As two fatal political diseases, Socialism and Islam, spread steadily through our Western civilization, two events signaled that liberty and prosperity might survive: one was Brexit – the majority vote in Britain to withdraw from the European Union – and the other was the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.

Both President Trump and Brexit are under relentless attack.

Yesterday an anonymous British civil servant published a warning to the British people.

It is titled:

Don’t be fooled: this Brexit deal creates a triple lock to shackle the UK to Brussels forever.

It makes it clear as day that the “deal” is a conspiracy between Prime Minister Theresa May and the Leftist Cabal that runs the corrupt EU to frustrate the will of the British people and sabotage Brexit.

We quote from the warning:

EU officials (ably abetted by their British allies) have produced a devilishly clever draft treaty which, if passed, would end Brexit and get Britain ready to board the express train to a United States of Europe. The political takeover of the UK represented by the Withdrawal Agreement is an audacious attempt to reverse a damning popular vote of discontent with the European Project and provide fresh impetus for the federal superstate that is the EU’s raison d’être.

The EU’s triple lock guarantee is so constructed that never again will Brussels be troubled by an explosion of democracy in the United Kingdom. Parliament has one last chance to escape total eclipse – and it is now, by rejecting the Withdrawal Agreement in its entirety.

The first lock: the transition period
The first lock is the transition period, which lasts until at least 2021. We must hand over an estimated £39 billion for nothing, be bound by EU law and take orders from an unelected Joint Committee operating under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Will the EU27 agree an equitable free trade agreement before the end of 2020? Unlikely, since all the goodies they want in the “future partnership” are set out in the Northern Ireland backstop, which kicks in automatically on 1st January 2021 unless superseded by a “partnership” agreement. Full ratification by all Member States is required before any such agreement can come into force. Achieving this in time to avoid entering the backstop would be nothing short of miraculous, even if the EU agrees to extend the transition period for one or two years. So it is more pay with no say and a likely doubling of the Brexit bill to £80 billion, to be paid with no reference to British MPs.

The second lock: the backstop
The backstop is intended to be inescapable. It prepares Britain for the final destination set out in the political declaration, as a permanent satellite state of the EU. By which time, of course, it is doubtless hoped that we will be so fed up with our vassalage that we decide to rejoin the EU as a full member – with greatly increased budget contributions and a whole swathe of new EU law to obey. The United States of Europe will have taken shape during our “wilderness years” using our money (“Britgeld” seems to be an appropriate term), but without our political input. No taxation without representation? What a joke.

Not only does the backstop carve out Northern Ireland as an EU province and set a border in the Irish Sea, it creates a partial “customs union” that requires us to implement EU trade tariffs and policy with no decision-making powers. Under highly restrictive “non-regression clauses”, the UK also agrees to implement all EU environmental, competition, state aid and tax harmonisation laws, with the unelected Joint Committee and the ECJ once again able to punish us for any perceived backsliding. British farmers will be locked into a subsidy regime well below support received by EU27 farmers, who nevertheless retain tariff-free access to the UK. British agriculture would be decimated. It means we could not support British businesses, give ourselves a competitive edge in new technologies where we excel, strike independent trade deals or diverge in key policy areas such as goods regulations and tax. Free EU access to UK fisheries is set down as a marker for negotiation in the future “deal”.

The third lock: the “future partnership”
Anyone expecting the EU27 to give up the immense advantages they gain under the backstop is delusional. Retaining tariff-free access to the UK market and effective control of UK trade and competition policy must be nirvana for them. To ensure they reap the full benefit, there is the third and final lock in the Withdrawal Agreement. Unless we agree to a “future partnership” as set out in the political declaration, the backstop will endure in perpetuity.

The Political Declaration replicates all the onerous “non-regression” clauses of the backstop and requires even more surrender of sovereignty via participation in and funding of the EU’s aerospace and defence programmes, free access to UK waters for EU fishermen, a full customs union and common trade policy, free movement by the backdoor under “mobility” clauses, EU control of UK agriculture via the state aid rules and in general full adherence to the acquis communautaire in all policy areas.

The good news is that a real break away from the EU can happen without an agreement – and will.

“Withdrawal Agreement” is an Orwellian misnomer, of course. This agreement keeps Britain in chains.

Voters may believe we need it in order to leave the EU. We do not. They could be fooled by the Prime Minister’s repeated claims that there might be “no Brexit” unless it is passed – when of course Brexit will happen by default without it under the terms of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act. Voters might also be forgiven for believing that the Withdrawal Agreement settles our future trade relationship with the EU. Not in the slightest. Future trade talks remain just that – in the future – while May’s “deal” keeps the UK legally shackled to a moribund EU economy which it must attempt to revive with vast sums of British taxpayers’ money for an indeterminate number of years.

President Trump opposes Theresa May’s sell-out of Brexit and wants a trade deal with an independent Britain.

And – an add-on item to enjoy – he recently downgraded the EU and demoted its ambassador by declaring it to be an international organization and not a nation-state.

The South African government has announced that it will take away land owned by white farmers without compensating them for their loss.

Take from them what they legally own. Take all they have. Seize it. Steal it from them. Leave them and their families and dependents destitute.

And the British government, (wo)manned by incompetent women led by an incompetent woman, says that’s just fine.

Here’s one of the stupid women using her unearned power to do irreparable harm on a vast scale:

Breitbart London has seen a letter written by Harriet Baldwin MP, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), to Sir Paul Beresford MP, who enquired what the government’s stance on the policy [of expropriating land owned by white farmers without compensation] was on behalf of a concerned constituent.

