Soy meat substitutes such as tofu have a worse impact on global warming than the consumption of lamb, pork or chicken, according to researchers and scientists who presented their findings at a British National Farmers’ Union conference on Tuesday.

A vegetarian diet is also harmful to health, leads to higher emissions in farm production, and contributes to the destruction of the global ecosystems, said the researchers at the conference in London.

The results of the research appear to refute the research of other scientists who claim the opposite.

According to Graham McAuliffe of the Rothamsted Institute, researchers usually do not take into account the fact that it is more difficult for the human body to process plant-based proteins, which means that people have to eat more.

From this point of view, the research suggests that to receive the same amount of protein from the tofu as from meat, one has to eat more of the soy substitute, which leads to higher greenhouse gas emissions.

However, McAuliffe added that the results of his research should be interpreted with caution.

“Without a doubt, peas and ground nuts always have a lower environmental impact than any livestock products. But if you look at tofu, which is processed, so there is more energy going into its production, when you correct for the fact that the protein in it is not as digestible compared to the meat-based products, you can see that it could actually have a higher global warming potential than any of the monogastric animals. To get the same amount of protein, tofu is worse,” he explained.

Soybeans and other products that vegans tend to gravitate to, such as palm oil, are also linked with deforestation and massive mono-culture planting, which is said to deplete soil nutrients and contribute to climate change.

According to Minette Batters, president of the British National Farmers’ Union, campaigns against meat consumption are more of a problem than Brexit.

Dairy farmers alone saw their profits decline 50 percent in just one year, largely influenced by the shift towards plant-based drinks.

“The vegan way of life has been enormously detrimental to farmers’ mental health. We want people to get involved more than just by eating vegan food,” she said at the conference, adding that people equate eating vegan food to fighting climate change.

Furthermore, researchers point out that vegan versions of unhealthy foods such as fish fingers, sausages, bacon, or burgers can be far more harmful to health than the meat versions. According to the BBC, these processed substitutes often contain higher levels of salt or sugar in addition to more indigestible substances.

There are also worries that children are not getting access to essential fatty acids and other nutritional benefits only found in animal products such as meat.

The Times in the UK has also compared the quality of vegan food and real meat, with certain foods, such as vegan imitations of eggs or bacon, having far higher levels of salt.

https://rmx.news/article/article/tofu-is-harming-the-planet-more-than-meat-scientists

For Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, it is not mass migration or virulent racism against Swedes that are behind the wave of sadistic child robberies in the country. Instead, he blames the former conservative government’s tax cuts.

Löfven claims that he reacts strongly to the sadistic, brutal humiliation robberies that have been carried out on multiple occasions against Swedish children. He thinks the robbers’ behavior shows a complete lack of morality, Fria Tider reports.
Despite his alleged empathy for the victims, Löfven fails to make the connection between the brutal phenomenon and migration, even though the issue is clearly about young migrants who rob and sadistically humiliate Swedish children.
Instead, Löfven – who seemingly has been living in a parallel universe – links the massive increase in robberies to tax cuts implemented by the conservative alliance.
“For a long time, there was a policy, for eight years with the previous nonsocialist government, which involved tax cuts and welfare cuts. That is untenable. Now we have changed that policy, and will invest more in welfare”, Löfven told Expressen.
Löfven then clarified that there wouldn’t be any similar tax cuts in the future. That time is over. Now the welfare will be strong, the prime minister said while pointing out that child robbery is “unacceptable”.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/02/swedish-pm-says-sadistic-pee-robberies-are-a-result-of-conservative-tax-cuts-10-years-ago/

A new report, “What Terrorist Migration Over European Borders Can Teach About American Border Security“, by Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, describes the extent to which terrorists disguised as migrants have entered the European Union to commit terrorist attacks. Although the study was written primarily for an American audience to prevent the same mistakes from being made on US borders, the study is extremely relevant for the European public — especially as Germany recently warned of a repeat migration crisis, similar to the one that occurred in 2015. According to Bensman:

“Between 2014 and 2017, 13 of the 26 member states lining the so-called Schengen Area’s external land borders recorded more than 2.5 million detections of illegal border-crossings along several land and sea routes, an historic, mostly unfettered surge that came to be known as the ‘migrant crisis’. The Schengen Area, which generally encompasses the European Union, consists of countries that combined immigration enforcement of a common external border of 27,000 sea miles and 5,500 land miles while removing all interior border controls to facilitate the free movement of goods and people.

