German Court Rejects Erdogan’s Appeal Against Axel Springer Chief Court rules Mathias Döpfner expressed opinion protected by freedom of expression By Ruth Bender See note please

Mathias Döpfner is one of Europe’s staunchest defenders of Israel who describes himself as a “non-Jewish Zionist” In his words:” “Israel and Europe should have an understanding of absolutely common interests in the defense of democracy and the values of the free Western world. Israel is the bridgehead of democracy in the Middle East. So it is in the interests of Europe to support it and to strengthen it. We share the same cultural roots and we share the same security interests and foreign policy interests. Let’s bring it closer together.” rsk

BERLIN—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to silence what his lawyers have called libelous mockery of his person in Germany suffered a blow on Tuesday when a court rebuffed a complaint he had filed against a prominent German media executive.

The higher court of Cologne ruled on appeal that Mathias Döpfner, chairman and chief executive of media group Axel Springer SE, expressed an opinion when defending a comedian’s vitriolic text about the president. This opinion, it said, was protected by freedom of expression.

The decision, which confirmed a judgment in first instance, marked a win for critics of the Turkish president and advocates of press freedom, who had accused Mr. Erdogan of seeking to extend a domestic crackdown on critics to other countries.

“The decision shows that the state of law functions in Germany,” said Frank Überall, chairman of the German Federation of Journalists DJV. “Maybe the Turkish president Erdogan will now concentrate again on a factual discourse rather than try and abuse of the German legal system to implement his crude censor fantasies.”

The decision is the latest episode in an unfolding dispute that originated in a poem that comedian Jan Böhmermann aired on a late-night comedy show at the end of March. The lengthy string of crude abuse aimed at the president was meant as an ironic response to Turkey’s prior criticism of another piece of satire and a self-avowed attempt to test the limits of free speech in Germany.

Mr. Döpfner, whose stables of publications include Germany’s mass-market Bild tabloid and the broadsheet Die Welt, had come out in defense of the comedian when it emerged that he was being sued by Mr. Erdogan for insulting the Turkish president. CONTINUE AT SITE

‘Brexit’ Vote Will Change Europe, No Matter the Outcome Britain’s EU referendum calls into question march toward closer ties; resistance over ‘total integration’By Laurence Norman and Stephen Fidler

BRUSSELS—If the U.K. decides in Thursday’s referendum to leave the European Union, it would shake the continent to its political foundations. Even if it stays, the bloc may never be the same.

A decision to leave, which would be a first by a member nation, would deepen the crisis facing a continent already struggling with economic weakness, debt problems, large-scale migration and growing geopolitical instability to its south and east.

At a minimum, politicians and officials say, a British exit would transform the bloc’s balance of power. Negotiations over a new relationship would consume the EU’s energy at a time when European institutions are struggling to respond to the other problems. A U.K. exit also could disrupt financial markets and fire up anti-EU forces in other countries.

Whether or not the U.K. leaves, change is coming. In February, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron struck a deal with the rest of the EU to restrict migrant benefits and detach Britain from the bloc’s push for an “ever closer union.” Mr. Cameron’s effort to claw back power from Brussels, coupled with the referendum at home, is an approach that other European politicians are promising to follow, potentially fragmenting the bloc further.
Known Unknowns of ‘Brexit’

On June 23 the U.K. votes on whether to stay in or leave the European Union. It’s difficult to know exactly what will happen if voters choose leave, but that hasn’t stopped both sides of the debate predicting the future. So, here are three things we definitely don’t know about Brexit. Photo: Getty Images.

The referendum, at a minimum, has delivered a shock to Europe’s political classes, calling into question what some had once regarded as an inevitable march toward a federal EU.

“Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our Euro-enthusiasm,” European Council President Donald Tusk observed in a speech in late May. “The specter of a breakup is haunting Europe, and a vision of a federation doesn’t seem to me like the best answer to it.”

Some see the U.K. referendum, no matter the outcome, as an opportunity to move toward a new EU treaty with a two-tier structure—core countries that are more integrated and peripheral counties that aren’t. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking a return to office in next year’s presidential elections, advocates reinforcing the eurozone with a finance minister and a European monetary fund. At the same time, he wants to maintain a broader EU, at 28 nations, which focuses on a few areas such as research, energy and agriculture. CONTINUE AT SITE

Top historians take down Ken Livingstone’s claim that ‘Hitler supported Zionism’ Jenni Frazer

In a lengthy J-TV interview, former London mayor again refuses to apologize for his ‘historical facts,’ which are refuted by leading Holocaust scholars.— The former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has again refused to apologize for his remarks about Hitler and Zionism, insisting he was “misquoted” after a radio show in the UK in April.