“The British government understands the need for land reform in South Africa”, Baldwin asserted, adding that they “welcomed” promises from President Cyril Ramaphosa that “the process of land [re]distribution would be orderly within South African laws” and be carried out “without negatively affecting economic growth, agricultural production and food security”.

In a follow-up email to the constituent from the Africa Department (Central and Southern) of the FCO, also seen by Breitbart London and confirmed as “reflect[ing] Government policy on this issue” by the FCO newsdesk, the department confirms Theresa May is satisfied with having been told that “[the] process would be taken forward on a multi-party basis, through Parliament, and… within the bounds of the Constitution and carefully designed so as to avoid damaging food security or deterring investment”.

Oh, that’s okay then. The theft will be legal!

The theft will be legal?

Oh, and “carefully designed”. No damage to “food security” is likely to occur because of “careful design”. And don’t worry if you’re thinking of investing money in South Africa; these soothing words should keep you from feeling “deterred”.

That the ANC government intends to make the seizure of white-owned farms without the owners being compensated legal, through parliamentary fiat and constitutional amendments, says nothing about the justness of the policy, however — and while Ramaphosa might insist he can confiscate land without “deterring investment” the national currency took an immediate hit when the policy was announced.

Minister Baldwin and the FCO Africa Department also dismissed the constituent’s concerns that white farmers, who own a majority of land being put to use for agriculture in South Africa but only a little over a fifth of land overall, were being deliberately targeted in racist attacks.

Many white farmers, including British nationals, have been brutally attacked and sometimes murdered on their homesteads, often following a prolonged period of torture — indeed, by some measures farming in South Africa is the most dangerous occupation in the world outside an active war zone.

Only white farmers attacked. Attacked only by blacks.

But Baldwin and the FCO bureaucrats played down the phenomenon, claiming: “Attacks on farmers are generally opportunistic and on the whole not based on racial grounds.”

In the same way, you see, taking land from white owners and giving it gratis to black owners has nothing to do with race.

How stupid and gullible can even a British female Member of Parliament be?

… Many observers believe the result of the land expropriation without compensation policy the ANC is pursuing — allegedly in response to electoral pressure from Julius Malema’s black nationalist Economic Freedom Fighters party — will be an exodus of the country’s white minority, followed by a collapse in agricultural production and the wider economy.

As happened in Zimbabwe “when  Marxist kleptocrat Robert Mugabe seized white-owned farms … and allowed violent mobs to forcibly eject and often kill the former occupants”, so turning the “Breadbasket of Africa” into a barren wasteland of a country needing to import food while having no money to pay for it.  

Who is the Snake alluded to in our heading – in recollection of the song President Trump has recited more than once in his rally speeches? The Snake the silly women ruling Britain are clasping to their collective bosom?

The creature with a forked tongue? Its name is Cyril Ramaphosa. Or the Government of South Africa.

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, the publisher of that scurrilous daily, the New York Times, is a white male.

So why does he appoint someone who declares that she hates whites and males to his editorial board?

It’s not a question that can be easily answered (except of course by psychologists and sociologists who know everything about the human mind and heart but can only explain what they know unintelligibly).

A similar question is: Why do Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the ladies who rule Sweden want to hand over their countries to Islam?

And another in the same genre is: Why do intellectuals who claim that their political mission and life-goal is to raise the folks at the bottom of the social hierarchy and sink the rich by robbing them until they are no richer than anybody else in order to achieve and establish an egalitarian society, despise and insult the working class?

At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson writes (in part – the whole thing is well worth reading):

Recently Politico reporter Marc Caputo was angered at rude hecklers at a Trump rally who booed beleaguered CNN correspondent Jim Acosta.

(Yay!)

So Caputo tweeted of them, “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.”

Politico had not employed such a crass journalist since before it fired Julia Ioffe for tweeting, “Either Trump is f—ing his daughter or he’s shirking nepotism laws. Which is worse?” (Ioffe was then snatched up by the Atlantic …). 

I suppose Caputo meant that Trump voters intrinsically lacked either the money to fix their teeth or the knowledge of the hygiene required to take care of them or the aesthetic sensitivity of how awful their mouths looked. Or Caputo was simply rehashing the stereotypes that he had seen on reality TV shows like Duck Dynasty and The Deadliest Catch.

Or none of the above: the journalist grandee was just stupid.

That last alternative seems most likely since Caputo then escalated and called them collectively “garbage people”.  …

What did “garbage people” mean? That by birth or training such toothless, smelly people were subhuman, like refuse? And if Caputo had substituted any other racial minority for his slurs, would he still have his job according to the cannons of progressive censure and Internet lynching? Could he have said something similarly degrading about the attendees of after an open borders or Black Lives Matter rally and still have his job?

Last week, the New York Times named tech writer Sarah Jeong to its editorial board with apparent knowledge of her long history of racist tweets, as well as verbal attacks on police and males in general. Perhaps such gutter venom was proof of militant orthodoxy to be appreciated rather than medieval racism to be shunned. Her mostly empty résumé seems compensated by her identity and her politics—as the Times more or less confessed in its sad defense of her racist outbursts.

Jeong claimed that white people smelled like wet dogs. She had bragged that she hated them, and hoped that soon they would become childless and disappear. Her final solution of demographic extinction was, she said (in historically dense fashion), “my plan all along.”