“During the 2014-2018 migrant crisis, the majority of travelers who crossed the external border and were then able to move unfettered between member nations came from nations in the Middle East, such as Syria and Iraq; South Asia, such as Afghanistan and Pakistan; and Africa, such as Somalia and Eritrea. It first became known that some ISIS terrorist operatives also were in the flows after some of them committed the November 2015 Paris attacks… and then the March 2016 Brussels attacks”.

According to Bensman “The totality of how migration and terrorism intertwined as a destructive force against Europe, and the continent’s response, remains largely unacknowledged, undocumented, and not analyzed”.

Nor does it get much — if any — prolonged attention in European public debates about migration.

According to Bensman:

“Between January 2014 and January 2018, at least 104 Islamist extremists entered Europe by way of migration over external sea and land borders among more than two million people who crossed external European Union borders. All 104 were killed or arrested in nine European nations after participating either in completed and thwarted attacks, or arrested for illegal involvement with designated terrorist groups…

“The majority of the 104 Islamist migrant-terrorists — 75 — were primarily affiliated with ISIS, while 13 were affiliated with Jabhat al Nusra. Others were associated with Ahrar al Sham, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Al-Shabaab, and the Caucasian Emirate. Some had unknown sympathies and some shifted among several groups. Only one was a woman and their average age was 26. They were from Syria and Iraq, but also from North Africa and South Asia…

“Of the 104 migrants implicated in terrorist acts, 29 were involved in 16 completed attacks inside Europe between 2015 and 2018. These attacks killed 170 people and wounded at least 878 more, according to an analysis of media accounts…

“At least 27 were part of one large cell of operatives dispatched onto the migration trails by ISIS. Most of the 27 were involved in the two highest-casualty completed attacks: the November 2015 multi-location strikes on Paris and the March 2016 attacks in Brussels. Most of the other completed attacks were smaller in scale and sometimes involved additional deployed operatives or long-distance communications with ISIS in Syria”.

One of the most noteworthy findings of Bensman’s report was that, “Most migrant terrorists involved in thwarted or completed attacks were purposefully deployed to the migration flows by an organized terrorist group to conduct or support attacks in destination countries.”

“Of the 65 migrant-terrorists involved in completed or thwarted attacks, at least 40 appeared to have been purposefully deployed into migrant flows toward Europe, impersonating war refugees, to conduct or support attacks in Europe. ISIS was responsible for this infiltration operation. Eleven others apparently initiated attacks or plots in small groups of relatives or associates, not coordinated by any foreign group. The balance were self-propelled lone offenders or information was insufficient to determine whether they were deployed…

“In 2016, the New York Times reported, based on French intelligence material, that a clandestine ‘external operations’ division of ISIS in January 2014 sent its first of ‘at least’ 21 well-trained operatives to Europe camouflaged among refugee and migrant flows…

“More fighters trained by ISIS in Syria traveled the migrant routes alone or in pairs at the rate of every two to three months through the balance of 2014 and early 2015, according to the Times.”

In Germany, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) warned in 2016 that Islamic State fighters had come into Europe disguised as refugees and that Islamic State leaders were training the fighters on how to apply for asylum.

The risks that European leaders took by allowing the migrant flows to continue ended in tragedy, as the terrorist attacks committed by the terrorists posing as migrants claimed the lives of 170 people and wounded 878 in the 2014-2018 period, as mentioned above. Furthermore, according to Bensman:

“A majority of the 104 terrorists applied for international protections such as asylum and were able to remain in European nations for an average of 11 months before attacks or arrests for plots, demonstrating that asylum processes accommodated plot incubation”.

The process of former ISIS fighters applying for asylum is still ongoing, proving that European authorities are still incapable of handling the issue. In late November, police in Switzerland reportedly arrested an alleged Islamic State fighter who had lived in the country as an asylum seeker for at least six months. Several other migrants had come forward and said that they recognized the man as a former ISIS terrorist.

