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UK: Female Player Crowned Victorious At Pool Tournament After Trans-Identified Males Dominate Women’s Semi-Finals

A woman has won a British pool championship after a “phenomenal comeback” against a trans-identified male in the final, who had played another trans-identified man in his semi-final.

Over the weekend, the Ultimate Pool Group hosted a Mini Series tournament in the UK. On the women’s side, 64 entrants entered the competition, including two trans-identified males – Harriet Haynes, formerly Chris, and Lucy Smith. By the time of the semi-finals, Haynes and Smith ended up playing off against each other, meaning that there was an all male semi-final in a woman’s sport.

Lynne Pinches, a professional pool player, who refused to compete against Haynes in the Women’s Champion of Champions final to a round of applause from spectators in November 2023, declared that it was an “absolute embarrassment” for pool to have two trans-identified males playing against each other. Round-the-world sailor and women’s sport advocate Tracy Edwards also slammed Ultimate Pool, decrying them as “spineless wimps” for allowing such a situation to happen in the first place. 

According to the rules of both the English Pool Association and World Eightball Pool Federation (WEPF), the governing bodies of the Ultimate Pool Group, trans-identified athletes are allowed to compete in the sport with absolutely no restrictions. According to their website, the current transgender bylaws for the EPA have been under review since December 2023.

Haynes eventually won the semi-final by 5 frames to 3, and went into the final against Welsh player Kirsty-Lee Davies. Despite initially dominating the match, with at one point leading 5 frames to 2, and only one more needed to win, Haynes lost to Davies after she won four frames in a row, in a comeback described by Pinches as nothing short of “phenomenal.”

Kirsty-Lee Davies. Photo Source and Credit: Ultimate Pool Group.

The Women’s Rights Network applauded Davies for her victory, writing: “Despite the best efforts of the pool authorities to scupper her chances by allowing two males to compete in the female category.” However, the WRN also pointed out that both Haynes and Smith, for making it all the way to the final and semi-final respectively, will pick up prize money that “rightfully belongs to a woman.”

Last year, two more female pool players refused to play against Haynes, just one week after the initial protest from Pinches.

In August 2023, the WEPF announced an update to their guidelines regarding transgender and non-binary players, saying that only those who were “born female” would be permitted to play in the sport.

“We understand that this decision may prompt questions and discussions within our sport. We want to emphasise that our commitment to upholding the values of sportsmanship, inclusivity, and adherence to regulatory standards remains unwavering,” the WEPF said at the time. “Our ultimate goal is to ensure the continued growth and development of the sport we all love, while maintaining a harmonious balance between inclusivity and the integrity of competition. We recognise the importance of fostering an environment where everyone can participate and thrive, and we remain dedicated to upholding these principles to the best of our ability.”

However, in October that year, the WEPF reversed the decision, reducing their guidelines to instead only require the entrants to identify as female for a minimum of four years, and further submit proof of lowered testosterone levels for as long as they compete in the Women’s Series. This decision kicked off the protests by Pinches and others, which developed into a lawsuit filed in January.

In February this year, Pinches revealed that she turned down a professional contract with the Ultimate Pool Tour over their transgender policy. “I’m absolutely gutted that I’ve dropped out, my heart wants to be on the Ultimate Pool Tour,” Pinches told BBC Sport at the time.

“I feel excluded even though I’ve self-excluded. I took my £200 deposit back. I’m sticking to my principles. I don’t want to face the transgender players who would be on that tour. I don’t think it’s fair. I’m doing this because I want to fight for the future of young people who are saying they want to quit (playing pool) before they even start,” she added.

https://reduxx.info/uk-female-player-crowned-victorious-at-pool-tournament-after-trans-identified-males-dominate-womens-semi-finals/

EU wants to restrict smoking on balconies and in private cars

Senior EU officials are considering heavily restricting citizens’ ability to smoke on balconies and in private cars.

Representatives in the Council of the European Union are pushing for a far-reaching ban on smoking and vaping in private places such as people’s balconies and cars. 

The drastic proposal has been floated during negotiations with the Council’s Working Party on Public Health, which consists of representatives from member states’ national governments, alongside officials from the European Commission and other EU institutions.