One wonders whether she will canonize her collected tweets into something like My Struggle … 

(The translation  of the title of Adolf Hitler’s book, in German Mein Kampf …)

… replete with less abstract territorial theories how to reify her “plan” or add pseudo-scientific details explaining why and how whites, as she alleges, smell or have had no cultural or scientific achievements. …

Many whites smell. (Or “stink” as the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson told a lady he did when she complained to him that he “smelt”, while she, he said, was the one who “smelt” – transitive verb, meaning she smelt him). But (to state the obvious for the average American Lefty who may have some academic degrees but has learnt little and cannot even spell) whites are responsible for most of the scientific achievements that have made our lives longer and better and our civilization great. The old Greeks who launched science were white. Isaac Newton who relaunched science and so also the Enlightenment, was white. The Age of Science began then and is with us still.  As for other cultural achievements …

What’s that you say, Ms. Jeong? Shakespeare was black, and actually a woman? Einstein too? Good grief, we never knew!

In the text message trove of disgraced FBI operatives Lisa Page and Peter Strzok there was the same sort of barnyard contempt. Georgetown graduate Strzok claimed to Page that a local Virginia Walmart “smelled” of Trump voters—a progressive stereotype of white Neanderthals that is increasingly freely expressed.

In another government text, an unidentified FBI agent, assigned to the Hillary Clinton email investigation, had written of the Trump voters that they were “lazy POS that think we will magically grant them jobs for doing nothing.”

Again, demonizing the Trump voter as beyond cultural redemption is nothing new. During the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton infamously dismissed Trump supporters as “deplorables” who were“irredeemable” and were “not America”. …

In some sense, the rebranded Clinton simply continued where Barack Obama had left off in his denunciations of the “bitter clingers” of Pennsylvania, who were prone to simplistic trust in their guns and religion and, out of insecurity, scapegoated others.

When Obama periodically wrote off Americans as “lazy” and ignorant of the world beyond them (this, from another Harvard law graduate who thought Hawaii was in Asia and Austrians spoke “Austrian”), he was, to use a progressive metaphor, dog whistling the themes of his clingers speech.

Elites are confident that there is nothing either ethically wrong or career-endangering in smearing middle-class Trump supporters with such crude stereotypes.

When pundits on television go after Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), they inevitably resort to attacking his Tulare roots, and his dairy-farm upbringing (“A former dairy farmer”; “way over his head”; “nothing in his résumé that would have qualified him for the post”, etc.) to claim that he is mismatched by Harvard-trained Adam Schiff. Again, how strange that egalitarians always revert to base snobbery and class stereotypes in lieu of an argument or an idea. …

Jeong is a Harvard Law graduate. Strzok has a master’s degree from Georgetown. The ridicule of the white working class by NeverTrump conservative pundits is read on the pages of the nation’s premier newspapers or voiced in hallowed symposia.

Is such ignorance of an entire class because of, or in spite of such, elite training?

Does the university-bred cursus honorarium have room for real-world experience beyond the campus and laptop?

Has Jeong ever worked welding alongside the grandchildren of Dust Bowl diaspora to adjudicate their actual skin-colored advantage? Did her class and gender studies work at Harvard Law constitute a tougher curriculum than a 12-hour shift at Denny’s? Is the soybean jack-of-all-trades farmer really denser than the Yale English major?

Which reminds us of this best of all satires ever. We cannot resist re-posting it:

The excellent Middle East Forum (MEF), under the presidency of Daniel Pipes, carries out wide, deep, totally reliable research on Islamic terrorism and terrorists.

It is also an active force to be reckoned with. 

The MEF organized a 25,000 strong protest in support of Tommy Robinson, and plans more rallies and other actions to gain his release from prison.

On July 8^th, 2018, MEF Director, Gregg Roman, issued this statement as a press release from their HQ in Philadelphia:

Tommy Robinson, the imprisoned English counter-Islamist activist, journalist, and book author, justifiably titled his autobiography Enemy of the State, for he has long been a target of the U.K. authorities impatient with his criticism of Islamism.

The Middle East Forum (MEF) is helping Robinson in his moment of danger. It does so in the context of its Legal Project which since 2007 has defended activists, journalists, politicians, et al. who face harassment, fines, or imprisonment because of their views concerning Islamism and related topics.

MEF is sponsoring and organizing the second “Free Tommy Robinson” gathering in London on July 14. MEF previously provided all the funding and helped organized the first “Free Tommy Robinson” event held June 9 in London.

MEF, along with a coalition of UK advocacy groups and international figures will assemble to advocate for Mr. Robinson’s release and demand greater protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. MEF is arranging for U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar (Republican of Arizona) to travel to London to speak alongside the Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, and others.

The latest incident began on May 25 with Mr. Robinson reporting on a rape-grooming trial involving Muslim defendants in Leeds, England, for which he was arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to 13 months prison, and jailed – all in the course of a few hours. To make matters worse, he was tricked out of the right to confer with counsel. Now, he has been moved to historically violent Olney prison, where he is a potential target of Islamist gangs.

“The police allow rape gangs to operate for decades but swoop down within minutes on Tommy Robinson for a peccadillo,” notes Forum president Daniel Pipes. “We worry that his life is now in immediate peril.”

Forum director Gregg Roman adds: “Western democracy requires a robust public discussion of Islam – including terrorism, terrorist funding, Islamism, immigration and related matters – not its suppression. No matter one’s views of Mr. Robinson, all decent people must support his right to discuss controversial matters without fear of arrest, secret trial, and imprisonment.”

The Middle East Forum is aiding Mr. Robinson’s defense in three main ways:

• Legally – By using Legal Project monies to fund his legal defense.
• Diplomatically – By bringing foreign pressure on the UK government to ensure Mr. Robinson’s safety and eventual release.
• Politically – By organizing and funding the 25,000-person “Free Tommy” London rally on June 9 and now the July 14 protest, also taking place in London.

