Month: June 2022

If, in a crisis, all imports to Switzerland were stopped, the Swiss population would still be guaranteed enough to eat – although people would have to tighten their belts.

Each citizen would have to get by on 2 340 calories a day, compared with the current average daily intake of 3 015 calories, according to calculations published recently by Agroscope for the Federal Office for National Economic Supply. This lower amount is still above most recommendations by the Swiss Society for Nutrition.

Self-sufficiency, also known as autarky, would mean people would have to adapt their diets. The biggest change would concern meat: pork and poultry, even eggs, would rarely be seen on plates. Use of sugar and cooking oil would also have to be reduced. Beer and wine would “basically be taboo”, Agroscope said.

Instead, shelves would be full of potatoes, baked goods and local vegetables. More milk would be consumed fresh, rather than being used for cheese – and all available meadows would be used to produce milk.

The livestock population would also change drastically, the study said. Farmers would be more likely to keep animals that ate roughage than animals that ate concentrated feed. As a result, the number of fattened pigs and poultry would drop by around 90 percent since it is more efficient to use vegetables for energy directly than to refine them for animal feed.

The calculations assumed that the authorities could still import hatching eggs for poultry production, fertiliser and pesticides.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/06/21/would-the-swiss-starve-if-all-imports-were-blocked/

In an open-air swimming pool in Berlin, some young men were not amused by a water pistol fight, which turned into a mass brawl. Knives were also drawn and a lifeguard was injured.

What started as a fun water fight degenerated into a mass brawl among groups of men with a migration background in an open-air swimming pool in Berlin. A video shows almost 100 men shouting loudly near the pool area and threatening and harassing each other. Ordinary, uninvolved bathers flee the danger zone and observe the situation from a distance. The situation escala”According to what we know so far, at around 4.25 p.m. two groups, consisting of four and ten people, first sprayed each other with water pistols in a joking manner,” said a spokesperson for the Berlin police. And further: “Then first a verbal and then a physical confrontation is said to have developed.” The security staff tried to mediate. Then the situation allegedly escalated.tes, people start fists fighting. The police have to intervene.

According to the police report, one man even attacked two people with a knife. A 23-year-old security guard at the swimming pool was also attacked. Initial investigations led to the identification of four suspects. They are a 23-year-old, two 21-year-old and a 15-year-old youth.

https://exxpress.at/wasserpistolen-schlacht-unter-migranten-endet-in-massenschlaegerei/

The Stuttgart Administrative Court recently ruled that calls to single out the Jewish state for boycott, divestment and sanctions do not violate Germany’s laws against hate speech and are protected, sparking outrage from critics that the decision turns anti-Semitism into a socially and politically correct view.

“It is probably the first time in the history of the Federal Republic that a court has expressly declared ‘anti-Semitic views’ to be a legally protected area of ‘​​freedom of opinion,’” Henryk M. Broder, a leading expert on German Jew-hatred, wrote in his popular column for the “Die Welt” broadsheet.

Broder’s column was published in late May, under the title, “Yes, there is room for anti-Semitism in Germany.” It came in response to Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s claim that there is “no place for anti-Semitism” in Germany, after a mob of pro-Palestinians demonstrators stoked Jew-hatred in Berlin.

JNS is the first English-language news organization to report on the pro-BDS court decision.

Prominent German Jews are urging Stuttgart Mayor Frank Nopper to swiftly appeal the April court decision in favor of Palestine Committee Stuttgart.

Nathan Gelbart, a veteran attorney and an expert on anti-Semitism and the law, told JNS that appealing the ruling “would send a signal we are not boycotting peace-loving activists but rather radical anti-Semitic boycotters, and that morally, we are right. Let the courts decide on this. We are not giving in to anti-Semitism.”

However, he expressed skepticism regarding the chances for a successful appeal. The city of Stuttgart has not said if it will be appealing the pro-BDS court decision.

“The ruling of the Stuttgart Administrative Court comes as no surprise. Already in January 2022 the Federal Administrative Court [one of Germany’s five federal supreme courts] ruled that it is illegal in principle to exclude promoters of the BDS movement from government-owned places in Germany,” he added.

The Stuttgart court is bound by the decisions of the Federal Administrative Court, Gelbart said.

