Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, I'll be here for our midweek Clubland Q&A taking questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet at 3pm North American Eastern - which is 8pm British Summer Time/9pm Central European. Hope you can swing by.
~The biggest story of our time is that the entirety of western civilisation is sliding off the cliff - on America's watch, which is the only thing historians will remember about the United States. Mass Third World migration is turning the west into tribal societies requiring an ever more authoritarian state to mediate relations between the tribes.
So yesterday Tommy Robinson was sentenced by Mr Justice Johnson to eighteen months for "contempt of court". If you don't have contempt for English courts, you're not paying attention. For the purposes of comparison, just to pluck at random from recent headlines, a convicted paedophile from overseas was not deported back to his land of citizenship because it would be an undue hardship to separate him from his children. (And from his neighbours' kids?) The BBC's senior news presenter, Huw Edwards, was convicted of "creating" child pornography, with at least six images in the most serious category - which means penetration, including of a boy estimated to be of seven to nine years of age. But Edwards, who anchored the Beeb's coverage of Her late Majesty's funeral and His present Majesty's Coronation, was given a six-month suspended sentence.
It's hard to avoid the feeling that the kid gloves for Edwards and the max and then some for Robinson are because one is in the club - he's "wrestling with his demons", etc - and the other isn't. Indeed, it's striking the way the authorities, in Rotherham and beyond, are so solicitous of child-sex predators and so hostile to a man who has sacrificed everything for shining a light on them.
"Contempt of court" is not a violent crime, and those convicted of it usually serve their time at an open prison. Tommy Robinson will serve his at HMP Belmarsh, usually reserved for terrorists and the hardest of hard cases. Because Belmarsh (like most other English gaols) is now run by Islamic gangs, Mr Justice Johnson has decreed that Robinson will be "held in segregation" - ie, solitary confinement - "for his own protection".
This is not a "contempt of court" sentence, in England or in any civilised society. This is the British state trying to drive Tommy Robinson to suicide (like another of Two-Tier Keir's political prisoners, poor Peter Lynch) - and, if that fails, they'll doubtless modify the conditions to put him, as with those gaoled for protesting the slaughter of the Southport schoolgirls, in the same wing as the Muzzie gangs. I regret to say I anticipated this development in my satirical whimsy of a year or two back:
Something has changed in the last few years. In one of many perceptive passages (if I say so myself) in The Prisoner of Windsor, the Home Secretary hears of the death of a mouthy Australian blogger she had "made an example of" and remarks that she'd expected to feel bad about it. And then she discovered that she didn't, and it fortified her to do more of the same.
There will be a lot more of the same. Mr Robinson's "conviction" arises from his screening of his documentary, Silenced, which it is apparently illegal to air in the United Kingdom. Take a look at it, and see if you think there's anything in there that one should not be able to discuss in a free society:
Britain's banned documentary - SILENCED pic.twitter.com/HKIBPsuZTA
— Tommy Robinson 🇬🇧 (@TRobinsonNewEra) July 27, 2024
~Meanwhile, in the crappiest election system in the developed (and much of the non-developed world), here we go again:
Pennsylvania GOP Committeewoman and RNC delegate Val Biancaniello was taken away in handcuffs for telling voters at a polling place in Delaware County to stay in line and vote...
According to Val Biancaniello, the Democrats were discouraging voters from in-person voting on Monday in Delaware County so she encouraged voters to stay in line.
This was straight out of Shenanigans 101:
Biancaniello said a Democrat election worker steered Republican voters to a satellite office to vote where they were told they ran out of voter applications.
A "satellite office" is another physical location, in Chester Heights. So you stand in line at Location A for a couple of hours (which doesn't happen when you try to vote in Denmark or Papua New Guinea) and then an "election worker" tells you the line's much shorter at Location B, so you schlepp across town to stand in line for another couple of hours until you get to the front and they tell you they've run out of "voter applications". As Sinatra used to sing: "That's A-me-ri-ca to me!"
A little more news from the sweet land of Liberty Bells and Constitution Halls:
BREAKING: RNC lawyers have sent a letter to Pennsylvania officials saying that voters are being denied at the polls
"Voters consistently report to us... they are told that "computers are down," the site will be closing early, they are not accepting any more voters, and that mail... pic.twitter.com/dPdsbz7WYz
— George (@BehizyTweets) October 28, 2024
"Computers are down..." "Closing early..." "Not accepting any more voters..." "Mail ballots will not be counted..." All together now:
That's A-me-ri-ca to me!
For two years, Trump has fought a brilliant campaign, against the odds and against not only the opposite party but against most of his own, plus a corrupt media, multiple judges and prosecutors in multiple states, and against multiple would-be assassins. But it will all be for naught if the usual rules of Shenanistani exceptionalism apply.
Kamala Harris can't win the electoral college without Pennsylvania. And on the ground, every hour of the day, they're serious about stealing it for her.
If Trump hasn't won by, say, 11pm Eastern on "Election" "Day", he won't be winning at all.
~What's coming next? A tweet from Tucker:
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 29, 2024
So this New York Times reporter, Nico Grant, is doing a "news story" on how the leftie activists at Media Matters have "found" that Tucker and others are guilty of "misinformation", after which Google/YouTube will remove them from the public sphere just in time for the start of the three-month "peaceful transfer of power". Google/YouTube has already memory-holed Trump's three hours with Joe Rogan. If you try searching for the actual show, the first hit is a story from The Arizona Republic telling you how crap it is.
But fear not: the wankercons at National Review thinks the best outcome is a Harris presidency with a strong rock-ribbed Republican Senate...
~We thank you for all your kind comments these last grisly months - and especially all those new members of The Mark Steyn Club, and those old members who've signed up a chum for a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Steyn Club Gift Membership. Steyn Clubbers span the globe, from London, Ontario to London, England to London, Kiribati. We hope to welcome many more new members in the years ahead.
