Global Fanatics Make Tommy Robinson Disappear

GLOBAL ESTABLISHMENT CLOSES RANKS AGAINST TOMMY ROBINSON

by John Hinderaker   at PowerLine:

“I wrote here about the strange case of Tommy Robinson, and Scott followed up here. The case is strange indeed: Robinson was live-streaming on Facebook from the street in front of a courthouse in Leeds where a number of defendants were on trial for rape. Reportedly, he was reading the names of the defendants and the crimes with which they were charged.

That was enough to bring out the paddy wagon. Police officers descended on Robinson, arrested him on “suspicion of breaching the peace,” and hauled him off to court. Within a matter of hours he had been imprisoned for contempt of court. Not only that, the court issued an order barring all UK press outlets from reporting on Robinson’s arrest and imprisonment.

If that doesn’t bother you, your civil libertarian instincts have atrophied. Yet it appears that only conservatives are troubled by Robinson’s incarceration; the world’s establishment has closed ranks against him. This is what you see if you enter “Tommy Robinson” in Google News. Click to enlarge:

Apparently only the “alt-right,” “U.S. Rightwingers” and “the right-wing outrage machine” care about the blatant suppression of free speech and normal criminal process that characterize the Robinson case. I was curious about Time’s article, headlined: “Why Tommy Robinson Was Jailed, and Why U.S. Rightwingers Care.” Time writes:

The right-wing campaigner was arrested and jailed on Friday outside a controversial trial in northern England.

No explanation of why the trial was “controversial,” even though news outlets were forbidden to report on it.

He is active in the global far-right, writing and broadcasting for Canadian far-right channel Rebel Media

You can never say “far right” too often. That means he is skeptical of the wisdom of mass Muslim immigration to Great Britain.

…and his arrest on Friday on suspicion of breaching the peace outside a court in the U.K. attracted tweets of protest by right-wing activists and commentators around the world.

The link on “right wing commentators” goes to my Power Line post.

Time explains that Robinson broke the law by reporting on “details of the trial,” although this claim seems doubtful based on other reports:

By filming defendants and discussing details of the trial while broadcasting via a livestream, Robinson was breaking the court-ordered restriction on media. As he was already serving a suspended sentence for filming outside another trial in May last year, he was jailed for 13 months.

In the U.S., reporting on ongoing trials is usually protected by the First Amendment.

No kidding!

A local paper, the Hull Daily Mail, has an up-to-date report:

A court order is currently in place temporarily banning any reporting on the trial, including its status as ongoing, so the press will not be able to reveal details until later this year.

So British newspapers aren’t supposed to report that the rape trial is taking place.

At the time of the Facebook Live, jurors were in the process of considering verdicts after hearing six weeks’ of evidence.
***
And a court order had also been in place temporarily banning any reporting on Robinson’s arrest and sentencing hearing, but Hull Live can now reveal the details.

A court order temporarily banned any mention of Robinson’s court proceedings but our colleagues at LeedsLive challenged the order and today (Tuesday) the judge agreed to lift the reporting restriction in regards to Robinson’s case.
***
Eventually, the 35-year-old was arrested on suspicion of a breach of the peace and was held in the court cells before being taken up to the courtroom to face the trial judge.

In a rare move, he was arrested, charged and sentenced within five hours.

Emphasis added. Is it really true that British news media can’t report anything about a trial in progress, even, as Robinson reportedly was doing, naming the defendants and itemizing the charges against them? I haven’t had time to research this in depth–although I think I have seen any number of news reports on British trials–but this is the BBC’s account:

Once proceedings are ‘active’, anything which creates a substantial risk that the course of justice in these proceedings will be seriously prejudiced or impeded will be a contempt of court.

In most criminal cases, proceedings become ‘active’:

* On the arrest of a suspect

* When an arrest warrant is issued

* On the issue of a summons (in Scotland a complaint) or indictment. This may be well before a person in charged

* When a person in charged.

Obviously, the Leeds criminal case was active. So the question is whether Robinson’s live-streaming from outside the courthouse “creates a substantial risk that the course of justice…will be seriously prejudiced or impeded.” It is hard to see why this standard would be met.