“It [the Stuttgart court ruling] argues that every association applying to be named in the city’s website [and thereby advertise its views] needs to be named, no matter what political attitudes it might represent, including anti-Semitic views, as long as they do not violate German law,” he said. “German law does not forbid the expression of anti-Semitic views unless, for example, they contain inflammatory content or the denial of the Holocaust. The rationales referred to in the ruling are therefore legally in order, as annoying this result might be for every person condemning discrimination and anti-Semitism.”

The BDS movement, said Gelbart, is “ugly and anti-Semitic,” favoring the creation of a political and cultural ghetto for Jews. Its claim to only boycott Israelis but not Jews is ridiculous and hypocritical, he added. “Almost 80% of Israelis are Jews, so Jews are the evident target of the BDS movement,” Gelbart said.

Malca Goldstein-Wolf, an anti-BDS activist, told JNS, “It is unacceptable for a municipal website to advertise an anti-Israel movement that the German Bundestag has unequivocally classified as anti-Semitic. If the German judiciary does not see itself in a position to issue legal judgments against Jew-hatred, that speaks volumes.”

Goldstein-Wolf then addressed the role of Michael Blume, the commissioner tasked with combating anti-Semitism in the state of Baden-Württemberg, where Stuttgart is located.

“It is undoubtedly one of the tasks of an anti-Semitism commissioner to clearly condemn this scandal and call for an appeal against this unacceptable verdict. If there is no other legal option, it would make sense to not publish any advertising at all for NGOs on municipal websites.”

Blume declined to respond to multiple JNS inquiries.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center Jewish human rights NGO classified Blume as anti-Semitic in 2021 for his activities against Israel and Jews, ranking his activities as the seventh worst outbreak of anti-Semitism on its Top Ten list for the year.

According to the Wiesenthal entry, “While Felix Klein, the Federal Commissioner for Jewish Life and the fight against anti-Semitism, has urged banks not to provide accounts to BDS groups, Blume has failed to urge the partly state-owned Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW) to close the account of Baden-Württemberg’s and Germany’s most powerful anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) organization, the Palestine Committee Stuttgart.”

The Red Flag newspaper, which is affiliated with the pro-PFLP Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany, praised Blume for not taking action against the funding stream of the Palestine Committee Stuttgart. The United States and the European Union have designated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a foreign terrorist organization.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the assistant dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS, “The Bundestag acknowledged the anti-Semitic nature of BDS. Now a German court has legitimized BDS as legally protected freedom of opinion. Will higher courts overturn this legitimization of anti-Semitism in Germany’s mainstream? Will such an opinion open the floodgates to more anti-Semitism in Stuttgart and beyond?”

Martin Widerker, the former head of the Jewish community in Stuttgart and a prominent Zionist and Jewish leader for 40 years, told JNS the municipality should “absolutely” appeal the decision.

When asked whether Barbara Traub, the current leader of the Jewish community in Stuttgart, should condemn the court’s ruling, Widerker said, “Of course.”

Widerker took Blume to task and said, “Of course he should criticize [the pro-BDS decision], but he hasn’t done it yet and probably will continue to not do so. If he does, it would be a colossal reversal.”

He continued, “Advertisements that promote anti-Semitism and propagate the destruction of the State of Israel under the guise of freedom of expression must not be allowed. The ruling is anti-Semitic. Only naive people don’t see it. The verdict clearly shows that there is no taboo on anti-Semitism in the judiciary either.”

Traub declined to respond to a JNS query.

JNS reported in January  on financial misconduct allegations against Traub and Blume.

Volker Beck, the new head of the German-Israel Friendship Society, a pro-Israel group funded by the German government, did not respond to numerous JNS press queries.

Beck, who was born in Stuttgart, was a Green Party deputy in the Bundestag when his party advanced an initiative to single out Israeli products from Judea and Samaria for labeling. Beck declined to publicly say whether he opposed his party’s BDS measure in 2013.

Germany’s main neo-Nazi party promoted a similar punitive BDS action in 2012.

Broder asked back in 2013 whether the Green Party had copied the neo-Nazi party’s legislative language targeting Israeli goods.

The Stuttgart legal case stems from a report by this journalist in 2018 that revealed that the municipality advertises on its website information for the BDS group.

After initial reluctance, Stuttgart’s then-mayor Fritz Kuhn scrubbed the promotion of the pro-BDS group Palestine Committee Stuttgart (Palästinakomitee Stuttgart) from the website. The BDS group filed a suit in an effort to secure its advertisement on the municipal website.

