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Facebook’s Tommy Robinson takedownBy Anne-Christine Hoff

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/facebooks_tommy_robinson_takedown.html

On February 26, 2019, Facebook removed Tommy Robinson’s official Facebook and Instagram profiles for allegedly violating their community standards. The company’s public statement alleges that Robinson consistently used dehumanizing language and incited violence against Muslims. Yet Facebook’s press release includes not even one screen shot to justify Robinson’s removal.

British news outlet Kipper Central wrote a piece on September 28, 2018 about Robinson’s meteoric rise on Facebook since his creation of an account five years earlier. According to the article’s author Reece Coombes, just before Tommy reached one million followers last year, he posted this message:

“Soon to reach one million followers. That is double as many as our Prime minister Theresa ‘the appeaser’ May.

The elites, establishment and the mainstream media are just so detached from what normal people feel. They continue to label all of us as extreme, fringe or far right but the fact that I have twice as many supporters as that so called ‘mainstream’ politician who is busy making a mess of this country, should give them a wake-up call.”

South African Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema is allowed to make statements on Facebook that truly incite violence, statements such as the one made on March 24, 2018 that call for the taking of other people’s land without payment. Yet he is never deplatformed.

Facebook’s community standards also go further to warn the followers of Tommy Robinson not to show their support on the platform or they too could have their accounts removed. The statement reads:

Are We Seeing the Start of a Global Centrist Revolution? By Neal Simon

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/02/are_we_seeing_the_start_of_a_global_centrist_revolution_139630.html

By Neal Simon

In the past week, we have witnessed the creation of new centrist coalitions in the United Kingdom and Israel — and here in the U.S. in the state of Alaska. In each case, members of the legislative bodies left their current parties to form a new power bloc in the middle of the political spectrum.

In Alaska, one moderate legislator (pictured), by refusing to caucus with his own party, was able to lead the formation of a bipartisan, centrist coalition that will likely put the interests of Alaskans ahead of the interests of either party. In the U.K., 11 members of Parliament from the Conservative and Labour parties left those parties in protest of their leaders to begin a new, independent, centrist coalition. In Israel, the top two centrist candidates for prime minister just joined forces, creating a new party to challenge the increasingly conservative Bibi Netanyahu, who will seek a fourth term when Israeli elections are held in April.

In the U.S., frustration with our government is at an all-time high. A Gallup poll released Feb. 18 revealed that a record number of Americans believe that poor government leadership is the largest problem in the country today. This dim view of our politics is shared about equally by Republicans and Democrats.

The United Church of Christ Wrongfully Attacks Israel by Denis MacEoin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13656/ucc-attacks-israel

Mistakes and falsehoods such as those we encounter throughout the UCC’s misnamed guide to “Promoting a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel”, each one seemingly trivial, cannot be dismissed as the results of a moment’s inattention. Much effort has gone into the writing of this Guide, and factual errors, which take up so much of the text, are clearly the result of conscious assumptions that have never been checked against reputable facts.

If a body of Christians really cares about Palestinian lives, Muslim and Christian alike, not to mention the lives of Israeli children, the lives of everyone on either side, then supporting an illegal and fanatical use of violence by telling lies and permitting distortions in order to incite an anti-Semitic hatred that will embolden and activate further terrorist attacks is beyond measure a contradiction of normative Christian ethics.

The UCC cannot continue to assert its association with Jesus Christ, a man of peace, when they so openly espouse the cause of Palestinian resistance that embraces violence as a solution above any form of peace-making. Jesus said “Blessed be the peace-makers”, yet here is a Christian church that blesses men of violence.

The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a shrinking Christian denomination mainly active in the United States, and “perhaps the most liberal of the Mainline Protestant American denominations”. With just under a million members and 5,000 churches (down from two million members and 7,000 churches in 1957, when it was founded), it still has prominent congregations in the heartland of the American Congregationalist movements, in states such as Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Although the UCC’s membership has included many US governors, senators, Supreme Court Justices such as William H. Rehnquist; some outstanding theologians such as H. Richard Niebuhr, his older brother Reinhold, and Paul Tillich; and several writers, and academics, it is, however, best known today as the church that U.S. President Barack Obama attended for twenty years between 1988 and 2008. For all that time, it was his spiritual home: “Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized.” He attended Trinity UCC in Chicago, with the largest of the denomination’s congregations, some 10,000 members. Trinity UCC is a black or “Afrocentric” church that bases itself on the pursuit of love and justice. Its black congregation stands out as different from the wider UCC’s mainly white membership.

