RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-africas-slide-1533598238

South Africa needs another enlightened leader like Nelson Mandela, but it keeps electing imitations of Robert Mugabe. President Cyril Ramaphosa confirmed recently that his government plans to expropriate private property without compensation, following the examples of Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

Mr. Ramaphosa says he wants “land reform” to “unlock economic growth, by bringing more land in South Africa to full use, and enable the productive participation of millions more South Africans in the economy.” In his telling, South Africa’s ills are related to the proportion of whites and blacks tilling the soil, not the economic mismanagement of predecessor Jacob Zuma or the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

Supporters of expropriation claim black South Africans own less than 2% of rural land, and less than 7% of urban land, thanks to apartheid-era policies. But the government’s 2017 land audit used questionable data and underestimated land returned to blacks since the ANC won power in 1994. The Institute of Race Relations estimates black South Africans control 30% to 50% of the country’s land.

Mandela insisted that land reform is best achieved through a “willing buyer, willing seller” principle, as it is in other democracies with a strong rule of law. When polled, the vast majority of blacks prefer cash instead of titles. Many black South Africans have streamed into cities to find jobs and better schools for their children.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/07/war-tommy-robinson/

Tommy Robinson was released this week from a British prison after his contempt of court conviction was not merely quashed but scathingly condemned on appeal. Here, with videos and a link to that ruling, is the genesis and gist of England’s disgrace.

Because of restrictions imposed by an English court, this article could not be published in the UK, either in print or on any online forum. In the interests of freedom of speech and the proper rule of law, it was first published on Quadrant Online and again in Quadrant itself. The version below is from our July-August edition
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The rule of law is fragile, and relies on the self-restraint of the majority. In a just society, the majority obey the law because they believe it represents universal values—moral absolutes. They obey the law not for fear of punishment, but for fear of the self-contempt that comes from doing wrong.

As children, we are told that the law is objective, fair and moral. As we grow up, though, it becomes increasingly impossible to avoid the feeling that the actual law has little to do with the Platonic stories we were told as children. We begin to suspect that the law may in fact—or at least at times—be a coercive mechanism designed to protect the powerful, appease the aggressive, and bully the vulnerable.

The arrest of Tommy Robinson is a hammer-blow to the fragile base of people’s respect for British law. The reality that he could be grabbed off the street and thrown into a dangerous jail—in a matter of hours—is deeply shocking.

Robinson was under a suspended sentence for filming on courthouse property in the past. On May 25, while live-streaming his thoughts about the sentencing of alleged Muslim child rapists, he very consciously stayed away from the court steps, constantly used the word alleged, and checked with the police to ensure that he was not breaking the law.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270920/how-british-jailers-abused-tommy-robinson-matthew-vadum

The jailers of newly freed human rights activist Tommy Robinson deliberately subjected him to inhumane treatment behind bars in England, according to independent journalist Ezra Levant of the Canadian news website, TheRebel.media.

The goal of the authorities seems to have been to silence Robinson, perhaps permanently.

“Tommy has endured two months as a genuine political prisoner, and I say that thoughtfully,” Levant said. “I don’t want to throw around the word political prisoner. Britain is still a great liberal democracy, but not in the case of Tommy Robinson, they weren’t.”

Robinson’s lawyers, Carson Kaye of London, released a statement celebrating his release: “The rule of law and the right to a fair hearing are fundamental to every individual and this ruling [is] an example of the procedural safeguards of our system, and its potential for protecting every citizen equally.”

Robinson, a tanning salon owner and anti-Islamization activist whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, was taken into custody May 25 when he reported outside Leeds Crown Court. Robinson had been trying to bring transparency to an opaque legal system distrusted by the public. The 35-year-old married father of three used his smartphone to live-stream on Facebook the arrival of accused rapists on trial for acts allegedly committed while being part of a so-called Muslim grooming gang.

The filming of the alleged pedophile rapists infuriated trial judge Geoffrey Marson Q.C. because he had imposed a ban on publishing news from their criminal proceeding. Within five hours Robinson had been railroaded and sentenced to 13 months in prison.

But on Wednesday a judicial panel headed by Baron Burnett of Maldon, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, quashed Robinson’s contempt of court conviction and ordered him released on bail. The Court of Appeal ordered that Robinson be released pending a fresh trial on the contempt charges before a different judge.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12801/britain-radicals-rehman

How expert are these two clerics at ‘interfaith relations’? Well, they are so good that their main credential is their enthusiastic support for the murderer of somebody accused of ‘blasphemy’.

Despite criticism from Shahbaz Taseer… the UK government had no problem allowing into the UK these two men who, as Shahbaz Taseer said, ‘teach murder and hate’.

In the past year, the UK has banned a fair number of people from entering the country. It has, for example, barred the Canadian activist and blogger Lauren Southern. It has also banned the Austrian activist and ‘identitarian’ Martin Sellner. Whatever anyone’s thoughts on either of these individuals, it is not possible to claim that either has ever addressed a rally of thousands of people which they have used to extol a murderer… Yet Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman has done these things – and yet has been allowed into the UK three years in a row.

It is more than a year since the UK suffered three Islamist terrorist attacks in quick succession. It is also more than a year since the Prime Minister, Theresa May, stood on the steps of Downing Street and announced that ‘enough is enough’.

Yet the striking aspect of the last year has been how little has changed.

Consider, for instance, the lax controls on extremist preachers that the UK had in place in 2016. As reported here at the time, in the summer of that year, two Pakistani clerics performed a tour of the UK. Their seven-week roadshow took in numerous UK hotspots including Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham and the Prime Minister’s own constituency of Maidenhead. The two clerics — Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman — began their tour by visiting the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, at Lambeth Palace for a meeting on ‘interfaith relations’.