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WORLD NEWS

MY SAY: ON ENGLAND

In The Magna Carta Libertatum (Medieval Latin for “the Great Charter of the Liberties”) established in 1512, illegal imprisonment was outlawed. Chapter 39, stipulates that no “free man,” could be punished without “lawful judgment of his equals.”

In England 1512, these freedoms were to be accorded to titled gentry and not to the common man.

In England 2018, these basic freedoms are denied to critics of Islam, but they are strictly upheld for the hate speech of Jihad enablers. RSK

UK: You’re Not Allowed to Talk about It. About What? Don’t Ask. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12389/britain-dissent-silenced

“I am in a country that is not free… I feel jealous as hell of you guys in America. You don’t know how lucky you are.” — Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad), YouTuber with around a million subscribers.

“I am trying to recall a legal case where someone was convicted of a ‘crime’ which cannot be reported on.” — Gerald Batten, UKIP member of the European Parliament.

“UKIP Peer Malcolm Lord Pearson has written to Home Secretary Sajid Javid today saying: if Tommy is murdered or injured in prison he and others will mount a private prosecution against Mr Javid as an accessory, or for misconduct in public office.” — Gerald Batten.

Good on Lord Pearson.

On Friday, British free-speech activist and Islam critic Tommy Robinson was acting as a responsible citizen journalist — reporting live on camera from outside a Leeds courtroom where several Muslims were being tried for child rape — when he was set upon by several police officers. In the space of the next few hours, a judge tried, convicted, and sentenced him to 13 months in jail — and also issued a gag order, demanding a total news blackout on the case in the British news media. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was immediately taken to Hull Prison.

Most media outlets were remarkably compliant. News stories that had already been posted online after Robinson’s arrest at the Scottish Daily Record, Birmingham Live, The Mirror, RT, and Breitbart News were promptly pulled down, although, curiously, a report remained up at the Independent, a left-wing broadsheet that can be counted on to view Robinson as a hooligan. Indeed, the Independent’s article described Robinson as “far-right” and, in explaining what he was doing outside the courthouse, used scare quotes around the word “reporting”; it then summed up the least appealing episodes in his career and blamed him for an attack on the Finsbury Park Mosque last January. Somehow, the Independent also got away with publishing a report on London’s Saturday rally in support of Robinson.

Also on Saturday, Breitbart UK posted a copy of the gag order, but redacted it as required. The resulting document proved to be a perfect illustration of Western Europe’s encroaching tyranny.

EDWARD CLINE: PERFIDIOUS ALBION

To read the headlines, you would think that Britain was still fighting for her life: defending its shores from German U-boats, launching the RAF to repel the Luftwaffe, and London subjected to regular bombings by V-1, V-2 rockets and flocks of Messerschmitts and Dorniers. As far back as WWI, British newspapers were given what were called “D Notices” by the War Ministry about what news about the war effort could not be published to prevent the enemy from gleaning information about Britain’s plans and capabilities.

But it’s not the 1940s. It’s May, 2018. Britain has slid down the slippery slope to out-and-ought censorship, or to Sharia, the subjugation of Muslims and non-Muslims to Islamic law in which one can criticize Islam usually on pain of death. The current, outstanding instance in this case has been the arrest, sentencing, and jailing yesterday (May 25) of Tommy Robinson for doing nothing, but for “disturbing the peace,” by reporting the outcome of a trial of Muslim groomers outside the Leeds courthouse. There was no mob of Muslims near him threatening to attack him or shout him down; only the police. It was the police who were disturbing the peace by shutting Robinson up, preventing us from hearing what he had to say, and hauling him away in a van, to court to be charged and booked, and then to prison.

It’s as though the government believed that Robinson was about to reveal Britain’s plans to repel the Huns – or the Muslims – or rather, reveal Theresa May’s plans to admit more Muslims into the country. What little of his broadcast outside the courthouse we heard contained little or nothing about the verdict on the groomers. He did not have time except to say what was occurring in the courthouse, before he was surrounded by over half a dozen policemen and shut down. His silencing amounted to that old-fashioned D-Notice with restrictions imposed on the story of Robinson’s arrest. One can’t discuss what happened (at least not in Britain) without risking committing a “crime.”

He was sentenced to thirteen months, as of today.

Media Blackout after Anti-Islamist Activist Jailed in England for Reporting on Muslim Rape Gang Trial By Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/trending/anti-islamist-activist-tommy-robinson-jailed-in-england-for-reporting-on-muslim-rape-gang-trial/

Tommy Robinson, a British activist and journalist, has been arrested outside a Leeds courtroom for livestreaming information about a Muslim gang on trial for raping and grooming hundreds of victims, some as young as eleven. Robinson was taken immediately to prison.