So in the U.K., an unpopular activist who stands outside a courthouse talking about the fact that a criminal trial is taking place, and naming the defendants and the charges against them, is subject to arrest for contempt of court, and can be hustled off to jail in a matter of hours with no meaningful fact-finding or opportunity to defend. And newspapers can be barred, and have been barred, from reporting on the activist’s arrest and incarceration.

This is obviously not the American way, and I seriously doubt whether it is the British way in any case that doesn’t involve Islam. But evidently, as is so often the case when it comes to free speech, no one cares except us “right wingers.

 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/05/global-establishment-closes-ranks-against-tommy-robinson.php

Protests Lift Fascist Brit Gag Order on British Media and Jailed Robinson for Speaking Truth!

Tommy Robinson case gag order on British media lifted in the face of worldwide protest

by Thomas Lifson  at  American Thinker:

When Tommy Robinson was arrested for live-streaming a report outside the Leeds courthouse where members of an alleged Muslim grooming gang who allegedly forced young British girls into prostitution, and the court quickly imposed a gag order on U.K. media reporting it, outrage (and an overseas legal defense fund) quickly followed.  (See my writing about it here, here, and here.)

In the words of Washington Post writer Avi Selk:

The gag order backfired, turning English Defense League founder Tommy Robinson into a sort of free-speech martyr to conservatives such as Donald Trump Jr. and Roseanne Barr before the gag order was lifted Tuesday.

Selk’s report, incidentally, drips with contempt toward Robinson, calling him “[o]ne of Britain’s most notorious anti-Muslim campaigners” (emphasis added).

Robinson wants to halt Muslim immigration and focuses on the crime statistics and the violent jihad activity that have resulted from large scale Muslim immigration.

Selk presents the rationale for gagging reporting:

It’s illegal in Britain to report the details of some trials before they conclude – a long-standing law designed to prevent the news from biasing juries and causing prosecutions to collapse, according to Leeds Live.

Oddly enough, even though the Washington Post’s motto, “Democracy Dies in  Darkness,” appears at the top of the web page featuring Selk’s article, he nowhere discusses this concept with regard to the gag order.

Not everyone thinks arresting someone for speaking and then forbidding any media discussion of the arrest is consistent with a free society.  Zerohedge has collected some of the overseas support for Robinson and outrage at the gag order:

Free speech advocates and supporters of Robinson’s movement from Melbourne to Berlin came out by the thousands to protest the Friday arrest outside of Leeds Crown Court while Robinson was reporting on a pedophile grooming trial via Facebook livestream.  Within six hours of his detention, Robinson was slapped with a 13 month prison term for violating a prior suspended sentence for a similar offense. …

Mass protests broke out following Robinson’s arrest – the largest of which was a crowd of thousands in the UK, demonstrating at the gates of Downing Street to demand the release of the conservative activist. …

 

Please click below to feel the power of  the protesters to champion their Tommy Robinson for his arrest and immediate imprisonment for thirteen months by court writ without trial…..and likely a death sentence for the innocent victim who loves the country he was raised in:

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/tommy_robinson_case_gag_order_on_british_media_lifted_in_the_face_of_worldwide_protest.html

Islams Fascistic Judge’s Invasions, AD 2018 Britain

The Suicide of Europe

by Ben Shapiro at realclearpolitics:

On Friday, the British police arrested Tommy Robinson, founder and former leader of the English Defence League, a far-right anti-Islam group. Robinson is a controversial character, to be sure, a sort of Milo Yiannopoulos lite. His chief focus is on the threat of radical Islam, which he believes threatens the integrity of the British system.

You don’t have to like Robinson. But whatever you think of him, his arrest is absurd by any measure. You see, Robinson was arrested for standing outside a court building and reporting on a trial involving the alleged grooming of young girls for sexual assault by radical Muslims.

Now, what would be illegal about that, you ask? It turns out that Robinson was given a suspended sentence last year for filming outside another court building, where a trial for alleged gang rape by radical Muslims was taking place. He wasn’t inside the courtroom. Nonetheless, the judge believed he was somehow biasing the jurors. According to the judge, Robinson was sentenced thanks to “pejorative language which prejudges the case, and it is language and reporting … that could have had the effect of substantially derailing the trial.”

