Month: June 2022
Switzerland: Afghan gropes children near a school
On Saturday evening, a man touched children in the area of the football pitch of the Hebel-Bach primary school in the St. Georgen neighbourhood in the city of St. Gallen, the St. Gallen cantonal police reported on Friday. The investigations of the St. Gallen cantonal police led to a 21-year-old Afghan. He is strongly suspected of having touched the children.
The public prosecutor’s office of the Canton of St. Gallen ordered the arrest and a house search. During questioning, the accused admitted to having been at the meadow. He also confessed to having been in contact with the children. Further investigations will show in what way the groping took place. The public prosecutor’s office has applied to the competent compulsory measures court for pre-trial detention against the 21-year-old.
It’s Time to Drop the Word ‘Homophobia’
By Steve Rose
Imagine Guy A calls Guy B a “homophobe.”
Guy B responds: “What do you mean? What is a ‘homophobe’? Can you define the word?”
Guy A might not be able to. He might have never thought of it.
But that isn’t the point, really. The “point” is that it works. The word was invented for a purpose. That purpose is to instantly convey the basic idea: “I’m a good person, and you’re not. I’m tolerant, and you’re not. I’m mentally healthy, but you’re not.”
The key is the shaming. The rest is irrelevant.
The word is a tool of ideological warfare. It frames the argument in a way that one side of the argument is “good” and the other “bad.” It weaponizes language to make one person psychologically healthy and the other psychologically dysfunctional. It bypasses rational, logical debate in favor of defining the personin the debate. In this way, it “wins” arguments by intimidating anyone away from even getting into the debate arena. It silences rational debate by preventing it from ever happening.
Calling someone a “homophobe” is an easy, no-cost way to establish moral superiority on the cheap. “Logic,” “rationality,” “clarity,” and so on—all part of the hard work involved in defining words clearly and thinking rigorously—are irrelevant. The point is power. It imbues the accuser with instant righteousness and smears the accused as psychologically defective. It’s no wonder it’s become so infectious and popular.
But let’s imagine Guy A can define the word.
He defines it as “an irrational fear of gay people.” Homo is roughly “sameness.” Phobia is generally “an irrational fear.”
“Phobia” is a psychological term. An individual with a genuine phobia is in the grip of a diagnosable, clinical psychological condition.
When asked, “What is a woman?” Leftist Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson said, “I’m not a biologist.”
Yet almost everyone slings around the word “homophobe,” and nobody ever asks: “Are you a clinical psychologist?”
The implication from Brown Jackson is that only professional biologists (“trust us, we’re experts!”) have been initiated into some sort of secret knowledge that allows them—and only them—to understand what women and men are, while the rest of us are excluded from this esoteric inner circle. Yet apparently, when it comes to diagnosing various psychological disorders, anyone can do it.
So, Guy B could then respond: “Are you a licensed clinical psychologist?”
Let’s give Guy A the benefit of the doubt, and assume he is a licensed clinical psychologist.
Is Guy B his patient? Has Guy B been under strict, professional observation under controlled conditions over an extended time, allowing Guy A, reluctantly, of course, to arrive at this diagnosis after careful scrutiny?
No. Of course not. The “diagnosis” is based on mind-reading. It’s an imagined ability to “know” what’s in someone’s subconscious (or heart) better than that person themselves. In a sane system, this kind of diagnosis at a distance would mean a psychologist lacked professionalism and should lose his license.
But let’s go even further: imagine this was a client of a professional clinical psychologist. Is that the way professionals treat someone with a genuine psychological condition? By publicly accusing that individual of having a disorder in a scolding, shaming manner?
Of course, all of this is applying reason and logic to a dynamic that is fundamentally irrational and absurd.
The point, again, is power. It’s ideological warfare. It weaponizes shame to win arguments. It shuts down rational discussion by branding someone as psychologically dysfunctional for having a different perspective on a complex topic.
Let’s be clear: “homophobia” is a made-up word.
It never existed throughout human history. But then one day, a guy imagined a word that meant “an irrational fear of gayness,” and liked it. He wrote it down, published it, and it was off to the races. (That guy was apparently George Weinberg, a psychologist, around 1969.)
