RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12420/denmark-approves-burka-ban

Denmark becomes the sixth European country to enact such a ban, after France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Austria.

“The face is your passport. When you refuse me to see you, I am a victim.” — Jacques Myard, a former conservative MP who supported the ban in France.

“[S]ome people do not want to be a part of Danish society and want to create parallel societies with their own norms and rules.” — Danish Justice Minister Søren Pape Poulsen.

The Danish Parliament has passed a ban on Islamic full-face veils in public spaces. The new law, sponsored by Denmark’s center-right government, and backed by the Social Democrats and the Danish People’s Party, was passed on May 31 by 75 votes to 30.

As of August 1, anyone found wearing a burka (which covers the entire face) or a niqab (which covers the entire face except for the eyes) in public in Denmark will be subject to a fine of 1,000 Danish kroner (€135; $157); repeat offenders could be fined 10,000 Danish kroner.

In addition, anyone found to be requiring a person through force or threats to wear garments that cover the face could be fined or face up to two years in prison.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/tommy-robinson-grooming-gangs-britain-persecutes-journalist/The latest controversy is maddening for many reasons.

Tommy Robinson is a British political activist and “citizen journalist” who came to prominence in Britain almost a decade ago when he founded the English Defence League. The EDL was a street-protest movement in Britain whose aims could probably best be summarized as “anti-Islamization.” It emerged in the town of Luton after a group of local Islamists barracked the homecoming parade of a local regiment returning from service in Afghanistan.

From their earliest protests the EDL’s members sought to highlight issues including sharia law, Islam’s attitudes toward minorities, and the phenomenon that would become euphemistically known as “grooming gangs.” In reality these protests often descended into hooliganism and low-level violence (naturally helped along by self-described “anti-fascists”). The authorities did everything they could to stop the EDL, and the media did everything possible to demonize them. In a foretaste of things to come, very few people made any effort to understand them. And nobody paid any price for (indeed many people benefited from) claiming that the EDL was simply a fascist organization and that anybody who even tried to understand them must be a fascist too. The usual prohibition against sweeping generalizations doesn’t seem to apply if the generalization tilts in that direction.

I interviewed Tommy Robinson five years ago, after he had left the EDL (having by his own admission failed to keep extremists including actual neo-Nazis away from the movement). As he said then, one of the problems of everyone insisting that a particular movement is campaigning for the Fourth Reich is that the few people who think that sounds like a great idea will show up. Whatever his other faults, there is no evidence that Robinson thinks that way. Indeed he was once charged with assault for head-butting a Nazi sympathizer who wouldn’t leave an EDL protest. Not many people bothered with those details. The assault got reported, but not the cause. So the fact that Robinson had head-butted a Nazi became yet more evidence that he himself must be some kind of Nazi.

Anyhow — Robinson wised up slightly, and eventually began to plough his energies into a type of citizen journalism/activism. Some of this has been remarkably brave, some of it remarkably wrong (such as a video he made after last year’s Manchester Arena attack, in which he seemed to furiously suggest that everyone living around a particular mosque in the area must be some type of enemy combatant), and some remarkably ill-advised — not least because it has allowed him to be presented in the worst possible light.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/tommy_robinson_and_the_british_press.html

Unlike the judge who delivered his 13-month sentence, I watched Tommy Robinson’s entire Facebook Live stream on the Muslim grooming gangs trial outside Leeds Crown Court. It is a little over an hour long and very enlightening.

One of the contentions of the court is that Robinson and his small camera crew are breaking the law by standing in front of the courthouse. In reality, they aren’t on courthouse property at all throughout the video. Robinson and his crew are filming on the street. They even ask the police at one point if they are standing far enough away from the courts not to be breaking the law.

The other thing I learned from the video is that ordinary Brits love Tommy Robinson. In the hour that Robinson is outside of the court house, multiple people stop to tell him that they appreciate what he’s doing. Apart from two non-whites, almost all are scared to be filmed with Robinson, but they want to take pictures with him. They want to stop and chat with him.

Almost all the Muslim accused hurl verbal abuse at Robinson about having had sex with his sister or wife or mother. Robinson simply asks them if they feel at all guilty, and by their response, it appears that they don’t.

The courts also contend that Robinson is disturbing the peace, but the only disturbance I saw throughout the video comes from the accused when they tell Robinson that they have “f—– his mother’s fanny,” whatever that means. At one point they even gesture through a courthouse window that they would like to slit the throats of Robinson and his camera crew, and they also threaten to kill a woman on the street. For unknown reasons, they are permitted to make such threats without any repercussions.