The ongoing trial regards the heinous rape of children as reported by the UK Metro News: “Twenty-six men and two women appeared before a judge at Leeds Crown Court charged with offenses including rape, trafficking, sexual activity with a child, child neglect, child abduction, supplying drugs and making of indecent images of children.”

Hundreds of children were allegedly raped and the defendants are now awaiting a verdict in this case. Muslim rape gangs have been an ongoing problem all over England and the British government has been actively trying to hide the widespread crimes from the public by imposing draconian sanctions for reporting on these trials

Robinson has been arrested before for reporting on similar trials in the past and because he was on a 13-month remanded sentence when he was arrested on Friday, he was put directly in prison, where he is at risk of being attacked by Muslim inmates. Unlike in America, the British media are forbidden from reporting on certain trials, purportedly to avoid prejudicing the jury, but many believe it is to keep the truth from the public. Robinson disobeys the law because he believes, rightly so, that the people are being denied the right to know what is happening in their country. CONTINUE AT SITE

Germany will now train “refugees” to be truck drivers. What could possibly go wrong? By Michael Walsh

Ach, du lieber…

Due to an acute shortage of professional truck drivers the German trucking association has launched a new project to train asylum seekers for the job, Austria’s tabloid Wochenblick reports. The project, which is named “ The drive into your new future” intends to make it easier for asylum seekers to become truck drivers.

In this way, the German Red Cross (DRK) and the Logistics Organization (UVL) want to alleviate the shortage of truck drivers. The concept was developed together with the SVG Driving School North, reports newspaper DVZ. During the training the candidates have to pass through two exams. In addition to its general suitability, the DRK also wants to check the language skills and the status of residence. In addition, a separate “refugee representative” should look after the participants during the three-year training.

The initiative is extremely popular: “Within a few days, 90 interested parties from all over Schleswig-Holstein and even from Hamburg have reported that 50 more refugees have been placed on a waiting list,” says Ilka Hübner, the head of the Red Cross in Kiel. CONTINUE AT SITE

Swift Injustice: The Case of Tommy Robinson by Bruce Bawer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12378/tommy-robinson-injustice

The swiftness with which injustice was meted out to Tommy Robinson is stunning. No, more than that: it is terrifying.

Without having access to his own lawyer, Robinson was summarily tried and sentenced to 13 months behind bars. He was then transported to Hull Prison.

Meanwhile, the judge who sentenced Robinson also ordered British media not to report on his case. Newspapers that had already posted reports of his arrest quickly took them down. All this happened on the same day.

In Britain, rapists enjoy the right to a full and fair trial, the right to the legal representation of their choice, the right to have sufficient time to prepare their cases, and the right to go home on bail between sessions of their trial. No such rights were offered, however, to Tommy Robinson.

The very first time I set foot in London, back in my early twenties, I kicked up into an adrenaline high that lasted for the entire week of my visit. Never, in later years, did any other place ever have such an impact on me — not Paris, not Rome. Yes, Rome was a cradle of Western civilization, and Paris a hub of Western culture — but Britain was the place where the values of the Anglosphere, above all a dedication to freedom, had fully taken form. Without Britain, there would have been no U.S. Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or Bill of Rights.

In recent years, alas, Britain has deviated from its commitment to liberty. Foreign critics of Islam, such as the American scholar Robert Spencer, and for a time, even the Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders have been barred from the country. Now, at least one prominent native critic of Islam, Tommy Robinson, has been repeatedly harassed by the police, railroaded by the courts, and left unprotected by prison officials who have allowed Muslim inmates to beat him senseless. Clearly, British authorities view Robinson as a troublemaker and would like nothing more than to see him give up his fight, leave the country (as Ayaan Hirsi Ali left the Netherlands), or get killed by a jihadist (as happened to the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh).

Parliamentary Questions on the Arrest of Tommy Robinson by Geert Wilders, Marie-Fleur Agema and Raymond de Roon

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12376/wilders-tommy-robinson-arrest

Written questions by Geert Wilders, Marie-Fleur Agema and Raymond de Roon, Members of the House of Representatives of the Netherlands belonging to the Party for Freedom (PVV), submitted to the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs about the arrest of British activist and Islam critic Tommy Robinson:

1) Have you heard about the arrest of British activist and Islam critic Tommy Robinson for “breaching the peace,” while he was covering a trial of Islamic rapists, and that he was within a few hours convicted to 13 months imprisonment? What do you think of this madness?

2) Do you realize that, if the said Islam critic has to spend his jail sentence among Islamic criminals, this may cost him his life? What is your opinion of this?

3) Does, according to you, freedom of speech also apply to Islam critics in the EU and are you willing to immediately voice your dissatisfaction about this violation of freedom of speech by the United Kingdom to your British colleague and demand his attention for the personal safety of the person involved? If not, why not?

