Once, rights were meaningful. People insisted on fundamental rights such as free speech and self-defense. But then liberals perverted the word “right,” just as they perverted the word “liberal.” Now we are told that we have a “right” for other people to be forced to provide us with what we want for free. For example, thanks to the predominance of feminism, someone else being made to pay for a woman’s tampons is becoming a right. The right to free tampons has not yet been implemented by Big Government. No matter; for now, people can just help themselves in stores. Stores that object are bullied into backing down:

Tesco, a British grocery chain that operates in multiple countries, told BuzzFeed News it has removed signs placed above tampons and other menstrual health products that asked people to report shoplifting of these items in its store in Kensington, London. The signs caused mass uproar online when a shopper took a photo and sent it to a friend, who shared it to Twitter last week.

A spokesperson for the company added that it is “very sorry for any offense caused” and claimed that this depicted sign was placed “in error.”

Civilization was not built by people lacking spines. It won’t be preserved by them either.

An outraged moonbat tells BuzzFeed that we should concern ourselves with “the root causes of someone needing to shoplift menstrual products.”

The root cause is that they know they will probably get away with it, and the punishment will be trivial even if they don’t.

moonbattery.com/grocery-chain-begs-forgiveness-for-not-liking-shoplifting/

Irish Republican Army dissidents planted a bomb on a truck that was intended to explode on the day Britain left the European Union last week, police in Northern Ireland said Thursday.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a Belfast newspaper had received a call Friday – Brexit day – saying there was a bomb on a truck at Belfast docks. The caller said the truck was headed for a ferry to Scotland.

Despite a search, nothing was found.

On Monday, another call was made to the same newspaper with new information. After a search lasting into the next day, police found a bomb aboard a truck at an industrial park in the Northern Ireland town of Lurgan.

Police assistant chief constable George Clarke said the caller said “the intention had been for that device to explode on Friday evening at around the time the United Kingdom left the European Union.”

The bombers appear to have picked the wrong truck, because the explosives-laden vehicle remained at a haulage company’s yard in Lurgan until it was discovered.

Police said they believed the bomb plot was the work of a group known as the Continuity IRA.

Detectives said they want to speak to anyone who noticed suspicious activity in the area on Friday.

“Once that device had left that yard, if it had … it was exposing people on the public road, at a busy time, and at busy places, to huge levels of risk,” Clarke said. “These people are absolutely callous and reckless in what they have done.”

More than 3,700 people died during decades of violence before Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord. Most militants have renounced violence, but small groups of IRA dissidents continue to carry out occasional bombings and shootings.

The violent dissidents were emboldened by several years of political drift in Northern Ireland, whose power-sharing government was suspended between January 2017 and last month – and by uncertainty about the future of the currently invisible border between the U.K.´s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland after Brexit.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/06/police-say-truck-bomb-was-meant-for-brexit-day-attack/

A month after Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps fired numerous ballistic missiles at U.S. troops in Iraq, Germany’s government is slated to celebrate the founding of the Islamic Republic, prompting a public rebuke from America’s highest-profile ambassador in continental Europe.

Iran marks “Islamic Revolution’s Victory Day” on Feb. 11 as a national holiday when the mullahs order state-sponsored demonstrations in every Iranian city.

“Germany has a moral responsibility to say to Iran very firmly and clearly that it is unacceptable to deny basic human rights to your people, or kill protesters in the streets or push gay people off buildings. Celebrating the regime’s ongoing existence sends the opposite message,” the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, told Fox News on Thursday.

Grenell, a former Fox News contributor, has been urging German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration for years to end its support for the Iranian regime.

The German Foreign Ministry told Fox News in a statement Wednesday that the country’s “usual practice in diplomatic relations also includes the celebration of national holidays in the other country.”

“As the Federal Republic of Germany continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Iran, this also applies to the upcoming national holiday,” the statement continued. Germany’s celebration of Iran’s regime comes at a sensitive time for American-Iranian relations.

