Out of control British police again: Police officer described as 'bully in uniform' used knife to saw through innocent man's windscreen after mistaking him for drug dealer

A police officer who was caught on video smashing a driver's windscreen after mistaking him for a drug dealer is a "bully in uniform", a court heard.

PC Joshua Savage, 28, pounded on the Ford Fiesta before sawing his way through the glass with a lock knife during the attack in north London, jurors were told.

The driver, Leon Fontana, filmed from inside the car as Savage shouted "get out of the car" and "you're not allowed to drive it", jurors heard.

Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay told Southwark Crown Court: "It's not unfair to say that he [Savage] comes across in that clip as a bully in uniform."

Mr Fontana was left with glass in his eye and had to fork out £175 for a new windscreen. The police officer had mistakenly identified him as a local gang member well-known to the police.

Mr Polnay added: "PC Savage knows perfectly well how to behave. In two minutes of footage that you have just seen did he once say please? Did he once call Leon Fontana sir or mister or show him any degree of courtesy?

"When he [Mr Fontana] was saying 'I have a licence and insurance', he was telling the truth. No one is above the law - not you, not me, not even the judge for that matter nor is PC Savage.

"The law says that you, as a person driving the car, must stop if they are asked to by police. There's absolutely no obligation for the driver to get out of the car.

"Having said that, in reality what was happened here, as well as being unlawful, he's absolutely lost his temper. He has lost it.

"This behaviour was against the very laws he was there to uphold."

Mr Fontana, 27, was pulled over in Weedington Place, Camden, at around 5.45pm on 16 September 2016 because police mistook him for a known local gang member, TJ Dixon.

On the mobile footage, Mr Fontana can be heard saying "I'm not TJ, I'm not TJ," referring to the gang member he had wrongly been mistaken for.

Savage received an incorrect radio message that the driver only had a provisional licence, he shouted: "Get out the car, you're not allowed to drive it. You're disqualified, you're not allowed to drive."

The prosecutor told the jury that there is "no power for police to force entry" to a car in this scenario.

But Savage then took out his baton and began attempting to smash the passenger window. When that failed, the officer started sawing a hole in the windscreen using a Swiss Army knife.

Mr Fontana finally got out of the car through the passenger door and was wrestled to the ground while saying: "I'm recording for my safety".

The driver told the court he thought his life was in danger when PC Savage started smashing the windscreen.

Mr Fontana told jurors: "He came straight up to my window and he looked like he was in an emergency to talk to me or something."

"I didn't want to get out of the car - I wasn't doing anything illegal. I felt threatened and very frightened, I definitely wasn't leaving the car.

"I thought if I left that car I would be in danger certainly. I was not getting out to a police officer with a cosh and a knife so I got out the other side."

Mr Fontana told the court he was in handcuffs for "15 to 20 minutes". In his police statement, Savage claimed he was acting in self-defence. "I formed the belief that the male may have access to firearms, offensive weapons or drugs," he said. "There was a real and immediate risk that the male could cause harm or risk to me or my colleagues."

Mr Polnay questioned why Savage was not heard warning his colleagues on the video if he was truly concerned he had a weapon. "The prosecution say this is simply not true," he added.

Savage, of Hermon Hill, Wanstead, east London, denies common assault, possession of a bladed article and destroying property.

The trial continues.

SOURCE







Colonel removes Bible from POW/MIA memorial because atheists were offended

Todd Starnes of Fox News reports the commander of F.E. Warren Air Force Base in my hometown of Cheyenne, Wyo., removed the Bible from a POW/MIA memorial. The commander was responding to demands by a one-man, left-wing, anti-religion organization. F.E. Warren has a storied legacy in the American West and has been the way station for generations of military leaders who served their country.

Col. Stacy J. Huser, by removing the Bible and by mouthing the offended group’s politically correct, bumper sticker, psychobabble nonsense, brings dishonor on this country’s uniform, those who served on the base before her, and those venerated by the memorial. President Trump, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, or Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson should remove Huser and restore the Bible to its rightful place.

I was born in Cheyenne; my father, mother, and brother are buried there; and my family has a lifelong connection to Warren. As a brash young man, Uncle Joe Wyrick fled the harsh hill country of Harlan County, Ky., enlisted in the U.S. Army, and ended up at Fort Francis E. Warren. My mother soon followed, met my railroader father who chased Depression Era jobs from the Arkansas Ozarks to Wyoming’s capitol, married, had my brother Barry and me, and, after jobs waitressing, became a nurse at “the base.” In the quiet of the graveyard shift, she watched over newborns and their mothers, most of whom were the wives of young, naive, and far-from-home enlisted men.

