We recently discussed how the United Kingdom has continued its erosion of free speech by pushing an effective blasphemy law. Now, a London man has been convicted of a “religiously aggravated public order offence.” Hamit Coskun, 50, a Turkish-born Armenian-Kurdish atheist was arrested after burning a Qur’an.
Coskun was protesting the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara over his embrace of radical Islamic principles. Exclaiming “f**k Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism,” he burned the Qur’an and was then slashed by a Muslim man with a knife. Critics were outraged that the man (who later pleaded guilty) was released while police continued to hold Coskun.
Despite arguing that his protest was protected speech, District Judge John McGarva convicted him and declared that his actions were “highly provocative” and that they were “motivated at least in part by a hatred of Muslims.” Judge McGarva made clear that his views of Islam would not be tolerated in the United Kingdom:
“After considering the evidence, I find you have a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers. That’s based on your experiences in Turkey and the experiences of your family. It’s not possible to separate your views about the religion to your views about the followers.’
“I do accept that the choice of location was in part that you wanted to protest what you see as the Islamification of Turkey. But you were also motivated by the hatred of Muslims and knew some would be at the location.”
Coskun later correctly condemned the decision as “an assault on free speech” and added:
“Christian blasphemy laws were repealed in this country more than 15 years ago, and it cannot be right to prosecute someone for blaspheming against Islam. Would I have been prosecuted if I’d set fire to a copy of the bible outside Westminster Abbey? I doubt it.”
Nicholas Brock, 52, was convicted of a thought crime in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The neo-Nazi was given a four-year sentence for what the court called his “toxic ideology” based on the contents of the home he shared with his mother in Maidenhead, Berkshire. Judge Peter Lodder QC dismissed free speech or free thought concerns with a truly Orwellian statement:
“I do not sentence you for your political views, but the extremity of those views informs the assessment of dangerousness.”
Lodder lambasted Brock for holding Nazi and other hateful values:
“[i]t is clear that you are a right-wing extremist, your enthusiasm for this repulsive and toxic ideology is demonstrated by the graphic and racist iconography which you have studied and appeared to share with others…”
The fear is that an expanded hate speech law that includes criticism of Islamophobia will operate like a British blasphemy law. In 2008, the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England. This new effort could constructively restore such prosecutions as they relate to Islam.
It’s been a banner week for authoritarians in Europe, and it’s only Wednesday.
On Monday, a French court banned Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Rally party and the frontrunner in the 2027 presidential election, from seeking public office for the next five years. The same day, The Telegraph reported that a toddler had been booted from a U.K. preschool for being insufficiently supportive of LGBT politics. Over the weekend, a British couple revealed they had been arrested based on complaints they expressed in a WhatsApp chat about their daughter’s public school.
This is exactly the kind of crackdown on free expression that Vice President J.D. Vance chastised complicit European leaders about in February, in an address at the Munich Security Conference. This week’s insanity further proves Vance’s dire warnings were right.
Vance called out the U.K., Germany, Sweden, and the European Union for censoring and criminalizing the free expression of their citizens, citing police raids against Germans for comments posted online and the prosecution of a British man who dared to pray in silence outside of an abortion facility.
“[A]cross Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he said. That may have been an understatement.
France isn’t the first country to bar political opposition candidates from its elections. In December, Romania’s highest court suspended its presidential election, blaming Russian interference. (Where have we heard that one before?) Calin Georgescu, who cast himself as a Trumpy “Romania first” candidate, took the lead in the country’s first round of voting before the court canceled the election and then barred Georgescu from running again.
Meanwhile, leftists in the German parliament have been threatening a ban on Germany’s prominent right-wing party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In January, lawmakers considered asking the country’s highest court to “examine whether the AfD is an anti-constitutional party,” which Politico characterized as the “first step toward legally banning it under German law.” Leftist lawmaker Carmen Wegge, one of the partisans behind the effort, claimed AfD posed “dangers to democracy” as she tried to ban the party from the democratic process.
Now, France is the latest in what Vance described as a disturbing trend of “European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others.”
In addition to her five-year ban on seeking office, Le Pen, who held a double-digit lead over the next closest candidate in France’s presidential election, was also slapped with a fine and a prison sentence for which she’ll likely be subject to two years of house arrest. Like U.S. President Donald Trump, Le Pen was accused of complex financial crimes that were alleged to have taken place years ago, with her opponents eagerly invoking the “rule of law” to defend their prosecution of political opponents. The similarities weren’t lost on Trump himself.
After the verdict was disclosed, Le Pen told reporters, “I am eliminated, but in reality, it’s millions of French people whose voices have been eliminated.”
She’s right, the voices of European citizens are being silenced — and not just by courts disenfranchising them by booting their preferred candidates from elections. From parents to preschoolers, Europeans are no longer free to express their views without fear of retribution from the government.
Since Britain’s “Online Safety Act” went into effect in October 2023, authorities have charged 292 people and convicted 67 under the anti-speech law. Among other things, the law criminalizes“false information intended to cause non-trivial harm” and targets “mis- and disinformation.” Months before the law went into effect, a mother posted footage of police arresting her autistic daughter for commenting that a female police officer looked like her lesbian grandmother. A spokesman for the West Yorkshire Police confirmed to the BBC that “a 16-year-old had been arrested on suspicion of a homophobic public order offence.”