Bensman’s report indirectly proves that the three EU countries — Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic — which refused to take in any of the migrants that came during the migrant crisis, citing security concerns, were right. The leadership of the European Union, however, initiated legal proceedings at the Court of Justice of the European Union against the three countries over the issue. In October, the Advocate General, legal advisor to the Court, said that EU law must be followed and that the EU’s principle of solidarity “necessarily sometimes implies accepting burden-sharing”.

A ruling on the issue by the Court is expected early next year. If the Court follows the advice of the Advocate General, it will rule that the three countries were in breach of EU law when they refused to take in their appointed quota of migrants. In response to the Advocate General, Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller, said, “ensuring security for our citizens is the most important goal of the government’s policies. Our actions were dictated by the interests of Polish citizens and the need for protection against uncontrolled migration”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15290/the-terrorists-migrating-into-europe

By Monica Showalter

Roger Stone liked to gleefully call himself a “dirty trickster,” but he was no match for the dirty cops of the Department of Justice who railroaded him with a nine-year sentence for three process crimes, including one where his purported victim said no crime happened.

Now it looks as though the dirty cops – the four prosecutors who lied to the Department of Justice about Stone’s sentencing recommendations, and the far-left judge who allowed a nakedly Trump-hating partisan to serve as Stone’s jury forewoman again – might just have been trapped themselves by none other than U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

For starters, it would explain why President Trump says he has no beef with Barr over Barr’s criticism of his tweets. It would also explain why the Schiff show in the House, fresh from failing to take down Trump, now says it now wants to impeach Barr.

According to a series of tweets by Brian Cates, which can be read with ease on ThreadReader — here is a speculative outline attempting to draw links that add up to some rather impressive power moves:Let me remind you all what happened since last November around this case:

1) Trump suddenly nominates US Attorney Jessie Liu to a top Treasury Dept. job, she accepts; Trump nominates Timothy O’Shea to replace her. She is the one who has been guiding the Stone case. 2) all 4 prosecutors suddenly agree amongst themselves they will brief the DOJ one sentencing recommendation, but then actually file a far more lengthy recommendation with the court.

With me so far? There is only one reason these prosecutors would do this.

They expected to get COVER from both the US ATTORNEY overseeing the case and from THE JUDGE presiding over the case in court.

Despite DOJ complaints about the tactic, Liu & Judge Jackson have their backs. 

   Cates goes on to explain why they seemed so bold about lying as they did. They had counted on Liu to keep the Barr people from hopping around mad about the new draconian change of sentencing recommendations for Stone. They had counted on Judge Jackson to go ahead and deliver them, even though she too knew that they were way out of sentencing guideline. Sticking it to the Trumpsters was the idea.

But it didn’t work out like they thought it would. According to Cates: Then all of these next two things happen in the span of two days:

3) the DOJ suddenly files a COUNTER to the prosecution teams own absurd filing. This was not supposed to happen. DOJ would have informed Liu first they were doing this, then she’d have warned them. 4) when the prosecution team russhes to contact the US Attorney’s Office in DC for an explanation, what they discover so surprises them that ALL FOUR TEAM MEMBERS resign within hours of each other.

What did these prosecutors discover BEFORE anybody else did?

Only this: 5) the Stone prosecution team discovers TWO things:

a) Trump had just WITHDRAWN Lin’s nomination to that cool new Treasury job and…

b) Attorney General William Barr had just told Liu that O’Shea was replacing her IMMEDIATELY. They don’t have any cover. They’ve been BURNED. Cates points out that the judge in the case, an Obama appointee named Amy Berman Jackson, looks every bit as dirty as Liu and the lying quartet of prosecutors. The Trump-hating judge was the one who ordered another Trump official, Paul Manafort, held in solitary confinement, again, for process crimes, with many speculating that the out of proportion sentence was a bid to pressure him into spilling secrets on Trump. She sentenced him to six years in the can, something that set off that drama where he almost ended up in that place where Jeffrey Epstein had been held, where the corrupt guards insist Epstein hanged himself when they weren’t looking. Cates continues: So, what happens the very next day?