According to documents seen by Brussels Signal, the timing for revising existing laws to include the ban was unclear, though officials emphasised that the revamp was “already underway and should be completed quickly”.

EC President Ursula von der Leyen was said to have already given “a clear mandate in the Mission Letter to the EU Health Commissioner to evaluate and revise tobacco legislation”.

Artur Furtado of the Commission’s Health and Food Safety department (DG SANTE) had presented “the long-awaited revision” of the Council’s recommendation for smoke-free and aerosol-free environments, part of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, in late September.

In the discussed recommendation, the Council Working Group on Public Health aimed to create a “tobacco-free generation” by 2040.

It took an aggressive stance on passive smoking and the proposal also included “an extension to outdoor areas and public spaces”.

That would mean areas such as terraces and the entrances of shopping malls would become off-limits to smoking, as would private cars, at least in cases where children were present.

“The vast majority of member states … expressly welcomed the proposal,” the diplomatic cable read, with many said to have already implemented such measures at the national level.

According to reporting by the EC, 24 per cent of EU citizens smoke traditional tobacco, 3 per cent use e-cigarettes and 2 per cent use other heated tobacco products, with novel products being especially popular among young people.

In outdoor or public spaces, 74 per cent and 71 per cent of citizens, respectively, noticed cigarette or e-cigarette use, with about half of these instances occurring where children were present. Member states aimed to combat smoking in the presence of children and adolescents in particular.

The EU plan is aimed to protect EU citizens from passive smoking both indoors and outdoors and envisioned extending its scope to include novel tobacco products such as e-cigarettes, as well as outdoor areas and public spaces, with the goal of “denormalising the consumption of cigarettes and novel tobacco products”.

During the negotiations, countries including Estonia and Finland pushed for banning smoking in private areas such as on balconies and in personal living spaces, especially where children were present.

Latvia told the group that it had already implemented bans on smoking on private balconies in the presence of children or if neighbours complained about the smoke.

Ireland said it was already planning to raise the minimum age for purchasing cigarettes to 21 years and to ban the sale of disposable e-cigarettes.

Finland stated it aimed to be tobacco-free by 2030.

Proponents argued that the recommendation was simply an update of existing policies, backed by scientific studies, but some member states appeared hesitant.

While supporting the recommendation’s overall goals, Denmark emphasised the need for careful messaging, stressing that the focus of external communications should be on protecting children and young people, rather than giving the impression that the EU wants to interfere in citizens’ private lives.

Poland expressed concern that the absence of precise terminology for novel tobacco products and “tobacco surrogates” could lead to interpretation difficulties.

Lithuania emphasised the need for a balanced approach to the measures, while Sweden, Greece, Bulgaria and Cyprus cautioned that the recommendations’ goals must be realistic.

Greece also warned that certain measures could negatively impact tourism but that was countered by studies indicating that customer and staff satisfaction increased with such smoke bans.

A clear definition of “public space”, to avoid ambiguity and prevent potential overreach in enforcement, also appeared to be a difficult issue.

The Council Secretariat was unable to answer if it was legal to smoke in smoking cabins in the Council building and ordered that be looked into.

Italy, Portugal, and Bulgaria criticised what they saw as the lack of a new impact assessment for the revised recommendation, suggesting that the Council’s working party may be moving too quickly without fully considering the potential consequences of its proposals.

The planned changes raised eyebrows due to its broad scope and potential implications for personal privacy and individual rights but, within the tobacco industry, it struck a nerve.

Japan Tobacco International (JTI), a leading international tobacco product manufacturer, appeared to be excluded from the conversation. JTI said it had already sent a letter to Commissioner Schinas asking for more information in mid-September, with the company saying that, as of writing, it was still waiting for an answer.

A spokesperson for the company noted that the Hungarian Presidency of the Council seemed to want to rush the proposals through.

“With the upcoming hearings, the EP [European Parliament] may not be able to provide an opinion in time for this timeline. It could be interesting to know why they are pushing it,” the spokesperson said.

In a commentary on the matter, JTI wondered if it was appropriate for the EU “to boss anyone around by telling them not to smoke in a zoo?”

