Whoever wins, Britain loses

If Corbyn and Labour win the British general election tomorrow… Britain gets a hard-core left Labour government, and Britain loses.

If May and the Tories win by a narrow margin, Britain’s bargaining power in Brexit negotiations will be weakened, and Britain loses.

If May and the Tories win by a great margin, she will feel emboldened to enact draconian new legislation in terms of regulating the internet, and speech, and Britain loses.

Even if Brexit happens, if Britons end up suffering increased tyranny from London, having shaken the shackles of Brussels, Britain loses.

If only Nigel Farage had not decided to step down after declaring victory in the wake of the Brexit vote, Britain might have been able to win.

 

Catholic farmer ousted from Michigan market over same-sex marriage views

Thought-criminal dissent from the prog zeitgeist will not be tolerated.

A Catholic farmer in Michigan is suing the city of East Lansing after he was barred from a municipal farmers market over his views on same-sex marriage.

Stephen Tennes filed a lawsuit at a federal court on Wednesday (May 31), seeking his reinstatement.

In it, Tennes says he was prohibited from selling his products after his business, Country Mill Farms, refused to host a lesbian couple’s wedding at its orchard in Charlotte, 22 miles outside the city and he stated on Facebook “his Catholic belief that marriage is a sacramental union between one man and one woman.”

Country Mill Farms had sold fruit and produce at the market for six years, but after city officials learned about the Facebook post, they “strongly and immediately pressured us not to return to the farmers market,” Tennes told a news conference at the state Capitol.

According to the lawsuit, Country Mill is the only business to have been prohibited under the market’s anti-discrimination policy.

In a statement, the city of East Lansing said the farmer’s refusal to host a same-sex wedding violated a “long-standing ordinance that protects sexual orientation as well as the Supreme Court’s ruling that grants the right for same-sex couples to be married.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian-based nonprofit legal organization representing Tennes, said his religious views have no bearing on his involvement at the market and said the city’s actions amounted to a First Amendment violation.

“Steve and his farm have been singled out and excluded from full participation in the life of the community for only one reason,” said ADF counsel Kate Anderson. “Steve expressed a viewpoint the city did not like.”

Flanked by supportive state lawmakers at the news conference, Tennes insisted his views on marriage had not prevented him from serving all farmers market customers equally.

“It’s our faith that informs us how to treat all who come to our farm and the farmers market with dignity and decency … serving customers of many races, religions, cultures and those who identify with the LBGT community,” he said.

His farm is outside of the city, and it’s his own property, but the city government considers his actions there to nevertheless be their business, when of course it’s none of their damned business.

But, that’s progs; no-one is safe, anywhere, from dissent, if they decide on a whim to bring the weight of the state to bear upon you.

Nevertheless, let’s pray that he wins his lawsuit.

 

Airstrip One acts against a thoughtcrime!

Where is Emmanuel Goldstein when we need him? (Hat tip.)

A British police officer was moved to activate her panic button after taking offence at a parody song making fun of former Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden being played at a garden party, bringing in serious re-enforcements to a small English village.

The officer pressed the panic button on her body-mounted camera after being dispatched to a garden party in a picturesque Cambridgeshire village at around 10pm on Thursday and overhearing a song being played that mocked Osama Bin Laden. Responding to the call for help, the local force dispatched another ten officers and a police helicopter, Cambridge News reports.

It is alleged that in addition to the parody song making fun of the dead terrorist, party-goers were also shouting “anti-Islamic abuse”, a suggestion the partygoers deny.

Mark Donovan, who attended the party in the Cambridge village — which dates back to the time of the Domesday Book — spoke to the paper after the incident, and said: “We was having a summer’s evening in my neighbour’s garden as we don’t have one. We had our karaoke machine on playing music through our phones from YouTube which are all approved songs.

“It was about 10pm and the music may have been a little loud but it was before 11pm. Someone must have made a complaint, and a police officer attended our address, at which time a song from YouTube called the Bin Laden Song came on.

“This police officer said she took offence at the song and pressed her panic button on her body cam and that’s when about ten police turned up and the police helicopter.

“They are now investigating it as a racist crime. It is ridiculous.”

Police have seized the karaoke machine.

“Approved songs”? Doesn’t sound like Big Sister approved!

So, a song that mocks a mass-murdering terrorist might offend some people? No doubt; they’re called terrorists!

Why this woman cop got all bent out of shape to hit a panic button and bring down a chopper and ten more cops, I guess she couldn’t handle such a horrible ‘thoughtcrime’ on her own. Needed back-up, you see – and to teach those white English punks a lesson, show them who’s boss!

 

Theresa May appears to intend to screw Britons over, one way or another

Dismaying, but unsurprising… (Hat tip.)

Theresa May is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.

Particular focus has been drawn to the end of the manifesto, which makes clear that the Tories want to introduce huge changes to the way the internet works.

“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” it states. “We disagree.”

Senior Tories confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the phrasing indicates that the government intends to introduce huge restrictions on what people can post, share and publish online.

The plans will allow Britain to become “the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet”, the manifesto claims.

It comes just soon after the Investigatory Powers Act came into law. That legislation allowed the government to force internet companies to keep records on their customers’ browsing histories, as well as giving ministers the power to break apps like WhatsApp so that messages can be read.