The word was invented. The original idea, it seems, was to turn the tables on the power of accusation against individuals who weren’t in favor of same-sex relationships.
But now, this dynamic has mutated. The word has become a tool to depersonalize a human being—to reduce a person to nothing but a “thing” infected with a mental disease. The subtext: “You’re no longer a human being. You’re a homophobe.”
Depersonalizing the depersonalizers isn’t an effective cure for depersonalization. It also isn’t good for society. This road leads to violence. It’s a form of trying to overcome evil with evil. “Instead of you bullying me, I’m going to bully you.” As Nietzsche might say, it’s a way of fighting monsters that turns you into a monster.
“Homophobia” is often assumed as the sole, universal, only possible explanation for someone who doesn’t fully submit themselves to The Narrative. It tries to explain away all resistance to The Narrative as a kind of illness of the mind and heart.
It doesn’t matter that there might be truckloads of science, reason, logic, and evidence in Guy B’s arsenal. A single word sweeps all of that away and bypasses it with a simplistic, back-of-the-hand slogan. After all, character assassination is much easier than thinking.
Real phobias are treatable with systematic desensitization. They’re treatable by gradually exposing a person to whatever they’re afraid of. When someone can be exposed without “excessive” anxiety (note the lack of precision in the word “excessive”), the phobia has been successfully treated. The fear has been exposed as irrational and unnecessary.
But “homophobia” doesn’t work like this.
In many cases, it’s the opposite. The more certain individuals are exposed to all this, the more averse they become. There aren’t irrational fears, but at least in some cases, principles that are quite rational. (One exception can be children, who are still learning the rudimentary basics of life, and so are highly vulnerable—and gullible.)
None of this offers reason to bully, shame, or depersonalize in either direction. There’s some room for healthy tolerance and mutual respect in these matters. Sexuality is a complex topic.
But the word “homophobia” is poisoning the conversation. Instead of producing clarity and understanding, it inflames, confuses, and depersonalizes. It corrupts the possibility for genuine dialogue. It opens a portal for hatred to flow from one human to another. It also paves the way for the open persecution of anyone who hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid of the Stalinesque narrative that powerful individuals are trying to shove down our throats.
But even more, the word is psychobabble.
It’s time we stopped using it.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/its_time_to_drop_the_word_homophobia.html
Austrian Broadcasting’s topman wishes Orban dead
“Manners” is a foreign word at the online portal of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). Worse still – an unmistakably hateful posting by ORF’s online managing director Karl Pachner has turned into a diplomatic incident.
In a Facebook post on Wednesday evening, Pachner criticised Hungarian head of government Viktor Orban for his closeness to Russia and, according to media reports, wrote: “A heart attack would be a fair thing, given his corpulence and potential for excitement!”
The Hungarian government has demanded an explanation from the Austrian ambassador for this “gross, deeply shocking scandalous statement”. The latter has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Budapest. Hungary’s government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs called for Pachner’s immediate resignation and his departure would be the only morally acceptable minimum consequence, he said.
Levente Magyar, Hungarian Secretary of State for Bilateral Development at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, told the Chief Executive of the Austrian Embassy that the vast majority of Hungarians felt offended by the comment.
“We are striving for good relations with Austria, but we will not allow either Austria or any other foreign player to overthrow the Hungarians, the democratically elected government of Hungary, its leader.”
The posting has since been deleted. On Thursday, Pachner apologised on Facebook for the “ill-considered and misleading wording”. Of course he wished Orban and no one else dead, he said ambiguously. He allegedly “deeply regretted” his posting, Pachner claimed.
The ORF quickly distanced itself from the posting. The post was “a private and personal Facebook page, which of course has no connection with the editorial reporting by the independent and independent editors of the ORF”, it stated.
ORF chief executive Roland Weissmann on Friday added that this had been his “last warning” to Pachner, who, according to the Austrian newspapers Kronen Zeitung and Die Presse, was suspended from his post on the same day.
https://freewestmedia.com/2022/06/04/austrian-broadcastings-top-man-wishes-orban-dead/
COVID vaccines: When will enough be enough?
