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The Fake News Media of Sweden by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

In most democratic countries, the media should be critical of those who hold power. In Sweden, however, the media criticize those who criticize the authorities. Criticism is not aimed at the people who hold power, but against private citizens who, according to the journalists, have the “wrong” ideas.

TV4 and all other media refused to report that it was Muslims who interrupted the prime minister because they wanted to force Islamic values on Swedish workplaces. When the Swedish media reported on the event, the public were not told that these “hijab activists” had links with Islamist organizations. Rather, it was reported as if they were completely unknown Muslim girls who only wanted to wear their veils.

The Swedish media are politicized to the extent that they act as a propaganda machine. Through their lies, they have created possibilities for “post-truth politics”. Instead of being neutral, the mainstream Swedish media have lied to uphold certain “politically correct” values. One wonders what lifestyle and political stability Sweden will have when no one can know the truth about what is really going on.

In February 2017, after U.S. President Donald Trump’s statements about events in Sweden, the journalist Tim Pool travelled to Sweden to report on their accuracy. What Tim Pool concluded is now available for everyone to watch on YouTube, but what is really interesting is how the Swedish public broadcasting media described him.

On Radio Sweden’s website, one of the station’s employees, Ann Törnkvist, wrote an op-ed in which Pool and the style of journalism he represents are described as “a threat to democracy”.

Why is Pool “a threat to democracy” in Sweden? He reported negatively about an urban area in Stockholm, Rinkeby, where more than 90% of the population has a foreign background. When Pool visited Rinkeby, he had to be escorted out by police. Journalists are often threatened in Rinkeby. Before this incident, in an interview with Radio Sweden, Pool had described Rosengård, an area in the Swedish city of Malmö heavily populated by immigrants, as “nice, beautiful, safe”. After Pool’s negative but accurate report about Rinkeby, however, he began to be described as an unserious journalist by many in the Swedish media, and finally was labeled the “threat to democracy.”

One might think that this was a one-time event in a country whose journalists were defensive. But the fact is that Swedish journalists are deeply politicized.

In most democratic countries, media are, or should be, critical of those who hold power. In Sweden, the media criticize those who criticizes those who hold power.

In March 2017, the public broadcasting company Sveriges Television revealed the name of a person who runs the Facebook page Rädda vården (“Save Healthcare”). The person turned out to be an assistant nurse, and was posting anonymously only because he had been critical of the hospital where he worked. Swedish hospitals are run by the local county councils, and thus when someone criticizes the healthcare system in Sweden, it is primarily politicians who are criticized. Sveriges Television explained on its website why it revealed the identity of the private individuals behind Facebook:

“These hidden powers of influence abandon and break the open public debate and free conversation. Who are they? What do they want and why? As their impact increases, the need to examine them also grows.”

It is strange that Sveriges Television believes that an assistant nurse who wants to tell how politicians neglect public hospitals, is breaking “the open public debate and free conversation”. This was not the only time that the mainstream Swedish media exposed private citizens who were criticizing those who hold power. In December 2013, one of Sweden’s largest and most established newspapers, Expressen, announced that it intended to disclose the names of people who commented on various Swedish blogs:

“Expressen has partnered with Researchgruppen. The group has found a way, according to their own description, without any kind of unlawful intrusion, to associate the usernames that the anonymous commentators on the hate websites are using to the email addresses from which comments were sent. After that, the email addresses have been cross-checked with registries and authorities to identify the persons behind them.”

The term “hate websites” (hatsajterna) is what that the mainstream media uses to describe some of the blogs that are critical of Islam or migration.

It is one thing to be critical of bloggers who you may consider have racist opinions. But exposing the people who have written in comments sections of various blogs in one of Sweden’s biggest newspapers is strange and terrifying.

Hezbollah, Assad Give Hundreds of ISIS Terrorists Tour Bus Ride to Sanctuary In deal, jihadists get air-conditioned trip to Iraqi border, infuriating al-Abadi. By Bridget Johnson,

The government of Iraq as well as the internationally recognized Syrian government in exile sounded the alarm about negotiations between the coalition of Hezbollah and the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the Islamic State that allowed safe passage to more than 300 ISIS terrorists.

The agreement between the parties, following a Sunday ceasefire between Lebanese government forces and the Hezbollah-Assad forces, allowed ISIS fighters to get on tour buses that shipped them and their families from the Syria-Lebanon border to Deir ez-Zor province southeast of Raqqa. The final destination, the Associated Press reported, where they were traveling today and where housing was being prepared, was Al-Bukamal — a mere 13-minute drive from the Iraq border crossing.

