruction, of this latter-day Jeremiah – were stunned by the verdict handed down on Friday after a two-day trial.

This was a rehearing of the same case that last year landed Tommy in prison (more specifically, in what amounted, in violation of the Geneva Convention, to solitary confinement), an ordeal from which he emerged, after two months, looking physically and psychologically all but broken. The charges themselves were absurd to begin with: he was taken into custody near the courthouse in Leeds, where he was doing a live report on Facebook video about an “Asian grooming-gang” (i.e. Muslim child-rape) prosecution that was underway inside. He didn’t do or say anything that any BBC or Guardian journalist in similar circumstances might do; but he was arrested anyway – on the grounds that his reporting from out on the street had somehow threatened to prejudice the trial going on inside the building – and was charged with contempt of court.

The speed with which he was tried, convicted, and incarcerated after his arrest in Leeds – the whole process took just a few hours – shocked observers who still thought of British justice as something serious and worthy of respect. His release from prison two months later came after the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, in an unusually blistering ruling, declared that the court proceedings against him had been illegitimate in a number of ways, and ordered his immediate release.

PBS:Rise of anti-Semitism elevates fears in France

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/rise-of-anti-semitism-elevates-fears-in-france

France has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel and the U.S., with 500,000 Jewish people living there. And with several high-profile, anti-Semitic incidents in recent years, along with statistics showing a significant rise in anti-Semitic attacks, there are growing concerns among the Jewish community. Special correspondent Christopher Livesay and videographer Joan Martelli report.Hari Sreenivasan:

An “increasing sense of emergency.” That’s how the president of the European Jewish congress recently described the concern over growing anti-Semitism in Europe. That includes France, where an increase in anti-Semitic attacks has raised the alarm. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Christopher Livesay reports from Paris.

Christopher Livesay:

Every Saturday for the past eight months thousands of people have donned yellow road-safety vests and marched on the streets of Paris and other cities in France. The so-called Yellow Vest protests. What began as and remains a mostly economic campaign against high fuel taxes has evolved into a more wide-ranging anti-establishment protest — sometimes violent — targeting policemen, journalists, the wealthy, the French president. But what’s shocked many here in France is that they’ve also at times targeted jews.

The yellow vest movement is a largely leaderless one that’s given a platform to people of all kinds of ideologies.Yet some people say it’s that same openness that’s allowed antisemitism to rear its ugly head.

Last February police had to step in to protect prominent philosopher Alain Finkielkraut after he was bombarded with insults and anti-Jewish taunts. And some protesters have been spotted calling French President Macron a “whore of the Jews” and their “puppet.”

Nonna Mayer:

The yellow vest is a very heterogeneous movement but it favors the expression of antisemitism because of its populist and anti-elite tones.

Christopher Livesay:

Research Professor Nonna Mayer says the yellow vest movement, while not anti-semitic itself, has accicentally revealed a subset of the movement that is. And statistics who anti-semitic incidents are on the rise, up 74% from last year.

Tommy Robinson, embattled hero By Caroline Rausch

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/07/tommy_robinson_embattled_hero.html

The hero Tommy Robinson has been reconvicted of contempt of court, after his previous conviction was overturned and he was released from prison, but the door was left open for the attorney general to relitigate if he so chose.  He duly did, leading to Robinson’s trial at the Old Bailey on July 5.

Robinson’s lawyer, Richard Furlong, said Robinson was being convicted for what he is, not for what he did.  What he did, that so offended the elite, was stand up for the victims of child abuse.  What kind of a sick society defends child rapists and persecutes someone who wants justice for cruelly raped little English girls?

According to Robert Spencer (Jihad Watch, 4 July 2019), there were approximately 6,850 victims of organized child sexual exploitation in the U.K. in 2015.  That’s at least 18 girls a day in just one year.  For exposing this ghastly crime, Robinson was imprisoned for 2.5 months in solitary confinement, not held in his rightful category, but moved to a Category C prison with the highest number of Muslim inmates, subjected to mental torture and constant threats and abuse, and had all his rights denied “in the interest of public safety.”  Now this fate looms again, and the government wants to once again put him in harm’s way, in the hope that some Muslim inmate will dispatch this troublemaker.