Tehran’s Jan. 8 missile strikes, launched in response to the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, caused traumatic brain injuries to 64 American military personnel, the U.S. Department of Defense said.

President Donald Trump authorized the elimination of Soleimani in Iraq, claiming he planning imminent attacks against U.S. diplomats. Soleimani, one of the world’s leading international terrorists, was responsible for the murder of over 600 American troops in the Middle East, the U.S. state department said.

The U.S. government has classified Iran’s clerical regime as the largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Germany’s President Frank-Walter Steinmeier sent a congratulatory telegram to Iran’s rulers last year, lauding the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the radical Islamic regime.

When asked if Steinmeier plans to send a telegram once again this year, his office told Fox News in a statement: “Greeting telegrams from the Federal President are created and transmitted in coordination with the Federal Government on the respective national holiday. All questions related to this will be answered after the respective national holiday.”

Merkel’s office declined to comment about her government honoring Iran’s regime.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Iran’s regime during a January congressional hearing on anti-Semitism of being the worst state sponsor of Holocaust denial and antisemitism.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, told Fox News this week that Steinmeier’s speech at the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious Nazi death camp, last month in Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum is “meaningless if Germany continues to honor the Holocaust-denying, Israel-hating, genocide-seeking Iranian regime.”

Bild, Germany’s highest-circulation newspaper, cited Steinmeier and Germany Deputy Foreign Minister Niels Annen, who celebrated Iran’s regime at Tehran’s embassy last year, as helping to make “anti-Semitism socially respectable” in Germany.

Annen told a German news outlet at that time that he had “no regrets” about celebrating the regime.

Grenell’s call for the Merkel government to stop boosting the Iranian regime was echoed by one of the leading German officials on the front lines of the struggle against the rise of anti-Semitism and Iranian-sponsored terrorism.

Uwe Becker, the commissioner for Jewish life in the German state of Hesse, told Fox News that his country should not congratulate Tehran’s rulers for their “Iranian revolution anniversary.”

“Germany should send a clear signal against the backdrop of human rights violations in Iran and the continuing threats by the Tehran mullah regime to destroy Israel,” he said. “The Iranian National Day is not just an anniversary, it commemorates the violent revolution of 1979 and the beginning of the reign of terror.”

Becker said Iran’s regime supports the terrorist organization Hezbollah in “and strengthens terrorism in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.”

“At the same time, the Tehran leadership oppresses its own people and denies them freedom and human rights,” he said.

The U.S. government has designated both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations. Germany’s decision to celebrate the Iranian holiday comes weeks after it joined Britain and France in paving a way for possible sanctions to be re-imposed on Iran. The three European powers accused the Islamic Republic of continuing to back away from its international nuclear deal and triggered the “dispute mechanism” — which begins a process that could result in the U.N. restoring sanctions it previously lifted under the deal.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/amb-richard-grenell-criticizes-germany-for-planned-celebration-of-irans-terror-regime

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier gave two important speeches toward the end of January. The first was delivered at the Fifth World Holocaust Forum in Jerusalem at Yad Vashem on 23 January. I heard from several people unfamiliar with the German reality that they found it impressive.

The second took place on 29 January in the Bundestag, the German Parliament. 

At Yad Vashem, Steinmeier said about the Holocaust: “Germans have tattooed numbers on lower arms. Germans have tried to dehumanize humans and make them into numbers and in the extermination camps to wipe out all memory of them…  The perpetrators were human. They were Germans. The murderers, the watchmen, the helpers of the helpers, the collaborators were German. The industrial mass murder of 6 million Jews, the greatest crime in human history, was committed by my compatriots… We Germans have learned forever from history.”  

Steinmeier added: “Yet I cannot say that when hatred and incitement are expanding. I cannot say that when Jewish children are spit at in the school courtyard. I cannot say that when under the cover of so-called criticism of Israeli politics, crude antisemitism comes up. I cannot say that when only a heavy wooden door prevents the right-wing terrorist on Yom Kippur from creating a bloodbath in a synagogue in Halle.”

