Sunday, June 11, 2017


An interesting election

The most interesting sentence is the last one below.  The Ulster DUP has kept the Conservatives in power.  The DUP is the old party of Protestant firebrand, the Rev. Ian Paisley -- and they want no truck with liberal morality. Their views are similar to those of American Christian conservatives. So there will certainly be no loosening up on that front and minor rollbacks may be possible.  Certainly, there will now be no homosexual marriage in Northern Ireland.  They will be able to secure support for that policy from the Union government

CONSERVATIVE Party chiefs will oust lame duck British Prime Minister Theresa May within the year.

May’s gamble of calling an early election has backfired disastrously for the party and the 60-year-old woman cannot survive, The Sun reported.

Her axing will be delayed to allow crucial Brexit negotiations to begin but her sacking will come after Christmas.

Humiliated party sources believe that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Amber Rudd (who only held her seat by 300 votes) and Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis are the most suitable replacements and are being sounded out, Telegraph UK reported.

Conservative MP Heidi Allen, who held her seat, said publicly that she believes May will be gone in six months, stating that the prime minister’s post may now be in a “period of transition”.

“If this was any other election in any other time in our history you could say yes the Prime Minister needs to stand down but this is different of course because we are about to start negotiating Brexit so that puts an entirely different complexion on that,” she told LBC Radio.

May’s position is terminal as the decision to call an early election — with the Conservatives already having a majority to rule — was hers alone and she ran the election campaign in her name.

May has told the Queen she has the numbers to form government, and will provide Brexit and anti-terror ‘certainty’.

Speaking to media outside Number 10, Ms May spoke as certainly as though her Conservative party had won an absolute majority - which it hasn’t.

“I have just been to see Her Majesty the Queen and I will now form a Government,” she said. “A government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country.

“This Government will guide the country through the crucial Brexit talks that begin in just 10 days and deliver on the will of the British people by taking the United Kingdom out of the European Union.

Ms May stated her government was the only viable outcome of the poll, would crack down on Islamic extremism and strengthen police powers, and would introduce policies of fairness and opportunity .

“Having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the General Election it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the House of Commons.

“We will continue to work with our friends and allies, in particular the DUP. Our two parties have enjoyed a strong relationship over many years and this gives me the confidence to believe that we will be able to work together in the interests of the whole United Kingdom.

“This will allow us to come together as a country and channel our energies towards a successful Brexit deal that works for everyone in this country, securing a new partnership with the EU which guarantees our long-term prosperity.

The leader of the Northern Ireland party that has handed Britain’s Conservative government power has said it will be ‘difficult’ for Prime Minister May to keep her job.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland has carried her Conservative Party over the line by throwing its 10 votes into the tally - without the need for a signing off on a formal coalition deal first.

DUP leader Arlene Foster told British media that contacts will be made over the weekend, but “I think it is too soon to talk about what we’re going to do.” However, she believed it would be “difficult for (May) to survive.”

The DUP opposes same-sex marriage and abortion.

SOURCE






All We Need Is Love … and Deportations

BY: ANN COULTER

After the latest terrorist attack in Britain — at least as of this writing — Prime Minister Theresa May bravely announced, “Enough is enough!”

What is the point of these macho proclamations after every terrorist attack? Nothing will be done to stop the next attack. Political correctness prohibits us from doing anything that might stop it.

Poland doesn’t admit Muslims: It has no terrorism. Japan doesn’t admit Muslims: It has no terrorism. The United Kingdom and the United States used to have very few Muslims: They used to have almost no terrorism. (One notable exception was chosen as the National Freedom Hero in this year’s Puerto Rican parade in New York!)

Notwithstanding the lovely Muslim shopkeeper who wouldn’t hurt a fly, everyone knows that with every tranche of peace-loving Muslims we bring in, we’re also getting some number of stone-cold killers.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair dumped millions of Third World Muslims on Britain to force “multiculturalism” on the country. Now Britons are living with the result. Since the 9/11 attack, every U.S. president has done the same. President Bush admitted Muslim immigrants at a faster pace after 9/11 than we had been doing before 9/11.

Whatever the 9/11 attackers intended to accomplish, I bet they didn’t expect that.

Now we can’t get rid of them. Under the rules of political correctness, Western countries are prohibited from even pausing our breakneck importation of Muslims, much less sending the recent arrivals home.