It added: “Liberal societies have fought for a long time to escape the nanny state syndrome, and don’t wish for it to return. In such a society, the state’s responsibility is to regulate for safety, not to make choices on behalf of their citizens, nor tell them how to live their lives.

“At JTI, we believe that such state interference should not prevail, but rather uphold the respect of individual autonomy and personal responsibility. This is particularly true for wanting to ban or regulate smoking in private areas, homes or vehicles.”

The company claimed: “The application of smoke-free environment measures to heated tobacco and e-cigarettes has not been based on solid scientific evidence,” noting that the only publication evaluated by the EC that examined the second-hand risk of emerging products was the SCHEER Report on e-cigarettes. That found “weak to moderate evidence of risks of respiratory, cardiovascular and carcinogenic damage due to second-hand exposure to e-cigarette aerosols”.

JTI also lamented what it said was the lack of distinction between traditional cigarettes and everything else, adding that plans go against the most recent Eurobarometer, which showed that a majority of respondents who started using e-cigarettes cited a desire to quit smoking or reduce cigarette consumption as the primary reason for their decision to do so. 

“Therefore, the right for adult consumers who have made the informed choice to use such products should be preserved, notably in public spaces. The counter-effect of extending such a ban to emerging products must be carefully considered by regulators,” the company concluded.

EU wants to restrict smoking on balconies and in private cars (brusselssignal.eu)

Pro-Palestinian Far-Left Group Calls for Ousting of Meloni Government

Screen grab youtube

Creating unrest in Italy is not enough for the communist pro-Palestinian movement that has called for violent acts against Jews and friends of Israel. In their most recent statement, they share their ultimate goal which is to oust the conservative Meloni government and replace it with one that meets their extremist demands.

As Italian daily Il Giornale reports, the far-left Partito dei CARC (Committees to Support the Resistance for Communism) issued a statement on Monday, October 14th, vowing to strengthen their support for the “Palestinian resistance,” while also claiming that “war must also be fought in our country.”

The declaration was made after the government banned two pro-Palestinian rallies due to public security concerns. They were scheduled to take place on October 5th in Rome.

Numerous anti-Israel demonstrations have been held in Italy since October 7th of last year when Palestinian terror group Hamas massacred 1,200 Israeli civilians and took hundreds more hostage. Israel responded with an offensive against Hamas in Gaza, a fight that is still ongoing.

Many of the protests organised by far-left groups such as Partito dei CARC and the New Communist Party have been hateful and antisemitic in nature.

https://t.co/rtRw9qy8As Watan Jamil Alabed: “la resistenza ha riportato la causa palestinese alla ribalta internazionale” pic.twitter.com/c3fJq7A8sc— P.CARC (@PartitoCARC) May 8, 2024

According to media reports, the extremist movement has even published a blacklist of Italian and Israeli companies, as well as Italian Jewish and non-Jewish politicians, academics, diplomats, journalists, and activists, all accused of being “Zionists” and “on Israel’s payroll.” Critics say the statement exposes the people on the list to possible violent retaliation.

Among the listed persons is holocaust survivor Liliana Segre, a 94-year-old senator of the Italian Parliament who has been a frequent target of antisemites.

Another one of the people singled out and called a “Zionist agent” is Francesco Giubilei, president of the conservative think tank Nazione Futura, who told The European Conservative:

Everyone has the right to demonstrate in favour of Palestine, but there is a big difference between the ‘right to demonstrate’ and making blacklists with the names of journalists, politicians, Jews, and people who simply support Israel. That is not freedom of expression; it is targeting that can lead to violence against the people targeted.

The latest declaration made by the communists on Monday invites its followers to fight a war in their own country, and to use disorder as a “first step to establish a just social order.”

“We need to oust the Meloni government and impose a government that is an expression of the demands and needs of the popular masses,” the statement reads, calling on a new government to—among other things—“declare Israel as an occupational, illegitimate and terrorist colony of the Palestinian territory”; “support the Palestinian resistance economically, politically and militarily”;  and to “withdraw all state-owned companies from Zionist-occupied territory.”

This is not the first time far-left extremist groups have called for the conservative government to be removed forcefully and as the Jewish news website Ynet states: “This is, indeed, an incitement to subvert the democratic order.” Spreading blacklists “risks expanding and leading to violent actions against Jewish, Israeli and pro-Israeli targets.”