But Livingstone, in an hour-long interview late last week with the Jewish cable channel J-TV, was put on the spot by the interlocutor, historian Dr. Alan Mendoza, who systematically took the Labour politician’s thesis apart, forcing him to admit he had a hazy grasp of facts and that his source, the left-wing journalist Lenni Brenner, had been selective in his interpretation.

In April, Livingstone, a close ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and himself a former MP, was suspended from the Labour Party after going on a BBC radio station and declaring that Hitler had supported Zionism. Livingstone was asked on the show to defend the party after a number of Labour members were suspended for social media posts deemed anti-Semitic.

But Livingstone was ultimately suspended himself after declaring, “Let’s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

The fall-out from Livingstone’s inflammatory remarks led to extraordinary scenes in Westminster as the Labour MP John Mann, who is the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, challenged Livingstone outside TV studios and called him “a Nazi apologist.”

Ken Livingstone appears before a parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism in London on June 14, 2016 (screen capture: YouTube)

Last week Livingstone was called before the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee to give evidence. Insisting that he had been right and was only re-stating “historical fact,” Livingstone claimed that London Jews were crossing streets to tell him he was correct.

‘If I had said something that was untrue and caused offense, I would have apologized, but what I said was true’

Nonie Darwish Moment: Why Moderate Muslims Can’t Destroy ISIS

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Nonie Darwish Moment with Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know.

Nonie focuses on Why Moderate Muslims Can’t Destroy ISIS, explaining how it is connected to why Obama acts like a defense attorney for Islam.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Nonie discuss: Why is Obama Defending Islam at Any Cost?, revealing the true reason the Radical-in-Chief positions Muslims as victims in every speech on terror:

RACHEL EHRENFELD: EMPEROR OBAMA’S NEW CLOTHES

The unfolding misrepresentations of the Obama Administration’s “deal” with Iran, suggest that either the President or the Iranians or both, have been avid readers of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

As in Andersen’s tale, the vain American president, Obama (the Emperor,) cares about nothing except for living up to his preordained legacy as Nobel Peace Laureate, wrapping himself in yarns of deceptions as accomplishments.

Although the American public and the world is led to believe that Emperor Obama initiated the rapprochement with Iran, it seems more likely, just as in Andersen story that idea came from the scheming weavers.

The crafty, terrorism trend-setting, Ayatollah Khamenei and his artful team of disinformation weavers, eagerly sought the opportunity to become the regional power and develop their in-house nuclear arsenal, recognized as early as 2007, the unique opportunity offered to them by then Democratic presidential candidate Obama, who declared he wanted “to talk to Iran.”

After decades of terrorist designations and sanctions, the election of Emperor Obama who strived to justify his unwarranted Nobel Peace Prize, and who did not hide his naked ambition to wear his power as no other American leader has done before him, offered the Iranian the perfect punter to their knotty scheme.

How The Satanic Verses failed to burn:John Sutherland

In 1988, Bradford Muslims didn’t apparently manage to incinerate Rushdie’s book — symbolic, says Kenneth Baker, of the endurance of the written word.

This is a book which, as one eyes its lavish illustrations and dips into its elegant prose, looks as if it ought to come with an option to buy a cut-price John Lewis coffee table.

On the Burning of Books is, in fact, much more than that. It wears its scholarship lightly. A weightier treatment of the topic for those interested can be found in Matthew Fishburn’s Burning Books (2008).

Kenneth Baker? A name that rings bells. But what did he do? He enjoyed high office in the Thatcher years. At one point he was touted as a contender for Downing Street. His legacy is the National Curriculum. Best forgotten is the Dangerous Dogs Act. Spitting Image caricatured him, spitefully, as a beslimed slug. He was probably the last politician in England seriously to use Brylcreem.

He has been out of the political game for decades now and, as Baron Baker of Dorking, has enjoyed his later years as a connoisseurial man of letters. Over the years (he is now 81) he has compiled notes on flagrant examples of book-burning. It’s something that gets his goat.

Fishburn devoted thoughtful chapters to what he called humanity’s ‘fear of books’. ‘I’ll burn my books,’ screams a desperate Faustus in Marlowe’s play, thinking thereby to escape the flames of Hell. He doesn’t: he can’t obliterate the books in his brain. He is what he’s read and must burn for it.

Monotonously cited, in various forms, is the Miltonic epigram, ‘Where men are burned, books are burned.’ (Baker recalls being setAreopagitica as an A-level text in 1952: things were different then.) There’s a sacred aura in printed books, even in the lowliest pulp paperback. My Waitrose has a rack or two. But whoever said ‘Where baked beans are burned, men are burned’?