By John M. Contino
AT recently published an article by physician Joseph Shepherd, who succinctly summarized how the COVID vaccines kill. Aside from all the well documented adverse effects and deaths from the vaccines, by now it should be obvious to the casual observer that the COVID boosters don’t protect against contracting or transmitting omicron or the sub-variants. Yet some of us still proudly announce our double-boosted status.
Given how blessedly minimal the effects of the virus on children have been in the aggregate, and given what we now know about the adverse effects of the vaccines on the vascular, coronary, neurological, and immune systems, one might be forgiven for regarding the vaccination of young children as borderline criminal. Yet Pfizer, not content with getting the green light to vaccinate children from agers 5 to 12, now wants to jab children under 5 with three doses. The company claims that “three doses of the shot were 80% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and generated a robust immune response in children ages 6 months to 5 years old.” Only 80%? What happened to the 93+% efficacies we heard so much about? What’s next — jabbing the fetus in the womb?
For the last two years, it’s been all about the vaccines. Early treatment protocols, such as ivermectin, cortical steroids, and antibiotics, used in conjunction, were effectively quashed by the medical establishment. Despite a wealth of anecdotal and observational studies and testimonials from doctors around the world, our medical institutions, most notably the CDC, refused to sponsor double-blind studies to assess the effectiveness of these safe, accessible, and (unfortunately?) inexpensive treatments.
Ivermectin, in particular, has stirred the wrath of the FDA, CDC, and WHO. A randomized study from Malaysia of 490 older, high-risk patients that showed ivermectin to be ineffective at treating COVID-19 has been highly publicized. Not so much for the dozens of studies claiming the opposite.
How are we supposed trust that our government and institutions are looking out for us when there are so many apparent conflicts of interest revolving around the jillions of dollars being redistributed in such a lopsided manner? Too often, the message we get from government and major media is “shut up and do as you’re told.” There’s a ton of information in the public sphere, much of it conflicting. We must look out for ourselves, spend the time to sift though what we can, think for ourselves, and then make our own choices to the extent we are able. There is no shortage of would-be masterminds out there who are working as hard as they can to make our choices for us.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/covid_vaccines_when_will_enough_be_enough.html
Radical climate protection: Air travel banned in Great Britain from 2050?
Great Britain has adopted an ambitious climate and energy policy. By 2050 all CO2 emissions are to be eliminated from the British Isles and Prime Minister Johnson wants to make Great Britain a model country for the energy transition. As early as 2019, the British climate targets were formulated in a comprehensive report entitled “Absolute Zero”.
The report is updated at irregular intervals. This time the tone of the authors has changed. They are now pointing out that the ambitious goals can only be achieved through drastic adjustments and changes in behavior.
The report offers a formidable refutation of the case that a solution to the climate emergency exists in the form of breakthrough technologies. The report’s lead author, Julian Allwood, Professor of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Cambridge, stressed that no new technologies were available to replace our current energy needs.
“In the age of climate emergency, one of the central myths that breeds complacency is that breakthrough technologies will gallop to the rescue, when instead we require radical action,” Allwood said.
Specifically, in order to meet its Absolute Zero commitments, the UK government has no choice but to phase out all air travel by 2050 and then impose a total ban – until a way is found to produce aircraft that do not generate greenhouse gases at any time during manufacture or use.
The authors further specify their forecast to the effect that “all airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast should be closed between 2020 and 2029” and “all other remaining airports should be closed by 2050”.
But that’s not all. If the current legislation remains in force, further drastic changes in daily life would have to be made, since they would be illegal in 2050: no longer use airplanes; cease all shipping traffic; use the train instead of the car; use carpooling; use an electric vehicle; reduce energy consumption, including heating; reduce the use of fertilizers; reducing the use of cement and steel, imports etc. It will also be imperative to limit or ban the consumption of red meat as lamb and beef will be banned in the UK in the future.
“Additionally, to comply with the Climate Change Act, we must refrain from anything that causes emissions, regardless of the energy source. This requires that we refrain from eating beef and lamb,” the report states.