One of the plot devices of the Star Trek series is that the captain and crew of the Enterprise, if they encounter a backward society, they must not “interfere” and preserve the society’s “natural” progress to civilization, or the state in which the Enterprise has reached. This is called “The Prime Directive.” It is akin to the “prime directive” of the U.K., by which citizens can be punished for “derogating” or “defaming,” Islam. Tommy Robinson and many other British citizens have been so punished. It is a Kantian moral imperative.

What has this to do with Tommy Robinson? Well, he violated Theresa May’s Prime Directive: Thou shall not call Muslim rapists and groomers scum. Or cast aspersions on their character.

I left this comment on Gatestone and many other sites.

I’ve yet to see anyone touch on the subject of Bills of Attainder, a subject I raise in my column “Magna Carta in the Dustbin.” A bill of attainder allows the authorities to snatch anyone off the street or from his home to be tried, convicted, and imprisoned in secret (with or without a politician’s or legislature’s endorsement). I have seen nothing about it in any blogsite commentary about such a bill. It isn’t rocket science. Two clauses in the MC specifically do not grant the government, or King John, the power of a bill of attainder, Nos. 38 and 39, publicly or otherwise.

The charge against Robinson declared by the police at the time of arrest, “breach of peace,” was changed to “contempt of court.” Apparently, the former offense would not constitute a violation of the terms of Robinson’s suspended sentence from last year and thereby justify immediate imprisonment. But by declaring Robinson guilty of “contempt of court,” the judge was able to ship him straightaway to prison.

In fact, it is clear to people all over Britain what is really going on here. Their country is being steadily Islamized, and their government is abetting this process. Muslims commit outrageous crimes, and police treat them respectfully — then turn around and arrest ordinary British citizens for daring to complain.

“Judicial power never been used before to silence a journalist in Britain and then to silence the silencing…. This lie came directly from Theresa May’s government…. and it was planned to the last detail. A courtroom and a judge were waiting to immediately sentence him. A prison cell was booked in his name…. This combined is the action of a totalitarian state, in all its brutal horror.” — Paul Weston, Pegida UK.

First the good news: on Wednesday, at about noon London time, Tommy Robinson’s former lawyer, Helen Gower, reported on Twitter that “Tommy has just rung me and is well.” He had been receiving e-mails of support and was humbled by them. “He did inform me of some of the things that happened on Friday,” Gower wrote, “but I don’t want to put anything out and I will leave that to his Solicitor.”

Well, there it stands: the media gag order on the Tommy Robinson case has been lifted, but Robinson himself remains in Hull Prison, having been arrested on the street in Leeds, hauled into a kangaroo court, and then sent off to jail. Incidentally, in a YouTube video, Canadian activist Lauren Southern and a member of Robinson’s team have provided a plausible explanation of why the charge against Robinson declared by the police at the time of arrest, “breach of peace,” was changed to “contempt of court.” Apparently, the former offense would not constitute a violation of the terms of Robinson’s suspended sentence from last year and thereby justify immediate imprisonment. But by declaring Robinson guilty of “contempt of court,” the judge was able to ship him straightaway to prison.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/russian-journalist-critical-of-putin-shot-dead-in-ukraine/

A Russian journalist well known for his scathing criticism of the Kremlin was shot dead in his Kiev apartment Tuesday night, apparently in retaliation for his activism, according to Ukrainian national police.

“The first and the most obvious is his professional activities,” Kiev police chief Andriy Krishchenko said of the victim, Arkady Babchenko, who joins the growing ranks of anti-Kremlin activists and journalists who have died under suspicious and/or violent circumstances in recent years.

Babchenko, 41, began his journalistic career as a contract soldier in the Chechnya civil war, chronicling his experience in a bestselling book before serving as a military correspondent for several Russian outlets. He later fled Russia for Ukraine in February 2017 after receiving unspecified threats, which were likely prompted by his extensive reporting on Russian involvement in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-one-arkady-babchenko-murdered-for-journalism/

The Oslo Freedom Forum is now taking place here in Norway. Earlier this year, there was a Freedom Forum event in New York, devoted to Russia. It was called “PutinCon.” I wrote a little about it here. One of the speakers on that occasion was Arkady Babchenko, an incredibly brave Russian journalist. Moscow-born, he served in the army, fighting in the Chechen wars. Then he embarked on his career as an investigative journalist. He fled his country last year, living in Prague, Israel, and Kiev. Addressing us in New York, he said that he had fled “after being afraid for years that they would arrest me, that they would find me at my building’s door and beat me in the head. I was afraid that they would come for me.”