On Sunday, the U.S. State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Bureau issued a statement expressing concern “about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom.” The State Department drew attention to the case of Livia Tossici-Bolt, a 62-year-old woman who stood trial last month for holding a sign near an abortion facility with the words “here to talk, if you want.”
As U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer tries — so far, unsuccessfully — to escape imminent tariffs from the Trump administration, Britain’s authoritarian speech codes undermine Starmer’s case for special treatment from the United States. According to The Telegraph, someone “familiar with trade negotiations” said the U.K. deserves “no free trade without free speech.”
Things are no better in Germany, where 16 separate “online hate task forces” are tasked with tracking down online commenters who are accused of publishing false or “hateful” speech. Just one of those 16 units “works on around 3,500 cases a year,” according to a report from CBS.
German prosecutors readily admitted to CBS that in their country it is a “crime to insult somebody in public” or even to repost false information online. Germans whose speech lands on the wrong side of the statute may have their homes raided by armed police, be slapped with fines or imprisoned, and/or have their phones and laptops confiscated.
The European Union’s Digital Services Act, which took effect last year, ensures speech that authorities deem “hateful” can be punished across the continent. Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr blasted the law as “incompatible” with the “free speech tradition.”
Jailing citizens for the expression of ideas and barring political candidates from elections are two sides of the same authoritarian coin. Neither is compatible with self-government.
“[S]hutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting people out of the political process,” as Vance told European leaders in February, “is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”
He was right. Unfortunately, European leaders appear to have taken his statement as an instruction manual instead of an urgent warning.
Elle Purnell is the elections editor at The Federalist. Her work has been featured by Fox Business, RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.
The U.K.’s ‘Rwanda Plan’ could serve as a model for the U.S. as both countries struggle to stem illegal immigration. Immigrants should be deported or sent to a safe third country to await the processing of their asylum claims. Pictured: Illegal immigrants sit on an inflatable raft before attempting to illegally cross the English Channel to reach Britain, off the coast of Sangatte, France, on July 18, 2023. (Photo: BERNARD BARRON, AFP/Getty Images)
After nearly two years of legal and political challenges, Britain’s parliament has finally passed a law confirming that Rwanda is a safe place to send people who arrive in the U.K. illegally by sea. This is a major policy win for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and a victory for common sense. Britain, like the U.S. and Europe, is experiencing mass illegal migration in the guise of asylum claims. The British devised the Rwanda plan in response, but the U.S. already has successful equivalents that can be resurrected when there is a will to once again control America’s borders.
Like those coming to the U.S. by land, most people illegally arriving in Britain by boat are economic migrants. Britain’s asylum system has been swamped by growing demand, and backlogs for processing cases stretch into years.
In 2018, only 300 people arrived illegally in the U.K. by small boat from France across the English Channel. In 2022, it was more than 45,000. And in August 2023, the U.K. received its 100,000th illegal boat-borne immigrant, one of 700 who arrived each day. Nearly all of the 100,000 are still in Britain, joined by ever-increasing numbers.
From Jan. 1 to April 21 this year, 6,265 small boats arrived in the U.K. carrying illegal immigrants, with the largest numbers being from Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Having left the European Union, the British are unable to return asylum-seekers to the first safe country in the EU under what are called the Dublin Regulations. By mid-2023, 96% of asylum-seekers who arrived in 2021 had not received final decisions in their cases, and around 50,000 were being housed in hotels, costing the United Kingdom the equivalent of more than $8.8 million U.S. a day. The limitless liability of illegal immigration to the U.K. is an important electoral issue for Conservative Party voters.
Sound familiar?
In August 2023, Sunak’s government passed an Illegal Migration Act that barred people who entered illegally by sea from applying for asylum. The act requires British officials to return inadmissible aliens—without appeal—back to their birth country, if possible, or if not, to a safe third country.
To implement the act, Britain needed a safe third country to house putative asylum-seekers pending case processing. Britain does not have any developing-country neighbors, so they struck a deal with Rwanda in 2022 in which that Central African country would be compensated to take up to 1,000 putative asylum applicants over five years.
Anyone sent to Rwanda could opt at any time to return to their home country or to be resettled in Rwanda as refugees, but they could not return to Britain. The British government fought a series of legal challenges to its policy, but passage of the new law should clear the way for removal flights to Rwanda within weeks from now.
Sunak says he means business. “The only way to stop the boats is to eliminate the incentive to come, by making it clear that if you are here illegally, you will not be able to stay,” he said at a press conference. “We are ready. The plans are in place.”
The government has also set aside judges and courts on standby to handle the inevitable legal challenges.
The Rwanda plan is Britain’s attempt to regain control over its borders and national sovereignty. The goal is to cut off the possibility of asylum from boat arrivals, thus both destroying the business model of maritime smugglers and saving lives. This past week, five people died when over 100 illegal migrants attempted to cross the English Channel in an overcrowded boat.