First called Fort D.A. Russell, after Civil War Brig. Gen. David A. Russell who was killed at the Third Battle of Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, it was established by the U.S. Cavalry in 1867 near Crow Creek Crossing, later Cheyenne, on the treeless high plains at the far western edge of the Great Plains to protect those working on the Union Pacific Railroad. It was home to three black regiments, including the 24th Infantry, the famous “Buffalo Soldiers,” and by the turn of the century, it was one of the largest cavalry bases in the United States, with its men fighting the Indian Wars, sent to war in the Philippines, and deployed along the Mexican border. In 1930, its name was changed to honor Wyoming’s first governor Francis E. Warren, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for battlefield gallantry in the Civil War.

In 1949 it became an Air Force base and, in 1958, part of the Strategic Air Command. In 1961, it became headquarters for the 90th Strategic Missile Wing, which controlled more than 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles, with their nuclear warheads buried deep in silos at the end of dusty dirt roads across southeastern Wyoming. With those ICBMs the likely target of incoming Soviet missiles, Paul Harvey labeled Cheyenne “Bull’s Eye, USA.” We were proud to be noticed, but, in the era of the “duck and cover” campaign and films of nuclear testing in the Nevada desert, it generated nightmares of a nuclear blast sweeping through my father’s windbreak outside my window at our home east of Cheyenne.

The base was not just named for heroes; warriors who became heroes once called it home. One of them, World War I fighter ace and Medal of Honor recipient Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, crash-landed his plane on its dirt strip and survived. Other hereos include Gen. Mark W. Clark, who saw action in WWI, WWII, and the Korean War and was the youngest Army four-star general in WWII; Maj. Walter Reed, M.D., the U.S. Army physician who first postulated and confirmed the connection between mosquitoes and yellow fever (Walter Reed Army Medical Center is named after him); Maj. Gen. William L. “Billy” Mitchell, the military aviation visionary and father of the U.S. Air Force; and Gen. Carl A. Spaatz, who successfully commanded the Strategic Air Forces over Europe in 1944 and became chief of staff of the newly formed U.S. Air Force in 1947.

Most significant for me, however, was General of the Armies John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing; after all, we drove Pershing Boulevard from our home to school, town, and the base where he served.

Fast forward to days ago, when Col. Huser acceded to the demands of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which claims to fight “virulent religious oppression” waged by “incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.” According to Starnes, MRFF President Mikey Weinstein says he has “36 unnamed clients” at Warren who were offended by the Bible at a POW/MIA table. To increase “the sense of belonging for all our Airmen,” Col. Huser announced the Bible will be replaced by a “book of faith” with “spiritual writings and prayers from the five [U.S. Department of Defense] Chaplain appointed faith groups and a sixth set of blank pages to represent those who find solace by other means.”

Gen. Pershing removed the Germans from Allied territory and, days ago, Col. Huser removed the Bible from a memorial. It is not your grandfather's Air Force anymore. What say you, Mr. President, Secretary Mattis, and Secretary Wilson? Is it yours?

SOURCE






The Great British Foreign Office Fantasy

According to the British Foreign Office, the Golan Heights are 'occupied'. They have been 'occupied' -- according to the logic of the UK Foreign Office -- since 1967, when Israel took the land from the invading forces of Syria. Ever since then, the Israelis have had the benefit of this strategic position and the Syrian regime has not. This fact, half a century on, still strikes the British Foreign Office as regrettable, and a wrong to be righted in due course.

Of course, since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011, the official position of the UK government has become ever-harder to justify. For example, if the Israeli government were at some point over the last seven years suddenly to have listened to the wisdom of the Foreign Office in London and handed over the strategic prize of the Golan, to whom should it have handed it? Should Israel be persuaded to hand over the territory to the Assad regime in Damascus? It is true that, throughout the course of the Syrian civil war, the one bit of territory to which the Syrian regime has laid claim and which it has not been able to barrel-bomb and otherwise immiserate the people there has been the Golan Heights. Only in the Golan has anybody in this 'Greater Syria' been able to live free from the constant threat of massacre and ethnic, religious or political cleansing.