In defense of the poor saps responding to every terrorist attack with flowers, candles and hashtags, these are people who have no ability to do anything else. Western leaders are in full possession of the tools to end Islamic terrorism in their own countries, just as their forebears once ended Nazi Stormtroopers.

Unable to summon the backbone to defeat the current enemy, the West is stuck constantly reliving that glorious time when they whipped the Nazis. In almost every Western country — except the one with an increasingly beleaguered First Amendment — it’s against the law to deny the Holocaust.

Are we really worried about a resurgence of Nazism? Isn’t Islamic terrorism a little higher on our “immediate problems” list? How about making it illegal to make statements in support of ISIS, al-Qaida, female genital mutilation, Sharia law or any act of terrorism?

The country with a First Amendment can’t do that — the most that amendment allows us to do is ban conservative speakers from every college campus in the nation.

But if our elected representatives really cared about stopping the next terrorist attack, instead of merely “watching” those on the “watch” list, they’d deport them.

To this day, we have a whole office at the Department of Justice dedicated to finding and deporting Nazis even without proof they personally committed crimes against Jews. But we can’t manage to deport hearty young Muslims who post love notes to ISIS on their Facebook pages.

If the Clinton administration had merely enforced laws on the books against an Afghani immigrant, Mir Seddique Mateen, and excluded him based on his arm-length list of terrorist affiliations, his son Omar wouldn’t have been around to slaughter 49 people at an Orlando nightclub last year.

If Secretary of State John Kerry, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson or anyone else in our vaunted immigration vetting system had done his job, Pakistani Tashfeen Malik never would have been admitted to this country to commit mass murder in San Bernardino a year after she arrived. Before being warmly welcomed by the U.S., Malik’s social media posts were bristling with hatred of America and enthusiasm for jihad.

We’re already paying a battery of FBI agents to follow every Muslim refugee around the country. When they find out that one of them lists his hobby as “jihad,” we need them to stop watching and start deporting.

Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, the rest of the useless GOP — and obviously every Democrat — have the blood of the next terrorist attack on their hands if they don’t make crystal clear that admiring remarks about Islamic terrorism is a deportable act.

But they won’t do it. That’s “not who we are,” as Ryan famously said.

True, most Muslims are peaceful. Guess what? Most Nazis were peaceful! We didn’t knock ourselves out to admit as many of them as we could, screening out only the Nazis convicted of mass murder.

Before we were even formally involved in World War II, the FBI was all over the German American Bund. No one worried about upsetting our German neighbors. (Perhaps because they knew these were Germans and wouldn’t start bombing things and shooting people.)

But today, our official position is: Let’s choose love so as not to scare our Muslim neighbors. Isn’t that precisely what we want to do? Facing an immobile government, two British men — by which I mean British men — were sentenced to PRISON for putting bacon on a mosque in Bristol last year. One died in prison just after Christmas, an ancient religious holiday recently replaced by Ramadan.

If we can’t look askance at Muslims without committing a hate crime, can’t we at least stop admitting ever more “refugees,” some percentage of whom are going to be terrorists and 100 percent of whom will consume massive amounts of government resources?

No, that’s “not who we are.”

Until any Western leader is willing to reduce the number of Muslims in our midst, could they spare us the big talk? “We surrender” would at least have the virtue of honesty.

SOURCE





From the front lines with Ezra Levant

Bad news in the battle for freedom of speech: today, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear my appeal of the defamation judgment against me, brought some eight years ago by Khurrum Awan.

Awan is the former youth president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. As you know, one of the reasons I lost was that the judge ruled that calling Awan an anti-Semite was defamatory.

But Awan used to be the youth president of an anti-Semitic group — the Canadian Islamic Congress. They even called for the legalization of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

But the judge ruled it was defamatory for me to call their former youth president anti-Semitic. Because Awan denied he was, and said he never knew about his organization's infamous misconduct. The judge ruled I did not prove it was factually true. Even though Awan himself testified at trial that he agreed it's reasonable for people to call certain statements by the Canadian Islamic Congress anti-Semitic.

I appealed that trial judgment, and I lost. And today the Supreme Court said they won’t hear a further appeal.

And so now I have to pay $80,000 dollars to Awan, plus his legal costs. That’s obviously a blow to me financially.

But what worries me more is that a legal precedent has now been set: if you call a leader of an anti-Semitic group, “anti-Semitic”, you can be sued for defamation.