In return, ISIS pointed to the burial location of several Lebanese soldiers kidnapped by the terror group in 2014. Bodies have been located and DNA tests are being conducted on the remains.

ISIS documents found in Qalamoun indicated that some of the fighters there were from Chechnya. Syrian state media released images of a fleet of air-conditioned tour buses waiting to load up with jihadists.

“Honestly speaking, we are unhappy and consider it incorrect,” Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi told reporters. “Transferring terrorists from Qalamoun to the Iraqi-Syrian border is worrying and an insult to the [Iraqi] people.”

“There must be no chance for Daesh to breath,” the Iraqi leader added.

Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah claimed in a Monday televised address that ISIS “had asked for a ceasefire in order to negotiate, something that was out of question for us, but as Daesh found itself cornered it surrendered and collapsed — they had no choice but to accept our terms.”

“We have made a deal to which we must commit; we do not stab in the back and we do not betray,” he said of the pact.

The Lebanese military wasn’t so quick to declare ISIS flushed out of their territory, noting the need to clear affected areas and ensure ISIS didn’t leave mines behind.

According to pro-Assad Al-Masdar News, Nasrallah said ISIS was “made by the western intelligence services to serve Israel, and they fought for the sake of the Israeli scheme and the U.S. hegemony.”

Hezbollah began sending fighters to aid Assad in 2012, after the Arab Spring revolution began. CONTINUE AT SITE

Somali Muslim Refugee Who Attacked Ex With Machete Wants English Language Lessons Daniel Greenfield

This tale of Islamoprivilege comes to us from sunny Australia.

Justice Roslyn Atkinson had asked for information on prison conditions during the sentencing Muhumed Samow Ali, a Somali-born man accused of trying to kill his partner with a machete in 2015.

More accurately, he was convicted of it.

He drove his car head-on into his former partner’s vehicle near a train station and struck her in the head with a machete as she tried to flee.

Here’s how bad the attack really was.

Crown prosecutor Sarah Farnden showed the jury a photograph of the woman’s cut to the back of her head.

“It was 6 centimetres in length, it went through a head covering that she was wearing, a hijab, it went to the bone,” Ms Farnden said.

The court heard how after 7:30am on September 10, 2015, the woman was driving home from the train station when the accused drove head on into her car.

He then got out and grabbed the machete from his car, while the woman ran down the street screaming for help.

The prosecutor said the woman recalled being struck on the back of the head and the shoulder and fell to the ground.

Ms Farnden said the attack ended with the “intervention of a number of neighbours who threw items at him” and used “wheelie bins to push him away”.

“It relates to an attack on a completely vulnerable women, it relates to an attack where she is struck on the head and she is struck repeatedly on the back while she lay face down, defenceless on the ground,” Mr Power said.

Members of the Somali community were also in court, supporting the accused, who has an interpreter.

Of course they were. They always do. And he blamed PTSD.

Prior to his sentencing the court has been told Ali suffers from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder related to horrific experiences in Somalia before he came to Australia as a refugee.

Don’t they all. They’re just poor traumatized refugees. With a bad habit of grabbing a machete and hacking away at people.

On the safe side, let’s avoid bringing in anyone from Somalia with traumatic experiences. They might be suffering from PTSD.

But the Somali Muslim refugee has found a sympathetic judge.

His lawyer, Ben Power, said he also had problems observing his religion in jail.

“The situation is there are also very few Muslims in jail; he has real problems with the food in the jail … Ramadan is very difficult because they don’t make allowances for fasting so he has to store up his food in order to eat it after dusk or dawn in order to observe Ramadan,” Mr Power said.

“He says he is often taunted during his required prayers.”

Taunted? That’s almost as bad as taking a machete to your ex-girlfriend’s head while she’s lying on the ground until it reaches the bone.

She said English lessons should also be investigated for Ali “so he is not so isolated”.

We wouldn’t want the psychotic monster to feel isolated. And in ten years, when he’s allowed to rejoin society, he should be able to speak English. How else is he supposed to buy his next machete?

Michael Galak Fear’s Missionaries

So many are afraid to state the obvious, to proclaim that we do not wish to change our laws and the way we live in order to accommodate a separatist minority whose very garments proclaim a refusal to integrate and assimilate.