The Rwanda plan has many opponents. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees argues that if the U.K. is successful, it will set a “worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations that other countries, including in Europe, may be tempted to follow …” Perhaps so, but the alternative is to cede control over immigration to foreign actors in perpetuity.
The British hope to emulate the success of Australia, which in 2001, started turning back boats carrying illegal migrants. The idea was to give “no advantage” to asylum applicants arriving illegally by boat over those arriving by air.
Australia set up detention and asylum processing centers on the island nation of Nauru, and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. Eventually, Australia adopted a strict rule that no asylum-seeker arriving by boat and processed offshore would ever be resettled in Australia. The policy faced considerable political opposition but was highly effective in reducing demand.
The message was quickly understood by would-be boat migrants and migrant traffickers across Southeast Asia. “Arrival numbers went off a cliff once the Australians started to deport … because ‘news spreads like wildfire among refugees,’” wrote Matthew Paris in the Spectator.
When a later Australian government closed the Manus and Nauru centers, illegal migration soared again. In 2012, more than 600 people drowned when boats carrying illegal migrants capsized. In response, Australia reopened the offshore centers and resumed sending back all illegal aliens who arrived or attempted to arrive in Australia by sea.
As before, the putative asylum applicants remained in the offshore centers for the entire time, pending the adjudication of their cases. The offshoring policy and an unbending Australian government destroyed the market for maritime migrant smugglers. For example, in 2014, only a single boat carrying migrants made it to Australia.
At its peak in 2014, Nauru’s camp had 1,233 asylum applicants living there. By June 2023, only three remained. Though the boat-borne illegal migration virtually stopped, a credible ability to restart offshore processing is vital to Australia maintaining its current control over seaborne illegal immigration. Therefore, Australia is paying the equivalent of $288,000 U.S. a year to Nauru to keep the detention/processing option open in reserve.
The U.S. does not have the advantage of being an island. But as recently as the Trump administration, we had Safe Third Country agreements in place with Central American countries and the Migrant Protection Protocols with Mexico. Under these agreements, any asylum applicant coming to the U.S. and first passing through a third safe country to get here would be sent back to that country if he or she had not applied for asylum in that country. For example, all those who crossed illegally into the U.S. from Mexico were returned there pending their case adjudication.
The U.S. needs to use all the economic and diplomatic leverage at our disposal to revive those agreements. Meanwhile, similar to the U.K. and Australia, we should prohibit asylum applications from those illegally crossing between ports of entry to discourage frivolous and fraudulent asylum claims.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues like human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Up to a third of trans-identified teens put on puberty blockers suffered a significant decline in mental health, according to new analysis of a survey from the United Kingdom.
In August, researchers published an updated review of data from a 2021 study in the U.K. on medRxiv, a preprint service for medical research. The original study conducted by the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) examined 44 children aged 12 to 15 over three years who were prescribed puberty-blocking drugs to treat gender dysphoria. Participants took triptorelin, a prostate cancer medicine used to inhibit the synthesis of estrogen in women and testosterone in men.
According to researchers at the University of Essex, the mental health of between 20 and 34 percent of participants significantly deteriorated while on the puberty-inhibiting drug. Just between 9 and 20 percent reported a reliable improvement. Between 56 and 68 percent witnessed no change in distress.
In other words, less than a fifth of those prescribed puberty-blocking drugs, if that, experienced emotional improvement after taking triptorelin. The findings contradict broad claims that such medical interventions are necessary to save gender-confused children from the perils of suicidal ideation. While the updated analysis from the University of Essex has yet to be peer-reviewed, another long-term study from Sweden found those who underwent transgender surgery were 19 times more likely to die by suicide than the general public.
The national suicide hotline is 1-800-273-8255. More resources are here.
A U.S. study published in 2019 found nearly 60 percent of trans-identified patients in a more than 10,000-patient survey were diagnosed with at least one psychiatric disorder (besides gender dysphoria) to begin with.
In June, the U.K. NHS updated guidelines to prohibit prescriptions for puberty blockers outside of clinical research. The change in protocol follows other European nations similarly pulling back on dangerous premature medical interventions on minors who wish to manipulate their gender.
“In the past few years, European health authorities conducted systematic reviews of evidence for the benefits and risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones,” City Journal reported in February. “The findings from these reviews — that the certainty of benefits is very low — guided the hand of policymakers there to restrict access to hormones.”
On Friday, California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed radical legislation mandating that parents “affirm” a child’s newfound so-called “gender identity.” Parents with kids in California’s Chino Valley Unified School District, however, are still fighting state Democrats for the right to watch over their own children.
In August, California’s far-left Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a legal crusade to terminate the district’s new policy requiring schools to notify parents whenever a child tries to change pronouns or display other symptoms of gender dysphoria.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss said Thursday that she is lifting the ban on fracking to help her country reduce exorbitant energy prices.
Truss, who was appointed as the new Conservative Prime Minister on Tuesday, announced in the House of Commons that she will enable oil and gas developers to seek permission from the government to increase domestic fuel supplies as the U.K. looks to combat its energy crisis. Truss said she hopes to get fracking operations started within the next six months and is also approving 100 new exploration licenses for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. (RELATED: British Pound Hits Lowest Level Against US Dollar In 37 Years)
“We will make sure that the U.K. is a net energy exporter by 2040,” Truss told parliament. “We are supporting this country through this winter and next, and tackling the root causes of high prices so we are never in the same position again.”