Canadian Court Rules Parents Can’t Stop 14-Year-Old From Taking Trans Hormones by Jeremiah Keenan

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/01/canadian-court-rules-parents-cant-stop-14-year-old-taking-trans-hormones/

The Supreme Court of British Columbia thinks it’s okay for doctors to override a parent’s wishes and administer trans hormones to his child.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada ordered that a 14-year-old girl receive testosterone injections without parental consent. The court also declared that if either of her parents referred to her using female pronouns or addressed her by her birth name, they would be considered guilty of family violence.

As previously reported, Maxine* was encouraged by her school counselor in BC’s Delta School District to identify as a boy while in seventh grade. When Maxine was 13 years old, Dr. Brenden Hursh and his colleagues at BC Children’s Hospital decided that Maxine should begin taking testosterone injections in order to develop a more masculine appearance.

Although Maxine’s mother was ultimately willing to support hormone injections, her father Clark* was concerned about the permanent ramifications of cross-sex hormones. Suspecting that his daughter’s mental health issues might be more the cause than the effect of her gender dysphoria, he ultimately decided that it would be better for her to wait until she was older before she embarked on any irreversible course of treatment.

North Korea’s Single-Minded Ambition by Peter Rowe

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine

THINK of North Korea as a liberation movement with unfinished business—the reunification of Korea—and you have the surest guide to explain its past actions and likely future behaviour. It is vital to keep this in mind, as President Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in claim success in reducing the threat from North Korea.

Summits between enemies like Trump and Kim Jong-un, and Kim and Moon, may grab attention as firsts and breakthroughs. But they do not signal a shift in the North’s ambitions. Rather, they fit into patterns of tactical manoeuvring that Pyongyang has engaged in for decades to meet short-term goals. This is especially necessary for a regime like North Korea which sees itself as an insurgency pitted against a superior occupying force like the US.

North Korea is one of the few successful Stalinist dictatorships. In a small, compact country with a manageable population, the founder, Kim Il-sung, was able to wipe out all his opponents and opposing factions in the first ten years of his rule. His successors, chosen for their ruthlessness, have been able to ensure the loyalty and obedience of the North’s Stalinist party organisation, the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), both to them personally and to their vision of a unified state. The North’s state apparatus, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a shadow, even less well-formed than other Leninist countries. It has no independent existence. The premier and cabinet ministers are all senior members of the ruling KWP. They carry out administrative functions decided and overseen by the party.

Nigeria’s Democracy Survives Saturday’s election was far from perfect, but it’s still good news. See note please

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nigerias-democracy-survives-11551400619

The question never asked: Are African nations that were British colonies better off since decolonization? How many years of tribal wars, corruption and chaos did it take for Nigeria to achieve this fragile state?…..rsk

There’s enough going wrong in Africa that it’s easy to miss the positive developments. Nigeria’s presidential election on Saturday is one of them, even if it was imperfect.

Voters decisively re-elected President Muhammadu Buhari with 56% of the vote, according to the country’s electoral commission. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar took home 41%. Mr. Abubakar, perhaps taking advantage of pre-election confusion, says he doesn’t accept the result. But this doesn’t square with the reality on the ground.

In 2015 Mr. Buhari became the first democratically elected Nigerian leader to take office in a peaceful transfer of power. But the former military dictator—he briefly ruled the country in the 1980s—seemed to be returning to his old ways. He suspended the Nigerian supreme court’s chief justice in January, and for years critics have complained that his anticorruption drive focuses on political opponents. After the election was delayed a week, it seemed Mr. Buhari might be seriously backsliding on Nigeria’s democratic progress.

Independent observers reported some irregularities and violence around the election, but both sides earned criticism. Critically, the shenanigans weren’t widespread enough to tip the result. The country has a long way to go from being a perfect democracy, but it still held an election in which the majority’s candidate won.

Success in Nigeria matters beyond its borders. With some 200 million people, it is easily Africa’s biggest democracy. Dashed hopes for democratic progress in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo were disappointing but all too typical. Serious regression in Nigeria would have been a disaster for democrats across the continent.

Neither choice in Saturday’s contest was inspiring, and Mr. Buhari’s statist economic policies hold back the oil-rich nation. The country could have benefited from the more market-oriented approach offered by Mr. Abubakar, who promised to privatize the state oil company, despite his baggage after decades in politics. But the Nigerian people made their decision, and it’s welcome news that they could control their own political destiny.

Participating in Nigeria’s democracy isn’t always easy. Voters often travel great distances and wait patiently in the sun for a chance to pull the lever. Even with turnout down, millions of Nigerians deserve credit for not losing faith in the process. Now the burden is on Mr. Buhari to live up to their expectations.