Jerusalem-based The Times of Israel is also concerned: “Incitement to subvert democracy, blacklist of Jews, where has Italy gone?”

Pro-Palestinian Far-Left Group Calls for Ousting of Meloni Government ━ The European Conservative

Britain Doesn’t Owe A SINGLE PENNY to the Caribbean! It’s a CASH GRAB by Greedy Political Activists

Ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting next week, Caribbean nations are again calling for Britain to pay reparations for slavery and colonialism. Our Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo explains why Britain doesn’t owe them a single penny.

‘Allah akbar, I will come back and carry out an assassination at the station”: A man from Nîmes, France, has been charged after threatening SNCF railway workers. He has previously been convicted of violence, death threats and glorification of terrorism and is now accusing the officials of racism

https://www.fdesouche.com/

I will kill you all. I will come back and carry out an assassination at the station’. On Wednesday evening, October 9, railway police officers at Nîmes station were confronted by a 21-year-old man who made death threats and then threatened to carry out an attack at the station. According to the officers, he even shouted ‘Allah Akbar’. The defendant, who appeared before the criminal court in Nîmes on Tuesday October 15, only partially admitted to these incidents.

According to Valérie Ducam, the presiding judge, this altercation started over a joint that the defendant is said to have smoked at Nîmes railway station. The officers then demanded the defendant’s identity papers. They then refused him access to the train as he did not have a valid ticket. The man starts raging. ‘’You insult them as idiots. You say that you’re from Marseille, that you’ve been in prison and that you know certain people,’ reports the chairwoman. The defendant denies these statements, as well as the death threats and the glorification of terrorism. And this despite the fact that one of the officers had switched on a video at the time of the crime. ‘They said they wanted to kill them, their wives and children. So you’re saying they’re lying?’ asks the chairwoman. ‘Of course they’re lying. I have to tell you something about security on the train, if you’re black or Arab, they start giving you the hairy eyeball after a certain time,’ the defendant tries to justify himself.

As far as the violence is concerned, the accused does not admit to the punch, but only that he bumped into one of the officers, who at least got off with two days on sick leave. ‘But only because he had bumped into me beforehand. I went completely bananas,’ he emphasises. He justifies this by saying that he suffers from schizophrenia and had not taken his medication that day. A medical history that was not proven during the trial. For the public prosecutor Philip Ughetto, these facts are very alarming. This is all the more true as the defendant had previously been convicted of violence, death threats and glorification of terrorism. ‘A worrying criminal record, considering he is only 21 years old. He obviously can’t stand authority,’ the prosecutor said.

His lawyer Mélanie Bargeton pleaded for his acquittal on charges of glorifying terrorism and making death threats. ‘In police custody, he admitted that he was not in his natural state. He was prepared to apologise. He had no intention of attacking the officers, and certainly not the station.’ An argument that did not prevail before the court, which sentenced him to four years in prison with revocation of his six-month suspended sentence and a five-year ban on living in the region.

www.midilibre.fr

Rifle and Koran: the new Western Woke antisemite

Nosta Lgia

by Giulio Meotti

A demonstration in Rome that praises Hamas and Hezbollah was held recently. Seeing the flags with the rifle and the Koran in the Italian capital of Catholicism was quite impressive.

But even more so were these strange girls dressed in pink, girls who Hamas would rape, torture and impale without thinking twice as they did to Israeli women on October 7, and who brandished signs that read: “October 7 is not terrorism, but resistance.”

They seemed to have come out of the latest polemic by the Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud: “In their tragedy on the margins of the useful world, Afghan women do not reproduce the effect of the decolonized, which we want to see again in the war between Israel and Hamas. Afghan women are not veiled by the Jews. We prefer the decolonized, the decolonizers, the decolonial and its positions. In the West, neo-feminism has decided and identified who its electoral clients will be. [The neo-feminist] has long since come to the conclusion that the ‘cotton fields’ of her community are on the side of Muslims and Islamists.”