The government of Baden-Württemberg declares on its website, along with photographs of Blume, Traub and Interior Minister Thomas Strobl, that there is “No place for anti-Semitism” in the state.

Observers such as Goldstein-Wolf note that Stuttgart could delete the over 7,000 advertisements on its website if it wishes to remove any city-sponsored Jew-hatred. Gelbart said the city would be within its rights to do so.

Stuttgart Mayor Nopper did not respond to a JNS press query.

https://www.jns.org/fury-over-german-courts-anti-semitic-pro-bds-ruling/

Following the opening of Documenta 15 last week, the organizers of this year’s edition of the famed recurring art exhibition in Kassel, Germany, have covered over an artwork that many had labeled anti-Semitic.

The artwork was by the Indonesian collective Taring Padi, and unlike many pieces in this year’s Documenta, it was not a newly made one. Titled People’s Justice (2002), it had first been shown the year it was made at the South Australian Art Festival in Adelaide.

A sprawling banner that meditates on the violence of the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, the piece includes images of soldiers who are labeled as members of Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel. Some have pigs’ heads for faces, and behind them can be spotted what the German art magazine Monopol identified as “a caricature of a Jew with sidelocks, a cigar, and SS symbols on his hat.”

Other works by Taring Padi have attempted to link war and violence in other countries with what has happened Indonesia. In an interview with Art & Market earlier this year, the collective said it has used its prints to evoke “solidarity with Palestine and Myanmar,” among other issues.

“It is not meant to be related in any way to antisemitism,” the collective said of the Documenta banner in a statement on Monday. “We are saddened that details in this banner are understood differently from its original purpose. We apologize for the hurt caused in this context.”

The collective’s statement continued, “Therefore, with great regret, we cover up the work. This work then becomes a monument of mourning for the impossibility of dialogue at this moment. This monument, we hope, will be the starting point for a new dialogue.”

Documenta 15 has been the subject of a bitter debate revolving around whether it was anti-Semitic for its curators, the Indonesian collective ruangrupa, to include a Palestinian collective called the Question of Funding in the exhibition. Ironically, however, Taring Padi had never been a part of that controversy.

The Question of Funding’s participation had spurred some Jewish groups in Germany to denounce Documenta 15. The debate at one point grew so tense that Documenta canceled a planned talks series focused on anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and related issues. Just before the opening, the Question of Funding’s exhibition space was vandalized with messages that ruangrupa described as “a death threat.”

Both ruangrupa and Documenta have denied the anti-Semitism claims, which have included allegations that the Question of Funding’s members support BDS, or Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, a pro-Palestine movement that has been controversial within Germany.

Despite there being little factual basis for those claims, they were picked up by some prominent German newspapers, and politicians have even thrown their hat into the debate, with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier saying at the show’s opening that “there are limits” to artistic freedom.

“As justified as some criticism of Israeli policies, such as the building of settlements, is, recognizing Israeli statehood means recognizing the dignity and security of the modern Jewish community,” Steinmeier said at the opening.

Even those who had risen to Documenta and ruangrupa’s defense amid the claims about the Question of Funding decried the Taring Padi work.

Monopol editor in chief Elke Buhr, one of the few German journalists to take a strong pro-Documenta stance with the anti-Semitism allegations first emerged, published a short article on Monday called “The limit has been crossed here.” “With this [work], Documenta Fifteen weakens its position,” she wrote.

Claudia Roth, Germany’s culture minister, had carefully advocated for “artistic freedom” during the initial anti-Semitism debate. But she did not mince words when, in a tweeted statement on Monday that did not mention Taring Padi by name, she called for the removal of “anti-Semitic imagery” from Documenta, writing, “I’ll say it again: human dignity, protection against anti-Semitism, racism and misanthropy are the foundations of our coexistence and this is where artistic freedom finds its limits.”

The Israeli embassy in Germany echoed Roth’s calls, and went one step further, calling the Taring Padi work “Goebbels-style propaganda,” a reference to Joseph Goebbels who was responsible for much of the racist and anti-Semitic messaging disseminated by the Nazi Party during World War II.

In a statement, Sabine Schorman, the general director of Documenta and the Frediricianum, made an attempt to distance the show from the Taring Padi work.

“The documenta management is not, and should not be, an authority to which artistic exhibits must be submitted for inspection in advance,” Schorman said, adding that the work had not been created for Documenta 15.

“All parties involved regret that feelings were hurt in this way,” she concluded.

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/documenta-15-taring-padi-anti-semitism-allegations-banner-1234632401/

Is there a form of religious separatism in French cemeteries? At least this is what a former deputy from Savoie, who has gone to court over Muslim burial grounds, claims, as reported by Le Figaro on Friday June 17. Marcel Girardin, a former municipal councillor (SE) from Voglans, told the newspaper that he criticises a “segregating and discriminatory religious point of view” which, in his opinion, “violates the essential principles of secular neutrality and equality before the law espoused by the French Republic”.

On Thursday June 16, at the request of the Paris Administrative Court, the Council of State reviewed a request to delete two passages of a circular of February 19, 2008, relating to the design of cemeteries and the confessional merging of graves, the newspaper reports. It is expected to make a decision in “two to three weeks”.

On the occasion of an article about the burial of a Syrian refugee in 2018 in the Muslim burial ground of the Chambery cemetery, I did some research,” Marcel Girardin reports in detail in the columns of the newspaper. I came across a circular from 2008 in which the Minister of the Interior [then Michèle Alliot-Marie, editor’s note] asked prefects to encourage mayors to promote the creation of confessional burial plots, in particular on the grounds that there were supposedly ‘appropriate agreements’.” The aim of this approach, the former Savoy MP continued: “To promote the integration of families with an immigrant background.”

In this circular, according to Marcel Girardin, Michèle Alliot-Marie asked prefects to verify with mayors who have authorised the burial of a citizen in a confessional burial ground “that no religious sign or emblem interferes with this confessional space and offends certain families”. This violates the Code général des collectivités territoriales (CGCT), which states that “any private individual may, without authorisation, have a gravestone or other sign indicating the religious background of the burial place placed on the grave of a relative or friend”.

The law of November 14, 1881 on freedom of burial establishes the principle of non-discrimination in cemeteries and removes the requirement that a part of the site or a specific place be available for each religion, reports Le Figaro. It specifies that cemeteries must be ” ‘ inter-confessional’, secular and neutral spaces, with the exception of the Alsace-Moselle department. Specifically, all identifying signs of the different religions are prohibited in communal areas, while religious symbols may only appear at the level of the graves. Subsequently, the issue of “confessional burial grounds” was further explained in three circulars from the Ministry of the Interior. The last one dates from 2008.

https://www.valeursactuelles.com/societe/separatisme-religieux-le-conseil-detat-sinteresse-aux-carres-musulmans-dans-les-cimetieres

Eric Dupond-Moretti speaks of the possibility of “moving forward together” with the RN in the National Assembly – Olivia Grégoire, government spokesperson, and Céline Calvez, MP, confirm this.

"Quand on a besoin d'avoir une majorité et si c'est bon pour les Français, on va aller chercher les voix du Rassemblement national" @celinecalvez, députée LREM

⏰ La suite à 22h30 sur @france5tv
▶︎ MACRON : LE GRAND SAUT DANS LE VIDE
➡️ https://t.co/KtYgK3Aw8d pic.twitter.com/ueMv48JNuI

— C ce soir (@Ccesoir) June 20, 2022

Comedy icon Rowan Atkinson, who will forever be immortalized as Mr. Bean, slammed political correctness and its stranglehold on comedy.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Atkinson said that comedy should not be drained of its potential to offend, arguing that offense is sometimes its primary job.

“It does seem to me that the job of comedy is to offend, or have the potential to offend, and it cannot be drained of that potential,” the Johnny English actor said. “In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”

Atkinson further described tragedy and comedy as “extremely close bedfellows, and you can’t really have one without the other.”

“Every joke has a victim, whether fictional or non-fictional or notional, ideological or human and, therefore, there’s always someone suffering if there’s a joke,” he said. “I suppose you have to accept that’s the way it is.”

In 2021, Atkinson came down hard on cancel culture, likening it to the “digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn.”

“The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends up creating a simplistic, binary view of society,” Atkinson told the U.K. Radio Times. “It becomes a case of either you’re with us or against us. And if you’re against us, you deserve to be ‘canceled.’”

“It’s important that we’re exposed to a wide spectrum of opinion, but what we have now is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for someone to burn,” Atkinson added. “So it is scary for anyone who’s a victim of that mob and it fills me with fear about the future.”

