Month: October 2022

On Monday, the family members of the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in Iranian moral police custody three weeks ago, said that they are receiving death threats from the Iranian government for participating in the protest against hijab laws. They are also being warned not to get involved in the demonstrations against the mandatory hijab laws.

“Our family has been under immense pressure from the Islamic Republic’s officials, so we don’t talk to human rights organisations or channels outside of Iran and inform anyone from the outside world about her passing”, said Erfan Mortezai, cousin of Mahsa.

According to the reports, Mortezai is a Peshmerga soldier for Komala, an exiled Iranian Kurdish opposition organization based in Iraq, which Iran accuses of separatism. The Amini family in Iran, on the other hand, has frequently denied backing Kurdish separatist organizations. Mortezai identifies his late cousin as Zhina, the name her loved ones gave her. Her parents were obliged to use Mahsa as her official Iranian name on papers since some Kurdish names are illegal in Iran.

“Zhina was a normal person, she was not political. The regime has been making up scenarios and disinformation – saying that Zhina was in contact with me and I taught her and sent her back to Iran to do a certain activity, when in fact this is completely baseless,” Mortezai said.

He said that regime authorities in Iran had threatened him and Mahsa’s family on Instagram, using bogus identities to warn them that they would be killed if they participated in the protests. “Myself, I have been receiving many threats over the phone, that if they see me in the city, they will kidnap me and kill me,” he added.

Mahsa Amini’s custodial death sparks anti-hijab protests across Iran

According to the reports, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was abducted by the ‘morality police’ in Tehran for not complying with the mandatory hijab laws of the country. Amini who was on a pleasure trip to Tehran had not covered her hair properly in the hijab. She was arrested by the police and then beaten in the police van while being taken to a detention centre, dubbed as a ‘re-education class’ for not conforming to the country’s mandatory hijab rules.

The police took the woman to the police station on Vozara Avenue where already dozens of other women were being held for not following the hijab rules. They beat the women and schooled them about the proper dress rules of the country. Mahsa was brutally beaten and taken to the hospital after she stopped responding in the custody. The doctors at the hospital stated that her heart continued to beat but her brain was no longer functioning. The woman breathed her last three days after the incident.

Her killing sparked massive protests in Iran, with women taking to the streets to up raise their voices against the regime. Several ladies including school-going girls burnt their hijabs in sympathy with the tragedy, while women all throughout the world trimmed their hair in the protest. Protests erupted in dozens of places around the country in the aftermath of her death after which the government retaliated with a harsh crackdown.

However, three weeks after the death of Amini, Iran’s Forensic Organisation revealed a report stating that the woman had died due to illness and not due to blows and beatings given to her in police custody. Earlier, the Police had also tried to cover up the matter claiming that Mahsa was already suffering from a heart problem and that she was never beaten in the custody.

https://www.opindia.com/2022/10/iran-mahsa-amini-family-receiving-death-threats-amid-hijab-protests/

New Zealand’s left-wing government on Tuesday proposed taxing the gasses farm animals create from burping and peeing as part of a plan to reset agricultural production and “tackle climate change.”

The Labour administration led by Jacinda Ardern, a former president of the International Union of Socialist Youth , claimed what it called a farm levy would be a world first and farmers should be able to recoup the cost by simply charging consumers more for their products.

Ardern and three of her ministers stood behind a podium of hay bales at a North Island dairy farm to unveil the government’s plan, the Guardian reports.

“No other country in the world has yet developed a system for pricing and reducing agricultural emissions, so our farmers are set to benefit from being first movers,” Ardern said.

“Cutting emissions will help New Zealand farmers to not only be the best in the world but the best for the world.”

The plan includes taxing both methane emitted by livestock and nitrous oxide emitted mostly from fertiliser-rich urine – which together contributes to around half of New Zealand’s overall emissions output.

Farmers quickly condemned the proposal, which would be introduced in 2025, coming just months after other Ardern restrictions including forced impositions on gun ownership as part of wider social crackdowns and restrictions.

Federated Farmers, the industry’s main lobby group, said the tax would “rip the guts out of small-town New Zealand” and affect food production because farms would be replaced with trees while at the same time making beef and lamb consumption a more expensive option.

“Our plan was to keep farmers farming,” Federated Farmers President Andrew Hoggard told the New Zealand Herald.

Instead, he said farmers would be selling their farms “so fast you won’t even hear the dogs barking on the back of the ute (pickup truck) as they drive off”.