In London at the same time people were marching shouting “I love Hezbollah”. And in Paris the left in Parliament declared “Hezbollah is a component of the Lebanese people”.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is right, writing in UnHerd: “Islamism is conquering the West from within”. “Hamas does not want a free Palestine but a Sharia state” writes the Dutch novelist Leon de Winter. “First it’s Israel’s turn, then Europe’s.”

The famous novelist Michel Houellebecq went to a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Paris to see with his own eyes whether the images of the rallies that appeared on TV channels were representative. He expected to meet bearded men, Sharia fundamentalists, who can’t stand the sight of a woman without a veil. Instead there were only “bobos”, bourgeois-bohemians, his left-wing, progressive friends, confesses the author of “Submission” and “Serotonin”. Houellebecq didn’t expect to find “leftists”, his former high school and university classmates, supporting Hamas after the October 7 attack. Houellebecq speaks of “Western suicidal masochism” whose root causes “are to be found more in Freud than in Marx.”

But we would be wrong to think that they are a minority. They will be the new majority.

Young English people are for Hamas after the October 7 massacre, according to a new YouGov poll. 16 percent of young English people believe that the massacre was justified. And that comes to over a quarter, 28 percent, of “very left-wing” Britons.

A good many young Americans say Israel should be “abolished and handed over to Hamas,” according to a shocking Harvard-Harris poll, which found that 51 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 said they indeed believed in “abolishing Israel and handing it over to Hamas”.

These are crazy percentages that can be replicated, to varying degrees, in all Western countries. And why not? The professor at the once prestigious Cornell University who called October 7 “exciting” has just returned to work without sanctions.

How we got here is explained by Pascal Bruckner in the latest City Journal: “Radical Islam has become the last great political narrative of the left, replacing communism and third-worldism. The shaheed, the jihadist, the martyr of Hamas or al Qaeda replaces the proletarian, the guerrilla, the Bolshevik. The followers of the Crescent will bring the Revolution”.

The unbridgeable gaps between leftism and Islamism have been pushed aside. Now, with the new impressive collapse into Islamoleftism, with the streets invaded by the Koran and the rifle, today we are at the final act of this long war against the West. Since October 7, we have been living in an unrecognizable world.

Rifle and Koran: the new Western Woke antisemite | Israel National News – Arutz Sheva

IS network in Lower Austria uncovered: youngest member is only 13!

Wikimedia Commons ,AleXXw, PD-user

The State Office for State Protection and Counter-Extremism in Lower Austria (LSE NÖ) was able to uncover an IS network in St. Pölten. Two arrests and eight house searches were ordered by court order. A 20-year-old is considered to be the head of the organization, eight other members are between 13 and 15 years old.

The head of the network is therefore an offender convicted in March 2023 as the “IS Sprayer of St. Pölten”. He is currently in custody. The other members of the network are between 13 and 15 years old.

The 20-year-old “IS sprayer” had already attracted attention in March 2023 with several IS graffiti in the area of St. Pölten’s main railway station. In the summer of 2023, Bashkim B. was sentenced to several months’ imprisonment on the strong suspicion of supporting a terrorist organization and damage to propert

He did not seem to want to learn from his mistakes. Shortly after his release from prison in November 2023, he began recruiting other young people in St. Pölten for IS and indoctrinating the attack by the terrorist organization Hamas – which is responsible for the attack on Israel on 7 October in which around 1,200 people died – as religiously legitimate.

He not only managed to win over a total of eight young people aged between 13 and 15 to the ideology of the Islamic State, but also to spread this ideology even further. The teenagers disseminated numerous “IS combat nasheeds” and “IS videos”, including execution videos, on the internet. The aim was to recruit other young people to join IS. The young people did not stop at anti-Semitic propaganda for Hamas and against Israel. The young suspects showed massive radicalization by Bashkim B. within a very short time.

The police investigation was initiated after the parents of a member of the association became concerned about the progressive radicalization of their son by the 20-year-old head of the network. “The State Office for State Protection and Counter-Extremism is taking tough, consistent and emphatic action against all forms of extremism. Regardless of whether they are Islamist extremists or right-wing extremist idiots,” emphasized Interior Minister Gerhard Karner. During questioning by the Lower Austrian police, the suspects ultimately confessed.