Rowan Atkinson also defended British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2018 after he made a joke about women wearing burqas.

“As a lifelong beneficiary of the freedom to make jokes about religion, I do think that Boris Johnson’s joke about wearers of the burka resembling letterboxes is a pretty good one,” the comedian said at the time.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/06/20/rowan-atkinson-comedy-cannot-be-drained-of-the-potential-to-offend/

The trial of the controversial preacher Abu Ramadan began on Monday at the regional court in Biel (Canton of Berne). The prosecution accuses him of racial discrimination and fraud.

The Libyan is defending himself against a conviction for racial discrimination and fraud. In court, he rejected the prosecution’s accusations.

According to the indictment, Abu Ramadan allegedly incited hatred against people on the basis of their religion or ethnicity as a lay preacher in the Ar’Rahman Mosque in Biel on July 7, 2017. He is said to have targeted Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians and Shiites.

The 68-year-old Libyan criticised that only one of his sermons had been scrutinised and that individual passages had been taken out of context. In other sermons, for example, he had warned against the terrorist organisation “Islamic State”, but no one was talking about that.

Abu Ramadan is also accused of having unlawfully received social assistance in the amount of about 46,000 Swiss francs in his commune of residence, Nidau (Canton of Berne). He is said to have declared to the municipal authorities that he had no income and no assets. But at the same time, he had helped organise pilgrimages and had earned a concrete income.

Abu Ramadan replied that he did everything voluntarily and earned nothing from his services. There had been money flows between pilgrims, him and the travel organisers, but everything had been above board. In general, he had never received a salary for his religiously motivated activities and had also done his voluntary work in the mosque free of charge.

The pleas are still pending at the trial in Biel. If possible, the court will give its verdict in the early evening.

If convicted, Abu Ramadan faces deportation. He currently lives in Switzerland thanks to a temporary C permit. The federal authorities withdrew his asylum status in 2017 after he had repeatedly travelled to his home country Libya. One of his daughters, two brothers and a sister still live there.

He could not imagine a permanent return to Libya, said Abu Ramadan. There, he said, he was exposed to dangers from the supporters of the former ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi, who controlled parts of the country.

The last time he was in the capital Tripoli was a few months ago. That trip was difficult, he said, and at times his passport was taken from him.

https://www.watson.ch/schweiz/bern/719367220-biel-prediger-abu-ramadan-wegen-rassendiskriminierung-vor-gericht

Germany will return to coal as an alternative energy source after Russian state-owned Gazprom reduced natural gas supplies to the country via the Nord Stream pipeline, citing the need for repair work.

The move marks a U-turn for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose ruling coalition vowed to cease coal usage by 2030 and expand its renewable energy capabilities for future power generation.

“It’s a bitter pill but an indispensable one for reducing gas consumption,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s federal minister for economic affairs and climate action, in a statement on Sunday.

“To reduce gas consumption, less gas must be used to generate electricity. Coal-fired power plants will have to be used more instead,” Habeck, who is a member of Germany’s Green party, added. The Green Party has long championed the closure of coal-fired plants and nuclear power plants, and actively opposed attempts to increase Russian gas supplies even before the war.

Now, Germany’s energy policy is in shambles, with Klaus Müller, the head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, warning that rising gas prices will lead to a major bankruptcies and price hikes that will “send shockwaves throughout the country.” His agency is Germany’s regulatory office for electricity, gas, telecommunications, postal services, and railway markets, which is embedded in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.

Germany, long dependent on Russian gas, has been incentivizing businesses and citizens to cut down their gas consumption, and the federal government has labeled the need to divert spare fuel to the country’s energy reserve facilities a “top priority.”

Habeck accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of devising a strategy intended to “unsettle” Europe “by driving up the price [of energy] and dividing us. We won’t let that happen,” the federal minister added.

The economic minister revealed the nation’s storage facilities are currently at 56.7 percent capacity, and assured people that the country was still able to make up the shortfall from Russia by purchasing natural gas elsewhere. However, he warned a longer-term solution would be required to ensure energy security in Germany.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has sparked a global energy crisis, with the price of all energy supplies skyrocketing, resulting in a number of European nations reverting to either purchasing more coal and other polluting forms of energy, or reactivating coal-fired power stations themselves.

https://rmx.news/germany/germany-to-ramp-up-coal-consumption-as-russia-cuts-gas-supplies/