After the La Rambla atrocity I hoped, although not with much conviction, that the Spanish might do more than engage in yet another resolute clenching of the collective jaw we have seen so often across Europe. I was right, sort of, because Spanish police did a very efficient job of first shooting dead the Islamists, but then it was back to the Continental norm – flowers piled on the site of the latest massacre, candles lit, cuddly toys for the dubious comfort of the dead. Oh, and resolute words, always those vows and pledges never to “let the terrorists win”, as countless politicians have said while the cameras roll. Quite likely they will have grabbed the nearest tame imam to stand beside them for the obligatory photo op. Perhaps someone is playing Imagine in the background.

And after that? To be blunt, nothing. The boatloads of illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East keep coming, with nary the hint of consensus that a slow-motion invasion needs to be stopped, let alone how this might be achieved. Indeed, the exact opposite. When Poland and other nations swear they will not have their cultures overrun, they are denounced as Islamophobes and bigots. With few exceptions, that’s the pathetic extent of fearful Europe’s resolve in the face of terror.

Nobody seems to notice that terrorists could not care less about the immediate reactions of the societies they are changing and squeezing every day, the societies whose liberties and freedoms are being constricted in the name of security. It is a sure bet they are not intimidated in the least by Teddy bears and wreaths on blood-stained pavements. What future victims do immediately after the body parts and dead children are scraped off the streets does not matter to future killers. What does matter is that their targets are afraid, softened up for future submission.

Fear is the weapon of Islamic Terror International. It does not have color or texture, one cannot touch it or see it. One can smell it, though, the sickly, hopeless, constant whiff of unarmed helplessness. Cattle in the abattoir’s holding pen must catch the same scent. This fear is all-pervasive, shaped and crafted by the human bombs and van attackers to percolate through the interstices of our lives, our thoughts, our behavior. It works, too. How many AFL fans heading for the MCG will be thinking the shuffling lines outside the ground make perfect targets — queues waiting for the bag checks, wandings and pat-downs that Islam’s shock troops have made ubiquitous.

This fear pervades our public discourse, just as intended, clouding our responses, our plans and actions — and it is an incredibly cost-effective weapon against our freedoms. This fear is easy to introduce, debilitating in the extreme, insidiously corrosive and easy to pump up to saturation point. It distorts perceptions and inverts logic. Aggressive, intolerant Islam is the reason our malls and public spaces are dotted with bollards, why we are now asked to arrive at the airport a full and inconvenient two hours before flights. Yet what do our leaders tell us? Why, that the greater problem is Islamophobia! We’ve heard it all so often: “exclusion”, “marginalisation”, “disempowerment”, fear of “the other”.

That fear, it has many faces. So many are afraid to state the obvious loud and clear, to proclaim that we do not wish to change our laws and the way we live in order to accommodate a separatist minority whose very garments proclaim a refusal to integrate and assimilate.

The recent massacres in the UK, France and Spain confirm that terror has become simple and cheap. Rather than the immense planning that must go into hijacking aeroplanes and flying them into tall buildings, knives and motor vehicles are the latest keys to martyrdom, paradise and the eternal orgasm with those 72 virgins.

This change in terror’s tools and tactics creates additional difficulties for law enforcement agencies by its unpredictability and lethal simplicity. Any Tom, Dick or Harry (or rather, Mohammad, Mahamad or Mohamet) with a cheap kitchen knife or a rented minivan can become a champion of Islam’s glory. In their personal fight against the infidel rest of us — the Dar al-Harb, the House of War by Islamist designation — the killing of kafirs is a sanctified pastime. Allah’s warriors make no distinction between Jews, Christians or Hindus, men or women, children or the aged, and it is working for them. It took just one man and six pistol shots to ignite Europe’s tinder box and start World War One. A sustained terror campaign ultimately led to the October Revolution. Arab hijackers and the Munich murderers of Israeli athletes were stepping stones on the path to a Palestinian state. Terror is effective because it infests entire societies with existential fear, thus destabilizing them. Even those terror campaigns which failed to achieve their political goals because they were vigorously opposed – here I think of the IRA and Tamil Tigers – achieved measures of success by imposing enormous costs on the societies they targeted.

I often compare Islamist tactics with those of the Communist USSR. While differing ideologically, both are similar in their aims and ways of achieving them. Both are messianic in their outlooks, convinced against all the evidence that their way of life and belief is superior to any other and, as such, will inevitably by adopted by all mankind, willingly or not.