Fracking, a process that harvests oil and gas from buried shale rock, was banned in England in 2019 by the Conservative Party due to concerns about the safety of the practice, according to the 2019 Conservative Party Manifesto.
PRESTON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 16: An aerial view of the Cuadrilla shale gas extraction (fracking) site at Preston New Road, near Blackpool on September 16, 2019 in Preston, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Truss also placed a £2,500 ($2,888) cap on skyrocketing household electricity bills for two years as part of an economic package that could cost the U.K. about £150 billion ($172 billion). Soaring utility costs have caused thousands of Britons to protest price hikes and refuse to pay their bills until they are reduced by the government, according to the protest group Don’t Pay U.K.
“We are facing a global energy crisis, and there are no cost-free options,” she stated.
Sanctions on Russian fuel supplies as well as the cut-off of natural gas via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline are causing British and European electricity prices to spike as countries look to ration fuel supplies ahead of winter. Additionally, the U.K. aims to reach net-zero emissions targets by 2050 by implementing a carbon emissions trading scheme that lowers the competitiveness of fossil fuels and accelerates investments in green energy, according to the U.K. government.
The British Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Notorious former Hollywood overlord and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein will reportedly be charged Wednesday in a new assault case in the U.K. Weinstein, who was allegedly the inspiration behind the Orcs in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, will be charged with two counts of indecent assault against a woman in London, according to the BBC. The assaults allegedly took place in the U.K.’s capital in 1996, but no further details have been released on the identity of the woman or the scope of the investigation, the BBC noted.
The head of Crown Prosecution Service’s special crime division, Rosemary Ainslie, said that the charges were authorized after a thorough investigation by London’s metropolitan police, the BBC continued. (RELATED: Kevin Spacey Charged With Four Counts Of Sexual Assault)
Superstar Actress Describes Feeling Like ‘Meat’ In Audition Process For Epic Film https://t.co/PIjoCC4gIp
The disgraced former producer recently tried and failed to have his 2020 rape conviction overturned in New York. A five-judge panel unanimously decided to dismiss his appeal, ensuring that Weinstein continues serving his 23-year prison sentence. In July 2021, Weinstein pleaded not guilty to sex crimes charges in Los Angeles, California. Should he be convicted on these charges, he faces up to 140 years in prison in the U.S.
Accusations against Weinstein started in October 2017 after a detailed expose by The New York Times was released. To date, at least 87 accusers have come forward against Weinstein and he has denied every allegation of non-consensual sex, according to USA Today.
A British-Iranian woman held prisoner in Iran for nearly six years has been freed and is returning home to the United Kingdom after the U.K. government negotiated to pay a historic debt the Iranian government claimed was owed to the Islamic theocracy.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was imprisoned in Iran in 2016 after the authoritarian regime accused her of being a spy and of plotting to overthrow the government. She and her family denied the charges, insisting she was on vacation with her daughter to visit family in Tehran.
Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent nearly five years in prison before she was released to house arrest in her parents’ home, the Washington Post reports.
Iranian state media reported Wednesday that Zaghari-Ratcliffe and another dual national, Anousheh Ashouri, left the country after the U.K. government paid more than $500 million to Teharn, according to Reuters.
That money was part of a debt Iran’s theocratic rulers claimed the British government owed after the shah of Iran purchased 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other weapons from the United Kingdom in the 1970s. But the U.K.’s International Military Services never delivered those weapons because the Islamic Revolution of 1979 toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. The order was canceled even though the previous Iranian government had paid in advance for it, and the Islamic regime that replaced the shah’s government has since demanded the repayment of those funds.
Richard Ratcliffe, Nazanin’s husband, who has tirelessly protested and advocated for his wife’s release, had previously accused Iran of using his wife as a political hostage in the country’s dispute over the debt.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed in a statement Wednesday that “we have also settled the IMS debt” after announcing Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release. The British government has denied that the two issues are related.
Earlier this year, however, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not deny there were efforts to negotiate Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release by settling the debt dispute with Iran.
On Feb. 9, British member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq said she had learned of a deal signed between the U.K. government and Iranian authorities in the summer of 2021 “that would have resulted in the payment of the £400m that we owe Iran and the release of my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe,” but that deal had fallen through, according to Sky News. Siddiq asked Johnson to meet with her and Richard Ratcliffe to explain why the deal had collapsed.
“The International Military Services, or IMS, debt is difficult to settle and square away for all sorts of reasons to do with sanctions. But we will continue to work on it and I will certainly make sure that we have another meeting with Richard Ratcliffe in due course,” Jonson said in response, suggesting the IMS debt was in-fact part of the negotiations to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release.
Foreign Secretary Truss said in her statement that resolving the IMS debt payment and securing the release of detained British nationals were “my top priorities” upon assuming office in September 2021.