They came for him at his apartment in Kiev yesterday. They shot him in the back three times as his wife was in the bathroom. He died at 41.

The chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, the organization behind the Oslo Freedom Forum, is Garry Kasparov, the onetime chess champion who became a human-rights champion. In a statement, he said, “Arkady Babchenko’s murder is a cowardly act by those threatened by the truths he told. . . . Arkady persisted in telling the truth because he believed in a free, democratic, and humane Russia.”

One by one, they are killed — not just journalists, but any critic of the Putin regime. Why do they keep criticizing, knowing the danger? Love of country, no doubt. And love of truth. A compulsion to tell it. Russia is lucky to have such men as Arkady Babchenko, and so is the world (whether we know it or not).

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/post-war-order-over-not-caused-by-trump-foreign-policy/And not because Trump wrecked it.

The 75-year-old post-war order crafted by the United States after World War II is falling apart. Almost every major foreign-policy initiative of the last 16 years seems to have gone haywire.

Donald Trump’s presidency was a reflection, not a catalyst, of the demise of the foreign-policy status quo. Much of the world now already operates on premises that have little to do with official post-war institutions, customs, and traditions, which, however once successful, belong now to a bygone age.

Take the idea of a Western Turkey, “linchpin of NATO southeastern flank” — an idea about as enduring as the “indomitable” French Army of 1939. For over a decade Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insidiously destroyed Turkey’s once pro-Western and largely secular traditions; he could not have done so without at least majority popular support.

Empirically speaking, neo-Ottoman Turkey is a NATO ally in name only. By any standard of behavior — Ankara just withdrew its ambassador from the U.S. — Turkey is a de facto enemy of the United States. It supports radical Islamic movements, is increasingly hostile to U.S. allies such as Greece, the Kurds, and Israel, and opposes almost every foreign-policy initiative that Washington has adopted over the last decade. At some point, some child is going to scream that the emperor has no clothes: Just because Turkey says it is a NATO ally does not mean that it is, much less that it will be one in the future.

Instead, Turkey is analogous to Pakistan, a country whose occasional usefulness to the U.S. does not suggest that it is either an ally or even usually friendly.

The often-crude imposition of a democratic socialism, pacifism, and multiculturalism, under the auspices of anti-democratic elites, from the Atlantic to the Russian border, is spreading, not curbing, chaos.

There is nothing much left of the old canard that only by appeasing China’s mercantilism can there be a new affluent Chinese middle class that will then inevitably adopt democracy and then will partner with the West and become a model global nation. China is by design a chronic international trade cheater. Trade violations have been its road to affluence. And it seeks to use its cash as leverage to re-create something like the old imperial Japanese Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. U.S. trade appeasement of Beijing over the last decades no more brought stability to Asia than did nodding to Tokyo in the 1930s.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/saving_tommy_robinson_and_english_civilization.html

Tommy Robinson faces the near certainty of assassination while being held in the general prison population at Hull Prison, following his arrest outside the courthouse in Leeds, where he was making a video about the trial of a Muslim grooming gang underway inside. (For background, see this and this.) Thanks to the gag order preventing the British press from reporting on his case, only help from overseas can bring pressure and raise funds for his defense.

Make no mistake: the entire U.K. government and establishment are committed to cultural suicide, by surrender to jihad, allowing no criticism of the spread of sharia law in Britain, and suppressing those who dare expose the costs. Recall that talk show host Michael Savage has been banned from Britain for supposedly causing “unrest” by remarks critical of jihad. He cannot be jailed, but Tommy Robinson can.

An American Thinker contributor currently visiting London emails this morning:

I am staying in London and saw a small protest on Monday near 10 Downing Street. I have seen nothing on TV or in the papers.

FWIW, SKYNews has been running a story on Rotherham on multiple shows. Same story, same reporter but edited differently to create a different package. It’s not like I am sitting in my hotel watching TV, but I have seen this three times. I am sure the most Brits know about Rotherham.

Sadly, my guess is most Brits (or at least Londoners) probably support his arrest. These people seem to value order over freedom. And the PC tone of their news broadcasts, even supposedly right-wing SKYNews, makes our MSM look right of center.

I like London. But the older I get the more I think that culturally these folks would be OK with a benign dictator running the show. It’s probably no accident that some [of the] best fiction ever written about living under soft or semi-hard tyranny or dystopia – Huxley, Orwell, maybe Wells – was written by people who called London home.

At The Rebel Media, for which Robinson wrote, Ezra Levant has established a legal defense fund for Tommy and makes the case for his innocence.

You can watch the entire incident of Tommy approaching the courthouse and getting arrested below. It is complete – an hour and 15 minutes long: