Reply from Ms Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission.
Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union guarantees freedom of religion. The Commission is committed to ensuring its upholding within the framework of its competences. EU rules specifically address the multiple forms and manifestations of racism and intolerance, including acts and hate speech based on religious affiliation. Within this framework, the Commission is committed to protecting Christians and members of other religious groups from persecution in the EU, making no distinction between the different groups.
The Commission does not plan a specific strategy to combat Christianophobia and does not intend to appoint a coordinator to deal with this issue. The Commission strongly condemns all forms of violence. […]
A nightmarish Saturday for 17-year-old Romain and his mother: they were allegedly robbed and raped by two minors.
The young man was on his way home in his car when two young men armed with knives threatened him, stole his mobile phone and the little money he had and forced him to perform oral sex in the street. They then forced him to take them to his house in the Casal Monastero district in an eastern suburb of Rome, where they stole 200 euros and raped the 17-year-old’s mother in the same way they raped her son.
The two attackers, who were Tunisian nationals, fled but were tracked down a few hours later by officers from the Viminale and Sant’Ippolito police stations.
(…) It is known that the two attackers had escaped from a juvenile detention centre.Il Tempo
“They threatened my son with a knife to his throat, what else could I do? They told us they would kill us both…”.
A night of horror according to the words of a 54-year-old mother who was forced to have sex by one of the two underage thugs who invaded her home in Casal Monastero, near San Basilio, after abusing her 17-year-old son in the street and then forcing him to take them to his home. Still with a knife at his throat.
(…) The two Tunisians allegedly videotaped the atrocities and broadcast them live on social networks.(…) Corriere
It’s official: The United Nations, following the Muslim world’s lead, has formally accepted the concept of “Islamophobia,” a move that will undoubtedly further paralyze any measures against Islamic aggression, or, in a word, jihad.
The resolution was introduced by Pakistan and supported by 55 Muslim-majority countries of the Riyadh-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which is also trying to get the U.N. to accept “blasphemy” laws.
There are two points worth considering here: what this bill will do and the hypocrisy of all who support it.
For starters, the resolution will further freeze any and all frank discussions on Islam and its body of teachings, since any criticism can and will easily fall into the category of “Islamophobia.” That is the whole point: to place Islam on a pedestal and shield it from any criticism.
Indeed, not a few international observers have made this point. An E.U. statement said (emphasis added): “We are concerned with the approach of addressing only one religion through a General Assembly initiative. … By using the term ‘Islamophobia’ instead of ‘anti-Muslim discrimination’ or ‘anti-Muslim hatred’, the OIC initiative focuses on protecting religion as such which is an approach that undermines the protection of the individual human rights of persons, such as the rights to freedom of opinion and expression, including the right to debate and criticise religion.”
Similarly, the “term Islamophobia has no agreed upon definition in international law, unlike the freedom of religion or conviction,” said Nicolas de Riviere, the French permanent representative to the U.N. “But it’s this liberty [freedom of religion or conviction] that France defends [as opposed to the religion of Islam itself]. … The phrase [Islamophobia] also suggests that it’s the religion itself that is protected, not the believers. Yet it’s the liberty to believe, or not believe, or the right to change religion, that we should promote.”
Citing discrimination against Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, India’s permanent representative, T.S. Tirumurti, called on the U.N. to condemn “religiophobias” as opposed to singling out “Islamophobia”: “we are concerned about elevating the phobia against one religion [Islam] to the level of an international day, to the exclusion of all the others.”
It should be noted that while France and India both spoke against the resolution, neither opposed its adoption by consensus.
At any rate, the actual reason many feel that Islam should be granted special protection is that, unlike Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., many of its teachings are problematic — killing apostates and “blasphemers,” treating women like chattel, and legalizing sexual slavery, to name a few — and, therefore, not suited for the modern world. Hence the real need to silence all criticism in the guise of “protecting Muslims.”
Meanwhile, those who truly need protecting from Muslims — for instance, religious minorities — get zero recognition by the U.N. The Muslim persecution of Christians, for example, is a real phenomenon: it’s unwavering, constant, systematic, and systemic, and it conforms to sharia-approved patterns — meaning its root source is Islam.