“Last month I spoke twice to Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian in a final push to bring negotiations to a successful conclusion. Our officials then held a last round of negotiations to sign off an agreement allowing Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori to return to the UK, and Morad Tahbaz to be released on furlough to his house in Tehran,” Truss said.
“The IMS debt has been settled in full compliance with UK and international sanctions and all legal obligations. These funds will be ring-fenced solely for the purchase of humanitarian goods.”
To hear the Media(D) tell it, these people shouldn’t exist — then again, they also predicted that Hillary had a ‘99% Chance of Winning’ 2016.
These guys just met.
One is a black guy with a British accent, and at least one of the other two is Scottish.
They’re all wearing MAGAhats, and they had to set the news correspondent straight about who is REALLY dividing people, and (more importantly) how.
Nationalism, they explain, isn’t a dirty word either. At least not what THEY mean by it. It brings people of very different backgrounds together by their common interests. Not RACIAL interests, but patriotic ones involving a flag that has — in many cases — been hundreds of years, in the making, usually with heroic stories of those who stood and fought under that flag to energize that patriotic spirit.
Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar…
The Defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo…
A hard-won victory in not one, but TWO World Wars…
The UK sprang from a culture so rich and stable that THREE of the SEVEN G7 Nations share that heritage.
They SHOULD love their country. Of course they should. They SHOULD want to defend its institutions — as we do ours. That’s what patriotism is all about, a positive sense of ‘nationalism’.
‘MAGA-thinking’ (if you were to call it that) doesn’t flow from a desire for other countries to be somehow diminished. That’s petty Zero-Sum-Game Thinking. And it’s typical of the Left’s endless ideology of envy. It’s for losers. No. It’s something else entirely. And these foreign-born Trump fans seem to have it figured out.
‘MAGA-thinking’ is about letting other nations chart THEIR own course as they and their citizens best see fit, while America chart ours in the way WE think best for OUR people. And so far, we’re happy with the course our President has been charting.
Nigel Farage has led the Brexit Party to victory while the establishment parties are left assessing the damage after their historic losses, with the Brexiteer declaring: “This is just the beginning.”
With almost all regions counted, the Brexit Party is in the clear lead after winning around one-third of the vote and projected to have gained 29 seats. In a distant second, the pro-Remain Liberal Democrats won 15 seats, while the new Change UK (CUK), established solely to stop Brexit, failed to gain a single seat.
“Never before in British politics has a party just 6 weeks old won a national election,”Mr. Farage posted to Twitter Monday morning. “If Britain does not leave the EU on October 31st, these results will be repeated at a general election.
“History has been made. This is just the beginning.”
Media reports that the Tories suffered their worst election result in two centuries, dropping to just nine per cent of the vote and winning only four seats — losing 15 — while the Labour Party is said to have had its worst election result in 100 years, halving its presence in the European Parliament from 20 to just ten seats.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Monday morning, Mr. Farage warned that the establishment political parties will suffer in the next General Election, scheduled for 2021, if they fail to take the UK out of the EU by October 31st, saying: “That date will become a bigger factor in peoples’ minds as these five months go by. If we don’t leave on the 31st of October, then the Brexit Party will go on to a General Election and stun everybody there, too.”
The Brexit Party leader later told the BBC that his party would be ready for even an October snap General Election, saying that it “might not be easy, but that work starts this afternoon.”
Recent polling of Westminster voting intentions point to the Brexit Party being ahead of the Conservative Party and just two points away from taking the lead over Labour.
Next month, the Brexit Party is challenging the establishment parties in the Peterborough by-election after the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was unseated following a recall petition.
After winning, according to provisional results, 29 seats in the European Parliament, the Brexit Party could find itself gain its first seat in the British House of Parliament, the next step in Mr. Farage’s challenge to the two-party system, bringing about a “peaceful revolution”in British politics.
Armed police officers walk outside Borough Market after an attack left 6 people dead and dozens injured in London, Britain, June 4, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
One of the three jihadis behind Saturday’s terror attack in London had been reported to anti-terror police on at least two occasions, British media reported Sunday.
The suspect developed deep extremist views over the past two years, according to one of his former friends. The friend said he contacted police about comments the suspect made about previous attacks, but authorities did not move forward with an investigation.
“We spoke about a particular attack that happened and like most radicals he had a justification for anything and everything and that day I realized I needed to contact the authorities,”theunnamed friend told BBC. “I did my bit. I know a lot of other people did their bit, but the authorities did not do their bit.”
The man got increasingly radicalized by watching YouTube videos of American hate preacher Ahmad Musa Jibril.
“He used to listen to a lot of Musa Jibril,”the friend told BBC. “I have heard some of this stuff, and it’s very radical. I am surprised this stuff is still on YouTube and is easily accessible. I phoned the anti-terror hotline. I spoke to the gentleman. I told him about our conversation and why I think he was radicalized.”
Erica Gasparri, a neighbor of the suspect, claims she reported him to authorities two years ago after he began “brainwashing” her children. She confronted him when her children came home and told her they wanted “to become a Muslim.”
“He was trying to radicalize the children, he would go down to the park and talk to them about Islam,”Gasparri said, according to The Telegraph. “He also came to the houses and gave the kids money and sweets during Ramadan.”
Police have not released the identities of the suspects. The attacks killed seven people and injured 48.
Things are getting ugly out there, folks. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion are both dying painful deaths in the once-Christian West. Over the last couple of years we’ve brought you a handful of stories about Christians being arrested for saying Christians things (see here, here, here, and here), and yet it just keeps happening more and more often.
Gordon Larmour is a 42-year old Christian who has been street preaching for seven years. This past summer he was handing out leaflets and saying, “Don’t forget Jesus loves you and He died for your sins.” One of the men passing him asked, “What does your God say about homosexuals?” Mr, Larmour responded by quoting Scripture and telling the questioner that God created Adam and Eve to produce children, which sent the young homosexual man into a rage and he began chasing the preacher.
When the police arrived they arrested Larmour (who was the one being threatened) and accused him of threatening or abusive behavior, which was ‘aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation,’ even though the preacher had not used any foul language or made any offensive remarks. Larmour was forced to spend a night in jail and the six months of court cases and legal trouble before finally being cleared of any crime by the local sheriff.
Mr. Larmour still can’t believe what happened to him, telling the Scottish Mail, “I can’t see why I was arrested in the first place – it was a massive overreaction and a waste of everyone’s time. The police didn’t listen to me. They took the young homosexual guy’s side straight away and read me my rights.
“I feel they try so hard to appear like they are protecting minorities, they go too far the other way. I want to be able to tell people the good word of the Gospel and think I should be free to do so. I wasn’t speaking my opinions – I was quoting from the Bible.”
Larmour believes that the police acted wrongly and points to the court case where the young man’s friend testified that Larmour had really done nothing wrong.
“I think the police should have handled it differently and listened to what I had to say. They should have calmed the boy down and left it at that.
“In court the boy’s friend told the truth – that I hadn’t assaulted him or called him homophobic names. I had simply answered his question and told him about Adam and Eve and Heaven and Hell. Preaching from the Bible is not a crime.”
The local courts found Larmour innocent of all charges and cleared him of all wrong doing, but it doesn’t change the injustice of this situation happening at all. Cases like this are becoming all too common in the UK and across Europe and Canada where saying the “wrong” thing can lead to arrest and fines. The world is a dangerous place for Christians (Christianity is the world’s most persecuted religion), but it’s even becoming dangerous for Christians living in the supposedly “Christian” West.
“I can see from the trends in abortion on grounds of disability that the writing is on the wall for people like me. People with congenital disabilities are facing extinction. If we were animals, perhaps we might qualify for protection as an endangered species. But we are only human beings with disabilities, so we do not.” — Lord Kevin Shinkwin
UK peer Lord Kevin Shinkwin recently spoke out against the unjust abortion laws in the UK that allow disabled children to be aborted right up until the moment of their birth. While the UK’s laws on abortion are more restrictive than the laws in the USA (abortions on a healthy child are only legal until the 24th week), there is a loophole that allows parents to abort their disabled children right until the moment of birth. In an effort to close this loophole, Shinkwin has proffered a bill that would see disabled children treated the same as healthy ones and make abortion after 24 weeks illegal for all children.
In an effort to convince his fellow lawmakers, Shinkwin delivered a brilliant and emotional speech that was sure to win over even the most hardened abortion supporters.
Our Paralympians represented their country in Rio with pride. What was the essential qualification for them competing at Rio? It was their disability. The country which applauded their success is the same country whose law regards that essential qualification for going to Rio—disability—as a reason they should die. How is that fair, right or logical? It is none of those things, which is why today I reflect on the remarkable impact that laws passed by your Lordships’ House have had on my life as a disabled person. It is why I ask myself: how could I not have faith in our common humanity? How could I not have faith in the truth that there is more that unites than divides us? And how could I not believe that your Lordships’ House will be true to itself and continue its noble fight for disability equality by passing this bill?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Onan Coca
Onan is the Editor-in-Chief at Liberty Alliance media group. He’s also the managing editor at Eaglerising.com, Constitution.com and the managing partner at iPatriot.com. Onan is a graduate of Liberty University (2003) and earned his M.Ed. at Western Governors University in 2012. Onan lives in Atlanta with his wife and their three wonderful children. You can find his writing all over the web.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory image in extreme ultraviolet light shows an active region of the sun’s coronal loops taken over about a two-day period, from February 8 – 10, 2014 and released on February 18, 2014. Coronal loops are found around sunspots and in active regions. These structures are associated with the closed magnetic field lines that connect magnetic regions on the solar surface. Many coronal loops last for days or weeks, but most change quite rapidly. REUTERS/Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA/Handout via Reuters ∧
Professor Valentina Zharkova at Northumbria University is being attacked by climate change proponents for publishing research suggesting there could be a 35-year period of low solar activity that could usher in an “ice age.”
Zharkova and her team of researchers released a study on sunspot modeling, finding that solar activity could fall to levels not seen since the so-called “Little Ice Age” of the 1600s. Zharkova’s conclusions may have huge implications for global temperature modeling, but her analysis is not accepted by some climate scientists.
“Some of them were welcoming and discussing. But some of them were quite — I would say — pushy,”she told The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) in an interview on her solar study.
In fact, Zharkova said some scientists even tried to have her research suppressed.
“They were trying to actually silence us,”she said. “Some of them contacted the Royal Astronomical Society, demanding, behind our back, that they withdraw our press release.”
Zharkova found that solar activity is driven by two magnetic waves from within the sun that can either dampen or amplify solar activity. Solar activity is believed to play a role in warming and cooling average global temperature. Zharkova’s team incorporated solar data into predictive models and found that the sun is heading into a period of low solar activity similar to the Maunder Minimum of the late 1600s. During this time, scientists believe low solar activity contributed to cooler average global temperature.
“Whatever we do to the planet, if everything is done only by the sun, then the temperature should drop similar like it was in the Maunder Minimum,”she said. “At least in the Northern hemisphere, where this temperature is well protocoled and written. We didn’t have many measurements in the Southern hemisphere, we don’t know what will happen with that, but in the Northern hemisphere, we know it’s very well protocoled.”
“The rivers are frozen,”she added. “There are winters and no summers, and so on.”
The so-called “Little Ice Age”is a controversial topic among scientists. Some argue low solar activity contributed to cooler temperatures over Europe and North America, but others argue volcanic activity drove temperatures lower since the trend began before solar activity fell. Climate scientists were quick to ask the U.K.’s Royal Astronomical Society to suppress Zharkova’s findings.
“The Royal Astronomical Society replied to them and CCed to us and said, ‘Look, this is the work by the scientists who we support, please discuss this with them,’” Zharkova told the GWPF.
“We had about 8 or 10 exchanges by email, when I tried to prove my point, and I’m saying, I’m willing to look at what you do, I’m willing to see how our results we produced and what the sun has explained to us,”she said. “So how this is transformed into climate we do not produce; we can only assume it should be. So we’re happy to work with you, and add to your data our results.
“So don’t take the sunspots which you get, we can give you our curve. Work with our curve. So they didn’t want to,”she said.
Zharkova isn’t the first to suggest a period of low solar activity is on the way that could cause a cooling trend. Solar activity was reportedly at a 200-year low in February.
A July 2015 study by Jorge Sanchez-Sesma at the Mexican Institute of Water Technology found the oscillations in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth could have a much bigger cooling impact on the climate than previous estimates by climate scientists.
Sanchez-Sesma examined solar cycle data going back 100,000 years and compared them to about 25,000 years of surface air temperature data in the Congo River Basin and found that “information from reconstructions and models indicates a potential continental tropical temperature cooling of around 0.5oC for the rest of the 21st century.”
Shrinivas Aundhkar, director of India’s Mahatma Gandhi Mission at the Centre for Astronomy and Space Technology, said in 2015 that declining solar activity could mean a “mini ice age-like situation”is on the way.
In 2013, Professor Cliff Olliert the University of Western Australia posited low solar activity could bring cool the planet.
“There is a very good correlation of sunspots and climate,” Ollier wrote. “Solar cycles provide a basis for prediction.”
“Solar Cycle 24 has started and we can expect serious cooling. Many think that political decisions about climate are based on scientific predictions but what politicians get are projections based on computer models,”he wrote.
Russian scientists argued in 2012 the world could expect the start of the another Little Ice Age starting in 2014.
“After the maximum of solar cycle 24, from approximately 2014 we can expect the start of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055,”wrote Habibullo Abdussamatov of the Russian Academy of Science.
The Obama administration’s disappointment with the United Kingdom’s referendum on European Union membership contrasts sharply with its celebration of the Muslim Brotherhood’s election in 2012.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a long-known terrorist sympathizing party, its founders spawned the first terrorist attack against the World Trade Center in 1993. In reaction to the Muslim brotherhood’s election, President Barack Obama’s White House issued a statement of congratulations, saying the U.S. would “stand by the Egyptian people as they fulfill the promise of their revolution.”
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking before Trinity College in Dublin June 24, told the audience, “I must say we had looked for a different outcome.”Biden later elaborated, “reactionary politicians and demagogues peddling xenophobia, nationalism, and isolationism.”
Obama took the unprecedented step of traveling to the U.K. in April to advocate against the U.K. leaving the EU. During his trip, Obama warned the United States would prioritize trade deals with the EU over bilateral trade with the U.K. Speaking on the timeline for a prospective U.S.-U.K. trade agreement, Obama said, “It’s not going to happen anytime soon,”and further claimed “The U.K. is going to be in the back of the queue.”
During the Arab Spring, the White House did not take such a stark position during elections in Tunisia or Egypt. Prior to the elections of the terrorist sympathizing government in Egypt, Obama issued a statement saying, “The United States does not support particular individuals or political parties.”
Both Biden and Obama emphasized the administration’s “respect” for the referendum and America’s commitment to maintaining a “special relationship” with the U.K. Biden followed that commitment by saying, “some politicians find it convenient to scapegoat immigrants instead of welcoming them, play to our fears rather than appeal to our better natures, divide us based on religion or ethnicity rather than unite us in our common humanity, and build walls between nations when we should be building bridges among us.”