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects the Western civilization from Middle East threats.

For more information, contact:
Gregg Roman, Director
[email protected]

The rally was held, although the Muslim mayor of London ordered the Metropolitan Police to ban two proposed demonstrations. One of them was pro-Trump, as the US President was visiting Britain at the time and was being subjected to much spiteful denigration, in part by a  permitted anti-Trump rally. The other was pro-Tommy. The two marches were scheduled to converge on the MEF-organized rally.The potentially massive turnouts for both were more than the Enemy-in-Charge could stomach.

Also, Geert Wilders, who is under death-threat by jihadis, was prevented from coming to London to speak at the rally by the pro-Islam authorities refusing either to let his own bodyguards be armed or to supply local armed guards to protect him. He had spoken at a pro-Tommy rally a month ago on June 9 – so effectively that the Theresa May police-state would not allow an encore. (We posted his June 9 speech here.)

The persecution of Tommy Robinson by the British government has become an international scandal.

Tommy tells the truth about Islam, and the European governing globalists who invited millions of Muslims to settle in their countries cannot stand it. So they shut him up behind bars. Then President Trump tells them the same truth, and they cannot put him in prison or clap their hands over their ears and shout “La-la-la”.

Tommy Robinson    President Trump

Strange that a working-class prisoner in Britain and the president of the United States should be allies. But they are, and they know they are. President Trump’s ambassador to the UK complained to the British ambassador to the US about the injustice meted out to Tommy. 

The president and the prisoner serve the same cause: the protection of Western civilization, under attack by the savage force of Islam intent on its destruction. 

*

Probably because Tommy’s case has become an international scandal attracting the attention of the president of the United States, it is now being put in the hands of the highest judge in the Kingdom.

The [British] government had delayed the court date for Tommy’s appeal from July 10 to July 24, making him rot in solitary confinement for two more weeks. Well, that date has moved again, but it is now sooner:

Tommy Robinson’s appeal will now be heard on July 18.

[And] there is a new judge.

The first judge appointed was Lord Justice Brian Leveson, the head of all criminal justice in the United Kingdom.

But now there are a panel of three judges, presided over by Sir Ian Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales.

It would be as if, in the US, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States were personally hearing the case

So Ezra Levant reports. He adds:

Tommy has asked me to personally come to London to attend at court. 

He doesn’t trust the mainstream media to report fairly on his case. And I agree.

Sir Ian Burnett, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

*

Update July 18, 2018:

The decision on Tommy Robinson’s appeal against a conviction for contempt of court, expected today, has been delayed, but will be revealed “by the end of July”.

So yet again Tommy waits in jail.

The website Politicalite.com supports the Free Tommy movement, Brexit, and President Trump.

Today (July 1, 2018) it breaks the silence Theresa May’s tyrannical government is trying to impose on news of Tommy Robinson’s treatment in prison by reporting this:

Letters sent by jailed right-wing activist, Tommy Robinson, are not being sent to his wife.

HMP Onley, the prison that Tommy is in, has refused to post his letters to his wife and children over fears that they may be shared online. 

Tommy is locked up 23 hours a day, he’s allowed a shower and one phone call to his wife at 1-1.30pm, but at that time his little kids are at school – so he can’t speak to them and the prison won’t post his letters.   

He’s being treated worse than a terrorist.

He was arrested for “disturbing the peace” –  which he wasn’t doing. He was sentenced to 13 months in prison for “contempt of court” – of which he was innocent.

He is actually being punished for drawing attention to the sex-enslavement of hundreds of underage girls by Muslim gangs, and generally to the Islamification of his country.

His letters are being intercepted and retained by the prison authorities because the one his wife received – and made public – revealed what his life was like in solitary confinement. (See it here.)

The excuse for locking him up alone for 23 hours a day may be that he is being protected from physical harm – even murder – by members of the large Muslim population of the prison (far from his home) that he’s been sent to. (Deliberately sent to because of its large Muslim population?) The likelihood of such an attack prompted Lord Pearson – the only member of Parliament who has raised his voice in support of Tommy – to warn the (Muslim) Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, that if any such harm came to Tommy while serving his sentence, he, Lord Pearson, would hold the Secretary personally responsible and make him answer for it in court.

The next event to protest the jailing and treatment of Tommy will be held in Whitehall, London, on Saturday, 14th July.

It is a tragedy greater than the Fall of Rome: The Fall of Britain.

And yes, it is far worse that Britain become Islamified than any other European country. It was Britain that spread the Enlightenment through the inhabited world.

Breitbart reported:

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has proposed negotiating away border controls during the Brexit talks, giving EU migrants access to Britain’s labour market, benefits system, and health service. The liberal “conservative” heads the government department responsible for immigration and border controls, but is privately in favor of walking back promises that Britain will regain full control over its borders once the country finally leaves the European Union.

This woman was intent on destroying her country. She was succeeding. But (hot news) she has just been forced to resign, this very day, for making another – different – misjudgment.*

No one is saying how late the hour is, how close to hopeless the cause of saving the nation.  

No attempt is being made to stop the influx of Muslims; the colonization of Britain by Muslim immigrants. Any hope that its regaining of independence after leaving the EU would save Britain from Islamification must be abandoned. .

Criticize the appalling ideology that calls itself Islam, and you can go to jail.

Don’t even dare to think how dreadful it would be to have to become Muslim – a frown of distaste at the suggestion can get you arrested.

So what can be done?

Since those who do oppose the Islamization of Britain – the silent majority (?) – are doing nothing to stop it, let them force the process to its conclusion.  