Other candidates for the territory naturally presented themselves across the same time-frame. The armies of ISIS came right up to the villages on the Syrian side along the borders of the Golan. There, they were able to bring that form of peace-through-barbarism which the world has come to know well. If ISIS had triumphed in the Syrian conflict rather than suffering repeated set-backs, would the UK Foreign Office have handed them the territory by way of reparational justice, or victor's prize? If not them, then perhaps the armies of Iran or Russia could have been the recipients of this feat of restorative diplomacy? Perhaps anyone who wished to lay claim to the Golan could have had it. So long as it was not the Israelis.

The ongoing madness of the British Foreign Office's position has been highlighted in recent days thanks to a request which came from the British government, as well as the governments in other European capitals and in Washington. A request which also involved the Golan.

Over the weekend, it emerged that the British government was among foreign governments to have made a dramatic request of the Israelis. As the war in Syria appears to be clarifying towards its end-point, a group of around 800 members of the 'White Helmets' and their families had reportedly become trapped near the southwestern border near the Golan Heights. The White Helmets only operate in 'rebel areas' and are despised by the Assad regime. With Syrian government forces moving in, a massacre may well have been about to occur.

At the request of these foreign governments, the Israelis just carried out an extraordinary and unprecedented mission. In recent days, a reported 422 of the intended evacuees and their family members were saved by the Israelis. The other -- almost half -- of the intended number appears already to have been cut off by other forces. Nevertheless, those who did make it out were transferred by Israeli forces across the Golan and have now reportedly arrived safely in Jordan where their future status will be determined. Some may stay in Jordan; others will be moved abroad to Western countries.

The painful irony of this situation should be clear to all observers. If the Israelis did not lay claim to the Golan, there would have been no means to have got the White Helmets and their families out of Syria. Had Israel not made the Golan the peaceful and thriving area it is, it would simply be another part of Syria in which different sectarian groups were slaughtering other sectarian groups.

As it is, the area is in the control of Britain's most reliable ally in the region. An ally which -- even as it is lectured by Britain -- agrees to requests from the British government that takes advantage of a strategic reality, one which the British government still refuses to accept.

The Israeli government has given the British government what it wanted. Perhaps now would be a good time for the British government to reciprocate in some way? There could be no better means of doing so than by admitting that the British policy of the last half a century has been a Foreign Office fantasy and a wholesale dud of 'realist' regional thinking. The Foreign Office will have to back out of its self-imposed corner regarding the Golan at some point and accept the reality on the ground. How much better it would be if it did so now in a spirit of goodwill and reciprocity, rather than later on in a spirit of inevitable and grudging defeat.

SOURCE







Ireland's Anti-Israel Bill and the Muslim Brotherhood

On July 11, the Irish Senate approved a bill criminalizing local companies that engage in commerce with Israeli firms based in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). Introduced in the body's Upper Chamber by independent member Senator Frances Black, the bill passed initial muster, in a 25-20 vote with 14 abstentions. The Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill, 2018 would prohibit any import of goods or services from "occupied territories," with financial penalties of a quarter million euros in fines and up to five years imprisonment for violators.

Israel's reaction to the Irish Senate's vote was swift. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Ireland's ambassador, Alison Kelly, for a reprimand. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the immediate closure of the Israeli Embassy in Dublin. It is unlikely, however, that Israel will follow through on Lieberman's threat, as Ireland's governing party, the Fine Gael, is opposed to the bill, which in any case must pass in Ireland's Lower house of Parliament, the Dáil, before becoming a law.

A U.S.-based litigation outfit, The Lawfare Project, which fights anti-Israel discrimination -- with the help of UK Lawyers for Israel -- has initiated legal action against the proposed legislation. The litigators say that the Irish bill could have a negative impact on American companies with subsidiaries in Ireland: it is illegal under US anti-boycott laws to cooperate with a ban on commerce with Israeli settlements. Compliance with US boycott laws would, in turn, cost US companies a good deal in fines for violation of the Irish boycott.

What, then, is behind the proposed bill? One possible explanation is the prominent role played by Islamic institutions and organizations in Ireland, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood's influence in Dublin, the nation's capital, is evidenced by the easy access its key personnel have to Ireland's government.

There is evidence to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood has established its European headquarters in the Emerald Isle. The Islamic Cultural Centre of Ireland (ICCI), which hosts several Muslim institutes affiliated with the international Sunni group that many view as a terrorist organization, is located in Clonskeagh, a suburb south of Dublin. The ICCI complex includes the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR), a prestigious institute of Islamic jurisprudence, which was founded by the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE), itself a Muslim Brotherhood institution.