This time, Robinson was again arrested for prejudicing a case, only he wasn’t inside the court building. He was outside. And the media were originally banned from reporting on his arrest so that his trial wouldn’t be biased. In other words, Britain has now effectively banned reporting that actually mentions the Islamic nature of criminal defendants for fear of stirring up bigotry — and has banned reporting on reporting on such defendants. It’s an infinite regress of suicidal political correctness.

But at least the Europeans have their priorities straight: While it’s perfectly legal to lock up a provocateur covering a trial involving Muslims, the European Union is now considering a ban on products like cotton buds, straws and other plastics for fear of marine litter. And just as importantly, it’s now perfectly legal to kill unborn children again in Ireland, where voters — with the help of a cheering press — decided to lift the ban on abortions until the 20th week, condemning thousands of children to death.

This is how the West dies: with a tut-tut, not with a bang. The same civilization that sees it as a fundamental right to kill a child in the womb thinks it is utterly out of bounds to film outside a trial involving the abuse of children, so long as the defendants are radical Muslims. The Europeans have elevated the right to not be offended above the right to life; they’ve elevated the right to not be offended above the right to free speech, all in the name of some utopian vision of a society without standards.

Discarding those standards was supposed to make Europeans more free; it was supposed to allow Europeans to feel more comfortable. But the sad truth is that no society exists without certain standards and Europe has a new standard: enforcement of its “tolerance” via jail sentence, combined with tolerance of multiculturalism that sees tolerance itself as a Trojan horse. The notion of individual rights sprang from European soil. Now they’re beginning to die there.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/05/30/the_suicide_of_europe_137149.html

The Tommy Robinson Phenomenon and The Death of Britain

GETTING TO KNOW TOMMY ROBINSON AND THE DEATH OF BRITAIN BETTER!

“Tommy Robinson is the reason for existence among the English anti-fa/leftist “politically correct” crowds. Fiyaz Mughal and TellMAMAUK wouldn’t be able to justify themselves as strongly, without Tommy Robinson being there to serve as the antagonist. The Roadrunner for the Coyote. Keep in mind in that Looney Tunes program that there never really was an end point to that series. Of course, they stopped production of episodes at some point. But when it comes to the plot of this endless pursuit the Coyote was vying for, it never arrived.

There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to Tommy Robinson, and he’ll pop up throughout this essay. But when it comes to understanding the fundamental core of his story, there are two must-see pieces of content. His Oxford speech and the interview Brittany Pettibone did with him. Like peanut butter and jelly, these two videos mesh perfectly together to give the full picture. In the former, Tommy Robinson talks about his political motivations and background. The latter, we see how the UK government and police responded to his activism against Islam.

 

https://nickmonroe.blog/2018/05/05/escape-from-big-mother-freedom-of-speech-of-uk-in-decay/4/

Brit Fascists Arrest Tommy Robinson AND English Civilization

Saving Tommy Robinson (and English civilization)

by Thomas Lifson  at American Thinker:

Tommy Robinson faces the near certainty of assassination while being held in the general prison population at Hull Prison, following his arrest outside the courthouse in Leeds, where he was making a video about the trial of a Muslim grooming gang underway inside.  (For background, see this and this.)  Thanks to the gag order preventing the British press from reporting on his case, only help from overseas can bring pressure and raise funds for his defense.

Make no mistake: the entire U.K. government and establishment are committed to cultural suicide, by surrender to jihad, allowing no criticism of the spread of sharia law in Britain, and suppressing those who dare expose the costs.  Recall that talk show host Michael Savage has been banned from Britain for supposedly causing “unrest” by remarks critical of jihad.  He cannot be jailed, but Tommy Robinson can.

An American Thinker contributor currently visiting London emails this morning:

I am staying in London and saw a small protest on Monday near 10 Downing Street.  I have seen nothing on TV or in the papers.

FWIW, SKYNews has been running a story on Rotherham on multiple shows.  Same story, same reporter but edited differently to create a different package.  It’s not like I am sitting in my hotel watching TV, but I have seen this three times.  I am sure the most Brits know about Rotherham.

Sadly, my guess is most Brits (or at least Londoners) probably support his arrest.  These people seem to value order over freedom.  And the PC tone of their news broadcasts, even supposedly right-wing SKYNews, makes our MSM look right of center.