Demand that Prime Minister Theresa May and all the women in government wear hijabs.

But why just them? Demand that all women in Britain be forced to wear hijabs. Or better still, burquas. And that all prepubescent girls undergo genital mutilation.

Accuse the police of Islamophobia. Loudly and often. Hysterically.

Petition parliament to substitute sharia for British law.

Demand the closing of all religious houses of worship except mosques. Or their conversion to mosques.

Cover the pictures and sculptures of nudes in all the museums and galleries of the British Isles or take the pictures down and smash the sculptures.

Instead of Guy Fawkes, use the 5^th of November for massive book-burnings. Empty the libraries. Re-fill them with Korans and other Islamic holy books. Preferably in Arabic.

Close the theaters. Silence the comedians. As the Ayatollah Khomeini said, “There are no jokes in Islam.”

Insist that all the pubs and bars be closed; all wine spirits and beer production cease. A great pouring out into the gutters, the rivers, the ocean could be a vast communal ceremony as Islam is passionately embraced. It would be a fitting display of homage to Allah and his inspiring Prophet.

Seek out a suitable adulteress for the first public stoning. A rape victim would be best.

Some cutting off of hands and feet in Trafalgar Square … some hundreds of gays thrown from roofs in the City … would bring the message home: Islam rules.

What to do about the monarch? Make Prince Charles sultan and caliph? He’s halfway there already.

Come on, Britons! Stop dithering. Raise the black flag of ISIS over Parliament, Whitehall, and Buckingham Palace.  Declare the Islamic State of Britain.

Then make Britain the leader of the Islamic world.

The Enlightenment must be extinguished.

In simple English, “Hello, Darkness!” 

***

*Amber Rudd’s replacement as Home Secretary is Sajid Javid, who is British-born of Pakistani Muslim descent.

From Wikipedia:

Javid has described his family’s heritage as Muslim, but he does not practice any religion, although he believes that “we should recognize that Christianity is the religion of our country”.

So might his appointment provide a ray of hope?

Answer: Nope. He had much to do do with this. Helping Muslims with their preferred methods of financial transaction. More Islamification.

“What did the missile strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons sites do for America?”

“Why should Americans expend blood and treasure for Syrians victimized by their own government?”

“America is not the world’s policeman.”

Such are the questions and protests that are coming from angry commentators, including many conservatives.

So was President Trump’s decision to act as he did right or wrong?

Claudia Rosett, for long a trusty reporter on the horror show called the United Nations, writes at PJ Media:

With air strikes on Syria’s chemical weapons facilities, carried out jointly with Britain and France, America has done the right thing.

Leading from in front, President Trump is finally redrawing the red line that President Obama erased in 2013. Whatever the threats and criticisms that will surely follow, the world will be safer for it. The vital message is that America is no longer the hamstrung giant of the Obama era. Tyrants such as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and his patrons in Moscow and Tehran, have been served notice that it would be unwise to continue to assume that America will waffle, appease or simply retreat while they take upon themselves the shaping – to monstrous effect – of the 21st-century world order. This message is also likely to resonate in Beijing (which has reportedly been planning live-fire naval exercises next week in the Taiwan Strait) and Pyongyang (with its nuclear missile projects).

The immediate aim of the US-led air strikes was to end the chemical weapons attacks that Syria’s Assad regime has continued to inflict on its own people – despite Assad’s promises in 2013 to surrender his chemical weapons, and Russia’s promise to ensure Assad did so. On Friday, speaking at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, Ambassador Nikki Haley charged that by U.S. estimates, “Assad has used chemical weapons in the Syrian war at least 50 times” – some of these attacks within the past year, including the gas attack that killed dozens … in the Syrian city of Douma.

There’s room for debate about whether it is America’s responsibility, on humanitarian grounds, to stop such atrocities. But whatever your views on protecting children in a far-off land from the hideous effects of chemical weapons, there is a larger, strategic reason for trying to stop Assad. Syria, with its liberal use of chemical weapons, has been setting a horrific precedent – repeatedly violating the Chemical Weapons Convention to which Damascus acceded in 2013, and eroding the longstanding international taboo against chemical warfare. This is dangerous way beyond Syria. As Haley told the UN Security Council: “All nations and all people will be harmed if we allow Assad to normalize the use of chemical weapons.”

In theory, the United Nations was supposed to prevent this, ensuring in tandem with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that Assad would give up all his chemical weapons – with the specific oversight and guarantees of Russia, under a deal cut in 2013 by Obama and Putin. As I explained in an article earlier this week for The Hill, the UN has failed utterly, thanks to Putin’s cynical exploitation of the entire setup. Russia used the chemical weapons disarmament deal as a portal for its own military entry into Syria in support of Assad, and has since been using its veto on the UN Security Council, along with a torrent of Kremlin propaganda, to run diplomatic cover for Assad.

As many conservative commentators pointed out at the time, it was stupid (if not collusional) of Obama and his secretary of state John Kerry to hand over the responsibility for overseeing Syria’s WMD abandonment to Russia.

The upshot has been that if the US does not stop Assad’s use of chemical weapons, then nobody will.

Neither Britain nor France would have done it without the US.

The US could have done it on its own. British and French participation in the missile attack was useful for President Trump, though not necessary for the success of the operation. The huge majority of the missiles were American – 88 of the 105. Nine were French and 8 were British.

Prime Minister May allowed British forces to strike Syria along with US forces because she “owed” President Trump for his supporting her, when she hit back at Russia for the poisoning of two Russian expats in Britain by expelling Putin’s diplomats and closing a consulate. She asked President Trump to do the same, and he did. She was able to give the order for the strike on Syria by the RAF without consulting parliament because the MPs were still absent on their Easter break. She seized the moment, and now there’s an outcry in the Commons – as well as the country – about it.