What about being judged by one’s peers? There were only two judges and no jury at Tommy’s trial at the Old Bailey.  One was Rt. Hon. Dame Victoria Sharp, DBE, president of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of England and Wales, the other Justice Warby, two executioners acting on behalf of the establishment.  It’s time for British citizens to tear down the Old Bailey as French citizens tore down the Bastille in Paris on July 14, 1789.

“You Are Born to Clean Our Houses”: Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14469/persecution-of-christians-april

“We are a peace-loving community in this small city, we had never hurt anyone, but we don’t know from where this amount of hate is coming.” – a Christian man who survived the bombing at St. Sebastian’s Church, Morningstar News, April 22, 2019, Negombo, Sri Lanka.

“[C]rosses on graves in an Italian cemetery in Pieve di Cento have been covered with black cloth so as not to offend those who may come from another religion.” – Il Giornale, April 4, 2029, and Breitbart; Bologna, Italy.

“My brother… had compassion for me. He [told me of] the plan my father had devised; to have me beheaded in Qatar because I had refused to convert back to Islam.” – Charles Mudasir, Persecution.org (International Christian Concern), April 22, 2019, Mombasa, Kenya.

“It took about a year for me to save and arrange the required funds to establish a grocery store. However, Christians in this… society are not allowed to initiate a business. I had customers in my shop when Fiaz Khattak led an armed group…. ” — Kenneth Johnson, a poor agricultural laborer who takes care of three children, after he tried to open a small grocery store; Persecution.org (International Christian Concern), April 10, 2019, Pakistan.

Slaughter of Christians

Sri Lanka: On Easter Sunday, April 21, Islamic terrorists launched a bombing campaign on Christians; the death toll reached 253, with hundreds more wounded. Eight separate explosions took place, at least two of which were suicide bombings: three targeted churches celebrating Easter Sunday Mass; four targeted hotels frequented by Western tourists possibly in connection with Easter holiday; one blast was in a house, and killed three police officers during a security operation. At least 39 foreigners — including citizens of the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan, Denmark and Portugal — were among the dead.

Boris Johnson: British Jews Among Immigrant Groups Who Have ‘Helped to Make Our National Culture’

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/05/boris-johnson-british-jews-among-immigrant-groups-who-have-helped-to-make-our-national-culture/

In remarks at a Conservative Party hustings on Friday, Boris Johnson hailed British Jews as one of the immigrant groups who “adapted and they have made their lives and they have helped to make our national culture.”

“That’s what I want for our country, I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be and to feel British,” he said.

Johnson — a former London mayor and foreign secretary — is battling current Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt to succeed Prime Minister Theresa May, who announced her resignation in May over her failure to handle the Brexit issue. The winner will be declared later this month.

Watch Friday’s event below (via The Guardian). Johnson’s comment about Jews occurs at around the 40:30 mark:

Rabid French Antisemite Dieudonné Sentenced by Paris Court for Money Laundering, Tax Evasion by Ben Cohen

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/07/05/rabid-french-antisemite-dieudonne-sentenced-by-paris-court-for-money-laundering-tax-evasion/

The rabidly antisemitic French comedian Dieudonné M’bala M’bala was sentenced to two years in prison by the Paris Criminal Court on Friday, which convicted him of tax evasion and money laundering.

However, the comedian — who has built his reputation in France by mocking the Nazi Holocaust and promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories — is unlikely to serve actual jail time and will perform “community service” instead, Radio France International reported. He has also been ordered to pay a fine of 200,000 euros (approximately $225,000).

ROD LIDDLE ON ANTI-SEMITISM IN 2018

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
Roderick E. Liddle is an English journalist, and an associate editor of The Spectator.