Stuff that started to come out more than two months ago but DIDN’T get any really attention suddenly bursts to the surface in a way that cannot be ignored. A juror so biased any attempt whatsoever at voire dire would have caught her and excluded her instantly not only ended up on the Stone jury in Judge Jackson’s court, this female juror ended up being the FOREWOMAN of the jury that convicted Roger Stone.

I’ll say this clearly: That could only happen if the JUDGE was either corrupt or incompetent.

Looking into this issue, several facts emerge.

Stone’s defense team moved to strike this juror from the pool; Judge Jackson refused.

This juror filled out a questionarre about social media/elections. The juror has both a social media history of pronounced bias against Trump and his associates and a political history of having run for office as a Democrat that should have INSTANTLY disqualified her from the jury pool. Liu is out of the picture, the four prosecutors have fled the scene, and now the onus is on the judge to show that her choice of that rabidly partisan juror to be the Stone case’s forewoman was merely incompetence, not raw naked corruption.  The heat is on Jackson now, not Stone. He appears to have been a victim of a railroading, which would necessitate the entire case being thrown out, forget the need for a Trump pardon. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy notes that the left’s howlings about Trump’s tweets regarding Stone’s sentencing are a red herring, what’s really a crime is prosecutorial misconduct. If Cates is right, then we are looking at a huge nest of dirty cops in the Stone case. Yet pillar by pillar, the schemings of these characters who have put the squeeze to Stone in their bid to Get Trump, are being knocked down, and there are fewer and fewer places to hide. This is the work of the very clever Barr. 

Barr had laid a Gilligan’s Island-style pit trap for them to fall into, and once they did, it hoisted them up in a net bag swinging for all to see from a tree.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/did_the_dirty_cops_of_the_roger_stone_case_step_into_a_barr_trap.html

by Giulio Meotti

The United Nations Human Rights Council lies in Geneva, the diplomatic Versailles. In the lakeside city, the presence of the UN Palais des Nations is massive and imposiing in the richness of its great history, the luxury of the sumptuous past, the clamor of public rhetoric and the thousands of officials arriving from five continents who make up a picturesque (and grotesque) crowd.

Thirty meeting rooms, each with materials and decorations from this or that member country. The library houses six hundred thousand volumes. The beautiful twenty-two hectare park was donated by a family of the Geneva patriciate, the Revilliod de la Rive.

In Geneva, Israel has just been indicted by the UN Council. It released a blacklist of more than 100 companies it said are “complicit in violating Palestinian human rights by operating in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank”. It is the first ever attempt by the UN to literally boycott and strangle the economy of a democracy.

Meanwhile in another European city, The Hague, the world’s capital of “peace courts”, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will soon launch “a war-crimes investigation into settlement policies”. This is the first ever attempt by that failed Court to legally shame and indict the Israeli policies and presence in its Biblical lands. Don’t forget that another Hague’s Court, the International Court of Justice, already judged as “illegal” the Israeli fence which stopped the stream of Palestinian suicide bombers which killed thousands of Jews.

Last November in another European city, Brussels, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that products made in Jewish comunities in Judea and Samaria must be specifically labelled as such and may not carry the generic label “Made in Israel”.

Europe has become the epicenter of a political and legal war against Israel, because instead of considering Israel’s borders like those of the 500 million European citizens, the Jewish State is fighting in the squares of Europe, in the corridors of power in Brussels, in various capitals of Western Europe and the United Nations.

It is not only that. Europe fights Israel also inside the Jewish State by financing many NGOs that call to boycott Israel.

Also, those responsible for the massacre of Israeli citizens are not “terrorists” in the European media, but “militants”. The Islamic world uses Europe to wage this war on the Jews. 

In Europe’s streets – from Paris to Berlin, from Malmö to Amsterdam – Jews are daily attacked and intimidated. Over the past decade, the Old Continent seems having developed a psychological ease in talking about the aggression and the self exile of the Jews. What remains of the Jewish community life in Europe now takes place behind bulletproof doors and barbed wire, and the actual end of the presence of an entire people – whose suffering sinks into a past most terrible in Europe and whose culture is one of the pillars of Europeans –  is discussed calmly, almost serenely, certainly with fatalism.