In this context, the changes Muslim immigration and associated terror brought to the West deserve to be examined. The low-skilled and poorly educated migrants came from failed or barely functional, poverty stricken societies often torn by religious conflicts and further complicated by their endemic corruption. Many were traumatized by their experiences of living in what amount to semi-feudal states. The backgrounds of these immigrants have virtually nothing in common with the Judeo-Christian culture of the West, especially in their rejection of religious tolerance. If pervasive, open and vicious anti-Semitism is not enough, an aggressive and often violent Sunni/Shia schism will always be alive and well.

As an aside, I find it grimly amusing to see Muslim clerics from countries with no histories of religious tolerance become sudden and ardent advocates of interfaith dialogue and universal brotherhood as soon as they arrive in Australia. When invited to Kirribilli to break the taxpayer’s bread with a prime minister hot for a multiculti photo-op, subsequent revelations that among his feted guests were would-be executioners of homosexuals and sexually active unmarried women are seemingly of no importance. Apparently it is only native Australians who can be hateful bigots. Sit tight and Waleed Aly will soon produce a column lamenting the racism and intolerance of those who baulk at “cultural differences”.

FIFA and International Olympic Committee Furthering Racism, Terror? by A. Z. Mohamed

Palestinian Media Watch stated that “FIFA has a clear double standard when responding to violations of its statutes. PMW has reviewed hundreds of decisions of the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) (the highest court for sport) and has learned that FIFA and the football community act forcefully to punish even minor violations when committed by other football clubs or even their fans. Yet the PFA’s and Rajoub’s racism and terror promotion, all serious violations, are being ignored by FIFA.”

Swift action must be taken to remove Jibril Rajoub from his posts, and the Palestinian Authority needs to be pressured to replace him with someone whose passion for sports and sportsmanship exceeds that of his lust for Jewish blood. If this is not undertaken, FIFA should oust the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) from its ranks.

The same applies to the International Olympic Committee, which has a duty to remain true to its mission — “to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” It has to threaten the Palestinian Olympic Committee that it will be ousted unless it rids itself of dangerous radicals such as Rajoub.

In its latest violation of the International Olympic Committee’s Code of Ethics in particular and the spirit of sports in general, Palestinian boxer Sultan Abu Al-Haj recently forfeited a match because it was against an Israeli — Druze contender, Amit Madah.

When asked recently by an interviewer on official Palestinian Authority television why he had “refused” to compete in the August 8, 2017 match at the Youth Muaythai World Championships in Bangkok, Abu Al-Haj replied:

“I didn’t make the decision. It’s my coaches and the [Palestinian] Olympic Committee that made the decision, and as an athlete, I cannot oppose them…The decision was reached that it is forbidden to compete with [Israelis] because it’s beneath my dignity and dishonorable to compete with them and recognize them [sic] the State of Israel.”

The Palestinian Olympic Committee (POC) is headed by Fatah Central committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, a senior Palestinian Authority (PA) leader. As the research organization Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented extensively, Rajoub — who also heads the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) — does not use sports as a means to building bridges or establishing peaceful relations between the PA and Israel, but rather as an additional tool to demonize the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

Afghanistan: How We See It vs. How They See It by Nonie Darwish

CNN International, which is widely watched in the Muslim world, has not been fair to the American position in the current clash between Islam and the West and Israel. Western media have a strong presence in the Middle East but refuse to bring much needed enlightenment to the Muslim public, and explain that the West has a legitimate right to self-defense against Islamic jihadist terrorism. As a result, the majority of Muslims in the Middle East, and many in the West, have no clue why America is in Afghanistan and why Syria is a huge security threat to Western nations.

After the invasion of Afghanistan, Islamic propaganda told Muslims that the US was intentionally poisoning its humanitarian food supplies in order to hurt the Afghani people. My own cousin, who received a good education in Cairo, called during the Afghan war to ask, “Why is the US poisoning Afghanis?”

It is hard for the Western mind to understand why the Muslim leadership and media are frantically trying to keep the public hostile and misinformed as to why the US is in Afghanistan. It is because the truth about violent jihad against the West launched from Afghanistan must be hidden and protected. There is an Islamic law that commands every Muslim head of state to conduct jihad and never abandon that sacred Islamic duty. Sharia dictates that leaders who refuse to conduct and support jihad must be removed from office. Such uncompromising Sharia laws regarding jihad imposed on Muslim heads of states are ignored and not taken seriously by Western leaders and the media.

