RUTHFULLY YOURS

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:

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-safest-country-for-european-jews-try-hungary/

Last Friday evening I put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue maintained by the Budapest Chabad. After violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public. The French community issued such warnings years ago. Belgian TV could not find a single Jew in Brussels willing to wear a kippah in public. I walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at my kippah twice. At services I met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and shtreimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants.

On any given Friday evening, the Keren Or synagogue—one of several Chabad houses in Budapest—hosts two hundred people for dinner. Jewish life isn’t just flourishing in Budapest. It’s roaring with ruach, and livened by a growing Israeli presence. About 100,000 Israelis have dual Hungarian citizenship; many own property in the country and vote in Hungarian elections.

Prime Minister Orban has been a close friend of Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu for twenty years. When Orban first was elected prime minister in 1998 in the thick of an economic crisis, he asked then-Finance Minister Netanyahu for help, and Netanyahu lent him some of his staff to shape Hungary’s economic program. I asked everyone at Keren Or who spoke English what they thought of Orban. In that gathering the prime minister would have polled 100%.

Orban, in turn, is one of Israel’s few staunch supporters overseas. Earlier this month Hungary, along with Rumania and the Czech Republic, vetoed a European Community resolution condemning the U.S. for moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Cynics dismiss this as an instance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That isn’t the case. Hungary is in the middle of a nasty fight with the European Community over migration, and stands to lose up to $4 billion in EC subsidies—roughly 3% of the country’s GDP. It doesn’t help Hungary to provoke Brussels by sabotaging its diplomatic efforts, as in the case of the Jerusalem embassy vote. On the contrary, Hungary is spending precious political capital in defense of the Jewish state, to its own possible disadvantage.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/u-s-walks-out-as-syria-assumes-presidency-of-un-disarmament-panel/

The U.S. delegation staged a walkout today in protest of Syria assuming the rotating presidency of the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said in a statement today that they would have tried to block Syria from holding the leadership role but were unable to do so because of the conference rules requiring unanimous consent. Instead, over the next four weeks of Syria’s presidency, the U.S. delegation “will limit participation in informal sessions convened by the presidency and will continue to highlight the hypocrisy of Syria holding this position in spite of its continued use of chemical weapons and disregard for its other disarmament obligations.”

Tweeted Robert Wood, a career State Department official who serves as U.S. ambassador to the conference: “I informed CD members that throughout Syria’s four-week presidency, the US would not attend any subsidiary body mtgs. or any informal sessions convened by the presidency. Syria’s presidency cannot be business as usual. I will, however, call out the regime’s crimes in plenaries.”

“It is shameful that a regime that continues to use chemical weapons to murder its own people has the audacity to accept the presidency of the very organization that established the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Ambassador Nikki Haley said. “The Assad regime does not have the moral authority to chair an organization that helped establish the global norms for ending the use of these heinous weapons.”

“It should immediately relinquish the presidency, and every country that supports accountability for the use of weapons of mass destruction should share our outrage and join us in opposing Syria’s presidency,” she added.

The monthlong presidency rotates alphabetically among the 65 conference members. Last up was Switzerland; next up will be Tunisia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/assads-disarmament-chair-1527633758

Anyone who still thinks that world peace and order can be enforced from something called the United Nations might want to consider that Syria this week assumed the rotating presidency of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament. That’s Syria as in Bashar Assad, as in sarin gas, as in barrel bombs dropped on innocent civilians.

The Conference is a multinational body based in Geneva that was established in 1979 to promote reductions in armaments, especially weapons of mass destruction. Though independent from the U.N., it reports annually to Turtle Bay, and the director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva is secretary-general of the Conference. Syria is now leading the group because it follows Switzerland in the alphabetical list of member nations.
Photo: istock/getty images

The appointment is best understood in light of the Conference’s proudest achievement: The 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. Apparently no one at the Conference sees any contradiction with having at its helm a regime that has used such weapons on its own people.

In 2012 Barack Obama declared the use of chemical weapons by Syria a “red line” that would trigger U.S. intervention. Assad used sarin gas anyway. In 2017 Syria used gas again, and President Trump responded with a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Assad used chemical bombs again in April, which provoked another U.S. strike on Syria joined by Britain and France. On Friday U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Assad has used chemical weapons at least 50 times.