What happened to England to have the first big European politician – Jeremy Corbyn – who questioned Israel’s right to exist, who calls Hamas and Hezbollah “friends”, laying flower crowns on the graves of the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes in the Olympic Games of Munich? What is happening to Europe? How have are come to believe that Molotov cocktails can be detonated against a synagogue in Gothenburg and Europe stays silent?

Islamic populations in Europe today are encouraged to manifest their anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, legitimated by Europe’s journalistic and politician speech which always demonizes Israel, in the name of “human rights”. The European Union does not lose an opportunity to manifest in the most insidious and slimy way its enmity towards the State of Israel throughout the international arena. It is definitely alongside the Islamist Ummah and Iran.

After the Second World War, the foundations of Europe had been placed on three fundamental values of Judeo-Christian culture: democracy, human rights and rule of law. These values are also the soul of the modern State of Israel. It is sad to see Europe once again obscured by its ancient hostility towards the Jewish people; now growing again inside it. But this mass anti-Semitic European psychosis has far-reaching symbolic dimensions, which consists in putting Western Europe smack in the face of its biblical origins.

It is a Europe submerged by self-hatred. Its days are numbered. 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25193

By Andrea Widburg

Last year, Alabama passed a law banning abortion except for situations in which the mother’s life is at risk. A federal judge found the bill unconstitutional and the Alabama Attorney General did not appeal the decision. Nevertheless, on Thursday, State Rep. Rolanda Hollis introduced a counter-bill requiring that all men over fifty or who have had three children must get a vasectomy. The bill is silly and fails to make a convincing pro-abortion case.

The bill’s summary is brief:

Under existing law, there are no restrictions on the reproductive rights of men.

This bill would require a man to undergo a vasectomy within ne month of his 50^th birthday or the birth of his third biological child, whichever comes first.

Hollis explained that she wants to highlight that it’s wrong for Alabama ever toforeclose the possibility of abortion for unwanted children, especially in cases of rape or incest:

This is to neutralize the abortion ban bill,” Hollis said. “The responsibility is not always on the woman — it takes two to tango. This is to prevent pregnancy and the abortion of unwanted children and to help men become accountable as well as women.

“You don’t think about what women have to go through as far as incest and rape, but you want them to carry a kid out of rape or incest so let’s neutralize it,” she continued.

Hollis further explained that men should not tell women what to do with their bodies:

“I am pro-life and I am pro-choice and what I mean by that is I don’t believe in abortion as a birth control, but I believe if a woman is raped or there’s incest or health reasons, then they [should] have a choice,” Hollis said. “I’m reading some of the things people are saying and I see the hypocrisy. It’s OK to tell a woman what to do with her body but it’s not OK to tell a man what to do with his.”

Hollis’s bill is a cute idea insofar as it’s garnered a lot of headlines so, in that way, she’s made her point. However, at a logical level, it’s completely wrongheaded.

The anti-abortion bill is not just about telling “a woman what to do with her body,” a notion that justifies telling a man what to do with his body. Women’s and men’s roles in procreation are so different that they cannot be compared in tit-for-tat fashion.

The pro-abortion arguments boil down to one thing: It’s not fair that men can walk away from sex while women end up with what one Leftist author calls “the incredible violence of pregnancy,” followed by the subsequent burdens inherent in raising a child.

It’s Nature, not a bunch of “old white men,” who decreed that women are the vessels of procreation, with all the upsides (creating a life, loving a child) and downsides (loss of control over their bodies, pain, illness, self-sacrifice, etc.), that come with it. It’s science (mostly old white men), though, that reduced maternal mortality.

Biblical morality layers onto biology the idea that unfairness doesn’t give women the automatic, unfettered right to snuff out the life they are incubating. As religious people know, the Bible is not about fairness. Only Marxism is about “fairness” — except that this ostensible fairness is always based upon a zero-sum game in which one person’s “fair” victory is another person’s loss, with the loss determined as “fair” provided that it furthers Marxism’s political ends.

Nature is unfeeling. It is instead a relentless, unfair force in which living species’ prime directive is to cling to life in whatever way they can. Religion tempers that prime directive with morality. Marxism tempers that prime directive with raw power and selfishness.