In contrast to the 20-year-old Bashkim B.: He was arrested on April 2, 2024 and taken to St. Pölten prison; to date, the 20-year-old has not confessed, but is considered an urgent suspect. Several books, cell phones and IS rings were seized during a house search. The rings bore the Shahada, an Islamic creed, and the seal of the “Prophet Mohammed”. 

In chats and personal conversations, he displayed his Islamist, anti-democratic and Western values-rejecting attitude. He claimed that it was reprehensible and forbidden to “sympathize with the Austrian state or cooperate with the police”. At the beginning of October 2024, 20-year-old Bashkim B. was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for membership of a terrorist organization by the St. Pölten Regional Court without a final conviction. 

The indoctrination of a 15-year-old member of the network went so far that he even became a “recruiter” himself and recruited other people for IS. His radicalization was also noticeable at school, where he dressed conspicuously and no longer accepted female teachers. During an excursion, he is said to have worn an IS ring and made a video “pledge of allegiance” to IS. He was also sentenced to a conditional prison sentence of one year at the beginning of October. 

Two other 15-year-old members also disseminated IS propaganda videos via the social network Tiktok, one of whom stated during police questioning that he had “celebrated beheadings and dreamed of flying into buildings in an airplane like the attacker of September 11, 2001”. All three exhibited particularly aggressive traits of moral guardian behavior. Their statements incriminated the 20-year-old “head” of the network. 

All members have already been convicted or are currently undergoing criminal proceedings. The proceedings against the 13-year-old member were dropped due to his immaturity.

https://www.krone.at/3560115

The Harris campaign is trying to win male votes by pushing pornography and abortion

Kamala Harris Shutterstock

The Harris-Walz campaign has a problem with men, and they are desperately trying to fix it as polls indicate razor-thin margins in key battle ground states.

First, the campaign attempted to trot out Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff as a paragon of the “new masculinity,” attracting wide mockery as pundits pointed out that a man who abandoned his family after impregnating the nanny was scarcely a model of male virtue.

A more recent allegation published by the Daily Mail that Emhoff slapped another ex-girlfriend was brushed off by the second gentleman, in legally specific terms, as a “distraction.”

The Harris-Walz campaign has moved onto the other things. They’ve recruited celebrities such as Jennifer Garner, an actress and ex-wife of Ben Affleck, to gush unconvincingly about how “sexy” men who support Kamala are:

Capital One Lady:

“God is there anything sexier than a man who’s like, men for Kamala? I mean whew!”

Dripping with despair.

pic.twitter.com/0p8WjORYUO

— Champagne Joshi (@JoshWalkos) October 12, 2024

To top off their efforts, they’ve released an ad allegedly targeted at men depicting various American masculine stereotypes gruffly announcing their support for Kamala Harris – and abortion (which, the ad implies, all real men support):

This is what Dems think men are like.

Incredible. pic.twitter.com/ELrKI8pHxx

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) October 11, 2024

The ad triggered almost universal mockery of the “hello, fellow kids” sort – the Harris-Walz campaign not only doesn’t know how to reach men, but it also doesn’t know how to hire actors able to convincingly portray traditional masculinity. Unsurprisingly, it soon emerged that several of the male actors hired to attract male voters are gay. The ad itself was created by a former writer for late night host Jimmy Kimmel.  

As Samuel James noted: “The only thing you need to know about the ‘not afraid of women’ ad is this. Kimmel, by the way, made his career with ‘The Man Show,’ a show that regularly made male lust and dissipation a source of delight. Secular masculinity is trapped within the porn/effeminacy binary.” James is precisely right.  

It is interesting to observe that even when they are attempting to be aspirational, all Harris has to offer men, when it comes down to it, is the agenda of the sexual revolution. Vote for me, because the women you love may need to have their babies suctioned out of them by Planned Parenthood. Vote for me, because your sex life depends on it. Vote for me, because our revolution depends on it. That’s all her ad offers, when you cut through the weird theater kid version of Country Guy Sits On Truck Tailgate stuff.  

It’s a more expensive version of Doug Emhoff partnering with “Men4Choice” to urge men to vote for abortion because pro-life laws are “affecting man’s ability to plan their lives.” Emhoff has held “Men4Choice” events in Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina. “I’m talking about this with my other dad friends,” he stated. “I’m talking about it with my son. And it’s not just because I also have a daughter. I have a son and we talk about it, about how this is going to impact him and how he’s going to start a family or not.” 