As for President Macron, he seems to be fascinated by President Trump, wanting to follow him and yet also to direct him. Macron claimed that he had “convinced” Trump that he should keep the US military engaged in Syria – and then he retracted the claim.

Last April, after Assad used sarin gas in an attack that killed almost 100 people, Trump ordered a strike of 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airbase. Evidently, that was not enough to stop Assad’s chemical weapons spree.

At a Pentagon press briefing Friday evening held shortly after Trump’s public announcement of the strikes on Syria, Gen. Joseph Dunford listed three targets “struck and destroyed,” which he said were “specifically associated with the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons program.” The last two on his list were chemical weapons storage facilities, one of which included “an important command post”. On these, I don’t know anything beyond the generic descriptions Dunford gave at the briefing.

But the first target on Dunford’s list had a very familiar ring. He described it as “a scientific research center located in the greater Damascus area”. He added: “This military facility was a Syrian center for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological warfare technology.”

That sure sounds like the notorious Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, also known as the SSRC. In which case there can be no doubt that these air strikes were aimed at an incredibly high-value target, an outfit central to some of the worst depravities of Assad’s weapons programs, and – as it happens – a longtime client of North Korea and Iran. On the 99 percent probability that this was the research center to which Dunford referred, here’s some background:

For starters, I’d credit Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis with telling it exactly as it is, when he said at the same Pentagon press briefing Friday night, “We were very precise and proportionate. But at the same time, it was a heavy strike.”

The SSRC has been on the U.S. sanctions list for 13 years, first designated under the Bush administration in 2005, with periodic, horrifying updates under the Obama and Trump administrations, targeting its various fronts, procurement arms, officials and connections.

This is not just any old research center. According to the U.S. Treasury, it is “the Syrian government agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and the missiles to deliver them”. …

On April 24, 2017, following Assad’s sarin gas attack on the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun, the Trump administration blacklisted 271 employees of the SSRC, stating that these individuals “have expertise in chemistry and related disciplines and/or have worked in support of SSRC’s chemical weapons since at least 2012”.  In other words, during the same time frame in which Russia (and former secretary of State John Kerry) were assuring us that 100 percent of the chemical weapons were gone from Syria, the Syrian regime’s SSRC was prolifically busy plowing ahead with Assad’s chemical weapons program.

We also have it on good authority that during roughly that same interval, the SSRC was ordering up shipments from North Korea. According to the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions, in a report dated March 5, 2018, their investigations into weapons and dual-use shipments to Syria from North Korea turned up more than 40 shipments between 2012 and 2017 “by entities designated by Member States as front companies for the Scientific Studies Research Centre of the Syrian Arab Republic.” Among these shipments were items “with utility in ballistic missile and chemical weapons programs”.

If the SSRC was indeed struck and destroyed, the likely benefits are enormous. That would deprive Assad of one of the most diabolical laboratories of his evil regime, quite likely providing a big setback to his chemical weapons program, with the two-fer that it might also have zapped his bioweapons program.

It would also send a useful message to everyone from the SSRC’s suppliers, such as Iran and North Korea, to such predatory dictators as Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Destroying the SSRC with air strikes ought to drive home, in a way that no amount of UN debate and no quantity of sanctions designations ever could, that these days the U.S. and its allies are serious about their red lines. 

The SSRC was struck. According to the caption to this picture in The Independent, this rubble is what’s left of “part” of it.

President Trump has – we’re glad to say – offended the British political and media establishment, including the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury. They all deserve to be offended.

They took offense at his retweeting certain videos – put out with pride by Muslims – showing Muslims carrying out violent acts. One of them was of a Muslim mob pushing a teenage boy off a roof and then, finding him still alive, beating him to death. Yes, of this they are proud!

It so happened that the videos had first been tweeted about by a British organization called Britain First – a name inspired by Donald Trump’s “America First ” slogan. In Britain it is de rigueur to revile Britain First, because, the revilers say, it is an offshoot from the British National Party (BNP) which was neo-Nazi; therefore, the reasoning goes, Britain First is “far right”. (Never mind that Nazism was a socialist movement, correctly describable as deriving from the Left – the Left long ago won that deception of nomenclature.) Actually, Britain First thinks of itself as being primarily Christian, and its opposition to Islam is at least partly on religious grounds.

But aside from all that, President Trump condemned the videos because of what they were, not because of who else condemned them.

He reacted to Theresa May’s indignant fury by tweeting: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

James Delingpole comments at Breitbart:

Now let me explain why, far from being a stupid, irresponsible, unpresidential move – as Britain’s chattering classes would have us believe – Trump’s tweets were in fact tactically astute. …

First, let’s just establish what he was NOT doing:

Winning the hearts and minds of radical Muslims; making liberals love and respect him more; getting nice coverage in the Guardian and the New York Times; persuading Never Trumpers that they might have misjudged him; winning over Theresa May and the rest of the faux-Conservative political class.

No. Trump doesn’t give a damn for any of these people. (And who can blame him?)