The manifesto makes reference to those increased powers, saying that the government will work even harder to ensure there is no “safe space for terrorists to be able to communicate online”. That is apparently a reference in part to its work to encourage technology companies to build backdoors into their encrypted messaging services – which gives the government the ability to read terrorists’ messages, but also weakens the security of everyone else’s messages, technology companies have warned.

The government now appears to be launching a similarly radical change in the way that social networks and internet companies work. While much of the internet is currently controlled by private businesses like Google and Facebook, Theresa May intends to allow government to decide what is and isn’t published, the manifesto suggests.

The new rules would include laws that make it harder than ever to access pornographic and other websites. The government will be able to place restrictions on seeing adult content and any exceptions would have to be justified to ministers, the manifesto suggests.

The manifesto even suggests that the government might stop search engines like Google from directing people to pornographic websites. “We will put a responsibility on industry not to direct users – even unintentionally – to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of harm,” the Conservatives write.

So, the choice Britons get in their upcoming election is this:

If they elect Labour, Brexit could be in jeopardy, because Labour can’t be trusted to see it through. (Maybe that’s her aim…)

If they do vote the Tories back in, Brexit may happen, but Britons will also get increased state tyranny as regards what they can see and post online. A deeper Deep State…

Fucked either way…

Why, it’s as if a certain vindictive ex-Remainder wishes to punish Britons for making the ‘wrong’ choice…

*Update, post-Manchester-attacks (hat tip):

G7 Summit: Theresa May to ask world leaders to launch internet crackdown after Manchester attack

 

Germany Confiscating Homes to Use for Migrants

Germany Confiscating Homes to Use for Migrants

In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities recently confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. The units, which are owned by a private landlord, are in need of repair and have been vacant since 2012. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them — against the will of the owner — to tenants chosen by the city. District spokeswoman Sorina Weiland said that all renovation costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.

The expropriation is authorized by the Hamburg Housing Protection Act (Hamburger Wohnraumschutzgesetz), a 1982 law that was updated by the city’s Socialist government in May 2013 to enable the city to seize any residential property unit that has been vacant for more than four months.

The forced lease, the first of its kind in Germany, is said to be aimed at pressuring the owners of other vacant residences in the city to make them available for rent. Of the 700,000 rental units in Hamburg, somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 (less than one percent) are believed to be vacant, according an estimate by the Hamburg Senate.

Socialists and Greens in Hamburg recently established a “hotline” where local residents can report vacant properties. Activists have also created a website — Leerstandsmelder (Vacancy Reporter) — to identify unoccupied real estate in Hamburg and other German cities.

It remains unclear why the landlord in Hamm left his apartments vacant for more than five years. Some have posited that, given the location of the properties, the renovation costs may have been too high and probably would not have been offset by the rental income.

 

How to tell if a neighbourhood is ‘vibrant’, ‘diverse’

Great quote:

This is an observant comment by theng85, about the costs, big and small, that Diversity™ imposes on society.

Also, a shower thought regarding vibrancy and open borders:

You’ve mentioned before that when a country’s border in weak or unstable, more mini-barriers will be opened up within the confines of the border. I’ll never forget walking by a brownstone in Brooklyn that had a “No border wall” sign in the window….A window that had bars over it and a locking gate around the property. What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander, I guess.

But there are more boundaries where there’s more vibrancy. My litmus test for whether or not I’m in a bad area is how easily I can access things in something like a gas station or a McDonald’s. If there’s a table with napkins, straws, ketchup, sugar packets, and I can walk into the bathroom and do my business without needing to talk to the staff, then I’m in a good (Read: White) area.

But if the ketchup and napkins are behind the counter, or you need to be buzzed into the bathroom/given a key, or you have to talk to the cashier through a 6 inch sheet of bulletproof glass, then you’re in a bad (Read: Vibrant) area. One of the selling points of my current apartment was that the 24-hour gas station down the street had open access to its bathrooms 24/7. That means I was in a safe neighborhood with little to no vibrancy. And I was right!

tl;dr: Diversity causes instability, instability creates boundaries.

Yep. I’ve noticed the same thing…

Another: does a neighbourhood / school dance require you to go through airport-style security?

When I went back to post-graduate school a few years back in Toronto, one night, I decided to attend a school dance; when I went, I shit you not, there was an X-ray machine that they made me pass the contents of my pockets through, and there was a portal I had to pass through, and an electromagnetic, beeping wand was waved around my body after, to make sure I hadn’t anything metallic still in my pockets. Just like at an airport.

At a college dance.

In Canada.

That never used to happen in the Great White North.

But now it does.

I found out why: 99% of the attendees were either homeboys / homegirls, guidos, or other wiggers, all droopy-pants-barely-wearing, ‘sup, ‘sup, yo’, hand-gesturing excessively types…

And it was all ‘urban’, hip-hop / R&B music…

Needless to say, I didn’t stick around very long that evening; I had maybe two beers, then I left…

Anyway, theng85’s comment at Roissy is helpful if you’re investigating a place, considering moving there…  (I also had a real estate agent describe a building elsewhere in the GTA to me as probably being ‘too Jane-and-Finch-y’ for my tastes, and anyone who’s ever spent any time in Toronto will know exactly what that means…)

Be careful not to step in the ‘diversity’…

 

“Do you want symbolic arrests?”

Yeah.