It was refreshing to hear President Donald J. Trump define without reservation a US mission to fight terrorism and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, or any other terror groups, when he summarized the US presence in Afghanistan as no longer about nation-building, but rather about “killing terrorists.”

Many Americans, however, are still confused regarding our mission in Afghanistan. This is mainly because the media in general did little to keep the public informed of the complexities of the Middle East and to stay focused on why, after 9/11, the US needed to destroy the safe havens of Al-Qaeda and other terror groups.

Reporting on Afghanistan — not just in the Arab media but also, unfortunately, by many in the US media – often appeared to portray America as the aggressor. That was perhaps a factor in why President George W. Bush overcompensated by including “nation-building” as part of the US mission in Afghanistan. Even though nation-building worked brilliantly in Japan, Germany and South Korea, it unfortunately has failed so far in Muslim nations, which clearly do not want to be “rescued” by infidels.

How to Get Out of the Iran Nuclear Deal by John R. Bolton

Although candidate Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement, his administration has twice decided to remain in the deal. It so certified to Congress, most recently in July, as required by law. Before the second certification, Trump asked repeatedly for alternatives to acquiescing yet again in a policy he clearly abhorred. But no such options were forthcoming, despite “a sharp series of exchanges” between the president and his advisers, as the New York Times and similar press reports characterized it.

Many outside the administration wondered how this was possible: Was Trump in control, or were his advisers? Defining a compelling rationale to exit Obama’s failed nuclear deal and elaborating a game plan to do so are quite easy. In fact, Steve Bannon asked me in late July to draw up just such a game plan for the president — the option he didn’t have — which I did.

Here it is. It is only five pages long, but like instant coffee, it can be readily expanded to a comprehensive, hundred-page playbook if the administration were to decide to leave the Iran agreement. There is no need to wait for the next certification deadline in October. Trump can and should free America from this execrable deal at the earliest opportunity.

I offer the paper now as a public service, since staff changes at the White House have made presenting it to President Trump impossible. Although he was once kind enough to tell me “come in and see me any time,” those days are now over.

If the president is never to see this option, so be it. But let it never be said that the option didn’t exist.
Abrogating the Iran Deal: The Way Forward
I. Background

The Trump Administration is required to certify to Congress every 90 days that Iran is complying with the July 2015 nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — JCPOA), and that this agreement is in the national-security interest of the United States.[1] While a comprehensive Iranian policy review is currently underway, America’s Iran policy should not be frozen. The JCPOA is a threat to U.S. national-security interests, growing more serious by the day. If the President decides to abrogate the JCPOA, a comprehensive plan must be developed and executed to build domestic and international support for the new policy.

Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, the President must certify every 90 days that:

(i) Iran is transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement, including all related technical or additional agreements;

(ii) Iran has not committed a material breach with respect to the agreement or, if Iran has committed a material breach, Iran has cured the material breach;

(iii) Iran has not taken any action, including covert activities, that could significantly advance its nuclear weapons program; and

(iv) Suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the agreement is –

(I) appropriate and proportionate to the specific and verifiable measures taken by Iran with respect to terminating its illicit nuclear program; and

(II) vital to the national-security interests of the United States.

U.S. leadership here is critical, especially through a diplomatic and public education effort to explain a decision not to certify and to abrogate the JCPOA. Like any global campaign, it must be persuasive, thorough, and accurate. Opponents, particularly those who participated in drafting and implementing the JCPOA, will argue strongly against such a decision, contending that it is reckless, ill-advised, and will have negative economic and security consequences.

Accordingly, we must explain the grave threat to the U.S. and our allies, particularly Israel. The JCPOA’s vague and ambiguous wording; its manifest imbalance in Iran’s direction; Iran’s significant violations; and its continued, indeed, increasingly, unacceptable conduct at the strategic level internationally demonstrate convincingly that the JCPOA is not in the national-security interests of the United States. We can bolster the case for abrogation by providing new, declassified information on Iran’s unacceptable behavior around the world.

A Tale of Two Labor MPs By Bruce Bawer

“These recent developments have made at least one thing clear: in Britain’s Labour Party, it’s OK to call for the destruction of Israel and for the silencing of child rape victims – the one thing you can’t do is tell the truth about Islam.”