Since July 2011, I’ve been compiling a monthly series, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” (published by the Gatestone Institute), collating and summarizing the one or two dozen accounts of persecution that surface every month. The accounts documented in every one of these now 125 reports typically fit under the same themes — including the bombing, burning, or banning of churches; the rape and forced conversion of Christian women; murderous attacks on and long prison sentences for apostates, blasphemers, and evangelists; overall discrimination and exploitation; and, increasingly, the outright slaughter of Christians. (For more on the doctrinal and historic background of this phenomenon, see this more elaborate and detailed article.)
Similarly, a study published in January 2022 found that, in 2021, “over 360 million Christians suffer[ed] high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.” On average, 16 Christians were killed for their faith every single day. During that same period, more than 5,000 churches were attacked and/or destroyed.
And the overwhelming majority of this persecution took place at the hands of Muslims. Worse, the Muslim nations that are especially brutal and notorious in their persecution of Christians — including Afghanistan and Somalia, respectively considered the worst and third worst persecutors and murderers of Christians in the entire world — are members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the same group that sponsored the “Islamophobia” resolution that the U.N. just adopted. Equally disgusting is that Pakistan — where not one week seems to go by without an underage Christian girl being abducted, raped, and forced to convert and marry her abductor, with the police and courts siding with the rapists — is the nation that submitted the resolution.
This brand of hypocrisy should be familiar by now: just as one stands to be “canceled” for quite appropriately saying something like “all lives matter” — since the only approved formulation is that “black lives matter” — so now one cannot say that “all religions matter,” but only Islam, the one religion that the U.N. has just granted a privileged position.
Why would you pay 2,000 korunas (€81) for a Czech woman when you can have a Ukrainian woman much cheaper? That is the message being broadcast on Czech websites dedicated to arranging meetings with prostitutes.
A businessman who regularly frequents the website brought the ads for Ukrainian women to the attention of the Women’s Protection Association, and they have in turn contacted the police.
The unnamed businessman said that although he regularly visits the website, the ads for Ukrainian women disturbed him given that there are women and children fleeing the country due to the war.
The Women’s Protection Associaton’s coordinator, Zdeňka Pecharová, confirmed that the first cases of abuse of Ukrainian refugees for forced prostitution had already begun in the Czech Republic.
“We have information from specific men that when they make an appointment and arrive at the place, it is a dirty private house where they give women drugs and force them into prostitution,” Pecharová said.
Mostly women and children flee abroad from war-torn Ukraine. According to Pecharová, men address them directly at the border, offering them transport to the Czech Republic for a fee. However, refugees thus become victims of human trafficking. Traffickers push drugs on them to get them addicted and then sexually exploit them. The association is said to know of dozens of such cases.
Monika Molnárová from the Slovak non-profit organization Caritas, which fights against human trafficking, also confirmed the presence of suspects at the borders.
“We have recorded several cases at all three crossings at the Slovak-Ukrainian border. The suspects arrived in luxury vans, were often wearing gold and some jewelry, and tried to lure women and children into the car, offering them accommodation or work abroad,” Molnárová described.
Members of her NGO’s team approached these suspicious men, which prompted them to quickly leave the scene. Based on this behavior, the team concluded that they were potential traffickers, however, they have yet to verify a specific case. Employees of the Ministry of the Interior also actively cooperated at the borders, distributing leaflets in both Ukrainian and Slovak languages with information on possible risks to war refugees.
Czech police have allegedly already received the information from the non-profit organization and will deal with the case. A few days ago, they published a video in the Ukrainian language warning of fraudulent behavior of people taking advantage of the situation in Ukraine.
“It includes, for example, an offer that someone will speed up the registration process for you or provide you with a well-paid job. Do not trust that person. You may be a victim of human trafficking and be forced to provide sexual services, slave labor, or other illegal activities,” the police officer warned in the video.
The Naši Ukrajinci (Our Ukrainians) and Pomáhej Ukrajině (Help Ukraine) projects are also trying to prevent these events.