Dubai's ruling al-Maktoum family, a key Muslim Brotherhood financier, donated the money to erect the ICCI complex, which also houses Ireland's largest mosque. Furthermore, the ICCI's Campus Dean, Imam Sheikh Hussein Halawa, is a former colleague of the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual guide, Qatar-based Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi, the chair of the ECFR, was denied entry into Ireland in 2011, after he expressed support for the suicide bombing of Israelis. Since then, he has not been allowed into Ireland.

Sheikh Halawa, in addition to being the dean of the ICCI, also chairs the Irish Council of Imams, made up of at least 35 Sunni and Shia Muslim scholars in the Irish Republic. As a result, he maintains a high public profile, which has awarded him invitations to state events with Ireland's prime minister and president, and with the mayor of Dublin.

Despite popular support in Ireland for same-sex marriage and other liberal causes, Halawa openly sanctions the death penalty for gays, and the ICCI has a record of hosting radical Islamic speakers. One such speaker, Saudi Mullah Aed al-Qarni, told Iqra TV in 2004 that the "brothers of apes and pigs" (i.e. Israelis and Jews) killed arch terrorist Hamas leaders Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi and Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. In 2005, al-Qarni sermonized about Jews "that throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered."

Another Saudi firebrand, Salman al-Ouda, delivered sermons at the ICCI in 2007. Egyptian imam Wagdy Ghoneim, who visited the center in 2006 and 2007, denounced Jews as pigs and apes at a conference of the American Muslim Society in May, 1998 at Brooklyn College. He was eventually banned from the UK and the US for having issued a fatwa urging Muslims to kill American troops fighting in Muslim lands, specifically to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Classified cables exchanged in 2006 between the State Department and the US Embassy in Ireland -- and published by Wikileaks in 2011 -- revealed that the administration of George W. Bush was trying to find out whether the European Council for Fatwa and Research and other such groups were working to legitimize Sharia (Islamic) law in Western Europe.

According to James Kenny, the American ambassador to Ireland at the time, a certain journalist claimed that outside of Qatar, Ireland had the strongest Muslim Brotherhood presence, and that al-Qaradawi "runs Islam in Ireland."

The White House's concern may have been warranted concerning some Muslim Brotherhood zealots in Ireland. But there are other Irish Islamic leaders who are more willing to compromise with Ireland's values, if not assimilate. In his 2014 book, Islam and Education in Ireland: An Introduction to the Faith and the Educational Challenges It Faces, Dr. Ali Selim -- the ICCI spokesman and secretary general of the Irish Council of Imams -- called for a reform of Ireland's education system, to make it more "inclusive" for Muslims. Among the changes he advocated was gender segregation in gym, music and art classes, where there could be "a clash of values" with Islam. Selim was interviewed in the Irish press and asked whether he favored Sharia to be implemented in Ireland. He responded that only in the case where Muslims are a majority is Sharia likely to be enacted.

Nor is Islamic extremism in Ireland limited to the ICCI campus alone. The leaked US Embassy cables also indicated that even some Irish Muslims refer to a certain mosque in Dublin as "Tora Bora," a cave complex on Afghanistan's border with Pakistan. One of the mosques imams, Yayah al-Hussein, originally from Sudan, is a member of Hamas, and many of its congregants are Bosnian and Afghan jihadists.

That jihadist groups feel comfortable in Ireland is understandable, given the country's genuine societal openness to Islam in general and Muslim immigrants in particular. In addition, Irish politics tend to favor the narrative of Palestinian Arabs in their conflict with Israel. This is due, in part, to their viewing -- inaccurately -- the plight of the Palestinians through the prism of their own history of occupation by England. But the Irish never aspired to displace Great Britain.

Even so, in Northern Ireland's Province of Ulster, still part of the United Kingdom, Palestinian flags can be seen flying from private homes.

Meanwhile, the recently-replaced Lord Mayor of Dublin Mícheál Mac Donncha is a member of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which supports the global boycott effort against products made in Israel.

Politics aside, the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood -- and its use of Ireland as a friendly base from which to spread its doctrine throughout the rest of Europe -- should be a cause of great concern not just to Dublin, but to democracies everywhere. Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi summed up the Muslim Brotherhood creed while running for election in 2012:

"The Koran is our constitution;
The Prophet Muhammad is our leader;
Jihad is our path and death for the sake of Allah is our most lofty aspiration;
Above all, Allah is our goal."

Is it any wonder, then, that chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed the Irish Senate's bill? In a statement quoted by the official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa, Erekat said, "This courageous step builds on the historic ties between Ireland and Palestine, [and] shows the way forward for the rest of the European Union."

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.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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