How Much of our Culture Are We Surrendering to Islam? by Giulio Meotti

The same hatred as from Nazis is coming from Islamists and their politically correct allies. We do not even have a vague idea of how much Western culture we have surrendered to Islam.

Democracies are, or at least should be, custodians of a perishable treasury: freedom of expression. This is the biggest difference between Paris and Havana, London and Riyadh, Berlin and Tehran, Rome and Beirut. Freedom of expression is what gives us the best of the Western culture.

It is self-defeating to quibble about the beauty of cartoons, poems or paintings. In the West, we have paid a high price for the freedom to do so. We should all therefore protest when a German judge bans “offensive” verses of a poem, when a French publisher fires an “Islamophobic” editor or when a music festival bans a politically incorrect band.

It all occurred in the same week. A German judge banned a comedian, Jan Böhmermann, from repeating “obscene” verses of his famous poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A Danish theater apparently cancelled “The Satanic Verses” from its season, due to fear of “reprisals.” Two French music festivals dropped Eagles of Death Metal — the U.S. band that was performing at the Bataclan theater in Paris when the attack by ISIS terrorists (89 people murdered), took place there — because of “Islamophobic” comments by Jesse Hughes, its lead singer. Hughes suggested that Muslims be subjected to greater scrutiny, saying “It’s okay to be discerning when it comes to Muslims in this day and age,” later adding:

“They know there’s a whole group of white kids out there who are stupid and blind. You have these affluent white kids who have grown up in a liberal curriculum from the time they were in kindergarten, inundated with these lofty notions that are just hot air.”

As Brendan O’Neill wrote, “Western liberals are doing their dirty work for them; they’re silencing the people Isis judged to be blasphemous; they’re completing Isis’s act of terror.”

A few weeks earlier, France’s most important publishing house, Gallimard, fired its most famous editor, Richard Millet, who had penned an essay in which he wrote:

“the decline of literature and the deep changes wrought in France and Europe by continuous and extensive immigration from outside Europe, with its intimidating elements of militant Salafism and of the political correctness at the heart of global capitalism; that is to say, the risk of the destruction of the Europe and its cultural humanism, or Christian humanism, in the name of ‘humanism’ in its ‘multicultural’ version.”

Kenneth Baker just published a new book, On the Burning of Books: How Flames Fail to Destroy the Written Word. It is a compendium of so called “bibliocaust,” the burning of books from Caliph Omar to Hitler, and includes the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. When Nazis incinerated books in Berlin they declared that from the ashes of these novels would “arise the phoenix of a new spirit.” The same hatred is coming from Islamists and their politically correct allies. We do not even have a vague idea of how much Western culture we have surrendered to Islam.

Mizzou: Telling Disabled People They’re ‘Inspiring’ Is a Microaggression Someone had better tell the Special Olympics. By Katherine Timpf

According to materials distributed by the University of Missouri Diversity Office, saying “you people are so inspiring” in reference to disabled people is not nice, but actually a microaggression.

The piece of advice is one of many included on a handout titled “Racial Microaggressions in Every Day (sic) Life,” which is available on an official school web page.

According to the handout, declaring that you consider people with disabilities to be “inspiring” is a problem because it amounts to “patronization.” Interestingly enough, the Special Olympics includes a link to subscribe to e-mails of “inspiring stories” on its website — which must mean that the supposedly charitable organization is actually just one giant, offensive microaggression.

Personally, I always considered it pretty normal to be inspired by people who are able to overcome difficulties of any kind — be they physical, mental, socioeconomic, or anything else — but I guess not. Thanks to Mizzou, I can see that this is actually very wrong, and that I am in fact a big jerk.

Among the list of sexist “microaggressions” on the handout is the fact that women aren’t asked as often as men are to help move boxes around the office. Of course, statistically and scientifically, men more often are physically stronger than women — but I guess science and facts don’t matter when discussing microaggressions. (Note: One of my favorite things about being a woman is that no one asks me to move boxes.)

The racial microaggressions include “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” and “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough,” because saying these things amounts to saying that “race does not play a role in life’s successes.”

RONALD LAUDER AT THE U.N.: BUILDING BRIDGES-NOT BOYCOTTS

World Jewish Congress (WJC) president Ronald S. Lauder addressing the plenary session of “Building Bridges, Not Boycotts,” the international summit on the delegitimisation of Israel at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and affirming his organisation’s commitment to the fightback against BDS.