I like London.  But the older I get the more I think that culturally these folks would be OK with a benign dictator running the show.  It’s probably no accident that some [of the] best fiction ever written about living under soft or semi-hard tyranny or dystopia – Huxley, Orwell, maybe Wells – was written by people who called London home.  

At The Rebel Media, for which Robinson wrote, Ezra Levant has established a legal defense fund for Tommy and makes the case for his innocence.

You can watch the entire incident of Tommy approaching the courthouse and getting arrested below.  It is complete – an hour and 15 minutes long:

On Friday, May 25, Tommy was reporting from outside the courthouse in Leeds, where an accused Muslim rape gang was on trial for repeatedly raping British girls as young as eleven years old. Tommy was broadcasting on Facebook, from his cell phone.

Tommy was very careful:

• He did not set foot on the court precinct.
• He did not call the men “rapists”, but rather called them “accused rapists”.
• In no way did he interfere with the trial, which was on its final day.
• When Tommy mentioned the names of the accused rapists, he was reading from a BBC website – so the names were clearly public information, on the state broadcaster.

Tommy did nothing wrong.

But suddenly, seven police officers swarmed Tommy and threw him in the back of a police van.

They said he was causing a disturbance, which is absurd – he was by himself on the street, with only a cameraman and a friend.

But it got worse. Much worse.

Within hours, Tommy was summoned before the judge. Tommy’s long-time lawyer was not informed of this. Rather, the court appointed a lawyer who didn’t know Tommy and wasn’t an expert in the specialized law of contempt of court.

In a matter of minutes, Tommy was sent to prison – with a 13-month sentence. He is now in HM Prison Hull, a brutal facility near Leeds.

A 13-month prison sentence for Tommy is tantamount to a death sentence – every Muslim criminal in prison will be trying to murder him. They’ve tried before.

The only alternative is for Tommy to request to be put into solitary confinement – but no-one can live that way, locked up without any human contact for 23 hours a day. Not for a year straight.

There is some hope for Tommy:

The Rebel is based in Canada, but we also have a registered UK corporation, with more than 150,000 UK customers, and a UK staff. So our UK company has legal standing to go to court on behalf of the British people.

We have hired an outstanding lawyer who has worked with Tommy before – Daniel Berke, the lawyer who took the case of Chelsey Wright, the girl from Sunderland who suffered so brutally at the hands of a predator.

I have spoken with Daniel, and he believes this is an important case, and he is already working on the emergency application.

It’s shocking that it falls to us – a small, independent, Internet-based news company – to fight for freedom of the press and open courts in the United Kingdom. Where is the BBC, or Sky, or any of the tabloids that so love to skewer Tommy when it suits them? Where are the organizations like Amnesty International or Reporters Without Borders, coming to the aid of a citizen journalist who was arrested and sentenced faster than in any dictatorship?

I guess it falls to us.

Because Tommy’s legal case isn’t just about him. It’s about all of us – and our freedom to have honest, public conversations about the threat of mass Muslim migration, gang rapes, and the Islamification of the west

If you want to help us crowdfund this court challenge to the gag order, please make a donation below. Note that this is separate from Tommy Robinson’s own case – this is simply to pay for challenging the publication ban in the UK.

It is hard to estimate how much it will cost, but my experience tells me it will be approximately £20,000.

Right now, Tommy’s family and lawyer are still huddling and coming up with a strategy. Let us give them their space. But in the meantime, let’s go to court to lift the publication ban on this horrific story.

I truly believe that if the British people learned what happened to Tommy Robinson on Friday, it would awaken within them the instincts of freedom and the rule of law that has been the British heritage since the Magna Carta.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/saving_tommy_robinson_and_english_civilization.html

(Note…ghr:  Tommy Robinson has been an activist for things English for more than half of his still relatively young life.   Many of my early “columns” at this site, perhaps a dozen years ago, dealt with the patriotic heroism of this Mr. Robinson.   He actually made a run for political office to represent the little that was  left of  British blood at that time.

The English no longer ‘manage’ England, much less the United Kingdom it used to be.   Islamic fascism  is chewing the island to pieces.)

https://theenglishdefenceleagueextra.blogspot.com/2011/02/minnesota-prager-discussion-group-on.html

 https://wordpress.com/post/mnprager.wordpress.com/117132