Who knows – maybe Emhoff’s son will also impregnate a family employee, and what will he do then if abortion isn’t available? Emhoff is precisely the right person to make the case for “Men4Choice,” because he is, as I’ve noted before, a good example of what the sexual revolution has done to masculinity.  

This stuff used to be implicit, but with the fall of Roe v. Wade, it has become explicit. Perhaps the best microcosmic example of this is the fact that the porn industry is also pouring cash into getting Kamala Harris elected. 

Thus far, the “Hands Off My Porn” campaign has spent $100,000 on ad buys targeting young men on porn sites. The message is simple: vote for Kamala Harris to ensure that you never lose access to your pornography. Harris is losing with young men. The architects of the “Hands Off My Porn” campaign think that this might be the way to shore up her flagging poll numbers and get her male votes. 

What is the Harris-Walz ticket selling young men? Abortion, pornography, and an assurance that masculinity means sex with whoever you want, whenever you want, however you want – with the government there to ensure that the consequences are taken care of. It’s a bold play. The gloves are off. So are the masks. 

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/the-harris-campaign-is-trying-to-win-male-votes-by-pushing-pornography-and-abortion/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=canada

The Victory That Saved Western Civilization – Commemorating the anniversary of the battle of Tours

The painting above is French Romantic Charles de Steuben’s “Bataille de Poitiers en octobre 732,” which depicts a mounted Charles Martel facing Abd-al Rahman Al Ghafiki at the Battle of Tours.

We have just passed the anniversary of an epic event that is not widely known in America except among history buffs, but which nonetheless dramatically shaped the future of the Western world, and which may still hold inspiration for us in the West today.

After the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in 632, Islam spread like a bloody tide throughout the Arabian peninsula, north to the Caspian Sea and east through Persia and beyond, westward through Egypt and across North Africa all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. From there it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and consumed virtually all of the Iberian peninsula, or al-Andalus as the Saracens called it. In a mere one hundred years, the warlord Muhammad’s imperialist legacy was an empire larger than Rome’s had ever been.

By 732 that fallen Roman empire had devolved into a patchwork of warring barbarian tribes across what is now continental Europe. When Abd-al-Rahman al-Ghafiki, the governor of al-Andalus, crossed the Pyrenees with the world’s most successful fighting force and began pillaging through the south of what would become France toward Paris, there was no nation, no central power, no professional army capable of stopping them.

No army except one – led by the Frankish duke Charles, the eventual grandfather of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. His infantrymen, as historian Victor Davis Hanson puts it in a fascinating chapter of Carnage and Culture, were “hardened veterans of nearly twenty years of constant combat against a variety of Frankish, German, and Islamic enemies.” Hanson writes that the Roman legions had crumbled “because of the dearth of free citizens who were willing to fight for their own freedom and the values of their civilization.” But the seasoned warrior Charles had gathered spirited, free fighters under his command who were willing to defend their Christian society, and he led them to intercept the marauding infidels leaving a ravaged trail toward the ultimate prize, Paris.

On the 10th of October, 732 (some dispute the exact date), the two armies met on a wooded field between Poitiers and Tours (and so the ensuing confrontation is sometimes called the Battle of Poitiers), barely 175 miles from Paris as the crow flies. Abd-al-Rahman arrayed his cavalry against Charles’ solid block of Frankish footsoldiers, which at 30,000 was by some estimates not even half the size of the Arab and Berber army (Hanson speculates that the armies were more evenly matched, but the Franks were unquestionably outnumbered).

The opposing forces sized each other up for a full week before Abd-al-Rahman ordered the charge that October morning. But his cavalry, which normally counted on speed, mobility, and terror to lay waste to undisciplined tribes, could not penetrate the highly disciplined, heavily-armed Frankish phalanx. In his must-read book Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, my friend, historian Raymond Ibrahim, quotes a contemporary chronicler who described that the Franks “stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword.”