A week later Steinmeier welcomed Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in the German parliament, the Bundestag. They had visited Auschwitz together. Steinmeier said to him: “Your presence is a sign of solidarity between our countries, between Israel and Germany. Even more than that: I see it as an obligation–an obligation to show ourselves worthy of the hand Israel has reached out to us. Reconciliation is a grace which we Germans could not hope for.”

Steinmeier concluded: “President Rivlin, we want to show Israel and the world that our country lives up to the newly bestowed confidence. That is the task given to us by memory. So that what can happen will not happen again.”

These two speeches have drifted far from reality. German Jewish historian, Michael Wolffson, wrote critically after the Yad Vashem speech: “Always the same words. Not a surprise that nearly nobody listens.” 

He added: “About a quarter of Germans have a migration background. Many are Muslims. The current memorial culture of Germany addresses only the descendants of those Germans who lived through the Nazi regime, carried it, and suffered it. As if the Muslim world in the murder of Jews in the Second World War did not collaborate with Hitler gangs…” Wolffson remarked also: “As hardly anybody mentions this fact, German Muslims think that all of this does not concern them. That is false.”

Jewish journalist Henryk Broder wrote about Steinmeier: “In May 2017 he laid a wreath on the grave of Yasser Arafat in Ramallah and bowed before the Fatah leader, whose politics have cost the lives of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians. Now he bowed down in Jerusalem before the Jewish victims of the Nazis.” 

Broder added: “Remarkable in this ‘gesture’ was not only the ice cold chutzpah with which it was executed, more surprising was that all German media resisted the temptation to combine these events photographically even though there are enough good pictures of both.”

The criticism of Steinmeier’s speech at Yad Vashem by non-Jewish journalist, Stephan Frank, was harsher. He quoted on the important website, Achse des Guten, that Steinmeier had said at Yad Vashem: “We fight antisemitism! We resist the poison that is nationalism!  We protect Jewish life! We stand with Israel!”

Frank then attacked Steinmeier head on: “The Federal President is lying in Yad Vashem, before the eyes of the world, for of course, ‘we’ don’t do that at all. We do not fight antisemitism, but we introduce a yellow Star of David for Jewish made products… We do not protect Jewish life, but we pay the terrorist organization of the PLO, that also calls itself the Palestinian Autonomy Authority, for their killing of Jews. Hezbollah which has murdered Jews in Israel, Bulgaria and Argentina, pointing over 130,000 missiles towards Israel and digging tunnels in order to abduct and kill Israeli citizens is not prohibited in Germany, but is entitled to collect donations and recruit members repeatedly.”

Frank continued: “No, Germany does not stand with Israel. Who keeps voting for almost every resolution against Israel in the United Nations, thus taking care that this institution is abused by the dictators of the world to put a single country to the pillory, while the worst tyrants of the world are being granted a clean bill? Germany.

“Who voted against the liberal party FDP application in the German houses of parliament, calling upon a change of voting behavior of the Federal German Government? Who sends a ‘from Germany, with love’ to Teheran for the anniversary of the ‘Islamic Revolution?’  The German Federal President.

“Who founded an interest corporation in the interest of enforcing regime trade interests of Iran with the European Union? The German Federal Government.

“Who bows to the grave of arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, twining wreaths for a terrorist? The German Federal President.”

Frank’s entire text is worth reading, but can only be partly reproduced here. In conclusion, he writes: “Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier bows to the murderers of Jews. The Federal Government broadly supports them and pays their pensions. Even if an MP inquires about the Near-East policy of the German Federal Government, she does not receive answers, neither comprehensive nor truthful. The Federal Government and the Federal President keep talking about the protection of Jewish lives and standing with Israel, but in the face of truth, they always stand with the foes of Israel and keep supporting the murderers of Jews. They help to make out of murderers respectable partners on diplomatic parquet, and to make the extermination machinery more effective by means of German money. At the same time, they mimic Israel’s best buddies….”