The other day, I noted on this site that “thousands of pedophile rapes aren’t enough to snap the British establishment out of its reprehensible PC equivocation about Islam.” Underscoring the pathological level of denial about the connection between Islam and so-called “grooming” gangs is a recent controversy – or, more correctly, pair of controversies – involving two female Labour MPs.

Sarah Champion represents Rotherham and until recently was shadow secretary of state for women and qualities; Naz Shah represents Bradford West and is a key ally of Labour honcho Jeremy Corbyn.

Rotherham, it will be remembered, is the city in which it was discovered that more than 1,400 non-Muslim girls had been raped, over a period of many years, by gangs of Muslim men. Police, social workers, and other public officials knew about this mass atrocity for a long time, but kept mum for fear of being called racist. Rape victims who sought to report the crimes committed against them were told that they were racist.

Eventually at least some of the Rotherham perpetrators were brought to justice, and similar patterns of activity were discovered in other cities across Britain. But an air of unease continues to envelop the whole issue. People don’t want to talk about it, and they especially don’t to mention the fact that the rapists share a common religion and nation of origin.

In an August 10 article for The Sun, Sarah Champion sought to confront this discomfort. “Britain,” she began, “has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls.” She continued:

There. I said it. Does that make me a racist? Or am I just prepared to call out this horrifying problem for what it is?

For too long we have ignored the race of these abusers and, worse, tried to cover it up.

No more. These people are predators and the common denominator is their ethnic heritage.

We have to have grown-up conversations, however unpalatable, or in six months’ time we will be having this same scenario all over again.

Champion went on to outline her own experience with the issue. Not long after being elected to Parliament in 2012, she attended a committee meeting at which members of the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council sought to “justify their failure to protect young girls who were victims of this vile crime.” Her response? “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

She launched an inquiry, and found critical problems in both police departments and courts that desperately needed to be addressed. In February 2015, she presented then-Prime Minister David Cameron and his cabinet with a plan for preventing further abuse. But nothing happened. Today “we have warm words and still no action.” Which, she explained, was why she was writing this article.

Note, by the way, one key detail about Champion’s article: she dared to point out that most of the rapists were Pakistanis – but she made no mention of Islam. Apparently she wasn’t willing to go that far.

In any event, her reticence on this point didn’t save her. She’d written the article in an effort to spark official action. Well, it worked – although not in the way she hoped. The article caused a firestorm. So did a brief follow-up column by Sun writer Trevor Kavanagh, who praised Champion for her outspokenness.

In response, Naz Shah drafted an open letter that condemned Kavanagh for using “Nazi-like language” to describe Islam. In fact, he hadn’t even mentioned Islam; his article could hardly have been tamer. But Shah got over a hundred MPs to sign her letter: such is the madness that has taken hold of the world’s oldest parliament.

Champion, feeling the heat, promptly apologized for her article, claimed that The Sun had “stripped” it of “nuance” (in reply, The Sun maintained that she had been “thrilled” with it), and threw Kavanagh under the bus (his column, she charged, was “repulsive and extreme Islamophobic”).

But her mea culpa proved insufficient. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn offered her a choice: resign as shadow minister or be fired. She quit.CONTINUE ST SITE

Europe’s Asylum Disgrace Guess who gets the red-carpet treatment — and who gets turned away? Bruce Bawer

Three years ago, Aideen Strandsson, an Iranian actress who had converted from Islam to Christianity applied for asylum in Sweden on the grounds that apostasy is a capital offense in her home country. (Don’t ask me why her name sounds Swedish rather than Iranian.) This summer, Swedish authorities turned her down. They were fully prepared to send her back to Iran – and to her death – when the Hungarian government stepped in and agreed to take her. It is just one individual’s story, but it illuminates the dramatic difference between Western and Eastern Europe when it comes to matters that will, before too long, decide the future of the continent.

Sweden, of course, is one of those Western European countries that have eagerly granted asylum to armies of Muslims who pose as refugees from persecution but who are, in fact, economic migrants, eager to climb onto the welfare-state gravy train. Hungary, meanwhile, is one of those Eastern European countries that refuse to take in Muslims but are willing to accept Christians.

The logic, in both cases, is clear. Western European politicians and bureaucrats tend to be postmodern multiculturalists – in Sweden, fanatically so. They feel a contempt for their own civilization and they regard this contempt as a mark of sophistication and virtue. They have made a fetish of unqualified respect for other cultures, however objectively undeserving those cultures may be of any decent person’s regard. They are especially fond of cultures that share their own contempt for the West, and hence there is no culture for which they show more deference than that of Islam, which since its founding has been at war with what used to be called the Christian world.