Beef and Lamb New Zealand was similarly worried the Ardern government had proposed to reduce the categories of sequestration recognised.

“New Zealand sheep and beef farmers have more than 1.4 million hectares of native forest on their land which is absorbing carbon and it’s only fair this is appropriately recognised in any framework from day one,” its chairman Andrew Morrison said.

Ardern noted the disproportionate impact on sheep and beef farmers and said her government is committed to working through the proposals to find solutions.

There are just five million people in New Zealand, but 10 million beef and dairy cattle, and 26 million sheep.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2022/10/11/new-zealand-proposes-taxing-cow-sheep-burps-and-peeing-to-curb-emissions/

On Sunday (October 9), a Hindu man was forcibly converted to Islam by a cleric in the Sindh province of Pakistan, reported ANI News.

The victim was identified as one Ajay Kumar. Maulana Rashid Mahmood Soomro, the General Secretary of Jamiat Ulama-e-Sindh, facilitated the forced conversion at the Jamia Islamia Masjid in Larkana city of Sindh.

ANI reported that Ajay seemed unhappy during the process of his coerced conversion to the Islamic Faith. The Islamic country of Pakistan has been a hotbed of religious persecution, especially for those belonging to minority Hindu, Christian and Sikh communities.

Mass conversion of Hindus in Sindh

In July last year, Opindia reported that as many as 60 Hindus were converted en masse to Islam in the Sindh province of Pakistan.

A man, identified as one Abdul Rauf Nizamani, had been the facilitator of the mass conversion process. In a Facebook post, the accused rejoiced, “Alhamdullilah aj meri nigrani me 60 log musalman hui hain inke liye dua karen (Today, 60 people accepted Islam under my watch. Please pray for them).”

According to the Facebook profile of Abdul Rauf Nizamani, he is the Chairman of the Municipal Committee in Matli in Sindh of Pakistan. The accused boasts of a whopping 4,275 followers on his personal profile.

In a video posted by him, the Islamic cleric could be seen making the 60-odd Hindus chant Kalma (Islamic oath of allegiance) and ensuring their full-fledged conversion.

In a subsequent video, the said Islamic cleric could be seen claiming that it was their recitation of the first-ever Namaz. “The only objective in the life of a Muslim is to make Allah happy. Only then, the purpose of your life will be fulfilled. Only the lives of those, approved by Allah, move forward,” the cleric could be seen speaking to the new converts.

https://www.opindia.com/2022/10/pakistan-hindu-man-forcibly-converted-to-islam-by-a-cleric-persecution-of-minorities-continues-unabated/

New data from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) paints a bleak picture about diversity and multiculturalism in the Mediterranean country, showing that 45.62 percent of all of those convicted of sexual assault do not have Spanish nationality despite foreigners making up only a small fraction of the overall population.

Almost 500 people were convicted in 2021 in Spain for crimes related to sexual assault. Of these, 267 have Spanish nationality (54.38 percent), and 224 are foreigners (45.62 percent). Within this second group, 93 Africans were convicted of such crimes while Africans only represent 2.4 percent of the Spanish population, reports The ObjectiveSpanish news outlet.

Convictions do not give a true picture of the sexual assault situation in Spain, as some rapes are never reported, while in other cases the assailant pleads to a lesser charge, or the assailant is simply never arrested. However, the data shows overall that sexual assaults are rising. In 2020, there were 428 sexual assault convictions. Spaniards were responsible for 238 cases and foreign nationals 190 (44.39 percent). Five years ago, in 2017, this percentage was 42.38 percent, of which 13.44 percent were African. The share of Africans involved in such cases has nearly doubled in five years.

If rape is considered, the most serious case of sexual assault, the data is similar. Of the 46 convictions for rape issued in 2021, 22 were Spaniards compared to 24 cases involving foreign nationals: 52.1 percent. That means that with foreign nationals representing 11.39 percent of the Spanish population (5,440,118 people out of 47,435,597), this group commits more than half of the cases involving conviction for rape.

The Objective newspaper has obtained this data by filtering the search on the INE portal, since the report provided by this body on Sept. 15 did not offer a selection by nationality for those convicted of the crime of sexual assault. The report did, however, specify, that “most of those convicted in 2021 had Spanish nationality” (75.2 percent), but most of these crimes were far less serious crimes than rape or murder.

However, considering the rate of convicted persons per 1,000 inhabitants of legal age, the rate of convicted foreign nationals (15.9 percent) is 2.6 times higher than those of Spanish nationality (6.1 percent). Among foreigners, the countries of the Americas accounted for the highest percentage of sentenced persons (33.9 percent of the total).