Steinmeier’s speech at the Bundestag was the introduction for a much longer one by Israeli President Rivlin. Steinmeier had said that Germany wanted to show Israel and the world that it lived up to the newly bestowed confidence.

Rivlin could have, in a diplomatic way, touched upon most of the points Frank made in his article. Yet among them he only mentioned the Hezbollah issue. Rivlin’s speech unfortunately pales in comparison with Frank’s article. I am not suggesting that he should have hired Frank as his speech writer. Yet Rivlin, President of the State of Israel, would have served Israel’s interests much better if he had at least used a reasonable percentage of the facts in Frank’s remarks quoted above. Why didn’t he?

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25149

A German state premier elected on Wednesday with the help of the far-right AfD has said he will stand down to pave the way for fresh elections. “Resignation is unavoidable,” he said.

The election of Thomas Kemmerich in the eastern state of Thuringia prompted outrage across Germany.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called the election “unforgivable” and said it must be reversed.

For years Germany’s main parties have shunned the AfD.

Wednesday’s vote is being described as a political earthquake for Germany.

The AfD has broad support in Thuringia. But the state election in October was won by the far-left Die Linke, whose leader Bodo Ramelow was ousted from power.

Mr Kemmerich beat Mr Ramelow by 45 votes to 44. Besides the support of the AfD, Mr Kemmerich also got votes from local MPs in his own FDP and Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrat CDU.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51399445

The general secretary of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Stephan J. Kramer, called Monday on the German-Israel Friendship Society (DIG) to take concrete action against the growing anti-Israel boycott activity within its ranks.“Anyone who sees a boycott of Israeli goods as a legitimate answer to something or other has understood nothing, and should look in the mirror and leave DIG,” Kramer wrote in an email to The Jerusalem Post.

“I think supporting a call for a boycott of a democratic country, which Israel is, and at the same time being a member of DIG is an insoluble contradiction and a burden on DIG and its members. [deputy in the state government of Thuringia Bodo] Ramelow is part of a long tradition of anti-Israel leftists, and we can no longer whitewash this.”Ramelow, a DIG member and Left Party politician, wrote on his Facebook site that the Swiss Migros supermarket chain’s labeling of Israeli products from the West Bank is a “legitimate measure.”Dr. Shimon Samuels, the international affairs director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, told the Post that Migros’s action is a boycott measure and must viewed as a “continuation of Nazism.”In a letter to the supermarket chain, Switzerland’s largest, diverse representatives of the country’s Jewish communities condemned the Migros action as “discrimination against the State of Israel.”Ramelow has been accused in Germany of using his DIG membership to delegitimize Israel and pretend that he is a friend of Israel. In an email to the Post on Tuesday, he wrote, “I have neither called for a boycott of Israeli goods” nor “signed the Pax Christi call” to boycott Israel merchandise. The German branch of the left-wing Catholic peace organization Pax Christi has mounted an aggressive campaign to boycott Israeli products, including setting up stands in pedestrian zones to encourage people to not buy Israeli goods.

When asked repeatedly by the Post to clarify his Migros statements, Ramelow wrote that “the Migros firm decided independently to demand from producers a designation of origin when they want to sell their products to Migros. I mentioned this and did not know that the mentioning of facts should be banned.”In response, Kramer, told the Post that Ramelow’s formulation regarding terming Migro’s action as a “legitimate measure” is clearly a call to boycott Israeli products.Ramelow added that when he visited Ramallah,”I saw that enough products were labeled ‘Palestine’ and I consider that a permissible origin designation.” He asked what is the problem with Migros labeling products from its suppliers.According to critics of Migros, including Swiss Jewish groups, Migros has singled out Israel for unique treatment in a pejorative sense.Melody Sucharewicz, a German-Israeli expert who has written extensively about anti-Israel actions in Germany, told the Post on Tuesday, “Not only should DIG have a clear policy of separating itself from members who support or justify even the most harmlessly presented form of ‘kaufverzicht,’ alias boycott against Israel. It should further make it a priority to expose such campaigns for what they are: destructive for the future of German-Israeli relations and destructive to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”Pro-Israel Germans have called on the head of the DIG branch in Erfurt, Thuringia, where Ramelow is a member, to expel him, as well as demanded that DIG national head Reinhold Robbe give Ramelow the boot and take action against anti-Israel sentiments within DIG and among German politicians.