‘This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it…. Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place…. Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended – and uttered…. And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge)….

Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more…. It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement…. Here’s the test – if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle East’s only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.’
Rod Liddle (2018)

US and Iran: What is NOT a Smart Policy by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14498/trump-iran-policy

Rooting for President Trump to fail in his policy with Iran means calling for empowering and emboldening a theocratic regime that has consistently threatened “Death to America” — with nukes, presumably, if it had the capability, which it is busy acquiring.

The core revolutionary pillars of this Iranian government are anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. This country, which some people say they would like to see prevail over President Trump, has also been named, several times, the leading executioner of children. It has killed thousands of Americans, including in the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, and has committed — and continues to commit — the most unspeakable human rights abuses, including flogging and executing minors….That documentation is just a limited accounting of the horrors it has committed; the list goes on.

During President Obama’s eight-year administration, Obama and Kerry made unprecedented concessions, fully respected the Iranian leaders, lifted sanctions, offered them a fast-track to legitimate deliverable nuclear capability and showered the regime with $150 billion — all in an attempt to appease the ruling mullahs. How did that turn out?

Iran gained legitimacy, directed the billions of dollars to Iran’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as Iran’s militias and terror groups, and, through its proxies, has been deepening its foothold in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and strengthening its hold on Hezbollah in Lebanon, Venezuela and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

There are policy analysts, scholars or politicians I have come across who say, “I hope Trump fails.” One area particularly focused on is the president’s policy on Iran. The statement “I hope Trump fails,” however, is not a sound strategy.

Those who hold this view would apparently rather see the country fail than see President Trump do well. Rooting for President Trump to fail in his policy with Iran means calling for empowering and emboldening a theocratic regime that has consistently threatened “Death to America” — with nukes, presumably, if it had the capability, which it is busy acquiring.

The core revolutionary pillars of this Iranian government are anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. This country, which some people say they would like to see prevail over President Trump, has also been named, several times, the leading executioner of children. It has killed thousands of Americans, including in the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, and has committed — and continues to commit — the most unspeakable human rights abuses, including flogging and executing minors.

Hong Kong’s Desperate Cry Condemning violence isn’t enough. The international community needs to make clear which side it’s on. By Benedict Rogers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kongs-desperate-cry-11562264502

Protesters stormed Hong Kong’s Legislative Council building Monday, the 22nd anniversary of the city’s handover to China. The world was shocked, Beijing demanded prosecutions, and Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam condemned what she called “extreme use of violence.” But it’s important to consider why this happened.

I don’t condone violence, and I applaud the vast majority of protesters in Hong Kong, who in recent weeks have remained peaceful, sometimes in the face of police brutality. But instead of simply condemning those who smashed their way into LegCo, understand that it was an act of desperation after years of frustration that their voices are ignored.

Five years ago the peaceful Umbrella Movement inspired the world but changed little. The erosion of Hong Kong’s freedom, autonomy and rule of law has continued. Booksellers have been abducted and disappeared in mainland China. Pro-democracy candidates and lawmakers have been disqualified from office. Academic and press freedom have come under increasing pressure. Lawmakers have introduced a bill that would criminalize “insults” to China’s national anthem. Pro-democracy protesters have been sentenced to long prison terms. The final straw was the bill to authorize the extradition of criminal suspects to the mainland. The decision to suspend it indefinitely, while welcome, does nothing to reassure Hong Kong people, who have seen their rights stripped. They want it withdrawn permanently.

Recent weeks have seen all these frustrations boil to the surface, turning a movement against the extradition bill into a broad call for democratic reform. Hong Kong residents rightly feel they have no say in how they are governed. The chief executive is handpicked by Beijing and rubber-stamped by a 1,200-member electoral college. The legislature is packed with pro-Beijing lawmakers from so-called functional constituencies (professional and other special-interest groups), and the disqualification of some pro-democracy legislators and candidates has further undermined confidence that the body represents the people.