Similar trends are present in Italy, where migrants account for nearly 50 percent of rapes. In Germany, they account for 36 percent of all sexual assaults, including half of all gang rapes, and France features similar numbers. In Sweden, foreigners are drastically overrepresented in sexual assault cases.

In Denmark, nearly 25 percent of all rapes are from foreign nationals, and the government there has not been shy about pointing out the issue.

“The figures clearly show that we have a problem with an ethnic slant when relatively many foreigners are convicted of rape, just as we have an obvious problem when more than half of the inmates in the country’s prisons and detention centers are immigrants, their descendants, or foreigners,” said Denmark’s Minister of Justice, Nick Hækkerrup, of the Social Democrats.

“It is first and foremost a huge problem for our community and our society that there are groups that make such a significant impact in terms of committing crime,” the justice minister added. “It challenges our cohesion, and therefore it is also the government’s policy that foreigners without Danish citizenship who are convicted of rape must be deported, to the extent there is a basis for it.”

https://rmx.news/article/foreigners-account-for-46-of-all-sexual-assault-convictions-in-spain/

When our friend, the very dedicated Father Jean-Paul Argouarc’h, was waiting for fuel at a petrol station, he was racially abused because of his clothes by a North African person who shouted out his proud to be the son of a Fellach.

The perpetrator then physically assaulted the priest and gave him a very violent punch to the left arm.

Afterwards, Father Argouarc’h was medically examined and filed a complaint at the nearest police station.

Of course, AGRIF, which was called in by the father concerned in the person of his lawyer, is acting as joint plaintiff to ensure that the complaint will be successful. Agrif

https://www.fdesouche.com/2022/10/11/sale-cure-un-pretre-agresse-dans-une-station-service-par-un-individu-se-reclamant-fier-detre-fils-de-fellagha-entre-arras-et-lens/

This is not a sign of de-escalation: the US is sending one of its most modern aircraft carriers, the USS Gerald R Ford, to Europe. It is the US Navy’s newest class of nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN 78), departing on its first major deployment. 

The 13 billion euro carrier was only put into service in 2017, is 337 meters long and has a crew of 4 500, 90 fighter jets and, presumably, nuclear weapons on board. The Strike Group includes 17 ships and one submarine.

The USS Gerald R Ford, accompanied by several guided missile cruisers, submarines and supply ships, should be operating in the North Sea in just a few days, joining the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Kearsage. This would give the US Navy a massive concentration of troops in northern Europe – and the air support of the most modern stealth fighter jets.

The Strike Group will be deployed alongside NATO forces. The US aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman is still stationed in the Mediterranean.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/10/11/us-moving-another-strike-group-to-europe/

A 40-year-old Congolese illegal immigrant has been arrested for the attempted rape of a 24-year-old French woman on Rue Quinault in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, with police saying that the man confessed to wanting a “beautiful White woman” and trying to gag his victim with popcorn.

The alleged perpetrator, who is in an irregular situation and has no permanent address, was arrested a day after the attack on Oct. 3, but information about his migrant status is only now coming to light.

On Sunday last week, in the early morning, the young woman was on her way to work when she noticed that a man was following her. He approached the victim while holding a bag of popcorn and asked her for information, but she said that she immediately noticed she was in danger. She made a phone call to her relative, but the person never answered their phone.

According to police, the attacker then threw himself at her, tackled her to the ground, and began to grope her and pull off her pants. The young woman began screaming, “Rape!” while struggling against her attacker, including sticking her finger in his eye.

“He tried to take off his pants and also the victim’s pants, and then shoved popcorn in her mouth to prevent her from screaming,” said a police source, according to Actu17. Despite the popcorn, the victim still managed to scream.

A number of people in the area ran to the victim. One witness opened his window and took a photo of the assailant, who then began to flee the scene. The image of the suspect proved invaluable to the investigation, according to police.

“That was enough to recognize the attacker,” said a police source.

The next day, the 40-year-old man tried to rob a shop owner at knifepoint in a neighboring district, resulting in his arrest.

At the police station, the suspect was recognized from the image taken of him the previous day, resulting in his arrest for sexual assault as well as rape. The victim also recognized the attacker behind a one-way glass lineup.

Police say that the man told them after his arrest that he was motivated to rape the woman because he did not have enough money for a prostitute.

“The attacker said he had no money to pay a prostitute in Strasbourg-Saint-Denis and said, ‘I wanted to have a beautiful White (woman),’” said a police source.