Addressing more than 1,500 students, dignitaries, public officials and representatives of Jewish organisations at the conference convened by, inter alia, the WJC and Israel’s Mission to the United Nations, Lauder pledged that the WJC “will commit all of our resources, and all of our abilities, to help fight BDS.”

And he observed, inter alia:

“I wonder if all those people who support BDS have the slightest understanding of what this movement really means. Those BDS supporters who join marches on campus and chant: ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!’ I wonder if they realize that the River is the Jordan, the Sea is the Mediterranean. These activists are calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. The Muslim groups have their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood …

Make no mistake. The BDS movement doesn’t support the Palestinian people. It is strictly a campaign to delegitimise Israel, which is simply the latest attempt to deny the Jewish People their right to self-determination. Every other people on earth have the right, but BDS wants to deny that basic right to Jews…. ”

“[T]he day of the quiet Jew … of the ghetto Jew are long over,” he warned.

The Trump Nuclear Bomb Other public figures won’t admit they agree with him — but they often quietly adopt his ideas. By Victor Davis Hanson

Donald Trump has a frightening habit of uttering things that many people apparently think, but would never express. And he blusters in such an off-putting and sloppy fashion that he alienates those who otherwise might agree with many of his critiques of political correctness.

Nonetheless, when the dust settles, we often see that Trump’s megatonnage strikes a chord — and, with it, sometimes has effected change. In an odd way, the more personally unpopular he becomes for raising taboo issues, the more resonant become the more refined variants of his proposals for addressing these festering problems.

For the last several months, anti-Trump demonstrators have sought to disrupt his rallies; they attack his supporters and wave offensive anti-American and often overtly racist placards, while burning American and waving Mexican flags — often with a nonchalant police force looking on.

Trump shouts back that their antics are only further proof of his general point: Illegal immigration and an open border have subverted our immigration laws and created a paradoxical movement that is as illogical as it is ungracious. After fleeing Mexico, entering the U.S. illegally, and being treated with respect (try doing the same in any Latin American country), some foreign nationals have been waving the flag of the country they do not wish to return to, while scorning the flag of the country that they demand to stay in. But apparently they are not fond of Trump’s larger point, disguised by his barroom rhetoric, which is that the old melting-pot protocols of rapid assimilation, integration, and intermarriage have been sabotaged — and now the American people can at last see the wages of that disaster on national TV.

In response to the general public disapproval that focused on the violent demonstrations, anti-Trump protestors recently have announced that they will ban Mexican flags from their future rallies. They probably will not, but why did they even play-act that they would? Are illegal-immigration activists suddenly turned off by Mexico and appreciative of the United States? Be that as it may, it would surely be a good thing if immigrants to the U.S. and their supporters stopped attacking the icons of the country that they have chosen to reside in.

For that matter, why suddenly during the past six months did 16 Republican primary candidates begin talking about enforcing immigration laws, avoid the very mention of “comprehensive immigration reform,” and promise to finish the southern border fence? While they all deplored Trump’s mean-spirited rhetoric, they all more or less channeled his themes. Until the approach of the Trump battering ram, outrageous developments like the neo-Confederate concept of sanctuary cities being exempt from federal law were off limits to serious criticism — even from the Republican congressional establishment.

Trump dismissively characterized Judge Gonzalo Curiel as a “Mexican” (the absence of hyphenation could be charitably interpreted as following the slang convention in which Americans are routinely called “Irish,” “Swedish,” “Greek,” or “Portuguese,” with these words used simply as abbreviated identifiers rather than as pejoratives). Trump’s point was that Curiel could not grant Trump a fair trial, given Trump’s well-publicized closed-borders advocacy.

Most of America was understandably outraged: Trump had belittled a sitting federal judge. Trump had impugned his Mexican ancestry. Trump had offered a dangerous vision of jurisprudence in which ethnic ancestry necessarily manifests itself in chauvinism and prejudice against the Other.

Trump was certainly crude, but on closer analysis of his disparagements he had blundered into at least a few legitimate issues. Was it not the Left that had always made Trump’s point about ethnicity being inseparable from ideology (most infamously Justice Sotomayor in her ruminations about how a “wise Latina” would reach better conclusions than intrinsically less capable white males, and how ethnic heritage necessarily must affect the vantage point of jurists — racialist themes Sotomayor returned to this week in her Utah v. Strieff dissent, which has been characterized as a “Black Lives Matter” manifesto)? Had not Barack Obama himself apologized (“Yeah, he’s a white guy . . . sorry.”) for nominating a white male judge to the Supreme Court, as if Merrick Garland’s appearance were something logically inseparable from his thought?