https://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/German-Jewish-leader-slams-boycott-activity

Today a Conservative party in Thuringia province Germany, voted with the AfD, which was a consensus-taboo till now, much like the “cordon Sanitaire” in the rest of Europe against any non-Socialist party, to get rid of a leftist regional premiere. Below, ANTIFA demonstrates to oppose the new, non-socialist pick.

https://vladtepesblog.com/

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to toughen sentencing guidelines for convicted terrorists after a newly-released prisoner carried out a jihadist attack in London.

On February 2, Sudesh Amman, a 20-year-old jihadist from Harrow in north-west London, stabbed two people in a knife rampage on Streatham High Road before he was shot dead by police. He had been released from prison just days earlier after serving less than half of his sentence for terrorism offenses.

Amman, who was carrying a 10-inch kitchen knife, wearing a fake suicide bomber vest, and shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the Greatest”), had been under active police surveillance at the time of the attack, which London police described as an “Islamist-related terrorist incident.”

In December 2018, Amman was sentenced to three years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to 13 counts of expressing support for Islamist terrorism and possessing and sharing Islamic State and al-Qaeda propaganda. He was 18 years old at the time.

Amman was arrested in May 2018 after posting Islamist propaganda online. At the time, police said that he had expressed support for the Islamic State, sent beheading videos to his girlfriend, and asked her to kill her “kuffar” (non-Muslim) parents. He also wrote about carrying out a jihadist attack:

“If you can’t make a bomb because family, friends or spies are watching or suspecting you, take a knife, Molotov [cocktail], sound bombs or a car at night and attack the crusaders, police and soldiers of taghut[idolatry], or western embassies in every country you are in this planet.”

In a search of Amman’s computer, police found documents titled, “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”, “U.S. Army Knife Fighting Manual Techniques” and “Bloody Brazilian Knife Fighting Techniques.”

During Amman’s trial, police noted that he had a “fierce interest in violence and martyrdom.” Acting Commander Alexis Boon, then head of the Metropolitan police counter terrorism command, explained:

“His fascination with dying in the name of terrorism was clear in a notepad we recovered from his home. Amman had scrawled his ‘life goals’ in the notepad and top of the list, above family activities, was dying a martyr and going to ‘Jannah‘ — the afterlife.”

“It’s not clear how Amman became radicalized, but it is apparent from his messages that it had been at least a year in development. Whatever the circumstances, this case is a reminder of the need to be vigilant to signs of radicalization and report it.”

Amman’s attack is the second one in the British capital in the past three months. On November 29, 2019, Usman Khan, a 28-year-old jihadist from Stoke-on-Trent, stabbed and killed two people in a knife rampage near London Bridge. Like Amman, Khan had also been released early from prison.

A day after Khan’s attack, Boris Johnson announced a review into the license (parole) conditions of 74 terrorists who had been released from prison early. He also vowed to end the practice of automatically releasing serious offenders from prison before the end of their terms:

“The terrorist who attacked yesterday was sentenced 11 years ago under laws passed in 2008 which established automatic early release.

“This system has got to end. I repeat, this has got to end…. If you are convicted of a serious terrorist offense, there should be a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years — and some should never be released.

“Further, for all terrorism and extremist offenses, the sentence announced by the judge must be the time actually served — these criminals must serve every day of their sentence, with no exceptions.”

A Sentencing Bill included in the Queen’s Speech in October 2019 would have changed the automatic release point from halfway to two-thirds for adult offenders serving sentences of four years or more for serious violence or sexual offenses. The bill, however, stalled due to a hung parliament, and was shelved later that month when new elections were called.