On abortion, leftists think they’re taking a stand for women and against the patriarchal God of the Bible. What they’re really doing is screaming against Nature’s unfairness and, in their effort to show their dominance over Nature, more and more openly embracing the same path the Nazis did: Namely, declaring that certain humans, including humans that are the result of rape and incest, aren’t human at all but are, instead, inconveniences, encumbrances, and parasites, and therefore entirely deserving of being snuffed out.

Trying to compare this biological and moral reality to men’s sperm delivery system is ridiculous. Abortion kills a life; vasectomies just mean that a specific man is precluded from impregnating a woman. Hollis’s bill is a joke and not a very good one.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/alabama_representative_introduces_bill_forcing_men_over_50_to_have_vasectomies.html

Switzerland has served as an isolated island of sanity, immunized by its mountainous terrain from the epidemics of mental illness that sweep the rest of Europe. It still respects the fundamental right to bear arms, which is rarely honored elsewhere in the Old World. But moonbattery eats its way into everything, even Switzerland, where it will now be illegal to counter the transformative LGBT agenda.

Via Christian News:

Voters in Switzerland have approved a referendum to include so-called sexual orientation in the country’s anti-discrimination statutes, prohibiting public “hate speech” and denigration of homosexuals, as well as inciting hatred through text or images. Violators could face up to three years behind bars.

Such law can be used to criminalize the expression of any opinion radical activists want suppressed. Even to refer to sexual perversion as “sexual perversion” might result in imprisonment.

According to the Swiss government,

The new provision will prohibit public statements or actions that violate the human dignity of a person or group and which therefore incite a climate of hatred and endanger the peaceful coexistence of society. It will also be an offence to refuse to provide someone with a service that is publicly on offer because of their sexual orientation.

This is bad news for any Christian who regards it to be blasphemy to partake in homosexual “marriages,” be they bakers, photographers, filmmakers, or even priests. Official establishment of homosexual “marriage” in Switzerland is coming soon.

Mathias Reynard of the Swiss Socialist Party is delighted. “Homophobia is not an opinion. It’s a crime,” barks Reynard. “One in five homosexuals attempted suicide, half before the age of 20.”

Most sane people will probably regard this statistic as evidence that homosexuality is not a characteristic of mental health, and that there are good reasons for the nearly universal proscription against it throughout place and time. In contrast, progressives take it as evidence that anyone critical of the homosexual lifestyle and agenda must be thrown in prison lest gays become upset by learning that not everyone finds their way of life admirable and appealing.

moonbattery.com/switzerland-criminalizes-resistance-to-lgbt-agenda/

The prosecution made serious accusations against a 54-year-old Turk. The man allegedly sexually abused a 14-year-old girl in his car and then simply abandoned her in a field near St. Pölten. The young schoolgirl was drunk after a party in May 2019. She was lured into his car by a Turkish man who already had several criminal convictions (including sexual offences). In court he claimed that the girl had told him in English language that she was willing to have oral sex with him for money. She then grabbed his steering wheel several times and finally jumped out of the car at Markersdorf, where she was later found lying in a field. The prosecution accused him of shamelessly exploiting the situation. The man was arrested months after traces of semen were discovered on the student’s jacket. On Thursday, the verdict was eight years imprisonment.

wochenblick.at/st-poelten-maedchen-14-geschaendet-tuerke-54-vor-gericht/

The Italian Senate has voted to strip former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini of parliamentary immunity so that he can face kidnapping charges for refusing to allow migrants to disembark from a ship at a port in Sicily.

If Salvini, who leads the anti-mass-migration party, Lega (League), is found guilty, he faces a ban on holding political office and up to 15 years in prison. He has said that he acted in Italy’s national interest and that the charges against him are politically motivated, aimed at silencing criticism of the country’s open-door migration policy.

Under Italian law, ministers enjoy immunity for actions taken while in office — unless the Senate votes to lift that protection. On February 12, the Italian Senate voted 152-76 in favor of lifting Salvini’s immunity, after a parliamentary committee on January 21 recommended the action.

In December, the Court of Ministers in Catania, Sicily, ruled that Salvini should be indicted for “aggravated kidnapping” for depriving 131 migrants onboard the Gregoretti coastguard ship of their liberty by refusing to allow them to disembark. The incident, which occurred over a four-day period in July 2019, was part of Salvini’s “closed ports” policy against illegal immigration and an attempt to force EU member states to share the burden of mass migration.