Every newspaper columnist, every political activist, every Jewish or Christian student in university must now be extremely careful. There is outrageous anti-Semitism on campuses these days. That’s not illegal. But calling members of those groups anti-Semitic can be illegal, if you don’t say it in just the right way.

This isn’t the first time that Awan has used the courts as a weapon to fight enemies of Islam. You’ll recall that Awan took the great Mark Steyn to three different Canadian human rights commissions for writing about Muslim extremism in Maclean’s magazine. It was my critical coverage of Awan’s lawfare against Steyn that caused Awan to target me with a lawsuit too.

Nearly eleven years has passed since Steyn first wrote that essay in October 2006. Awan sued me in 2009. That’s a long time. And that battle is over.

But what is Khurrum Awan up to now? He left Toronto, got married, settled down, started a family. He’s working for a law firm in Regina.

But he’s not done with using our western courts to promote his Islamic agenda.

Just six weeks ago, Awan filed a stunning lawsuit against his neighbour in Regina. Now, most of it is just a legal squabble that neighbours sometimes have. Awan and his wife, Ayesha Ahmed, claim that there are “approximately three trees the branches of which overhang the Plaintiff’s backyard”. And some of the branches snapped and fell.

The lady who owns the neighbouring house, by the way, is in her 70s. So maybe she is not doing all the gardening she should. I don’t care. There’s no news here.

But Awan is a lawyer, with lawyer friends. So he got another lawyer named Ahmed Malik to sue the neighbour, demanding $60,000 dollars.

But here’s the shocking part: Awan is suing his 77-year-old neighbour for having “a large Christian cross” on her backyard.

Oh, yes. Awan says it’s a “violation of human rights” that a Catholic granny has a cross on her property, and that it’s "an attempt to intimidate and discriminate against the Plaintiffs, who are visible minorities and visible Muslims.”

He’s not just asking for $60,000 from his neighbour. He’s asking the court for “an injunction ordering the Defendants to permanently remove the cross.”

He’s a bully. Bullying a 77-year-old Catholic granny. Suing her for having a cross in her back yard.

The same bully who went after Mark Steyn.

The same bully who just won $80,000 dollars from me in court.

See, the Supreme Court taught Khurrum Awan a lesson today: that the best way to wage a jihad against the west isn’t through violence like terrorism. The best way to wage a jihad against the west is peacefully, by using our own laws against us. A human rights kangaroo court against Steyn; defamation laws against me; and just plain old suing a 77-year-old neighbour for having a cross on her deck.

Look. I’ve got to pay Awan his $80,000. I have no other choice. And I’m going to pay that from my own funds — I don’t think I could ask anyone else to help with that. If you want to help me with my legal fees though, I’d be grateful for your help there — I still have to pay my lawyer. You can do that at StandWithEzra.ca.

And once I raise enough to cover my own costs, I’m going to do this: I’m going to send a cheque to that 77-year-old granny to help her cover her legal fees. Not for the squabble about branches and trees. But because no-one in should be sued for having a cross on her property — this is Canada, not Pakistan.

If you can help, go to StandWithEzra.ca

Via email






Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Think Christians Are Fit For Public Office

While the nation’s capital was twittering with excitement on Wednesday about former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, something far more outrageous was underway in another Senate hearing: Sen. Bernie Sanders, in a blatant violation of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, was applying a religious test for an office of public trust.

Specifically, Sanders doesn’t think Christians are fit to serve in government because they’re bigots. Basic Christian theology, in Sanders’s view, “is indefensible, it is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world.”

Here’s what happened. During a confirmation hearing for Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sanders expressed his indignation at an article Vought had written in January 2016 about a controversy that erupted at Vought’s alma mater, Wheaton College. A political science professor, Larycia Hawkins, had published a Facebook post announcing her intention to wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims and suggesting that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.

Vought, a Christian, took issue with Hawkins’s post and defended Wheaton in an article for The Resurgent. During the hearing Wednesday, Sanders repeatedly quoted one particular passage he described as “Islamophobic” and “hateful.” Vought wrote: “Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology. They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

As a matter of theology, there is of course nothing objectionable, much less Islamophobic, about that. It is simply a statement of fact: core Christian doctrine, plainly stated in the Bible, says that eternal life comes only through faith in Jesus Christ. Not that exclusivity is unique to Christianity. By their very nature, most religions are exclusive, especially when it comes to salvation.