The latest attack sparked considerable anger. In an interview with Sky News, the editor of Spiked magazine, Brendan O’Neill, spoke for many when he said:

“The Streatham terror stabbing is a scandal. This man was an Islamist maniac. He was devoted to ISIS and he had planned to kill non-believers. And yet he was let out of jail after just 18 months. We’ve got to start taking Islamic terrorism more seriously.”

Paul Stott, a terrorism researcher with the London-based Henry Jackson Society, added:

“We need an immediate moratorium on the release of terrorist prisoners, whilst the government reviews each individual case.”

In an interview with the Daily Mail, an unidentified government source said that according to British law, Amman had to be released from prison early, despite the threat he posed to society:

“There had been concerns when he [Amman] was in prison but there were no powers for any authority to keep him behind bars.

“There was nothing that could be done to keep him behind bars under existing laws, hence why he was under surveillance and strict licensing conditions.

“He had served half of his sentence, which was more than three years, so he had to be released despite concerns over his conduct.

“The public will look at this case and say why was this individual not kept behind bars and the Prime Minister shares that view.”

After the latest attack, Johnson promised “fundamental changes” to the system for dealing with convicted terrorists. He said that terrorists currently in prison will lose their right to automatic early release halfway through their sentences. Johnson stressed that the legal concept of automatic early release for people “who obviously continue to pose a threat to the public has come to the end of its useful life.”

On February 3, Secretary of State for Justice Robert Buckland announced that the government would introduce emergency legislation — The Counterterrorism Bill — to end the automatic early release from prison of terror offenders:

“We cannot have the situation, as we saw tragically in yesterday’s case, where an offender — a known risk to innocent members of the public — is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board.

“We will, therefore, introduce emergency legislation to ensure an end to terrorist offenders getting released automatically having served half of their sentence with no check or review.”

Buckland added that the changes would be retroactive and apply to jihadists currently in prison:

“We face an unprecedented situation of severe gravity and, as such, it demands that the government responds immediately and that this legislation will therefore also apply to serving prisoners.

“The earliest point at which the offenders will now be considered for release will be once they have served two-thirds of their sentence and, crucially, we will introduce a requirement that no terrorist offender will be released before the end of their full custodial term unless the Parole Board agrees.”

A total of 353 convicted and suspected Islamist terrorists were released from prison between June 2012 and June 2019, according to Home Office statistics cited by the Daily Mail.

In October 2018, the Islamist firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary, described as Britain’s “most dangerous extremist,” was released from prison after serving only half of the five-and-a-half-year sentence he received in 2016 for pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

Prison authorities could not prevent his release: under British sentencing guidelines, prisoners — even those who are still a risk to the public — automatically become eligible for release under license (parole) after serving half their terms.

In an essay published by the Daily Mail, Philip Flower, a former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, warned that the fight against violent Islamism in Britain was being hampered by political correctness:

“As a retired senior police officer involved in containing terrorist and other threats during a 40-year career, I want to tell you of the intense frustrations that will be felt today across British policing. They will feel utterly let down by the judicial system.

“When I was a constable, I could arrest and process a suspect in an hour, maximum. Today, it takes a day or more.

“The police are mired in bureaucracy, while the judicial system has become an institutional cloud-cuckoo land.

“As a society, we have to decide how to deal with terrorist suspects. It takes around 32 police officers to maintain around-the-clock surveillance of a single terror suspect.

“It is insane to attempt to maintain this level of supervision of the thousands of individuals known to be of interest to the security services and counter-terrorism police. It seems as though the Streatham perpetrator was being watched by armed police, yet still he managed to stab shoppers….

“If we are to release convicted terrorists from jail early, then we would have to recruit thousands and thousands more police to oversee them, which of course will never happen because there is not enough money and we would find that level of intrusion unacceptable in a free society.

“There is a wider problem of maintaining the morale of the officers charged with keeping the public safe from fanatics.