U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama travelled to the United Kingdom today, choosing to give a speech on female empowerment while surrounded by hijab-clad girls in the ethnically “diverse” London borough of Tower Hamlets. But the Commercial Road in Tower Hamlets, from where Mrs. Obama chose to lecture, isn’t ethnically diverse, and nor is the Mulberry School for Girls that she visited.
Tower Hamlets, which only days ago managed to shake off its Islamist-linked Mayor, boasts a Bangladeshi, Indian, and Pakistani, and otherwise Asian population. At the last census, in 2011, 39 percent of the population self-identified as Christian, while 36 percent identified as Muslim. The Muslim population of the borough is believed to have overtaken the Christian population by some way in the years since, with the next census not due until 2021.
And in Tower Hamlets, nearly 1 in 5 residents did not speak English as their first language, according to the 2011 statistics, opting instead for Bengali. The Mulberry School for Girls, where Mrs Obama delivered her patronising ‘Let Girls Learn’ speech, is described in multiple Ofsted school inspection reports as having “nearly all students… of Bangladeshi heritage, with a very small minority from other backgrounds, including White British, Pakistani and African.”
And while the school has been rated as “very good” for a number of years, it has also played host to hard-left conferences sponsored by groups such as ‘War on Want’, which is closely tied to anti-Israel activities in the United Kingdom, the ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ which has its roots in communist sympathising, and indeed the European Parliament. The Mulberry Youth Conference boasts amongst its speakers Shami Chakrabarti from left-wing campaign group Liberty, now-deceased Labour MP Tony Benn, ex Labour MP Clare Short, editor of the Guardian newspaper Alan Rusbridger, anti-white racist columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, hard-left activist Owen Jones, and feminist campaigner Lucy-Anne Holmes.
So why did Michelle Obama choose Tower Hamlets, and the Mulberry School for Girls? She said she specifically chose the area, and asked the question aloud herself, during her speech: “Why would she choose Tower Hamlets? I’m here because of you,” she told the crowd. “When I look out at all these young women, I see myself. In so many ways your story is my story,” she told the room full of hijab-wearing girls. “I know I don’t look [older than you all]”, she crowed. And then went on to praise the local area, which is known for being a hot bed of Islamist activity and sympathy.
She described Tower Hamlets as a place where “families are tight knit… with strong values”. Perhaps this is true. There has certainly been evidence of a very “tightly knit” cabal attempting to rule Tower Hamlets. And there are certainly strong values too. Almost half of Britain’s 1300 cases of Female Genital Mutilation last year were from London. No prizes for guess which areas these emanate from.
So perhaps Mrs. Obama’s message about “climate change, poverty, extremism” were not best placed in the London borough best known for being a hive of corruption itself. Then again, as she chose to remind us, she is from the mean streets of Chicago. So that rotten stench probably rings quite familiar.
Free people, especially those who once lived under or experienced tyranny, know the value of Liberty. But those who have known nothing else but freedom are often great fodder for those longing to enslave them…
A serious danger to freedom in the West has been happening, right under the radar of the majority of citizens. Islamic Jihadists and terror-linked Muslims are using our laws…meant to protect our freedoms…to undermine our freedoms. According to The Lawfare Project, “Lawfare denotes ‘the use of the law as a weapon of war‘ or, more specifically, the abuse of Western laws and judicial systems to achieve strategic military or political ends.”Though it’s been occurring across our country, it has not yet reached the peril the UK now faces…thanks to the appeasement of Leftist Western leaders…
The UK Anti-Terrorism Chief has resigned because he’s been unable to deport practically ANY Islamic terrorists! Yes, you read that right…according to the Telegraph, a mere 12 foreign terrorists have been expelled in the past decade under the Deportation with Assurances policy. Not one terrorist suspect has been sent home in the past year. These Islamic Jihadis are using Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which assumes a right to “private and family life,” hence preventing their deportation.
Here’s one example…a British-Algerian, Baghdad Meziane, was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in 2003 for running a terror network recruiting jihadists and fund-raising for Al-Qaeda. He served only 6 years and is now in the bosom of his family…in Leicester! The Home Office (like our DHS) has continually described him as a “danger to the community of the United Kingdom”. Yet, he has successfully claimed that his deportation would breach his human right to a family life and that he might face torture if sent home. Because, after all, the poor itty-bitty terror-plotting savage deserves protection from condign punishment, right?
This is the lunacy of the Left in the West…and via cowardice and appeasement…it’s headed our way!
The intentional and continual chipping away of our free speech, via Cultural Marxism (political correctness), coupled with the veiled enforcement of Sharia Law (“The future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” ~Obama, Sept, 2012 at the UN), is placing the US and its democratic allies, in self-submission to an ideology that enslaves all those who don’t convert (if they’re lucky enough to escape the sword).
It’s time for the West to lift its collective head from Islam’s prayer rug…because bowing to Muhammed is not the posture of a free people!
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Michael Bastasch 08/09/2016
Free people, especially those who once lived under or experienced tyranny, know the value of Liberty. But those who have known nothing else but freedom are often great fodder for those longing to enslave them…
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