As for having a “deficient theology,” one could substitute any other religious group for Muslims: Christians also believe that Jews have a deficient theology, along with Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, and the tens of thousands of Britons who claim membership in the Temple of the Jedi Order. And of course, members of all these religions likely believe Christians have a deficient theology.

To Sanders, Christian Theology Amounts to Bigotry

But to Sanders, a sincerely held religious belief—like believing there is only one path to salvation—amounts to bigotry and should disqualify anyone, or at least Christians, from public service. Reporting for The Atlantic, Emma Green noted that at one point, the exchange between Sanders and Vought became tense, with Sanders “raising his voice and interrupting Vought as he tried to answer questions.”

Sanders: I don’t know how many Muslims there are in America, I really don’t know, probably a couple million. Are you suggesting that all of those people stand condemned? What about Jews? Do they stand condemned too?

Vought: Senator, I am a Christian—

Sanders: I understand that you are a Christian. But this country is made up of people who are not just—I understand that Christianity is the majority religion. But there are other people who have different religions in this country and around the world. In your judgment, do you think that people who are not Christians are going to be condemned?
In other words, Sanders understands Vought’s a Christian, he just didn’t think Vought was that kind of Christian. Neither did Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who defended Sanders, saying, “I don’t think anybody was questioning anybody’s faith here.” Van Hollen then questioned Vought’s faith and claimed his theology is all wrong: “I’m a Christian, but part of being a Christian, in my view, is recognizing that there are lots of ways that people can pursue their God.”

It should go without saying that this is the sort of thing that should never come up in a Senate confirmation hearing. But it helped illuminate what progressives like Sanders and Van Hollen really think about religion, and especially Christianity. It’s okay to say you’re a Christian if, like Van Hollen, you don’t really think Christianity is the one true path to salvation. But if your version of Christianity lays claim to exclusivity—as orthodox Christianity does—then you’re a bigot who, as Sanders said of Vought, “is really not someone who is what this country is supposed to be about.”

Agree With My Religious Views Or You Can’t Hold Office
Let’s take a step back. Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” Yet it seems that Sanders and his ilk not only want to exclude sincere Christians from public office, but to impose a kind of secular test of their own. To serve in government, in their view, one must affirm the ever-changing tenets of progressivism.

One recent example of this cropped up in Illinois, where the state’s child welfare agency declared that staff must “affirm” gender ideology and “facilitate” LGBT identities for foster kids, or be fired. Same goes for foster parents. If children or adolescents under the state’s care “explore/express a sexual orientation other than heterosexual and/or a gender identity that is different from the child/youth’s sex assigned at birth,” agency staff and foster parents must “support and respect” the child’s exploration “without any effort to direct or guide them to any specific outcome for their exploration.” If not, then in the state’s eyes you’re not fit to be a staffer or foster parent.

The state of Illinois has thus claimed that adherence to traditional Christian teaching on sexuality, which makes the bold claim that God created only two sexes, male and female, makes one unfit to be around children.

Progressives Have No Use For Christians
That’s more or less what Sanders did by conflating Vought’s thoroughly commonplace understanding of Christian theology with racism and bigotry. A spokesman for Sanders said in a statement issued Thursday: “In a democratic society, founded on the principle of religious freedom, we can all disagree over issues, but racism and bigotry—condemning an entire group of people because of their faith—cannot be part of any public policy.” The nomination of Vought, “who has expressed such strong Islamaphobic language,” the statement said, “is simply unacceptable.”

At the hearing on Wednesday, Sanders said he would vote against confirming Vought for deputy director of the OMB. Afterwards, Muslim groups including the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Muslim Advocates, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned Vought’s comments, saying without a hint of irony that his views threaten the principle of religious freedom.

It’s important to understand what’s going on here. The Left, itself a kind of secular religion, does not really think it’s okay to be religious—to hold strong convictions about eternal salvation or the divinity of Jesus Christ. Progressives believe this is disturbing and un-American. The irony is that the opposite is true, as John Adams put it: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Understand, too, that the progressives who now run the Democratic Party will turn a blind eye to the exclusivity claims of Muslims and other religious groups they think they need in their political coalition. But they will not suffer Christians. There’s a simple reason for that: Democrats know they have lost orthodox Christians as a constituency, and now they have no use for them.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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