At the end of the day’s carnage, both sides regrouped for the next day’s assault. But at dawn, Charles and his men discovered that the Muslim army had vanished, beginning their retreat toward the Pyrenees, leaving the booty stolen from ransacked churches and abbeys behind, as well as at least 10,000 of their dead – including Abd-al-Rahman himself. Exact figures in historical sources are questionable, but Arab chroniclers, Ibrahim reports, “refer to the engagement as the ‘Pavement of Martyrs,’ suggesting that the earth was littered with Muslim corpses.”

It was not the last Muslim incursion into Europe – Charles racked up subsequent victories against the Saracens for a few years afterward – but it was the beginning of the end, and Islam never again penetrated militarily as far into European territory. The victory at Tours helped solidify Charles’ standing among the Franks as a great leader and defender of Christendom (he was afterward dubbed Martel, or “the Hammer”; the Pope reportedly labeled him “the Hammer of God”). He became ruler over all the Franks, essentially unifying all the fragmented territory of western Europe and paving the way for the rise of his grandson Charlemagne to become “the Father of Europe,” the first great ruler of Christendom.

Some historians today downplay the magnitude of the Muslim threat that Martel countered, claiming that Abd-al-Rahman’s force was only a raiding party with no grander designs on seizing the whole of the European continent. They minimize the significance of the Battle of Tours’ outcome, too; at least one historian even claims that Europe would have been better off if Islam had conquered it.

But Hanson notes that “most of the renowned historians of the 18th and 19th centuries… saw Poitiers as a landmark battle that signaled the high-water mark of Islamic advance into Europe.” Edward Creasey included it among the fifteen most decisive battles of world history. Many believe that if Charles –– had not stopped Abd-al-Rahman at Tours, there would have been nothing to prevent the Islamic tide from sweeping across the continent and making Europe Islamic. Edward Gibbon called Charles “the savior of Christendom” and wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776 that if not for Charles’ victory, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford.”

If only Gibbon could see Oxford now. Not only is the interpretation of the Koran taught there, but Islam thrives in Oxford, thanks partly to the patronage of the UK’s current dhimmi king. In his essay “Islam in Oxford,” faux moderate Muslim scholar Muqtedar Khan wrote that “Gibbon would have been surprised to learn the lesson that military defeats do not stop the advance of civilizations and the globalization of Islam is unimpeded by the material and military weaknesses of the Muslim world.”

Apart from his dubious suggestion that Islam has anything to do with the advance of civilization, Khan is right: today the Islamic incursion into Europe is of the demographic, not military, sort. The continent faces an immigration crisis due in no small part to at least one generation of young Muslims, many of whom not only are willfully unassimilated, but who are waging cultural and physical aggression against their hosts, establishing parallel communities – “no-go” zones ruled by sharia and in which infidels are unwelcome, to put it mildly. “Nothing can stop the spread of Islam,” insists Islamic apologist Reza Aslan. “There are those who would try, but it simply will not happen. Absolutely nothing can stop the spread of Islam.”

In 732, Charles Martel begged to differ. What it took was the will, the discipline and training, and a warrior spirit and righteous faith.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-victory-that-saved-western-civilization-2/

France: In three different colleges and with shouts of ‘Allah Akbar’, pupils disrupt the minute’s silence for Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, who were murdered by Islamists. In a fourth school, a father opposes the memorial service

On Monday October 14, 2024, the middle and high schools of the Indre-et-Loire department took part in the national commemoration for Samuel Paty and Dominique Bernard, the two teachers murdered by Islamist terrorists. The academic director Christian Mendivé took the stage to bring secularism back to the fore (…).

‘A minute’s silence was held today (Monday) and during the week activities will be organised with the teachers and their students. During the minute’s silence there was a lot of emotion, in the group, as the moment was very solemn. Four incidents were reported to us: In three collèges, it was pupils who disrupted the minute’s silence by shouting ‘Allah Akbar’. In another college, it was a father who asked that the minute’s silence not be held or that his daughter be dismissed.’ (…)

La Nouvelle République / Indre-et-Loire : dans trois collèges différents et au cri de type “Allah Akbar”, des élèves perturbent la minute de silence pour Samuel Paty et Dominique Bernard. Dans un quatrième établissement, un père s’oppose à l’hommage – Fdesouche