German-speaking public kept in the dark
It’s also worth taking a look at “Absolute Zero” for Germans, because the German climate protection requirements are very similar to the British ones. The only thing is that the inevitable consequences of a draconian climate policy are being hidden from voters.
In Austria, skyrocketing fuel prices and a decidedly car-hostile traffic policy are paralyzing car traffic. But those who switch to the train and prefer public transport are often left out in the rain these days in the truest sense of the word.
Since the introduction of the climate ticket, there are no longer enough seats on the trains. Hundreds of people traveling and commuting have already been expelled from the train because there is no space for them. Instead of purchasing new train sets and expanding the offer with foresight, it was simply made cheaper in accordance with the green doctrine and on behalf of Black-Green coalition, in order to celebrate this catastrophe with higher utilization figures as a “success” in the end.
Parking space brawls
In Vienna, this policy has led to even further extremes. The shortage of parking spaces there recently led to a mass brawl among Ukrainians.
The problem is home-made: For years it has been observed how the previous city administrations kept reducing parking spaces. This happened in part through opting for “bicycle parking spaces” or art installations that are not used by anyone and are only noticed by drivers looking for a parking space.
With the Ukraine crisis, the move was made to allow refugees to park for free, wherever they wanted, until May.
They were then deprived of this luxury and Range Rovers, Porsches and other expensive wheels now vie for the already scarce parking spaces. In line with the “sustainability” of Agenda 2030, people are first deprived of their freedom and self-determination of individual transport, in order to then banish them to train stations from which they cannot be transported to any destination due to a lack of capacity.
Fly-shaming
In Sweden, a movement was formed in 2018 to have a hundred thousand people sign up and pledge not to fly for a year. That led to ‘flight-shaming’ [flygskam]. As a result, if one looks at national statistics on take-offs in Sweden, the domestic ones have fallen and the government has responded by promising to invest more in rail as an alternative to aviation. Except that trains do not cross oceans.
Led by a small group of celebrities, including Olympic winter gold medallist Bjorn Ferry and the musician Malena Ernman, who also happens to be climate activist Greta Thunberg’s mother, their “commitment” to give up flying forced Swedes to comply.
The Facebook group’s Jag flyger inte – för klimatets skull [I’m not flying – for the sake of the climate] campaign managed to lower the number of international flights at Swedish airports by 4 percent within a year.
Banlieue Pride 2022 in France: “The LGBT movement is being usurped by radical Islamism”
On June 4, 2022, a Pride of the suburbs will take place in Saint-Denis (93) with the aim of fighting against the “accumulation of discriminations”: sexism, racism, Islamophobia, police violence, poor housing conditions… Christine Le Doaré, long-time feminist and LGBT activist, criticises an event that in reality dwarfs the fight against LGBT phobia.
This year, LGBTQIA+ are calling for a gathering on June 4, also in Saint-Denis, to fight against “an increase in discrimination and the enforcement of the right to decent housing”. So what can we expect this year? In a logic of intersectional convergence of struggles, it is difficult to see what falls under the struggle against discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
[…]
An identitarian demonstration, from the radical left, against capitalism, colonialism, “state racism”, “state Islamophobia”, and in which you can certainly find some LGBT people. A march inspired by American queers who grew up with cultural relativism and multiculturalism. It is surprising that this year Aides and the LGBT Centre Paris IDF are behind the signatories who can be described as left wing Islamic.
A political instrumentalisation of LGBT demands, pandered to by radicalised activists who are increasingly detached from the population groups they are supposed to be defending. The LGBT movement, already versed in cultural relativism, wokism and cancel culture, is defiantly being usurped by an even more radical identitarianism. This is worrying.
Nor is it the place for lesbians on this protest march to question the instrumentalisation of the female body in prostitution or surrogacy, let alone the attacks on feminists by radical trans activists.