Instead he was sending a message to the people he cares about: all those ordinary people out there, not just in the U.S. but in Europe and beyond, who are shocked, appalled, scared by the way their countries are slowly (or quite quickly in the case of some countries, Sweden, for example) surrendering to Islam; who feel betrayed by the pusillanimity of their political leaders and let down by the failure of most of their media to report on the rapes and the sexual grooming and the violence being committed disproportionately by Muslims, both immigrants and home-grown radicals; who feel unable to speak – except in embarrassed whispers – about their fears about being stabbed or machine-gunned or blown up or mown down by yet another jihadist simply for the crime of going about their daily, Western life; who bitterly resent being tarred as Islamophobic or xenophobic or uncaring when all they want is to be allowed to live their life in peace in a country whose traditions, laws and cultural values remain the ones they grew up with and which make their homeland worth living in.

These are the people Trump was reaching out to with those tweets.

As for the rest – all those politicians and media types and cry bully activist groups – they just fell into Trump’s trap.

Trump wanted them to react in the way they did. ..

That boy on the roof – Hamada Badr, his name was, and he was 19 years old – really was pushed off and beaten to death by an Islamist mob, one carrying the black Al Qaeda flag …

So what, exactly, was Trump doing wrong by tweeting videos drawing attention to these issues?

None of his detractors has successfully answered this question.

That is because they do not have an answer.

Some of us here in Britain – many if not most of us, I suspect – are continually pinching ourselves in disbelief at what our country has become in so short a space. It seems only yesterday that we used to be able to walk over Westminster Bridge or go shopping round Borough Market or go to a pop concert without for one second having to worry about the possibility of being murdered by Islamic terrorists; that boys and girls in headscarves were never segregated in inner city schools and taught to despise Jews and other kuffar; that the correct response to mass rape was mass arrest not mass cover ups; that Britain believed in equality before the law not in separate Sharia courts for certain communities; that a supermarket worker who told his boss “I can’t serve alcohol to customers” would be told in no uncertain terms either to do his job or move on elsewhere …

The story is the same across continental Europe, from Austria to Sweden to Germany to France and the beaches of Greece, Italy and southern Spain.

But has our political class responded to our concerns about this menace to our values, our cultural cohesion and our safety?

On the contrary. It has either ignored the problem altogether. Or doubled down on it, as Angela Merkel did in 2015 when she decided to enrich her country, whether it liked it or not, with another million or so Muslim “refugees”. Or – as in the case of all this confected outrage about Britain First (a tiny organization about which few people either know or care) – they go: “Look, a squirrel!”, in the hope that people will politely join them in pretending that there isn’t a problem, thus relieving themselves of the burden of having to deal with it.

The U.S. was nearly as bad, of course, till Trump came along and said: “Enough is enough.” Which, of course, is one of the main reasons he is now president. He understood, as so many of our chatterati still do not, that there is a yawning gulf between where our political class are on the subject of immigration and Islam, and where the man and woman in the street are.

Trump sticks out like a sore thumb at the moment … because he is the only truth teller in a world of lies.

As a result of these events, the Special Relationship is under strain, and President Trump has cancelled a planned working visit to the United Kingdom to open the new US embassy in London.

Good decision, Mr. President!

It is foolish of Theresa May to pick a quarrel with President Trump, when Brexit Britain badly needs the best trade deals  it can get with the United States.

But what else should be expected of her? She is plainly a foolish woman when she constantly says that that the Muslim terrorist attacks plaguing her country “have nothing to do with Islam”, and at the same time has the forces of law and order hunt down and punish those who denounce the horrors on the grounds that any such criticism is offensive to Muslims.

AP reports: 

The Islamic State group [ISIS] claimed responsibility Thursday [March 22, 2017] for an attack by a man [Khalid Masood], who plowed an SUV into pedestrians on a crowded London bridge and then stabbed a police officer to death on the grounds of Britain’s Parliament.

The attacker was born in Britain and known to authorities who had once investigated him for links to religious extremism … 

The Islamic State group said through its Aamaq News Agency that the attacker was a soldier of the Islamic State who “carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition” of countries fighting IS in Syria and Iraq. …

Theresa May, the prime minister of Britain mirabile dictu, informed the world that the murderous attack (March 22, 2017) with a car on dozens of people on London’s Westminster Bridge and with a knife on a policeman in the precincts of Parliament, was “NOT AN ACCIDENT”. The world was not stunned to hear it. Who could disagree?

She called it “Islamist terrorism”, yet declared “it would be wrong to describe the attack as Islamic extremism”.

Because, she announced, “Islamist terrorism” is “A PERVERSION OF A GREAT FAITH”.

Is it?

From Jihad Watch, by Robert Spencer:

How is “Islamist terrorism” a “perversion of a great faith”? The learned imam Theresa May did not bother to explain. For her and her ilk, it is self-evident.

Yet one might get the impression that violence against unbelievers is not at all a perversion of Islam from the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence (madhahib):

Shafi’i school: A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that was certified in 1991 by the clerics at Al-Azhar University, one of the leading authorities in the Islamic world, as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy, stipulates about jihad that “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians … until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by Sheikh Nuh Ali Salman, a Jordanian expert on Islamic jurisprudence: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya)…while remaining in their ancestral religions.” (‘Umdat al-Salik, o9.8). …

Hanafi school: A Hanafi manual of Islamic law repeats the same injunctions. It insists that people must be called to embrace Islam before being fought, “because the Prophet so instructed his commanders, directing them to call the infidels to the faith”. It emphasizes that jihad must not be waged for economic gain, but solely for religious reasons: from the call to Islam “the people will hence perceive that they are attacked for the sake of religion, and not for the sake of taking their property, or making slaves of their children, and on this consideration it is possible that they may be induced to agree to the call, in order to save themselves from the troubles of war”.