Poland, Judaism and Historical Memory It’s a complicated story, and politicians too often attempt to simplify it. By Elisabeth Zerofsky

https://www.wsj.com/articles/poland-judaism-and-historical-memory-11551397831

Call it the pangs of intimacy. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cultivates relationships with Central European heads of state, he has had some uncomfortable moments. A recent spat shows how quarrels over Judaism’s history in the region can complicate cooperation.

During a foreign-policy conference in Warsaw two weeks ago, an Israeli reporter asked Mr. Netanyahu to comment on the controversial “Polish death camps” bill. Signed into law in February 2018, the legislation made it a crime to claim “contrary to the facts” that the Polish nation was “responsible or co-responsible” for crimes committed by the Third Reich during its occupation of Poland. After critics objected in Israel and around the world, Warsaw downgraded the crime to a civil offense.

A Welcome Failure By The Editors

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/a-welcome-failure/

Donald Trump walked away from talks with North Korea, the best possible outcome given that he never should have walked into the talks to begin with.

In the unlikely event that North Korea wanted to give up its nuclear program, it could have demonstrated its commitment over time in low-level talks building toward an agreement. Instead, President Trump took the high-wire route of two direct meetings with Kim Jong-un, giving the North Korea dictator, if nothing else, an incalculable propaganda coup by enhancing his international standing.

Worse, Trump couldn’t help but make boosterish comments about the Supreme Leader, who enslaves and immiserates his people. In Hanoi, he even professed to take seriously Kim Jong-un’s denial that he had anything to do with Otto Warmbier’s murder, as if rogue security services are kidnapping and torturing Americans on their own initiative in the most tightly controlled society on Earth.

All signs were that the North Koreans were heading to a diplomatic win, getting sanctions relief — as well as a U.S. liaison office in Pyongyang and a formal end to the Korean War — in exchange for steps to dismantle its Yongbyon enrichment facility. This is a version of the sucker’s deal that the U.S. has fallen for time and again with the North. Pyongyang’s play is to pocket any economic relief and diplomatic recognition, and then cheat on its commitments. Indeed, President Trump revealed that we are aware of a second, heretofore unknown enrichment facility.

Trump Walks on Kim Give him credit for refusing to accept less than denuclearization.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-walks-on-kim-11551389478
President Trump’s critics are carping that his top-down negotiating model undermined his nuclear summit with Kim Jong Un because the details hadn’t been settled on at lower levels of diplomacy. We give Mr. Trump more credit for walking away from a deal that would not have required North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

Despite the long history of the North’s military threats, only recently has it developed and tested both nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver them across the Pacific. The Hwasong-15 missile, successfully tested in late 2017, is theoretically able to reach deep into the U.S. mainland. For the current U.S. Presidency, which happens to be Donald Trump’s, that is the hard reality. Something has to be done about this threat, and Mr. Trump has thrown away diplomatic convention to address it.

One can quibble about Mr. Trump’s negotiating style—the over-the-top buttering up of the North Korean dictator, pushing the process to a summit before the principals on either side had arrived at a mutually agreed framework. But in the event, President Trump was willing to walk away without the deal Mr. Kim was offering. It was the right decision.

Political Scandal Worsens for Canada’s Justin Trudeau Former justice minister says prime minister’s top aides repeatedly pressed her to drop the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin By Paul Vieira and Kim Mackrael

https://www.wsj.com/articles/political-scandal-worsens-for-canadas-justin-trudeau-11551312209

OTTAWA—A political firestorm surrounding Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau became more damaging Wednesday, as his ex-justice minister accused his top aides of repeatedly pressuring her to drop the prosecution of a global engineering and construction firm.

The testimony delivered by Jody Wilson-Raybould to a parliamentary committee offered the most detailed version yet of events fueling a scandal that risks upending Mr. Trudeau’s re-election effort later this year. She said that between September and December, she and her staff had roughly 10 phone calls and 10 meetings about the matter involving SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. with Mr. Trudeau’s senior aides and other government officials, including staff from the finance minister’s office.

“I experienced a consistent and sustained effort by many people within the government to seek to politically interfere in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Ms. Wilson-Raybould said.

The former justice minister recounted how senior government officials, mostly from Mr. Trudeau’s office, attempted to persuade her to order prosecutors to cut a plea deal with SNC-Lavalin, which is based in the politically important province of Quebec. A plea deal would have allowed SNC-Lavalin to avoid a decadelong ban on bidding on government contracts in Canada and elsewhere.