4) Do you and your colleagues in the EU realize that you cannot silence the dissatisfaction in society about Islamization by prosecuting or arresting Islam critics, and that a large segment of the population will at a certain time no longer accept
this and turn against you and your colleagues?

5) Can you answer these questions before Tuesday, May 29, 11 am?

Italy, Again, The Euro, Again By Andrew Stuttaford

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/italy-again-the-euro-again/

“Revenge,” it is said, “is a dish best served cold”. The creation of the euro, it is said, was the triumph of politics over economics. The eurozone crisis a decade or so later, it is said, was the revenge of economics.

Well, economics has returned for another helping.

Accepting Italy as one of the eurozone’s founding members was a decision only made possible by ignoring common sense, by twisting statistics, and by making a mockery of the rules. But it was a Pyrrhic victory: Italy was allowed to trick its way onto a voyage that damned it. The euro simply did not fit the realities of Italy’s economy or its politics. By dramatically cutting the country’s financing costs (borrowing lire would have carried a significantly higher nominal cost) adopting the single currency allowed Rome to avoid tackling the country’s high debt load, a debt load that was made all the more dangerous now that it was all denominated in a ‘foreign’ currency. Italy could no longer print lire to pay off its creditors.

When the eurozone crisis hit, Italy was one of the victims, and so, in some respects was its democracy. In something that came uncomfortably close to a coup, the eurozone leadership essentially used Italy’s financial fragility as a lever to secure the replacement in 2011 of Prime Minister Berlusconi by a Brussels man, Mario Monti, a pliable, unelected proconsul. Next time you hear Brussels lecturing Eastern Europeans on democracy remember that.

Italy weathered the crisis in a ‘just a flesh wound’ sort of way. Its problems became chronic, rather than acute, if that’s the correct adjective to describe the consequences of staying stuck in the euro’s deflationary trap: High rates of unemployment and anemic economic growth.

Alberto Mingardi Italy: The Endless Appeal of Easy Money

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/05/italian-elections-endless-appeal-easy-money/

The two political champions of ‘moderate’ Italy — Berlusconi and Renzi — have both fallen, rejected resoundingly by voters very much imbued with the spirit of Brexit and Trump’s deplorables. ‘Populism’ has been the ready explanation, but there is much more to it than that.

On March 5, Italy looked like France without Emmanuel Macron. The national elections, held the day before, were hailed as a triumph for the so-called populists. Added together, the political parties that could be so labelled gained 58 per cent of the votes. “Moderates” of the Left and the Right, namely the Democratic Party and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, performed badly.

This seems to be another tile falling down in a domino effect. Since Brexit (June 2016) and the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States (November 2016), observers have looked for a pattern in political shocks. Some analysts have suggested that middle- and lower-middle-class voters are protesting, all over Western democracies, against globalisation, as they feel its costs (businesses moving to emerging economies) and fail to see its benefits (lower prices, more innovation, better international division of labour). Others have pointed to a sense of frustration people are developing with international organisations, beginning with the EU, that are perceived as an attempt to shield political decision-making from democratic accountability. Almost everybody believes social media has changed the rules of the game, making “mainstream media” less and less relevant and perhaps transforming the world of news into a series of “echo chambers”, where like-minded people listen exclusively to other like-minded people.

Amnesty, morally corrupted? Hal G.P. Colebatch

https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/05/amnesty-morally-corrupted/

When Amnesty International concerned itself with campaigning on behalf of individual and identifiable political prisoners of regimes of whatever political colour it did some real good.

However, it now appears to have become an expensive exercise in wholesale and futile virtue-signalling, with some highly dubious choices of targets. If it is still campaigning for individual prisoners, one doesn’t hear much of this.

Kate Allen, UK Director of Amnesty International (the world’s third-biggest Amnesty Organisation), would-be Labour politician and long-time former mistress of extreme leftist and anti-Israel activist Ken Livingstone, appears to have had much to do with radical changes in Amnesty’s policies and political colour in Britain. Acccording to Wikipedia, ‘Allen undertook a major restructure.’

She was quoted in the International Express of May 7 on planned demonstrations at President Trump’s proposed British visit: ‘We and thousands of our supporters will very definitely be making our voices heard. In the 15 months of his presidency we’ve seen a deeply disturbing human rights rollback.’

Huh? I do not believe there is one single instance of ‘human rights rollback’ that can be blamed on Trump. His attempted crackdown on illegal immigration has nothing whatever to do with human rights, but with stopping the law of a democratic nation being flouted and damage being done with impunity to its polity, economy and identity. The accusation is not only false but will achieve nothing good. Amnesty, in Britain at least, appears to have gone from being a respected and effective defender of persecuted individuals to being just another bunch of virtue-signalling creeps.