More than 600,000 migrants have arrived in Italy over the past four years. Under EU rules — known as the Dublin Regulation — migrants must seek asylum in their country of arrival, which, for reasons of geography, places an inordinate burden on Italy.

After five other EU member states agreed to take in most of the migrants onboard the Gregoretti, Salvini on July 31 allowed them to disembark in Augusta, Sicily, from where they were transferred abroad.

In September, Sicilian prosecutor Carmelo Zuccaro said that the kidnapping accusations against Salvini were “groundless” and recommended that he be acquitted of all charges. The Court of Ministers, however, overruled Zuccaro, who is now, paradoxically, required to proceed with prosecuting Salvini, even though he has already found him to be innocent.

The charges against Salvini appear to be part of a political vendetta against him as well as his opposition to mass migration. Case in point: Although the decision to prevent those onboard the Gregoretti from disembarking in July 2019 was madeby Salvini in close coordination with senior members of the Italian government, only Salvini is facing prosecution.

Addressing the Senate before the vote to lift Salvini’s immunity, Lega Senator Erika Stefani presented documents showing that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio and Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede were all deeply involved in discussions over the Gregoretti. “No contrary position was taken by Prime Minister Conte,” she said. “There was an implicit and also explicit sharing of Salvini’s position…. This makes the hypothesis of individual action by Minister Salvini completely improbable.”

The prospect of an extended legal battle appears to have energized Salvini and catapulted him into campaign mode. Before the Senate voted to lift his immunity, Salvini tweeted:

“If I have to go to court, I will explain to the judges that defending the borders of my country and protecting citizens was my duty and, serenely, I will go to that courtroom to represent millions of Italians, because I simply did what they asked me to do: to control who enters and who leaves Italy.”

After the Senate voted, Salvini tweeted: “I have nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, I will go to that courtroom reaffirming what I have done. I am proud of what I did as a minister.” He also called out his political opponents as the true kidnappers: “kidnappers of democracy.”

Speaking to TG2 television, Salvini added:

“During my time in government we reduced the deaths at sea. We reduced landings, costs and problems for Italians. I expect an impartial judgment from the court. I feel like a true Italian, not a criminal. I defended the borders of my country and the safety of my children and the children of all Italians. I do not ask for a medal. They give me a trial. I will go to that courtroom to say that defending the borders of my country is my right and my duty.”

Salvini has faced additional legal threats. In August 2018, Sicilian Prosecutor Luigi Patronaggio accused Salvini of “kidnapping, illegal arrest and the abuse of power” for preventing 150 mostly Eritrean migrants from leaving the Italian coast guard ship Diciotti unless other European Union member states agreed to take some of them in.

After a six-day standoff, the Italian government on August 28, 2018, allowed the migrants to disembark at the Sicilian port of Catania after the Vatican, Albania and Ireland agreed to take them in.

In March 2019, the Italian Senate voted to shield Salvini from prosecution in the Diciotti case.

On February 12, 2020, the Milan public prosecutor’s office closed the investigation of Salvini for “defaming” Carola Rackete, the 31-year-old German captain of a migrant rescue ship. Salvini denounced Rackete for aiding illegal immigration, calling her a “pirate” and an “outlaw” and vowing to expel her from Italy. Rackete’s lawyer, Alessandro Gamberini, accused Salvini of stirring up hatred: “We have already prepared the case against Minister Salvini.”

Meanwhile, on February 26, 2020, a Senate committee will rule on whether to charge Salvini with “kidnapping” 107 migrants aboard the Open Arms, a Spanish NGO boat in Sicily, between August 14 and 20, 2019.

Salvini has, unsurprisingly, compared his legal harassment to that of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, who has faced an onslaught of lawsuits aimed at challenging his policies. Salvini tweeted:

“Me like Trump? He has a few more billions and a few more years, but it is a habit of the left, around the world, to try to win by judicial means.”

Like Trump, Salvini’s legal troubles are fuelling his approval ratings. Lega is now Italy’s most popular political party, with voter support at around 30%, according to opinion polls. Surveys indicate that if Italy held elections now, Lega would win a majority together with its conservative allies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15597/italy-salvini-show-trial