“Bluntly, how would you feel if you were told to keep track of known terrorists who have been released from prison to satisfy the politically correct assumptions of our justice system?”

Ian Acheson, a veteran prison officer who in 2015 led an independent review of Islamist extremism in British prisons, told the BBC’s Today program that the UK’s risk-management system is fundamentally broken:

“We are going to have to accept that we have to be much more skeptical and robust about dealing with the risk of harm.

“We may need to accept that there are certain people who are so dangerous they must be kept in prison indefinitely….

“I am still unconvinced that the prison service itself has the aptitude or the attitude to assertively manage terrorist offenders.”

gatestoneinstitute.org/15536/uk-jihadists-released-early

Björn Höcke has risen to AfD kingmaker by causing an internal political sensation with the unexpected election of the FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich as the new Thuringian prime minister in the German state.

The AfD parliamentary group leader organised an unofficial electoral alliance with the CDU and FDP, sending off the red-red-green government with its popular head of government Bodo Ramelow (Left Party) to man the opposition.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany president Josef Schuster told AFP that he was “horrified” by the vote outcome.

As one of the founders of AfD Thuringia, Höcke became Member of the Landtag after the 2014 Thuringian State Elections. Höcke is the speaker of the parliamentary group of the AfD and he is the spokesman of the Thuringia regional association of his party. He is said to be part of the “national-conservative wing” of the AfD and his faction is known as the Flügel [the Wing].

In September 2019, a court ruled that Höcke could legally be termed a “fascist” as the description “rests on verifiable fact”.

The AfD member duped all parties in the most recent ballot: while the Left, SPD and Greens celebrated Bodo Ramelow as the possible election winner, in reality they had lost their absolute majority. Around 100 days after the state election at the end of October, the real election winner has been determined: Björn Höcke.

Höcke succeeded in presenting the non-party candidate Christoph Kindervater as an alternative to incumbent Ramelow, but in the decisive third ballot the CDU and FDP did not vote for him, finally electing Kemmerich as prime minister.

It is a coup that is unparalleled in the history of parliament in Germany. But it is a democratic, legally valid election, not defrauding voters, despite accusations of breaking the taboo.

It remains to be seen whether and how the Erfurt earthquake will affect the Grand Coalition in Berlin. CDU and SPD members organised a crisis meeting in Berlin on Saturday to discuss the issue.

“The republic is in danger,” said Katja Kipping, a leader of the far-left Linke party.

Will the SPD implode now that it was booted out in Thuringia? The permanently weakened CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is at a loss because her party friends in the state have violated the federal decision not to work directly or indirectly with the left or the AfD.

“This is a bad day for Thuringia, a bad day for Germany,” Kramp-Karrenbauer said in Strasbourg and immediately called for new regional elections as a way out of the “crisis”, a call echoed by other mainstream parties. She also blasted regional politicians for breaching the party’s policy of no cooperation with the AfD.

Thus the chances for a black-green alliance after the next federal election have not improved.

The FDP in the state could seize the opportunity and provide the AfD with content. If the ban on contact and exclusion against the AfD is not lifted, Kemmerich will have a hard time in governing Thuringia. And since he stumbled into high office completely unprepared, those who rant about an agreed maneuver between the AfD, FDP and CDU have not been refuted yet.

The FDP, which only entered the state parliament when the ballot was recounted, must now seek parliamentary majorities. Red-red-green will refuse, but the CDU is ready for dialogue, as is the AfD.

The question is whether the CDU, FDP and especially the new prime minister will jump over their parliamentary shadows and seek talks with the AfD.

Actually, the new prime minister has no choice, since the alternative would announce his failure. Kemmerich still speaks of a “firewall” against the AfD. On the other hand, he recently brought up “colorful majorities” because “you have to rethink” politics.

AfD co-leader Joerg Meuthen told the German daily FAZ that the vote showed that there was “less distance” between the CDU, FDP and AfD than other parties.

freewestmedia.com/2020/02/06/in-historic-coup-afd-rises-as-kingmaker-in-thuringia/