However, “If the infidels, upon receiving the call, neither consent to it nor agree to pay capitation tax [jizya], it is then incumbent on the Muslims to call upon God for assistance, and to make war upon them, because God is the assistant of those who serve Him, and the destroyer of His enemies, the infidels, and it is necessary to implore His aid upon every occasion; the Prophet, moreover, commands us so to do.” (Al-Hidayah, II.140)

Maliki school: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), a pioneering historian and philosopher, was also a Maliki legal theorist. In his renowned Muqaddimah, the first work of historical theory, he notes that “in the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.” In Islam, the person in charge of religious affairs is concerned with “power politics,” because Islam is “under obligation to gain power over other nations”. 

Hanbali school: The great medieval theorist of what is commonly known today as radical or fundamentalist Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya, 1263-1328), was a Hanbali jurist. He directed that “since lawful warfare is essentially jihad and since its aim is that the religion is God’s entirely and God’s word is uppermost, therefore according to all Muslims, those who stand in the way of this aim must be fought“.

This is also taught by modern-day scholars of Islam. Majid Khadduri was an Iraqi scholar of Islamic law of international renown. In his book War and Peace in the Law of Islam, which was published in 1955 and remains one of the most lucid and illuminating works on the subject, Khadduri says this about jihad:

The state which is regarded as the instrument for universalizing a certain religion must perforce be an ever expanding state. The Islamic state, whose principal function was to put God’s law into practice, sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world. … The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state. (P. 51)

Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee [is] Assistant Professor on the Faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad. In his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad, he quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book … is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

All this makes it clear that there is abundant reason to believe that violence against unbelievers is not a perversion of Islam. It would be illuminating if Theresa May or someone around her produced some quotations from Muslim authorities she considers “authentic”,  and explained why the authorities I’ve quoted above and others like them are inauthentic. While in reality there is no single Muslim authority who can proclaim what is “authentic” Islam, and thus it would be prudent not to make sweeping statements about what “authentic Islam” actually is, clearly there are many Muslims who believe that violence against unbelievers is not a perversion of Islam.

One might also get the impression that violence against unbelievers is not a perversion of Islam from these Qur’an verses:

2:191-193: “And kill them wherever you come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is worse than slaughter. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they should fight you there; then, if they fight you, kill them — such is the recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate. Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s; then if they give over, there shall be no enmity save for evildoers.” …

4:89: “They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of Allah; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and kill them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper.”

5:33: “This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.”

8:12: “When thy Lord was revealing to the angels, ‘I am with you; so confirm the believers. I shall cast into the unbelievers’ hearts terror; so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them!”

8:39: “Fight them, till there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s entirely; then if they give over, surely Allah sees the things they do.”

8:60: “Make ready for them whatever force and strings of horses you can, to strike terror thereby into the enemy of Allah and your enemy, and others besides them that you know not; Allah knows them. And whatsoever you expend in the way of Allah shall be repaid you in full; you will not be wronged.”

9:5: “Then, when the sacred months are over, kill the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and perform the prayer, and pay the alms, then let them go their way; Allah is All-forgiving, All-compassionate.”

9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah and the Last Day and do not forbid what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, and do not practice the religion of truth, even if they are of the People of the Book — until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their selves and their possessions against the gift of Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah; they kill, and are killed; that is a promise binding upon Allah in the Torah, and the Gospel, and the Qur’an; and who fulfills his covenant truer than Allah? So rejoice in the bargain you have made with Him; that is the mighty triumph.”

9:123: “O believers, fight the unbelievers who are near to you; and let them find in you a harshness; and know that Allah is with the godfearing.”

47:4: “When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will not send their works astray.”

There are some tolerant verses in the Qur’an as well — see, for example, sura 109. But then in Islamic tradition there are authorities who say that violent passages take precedence over these verses. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, an eighth-century Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God [Allah] sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.”

The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” — that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Ibn Ishaq gives no hint that that command died with the seventh century.

The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) also outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”

In other words, he initially could fight only defensively — only “those who fought him” — but later he could fight the polytheists until Islam was “fully established”. He could fight them even if they didn’t fight him first, and solely because they were not Muslim.

Nor do all contemporary Islamic thinkers believe that that command is a relic of history. According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” …

Here again, obviously there is a widespread understanding of the Qur’an within Islamic tradition that sees it, and Islam, as mandating violence against unbelievers. And we see Muslims who clearly understand their religion as mandating violence against unbelievers acting upon that understanding around the world today.

So will Theresa May defend her claim? Of course not.

So there will be more terrorist attacks and more lethal violence carried out on in the name of Allah in Britain.

Why should British Muslims, faithful to their creed, hold back?

They have their instructions from “the authoritative sources in Sunni Islam, the schools of Sunni jurisprudence”, and from the Qur’an itself.

And Prime Minister Theresa May will exonerate their ideology.   

Yesterday, the very day of President Trump’s inauguration, these praiseworthy actions were carried out:

The White House’s page on climate change was taken down.

The sculptured head of Winston Churchill was put back in the Oval Office. Here he is re-instated among happy allies, friends, admirers:

And today – the first full day of his presidency – President Trump will talk to the CIA.

The Express informs us:

The President plans to visit the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The visit may well be a tense one after he criticized the CIA for concluding Russia was involved in hacking email to interfere in the presidential election.

We doubt it will be tense. Donald Trump doesn’t do tense. He deals.

And he keeps his promises:

President Trump appears to have dropped the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the European Union (EU) … During the election campaign Donald Trump said he would bin the beleaguered deal and it appears just hours into his presidency he has kept his promise.

He will, however, meet the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, perhaps “as early as next week”:

Theresa May is expected to meet Mr Trump as soon as possible following his remarks signalling a close relationship between the UK and the US.