In my opinion, this LGBTQIA+ counter-march, instead of fighting for homosexuals and trans people, puts us in even more danger by linking us to an anti-democratic culture of extremes and censorship and surrendering us to Islamists who are sympathetic to political Islam. Marianne
UK: Muslims protest outside a Bradford cinema after the launch of the film The Lady Of Heaven yesterday, deemed “blasphemous”
Synopsis: Two stories separated from each other by 1400 years. After losing his mother in the midst of a war-torn country, an Iraqi child learns the importance and power of patience by discovering the historical story of Lady Fatima*.
*Fatima Zahra is the daughter of the Prophet of Islam Mohammed and his first wife Khadija, who was born in Mecca at an uncertain date, 604, 605, 609 or 615, depending on the source, and died in Medina around 632.
Champions League riots in Paris: 76% of French people not buying interior minister’s excuses, majority blame ‘youths’ from ‘troubled neighborhoods’
Shortly after mass rioting broke out during the Liverpool-Real Madrid Champions League match at the Stade de France in the troubled multicultural neighborhood of Saint-Denis, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin rapidly tried to place the blame for the assaults and robberies on English fans from LIverpool.
The problem for France’s interior minister is that it appears the French are simply not buying his explanation.
According to an Odoxa Backbone Consulting poll conducted for Le Figaro, 76 percent of French people remain unconvinced by Gérald Darmanin’s explanations of the riots that broke out on Saturday. In fact, the same poll shows that 61 percent of respondents instead blame “youths” from “troubled neighborhoods” in the area.
Many of these French may have seen footage from the incident, in which scenes of chaos marred the pre-match, with English and Spanish fans facing mass attacks and robberies by primarily African and Middle Eastern youths from the surrounding neighborhood. One victim speaking on CNews described what he and his family went through:
“They attacked me. There were hundreds of ‘youngsters,’ or men, they were all men… They attacked me, and took my four tickets. They had cost me €6,000, but it didn’t matter anymore, we were scared for ourselves and for our children… At the exit, it was even worse. There were even more assailants. They tried to steal my wife’s bag. The attackers were watching my children cry, and they were laughing. They found our fear amusing.”
Other English fans described being hit with bottles, stabbed, and slashed by large groups of youths who stole their wallets, watches and other belongings. Many fans were stranded outside the stadium due to ticketing problems, which delayed kick-off by more than 30 minutes. However, others were targeted later in the night when they tried to leave the stadium.
The French interior minister pointed to the “thousands of British ‘supporters’ without tickets or with fake tickets” who had “forced” their way in. Darmanin then estimated their number at “30,000 to 40,000,” a far cry from the 2,800 “scanned fake tickets” identified by the French Football Federation and UEFA. With the scandal marring not only Darmanin, but also his boss, Emmanuel Macron, the minister is facing significant pressure to explain the discrepancy. Nevertheless, he repeated this same line of defense on Wednesday during his hearing by the Senate law commission.
Supporters of Reconquête are those who most disapprove of the interior minister’s explanations (88 percent), according to the poll. Supporters of France Unbowed (82 percent), the National Rally (77 percent), and the Greens (77 percent) follow behind.
While “youths” were the most blamed for the chaos, other people and organizations also faced criticism; respondents found fault with the organization behind the Stade de France (51 percent), the police headquarters (44 percent), and the UEFA (41 percent). Although the vast majority of French do not believe Darmanin’s explanation for what occurred at the stadium, only 40 percent actually blame him for what transpired.
Macron, who has taken care to distance himself from this affair as the legislative elections approach, follows at 27 percent.
A bad image of France
Regarding the police, a narrow majority believes they were ill-prepared for the riots, with 28 percent of respondents saying the police forces are generally not repressive enough, and 11 percent saying that they are too repressive. On Wednesday, Darmanin apologized for “the disproportionate use of tear gas” on fans outside the stadium.
For more than one in two French people (53 percent), the chaos outside the stadium shows that France is ill-prepared to host the Rugby World Cup next year and the Olympic Games in 2024. For 46 percent, France will learn a lesson from this match and will be able to host these future sporting events without a problem. Nevertheless, most French people judge what happened around the Stade de France harshly. Nine out of ten respondents think the incident offers up a bad image of France to the rest of the world, and 90 percent believe it spoiled the Champions League final.