The postmodernists live, of course, in countries that are – or were, until they started ruining it all – free, prosperous, and safe, and they feel an obligation to share their good fortune with as many Muslims as possible, even if it means, in the long run, destroying that freedom, prosperity, and safety. In the case of Sweden, this self-destructive impulse is so strong that the country has actually opened its arms to returning ISIS terrorists – and given them all kinds of freebies to make them happy.

When a Muslim such as Strandsson converts to Christianity, however, all bets are off. Her otherness is immediately erased, effaced, nullified. Western officials who reflexively treat everything having to do with Islam with delicacy and respect take an entirely antithetical view of a Muslim who has converted to Christianity. While they regard Islam, the religion of “the other,” as by definition virtuous – as a faith whose adherents should be automatically esteemed, appeased, and rewarded – they view Christianity, the faith of their despised Crusader ancestors, as intrinsically iniquitous, a religion of conquest and oppression. In the eyes of the truly fervent Swedish multiculturalist, sending someone like Strandsson back to a place like Iran to be brutally executed by the merciless enforcers of sharia law is not obscenely immoral but is, rather, the ultimate gesture of respect – and thus an act of virtue.

What makes Eastern Europe so different from Western Europe in this regard is simple: it is not postmodern. It rejects multiculturalism. Its officials, perversely enough, are actually on their own side. Having been under the Soviet boot within living memory, they have not enjoyed freedom long enough to take it for granted. In their view, their primary duty is not to serve the interests of strangers from distant lands but to preserve the liberty, culture, prosperity, and security of their own people – and to reach out a hand to those who need their help and have embraced their values. “Taking in persecuted Christians,” said Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister, Zsolt Semjén, about the Strandsson case, “is our moral and constitutional duty all at once.”

Palestinians: Destroying the Judiciary by Khaled Abu Toameh

Now that Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership have succeeded in their effort to intimidate social media activists and journalists, they are turning their repressive gaze on judges and lawyers.

The PA government’s proposed bill authorizes the executive branch to dismiss judges; the critics say that this constitutes a breach of the Palestinian Basic Law and jeopardizes the independence of the judicial system. The controversy surrounding the PA government’s new bill targeting the judicial authority is yet another indication of how the Palestinians are marching backward, and not forward, in establishing proper and transparent state institutions.

Abbas and his government are quietly and successfully turning the PA into an autocratic one man-show, making it a private Abbas fiefdom. After the journalists, the media and the judiciary, it remains to be seen whose turn is next.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is facing sharp criticism over its attempt to “encroach” on the judicial authority and turn it into a tool in the hands of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Palestinian lawyers, judges and legal experts say that a new bill proposed by the PA government in the West Bank would have a negative impact on the independence and integrity of the judiciary system.

The controversial draft bill aims at amending the law of the judicial authority so that Abbas and his government would be able to tighten their grip over the work of the courts and judges.

The PA leadership’s bid to take control over the judicial authority comes on the heels of an ongoing crackdown on the Palestinian media and journalists. In recent weeks, PA security forces have blocked more than 20 news websites and arrested scores of journalists. In addition, Abbas has approved a Cyber Crimes Law that gives his security forces expanded powers to silence his critics on social media.

Protests by Palestinian journalists and some human rights organizations have thus far failed to persuade Abbas to abandon the Cyber Crimes Law and punitive measures against reporters. As of now, Abbas’s campaign to muzzle his critics appears to have worked.

Deterred by the new law, which was passed secretly and without consultation with the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and the Palestinian Legislative Council, and the arrest of seven journalists in the past few weeks, many of Abbas’s critics are keeping a low profile.

This month, PA security forces arrested Mashal Alkouk, a Palestinian-American, for posting critical comments on Facebook. Alkouk, a prominent member of the Palestinian community in the US, was arrested on August 19 when he came to the West Bank to attend the wedding of a family member. He was released four days later.

A statement issued by his friends in the US strongly condemned Alkouk’s arrest as a “flagrant assault on individual and public freedoms and freedom of expression.”

The statement noted that Alkouk was arrested for his public activities on website called “Palestinians in the US.” It said that the website is based in the US and serves as a platform for Palestinian and Arab activists living in the US.