Did Saber Lahmar incite Muslim believers to go to jihad for Daesh, or not? This is the question that the Paris criminal court will have to decide from May 10 to 13, as Sud-Ouest reports. The imam from Bordeaux is charged with organising a “terrorist criminal organisation” and is said to have assisted in the departure of several Islamists to the Middle East. In particular, of a family that had left for Iraq via Greece in the summer of 2015. The issue for the judiciary is: How much was the accused preacher actually involved in the departure to Islamic State-controlled areas? His lawyer answers that his client never called for “hijra”, emigration to an Islamic country, which is the duty of every good Muslim according to Sharia law. While there are no records to prove such statements, Saber Lahmar’s sermons were very radicalised. It could be a hidden call to jihad.
Saber Lahmar has had a special background. He was a member of the GIA (Groupe islamique armé, an Algerian jihadist movement responsible for numerous attacks, particularly in France) and subsequently lived in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). There he was arrested by the Americans and spent eight years in the high-security Guantanamo prison before being released for lack of evidence against him. Saber Lahmar, who came to France after his release, is said to have never broken his ties with radical Islam, having made contact with two notorious Islamists who were imprisoned: Lionel Dumont of the Roubaix gang and Mohamed Achamlane, the leader of the jihadist group Forzane Alizza.
Ukraine’s defense ministry has been using the facial recognition software of the company Clearviewsince Saturday to identify Russian soldiers.
A Clearview spokesperson confirmed this to Reuters. The technology can be used, among other things, to find out the names of Russian soldiers, combat misinformation and the identities of the dead. Clearview can also be used at checkpoints to recognize “persons of interest”.
According to Lee Wolosky, a company spokesperson, Clearview will offer its services to the country for free. The program will not be provided to Russia, he added.
The company will use a database of more than two billion images from the Russian social network VKontakte. That data can be used, among other things, to identify Russian soldiers.
This method is more efficient than using fingerprints, it said. Moreover, this can be done even if there is damage to the face.
For the time being, however, it is unclear for what exact purposes Ukraine intends to use the technology. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has not yet responded to questions.
I’ve long known about hydrogen peroxide’s antibacterial properties. When I was a kid, my mother always had a bottle of Gly-Oxide in the house for cold sores, bitten tongues, and other minor mouth ailments. And since I’m a bit nervous about E. coli and salmonella (long, irrelevant story), I usually have some vinegar and hydrogen peroxide under the kitchen sink for rinsing fruits and vegetables.
Recently, I got a letter from a friend about the fact that both he and his wife had pneumonia that wouldn’t retreat even with a hospital stay and antibiotics. What finally ended the pneumonia was a nebulizer with saline solution and food-grade hydrogen peroxide.
However, and this is very important, I also discovered mainstream media articles, complete with quotations from doctors, saying that whatever you do, don’t nebulize hydrogen peroxide. This September 2021 Reuters article is a good example:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not list hydrogen peroxide as a treatment for COVID-19 (here).
Hydrogen peroxide is traditionally used for minor cuts and scrapes (here).
These rumors prompted organizations like the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) (www.aafa.org/about-aafa.aspx) to post an advisory on their website, seen bit.ly/3APNtWa and on the organization’s Facebook page (here) warning against inhaling hydrogen peroxide. “DO NOT put hydrogen peroxide into your nebulizer and breathe it in. This is dangerous. It is not a way to prevent nor treat COVID-19,” they warned, in response to the social media trend.
According to AAFA, “Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a cleaner and stain remover and can cause tissue damage if you swallow it or breathe it in.” The organization cites toxicology records (here) from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
[snip]
Dr Jamie Alan, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University told Health.com, “Hydrogen peroxide is a free radical, meaning it’s an unstable atom that can damage cells. If it’s inhaled, it goes to the lungs where it can damage cell membranes.”
Panagis Galiatsatos, M.D., an associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, shared Alan’s sentiment. Dr. Galiatsatos told Reuters via phone that claims regarding hydrogen peroxide as an effective treatment for COVID-19 “are all false.”
At this point, I was stymied. Do I believe the traditional medical establishment, or do I trust random people, including random doctors, giving their opinion on the internet? Once upon a time, trusting the medical establishment would have been a no-brainer. Now, though, given that the establishment hasn’t covered itself with glory and has aggressively rejected any early treatment for COVID…let’s say my trust is diminished. Still, those warnings are scary.
However, with hydrogen peroxide now stuck in my brain like a burr, I was fascinated to learn that a recent medical study identifies aerosolized hydrogen peroxide (presumably the food-grade kind) as a new weapon in the war against one of the most pernicious infectious diseases in care facilities such as skilled nursing facilities or old age homes:
New data published today suggest that adding aerosolized hydrogen peroxide (aHP) to hospital infection prevention protocols can effectively reduce Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI), one of the most common healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), among patients in large, acute-care facilities. The findings, which offer the first, long-term evaluation of an aHP disinfection system for reducing CDI in a clinical setting, appear in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), the journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
“Our study showed that persistence in utilizing an aerosolized hydrogen peroxide system had a significant impact on reducing C. difficile infections hospital-wide,” said Christopher L. Truitt, Ph.D., Wayland Baptist University, and the paper’s lead author.
Individuals infected with C. difficile can be asymptomatic or have symptoms ranging from mild diarrhea to severe and life-threatening inflammation of the colon. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The Joint Commission, C. difficile is responsible for 223,000 HAIs resulting in more than 12,000 deaths and $6.3 billion in costs in the United States annually.
Why do I hear echoes of stories about hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in the above report? Could it be that’s because it involves a commonly available, affordable substance that seems to have amazing properties but that is completely frowned upon by the establishment, especially when it comes to treating COVID before a hospital stay is necessary?
Given the warnings against inhaling hydrogen peroxide, I’m not about to start sucking it in on a daily basis. However, I am going to keep an eagle eye out for medical journal studies announcing that hydrogen peroxide does indeed have anti-viral properties. I’m willing to bet that the odds are good that precisely such an article will appear in the next year.
German as well as French mainstream media has ignored the issue completely. France may be facing a major change regarding German-speaking Alsatians. In a large-scale referendum held in recent weeks, the overwhelming majority of Alsatians voted in favor of leaving the current French administrative region Grand Est and for an independent region of Alsace.
The initiator of the poll, Frédéric Bierry, announced the result last month: Some 92,4 percent of Alsatians voted for an independent Alsace in the almost two-month survey. “This February 21st is historic,” Bierry commented. There is already talk of an “Alsace exit” in France.
Although the result of the survey is not binding on anyone, it does send a clear signal to Paris, even if less than ten percent of Alsatians (around 168 000 citizens) actually took part.
Bierry, who is driving the exit plan, spoke of a great success to which he felt committed. The vote set a movement in motion that can no longer be stopped. “Alsace wants and will return to a autonomous region,” announced the conservative politician. He will personally work to implement the will of the people so that the Alsace region is reborn. He urged French politicians to comply with the request.
Founded in 2016, the Grand Est region includes the former regions of Alsace, Lorraine and Champagne-Ardenne. In Alsace, there were protests against the merger from the start. Also as a result of the dissatisfaction, the two departments Bas-Rhin (67) and Haut-Rhin (68) have merged to form a “European regional authority Alsace”, which was launched in January 2021. Bierry was elected joint president. From his point of view, the citizen survey is now the next step towards leaving the Grand Est. The government in Paris must present a law to transfer all competences from the greater region back to Alsace.
There were hardly any official reactions at first – probably also in order not to give the vote too much weight. The established media ignored the “historic day”.
Grand Est President Jean Rottner meanwhile rejected the poll. “Before 2028 there will be no changes in the regional layout.”
The man, who had been taken into police custody on Thursday evening for glorifying terrorism – he shouted Allah akbar – was taken to hospital, according to the Reims public prosecutor’s office.
Trains were no longer running at the Reims train station. The reason for this was the arrest of a person by the police. All entrances to the station were then closed.
One round trip between Reims and Épernay was cancelled. Nine trains were waiting to enter the station.L’Union