Investigators interrogated the man, asking him what would have happened if witnesses had not intervened, to which the man reportedly smiled in response. An expert was brought in who testified that the man was criminally responsible for his actions. The suspect is currently being prosecuted for sexual assault and theft, but police are investigating if he is tied to any other cases.

France has been beset with a number of similar cases, including a Tunisian migrant who raped an English tourist directly on a street in France. In August of this year, a North African migrant was arrested for raping an American tourist in a Paris public toilet while her partner waited outside. Such cases have been seen across Europe, with Girogia Meloni recently posting a video of a migrant raping a woman directly on the streets of Italy in the middle of the day, which sparked international headlines.

The trend of migrants being vastly overrepresented in sexual assaults and other serious crimes is present across Europe; however, pointing this out can sometimes be dangerous. For example, in Sweden, two respected academic researchers have been prosecuted for publishing a study detailing the massive overrepresentation of foreigners in rape cases.

France has also seen a dramatic increase in murders and rapes in recent years, which has coincided with a dramatic rise in immigration from North Africa, Africa, and the Middle East. According to the French interior minister’s office, 48 percent of criminal acts in Paris are committed by foreigners, while this figure is 55 percent in Marseille.

https://rmx.news/france/i-wanted-a-beautiful-white-woman-congolese-migrant-attempts-to-gag-french-woman-with-popcorn-rape-her-in-broad-daylight/

When I heard about the concept of fact-checking years ago, I was on board immediately. I liked the idea of independent professionals who will help us verify news on social media. What can be better to bring sanity to the newly democratised media? An independent editorial board for social media that will instil a sense of journalistic ethics and fair play. I was pleased.

Fast forward to 2022, and I squirm when I watch Alt News winning medal after medal in mental gymnastics while defending every crime by Islamists and leftists. The latest being how terrorist organisation PFI’s supporters in Pune never shouted pro-Pakistan slogans. This is now my second favourite fact check in India after stones in Jamia Milia turned to wallets during CAA rioting. When your fact-checkers sound exactly like Baghdad Bob, it is fair to conclude the project has failed (or perhaps working exactly as envisaged) in India. Only this week Alt News was proudly flaunting fake news about the Nobel nominations of its founders as published by leftist propaganda magazine Time.

But that’s messy India. Certainly, things must be better in first-world countries with their higher educational standards? Recently we had a chance to analyse that during the anti-Hindu Leicester riots in the UK, the home of everything good and noble that exists in India as per our intelligentsia. From the very outset, the riots were fuelled by fake news and rumours targeting the Hindu community.

A small post-cricket clash was blown out of proportion by the vast Islamist network in the UK. From ‘Muslim youth stabbed’, a Muslim young girl approached for abduction to a Mosque attack, all the usual tropes used by the usual suspects were deployed. This wasn’t happening in chaotic Bangladesh anymore but in first world UK. Even the police seemed to have fallen for some of these rumours before they finally debunked them after days. Nobody expects the far-left Hinduphobic British mainstream media to call out anti-Hindu rumours.  Instead, we watched in utter disgust as Guardian journalist Aina Khan went around Leicester accompanied by rumour super-spreader Majid Freeman, seemingly reporting what he told her. Surely the fact-checkers had a field day, debunking lie after lie, shining the light of facts and reason to dispel the ridiculous falsehood and help protect the peaceful but successful Hindu minority? Surely, right? I decided to investigate.

I found the following prominent anti-Hindu fake news during riots:

1. Chants of “Death to Muslims”
2. Hindutva groups on the rampage
3. Attempted abduction of a Muslim girl by Hindus
4. Attack on a Muslim traffic warden
5. A coach from London filled with RSS people went to Leicester
6. Attack on a mosque in Leicester

In comparison, I could not find any substantial fake news that went against the Muslim side. Fake news created to incite violence follows certain patterns to play on the fears and base instincts of mobs. Remember “CAA will take away the citizenship of Muslims” that resulted in the Delhi riots? Similarly, these fake reports that were amplified by Islamists & leftist media world over were designed to incite violence against the Hindu minority.

How did British fact-checkers respond to this deluge of dangerous fake news?

I analysed two UK-based fact-checkers, Reuters Fact Check and FullFact. Reuters is one of the largest global news organisations based in the UK and runs an active fact-checking service. A search and step-by-step perusal of their fact checks over the last 1 month shows they did not do a single fact check on the anti-Hindu fake news in Leicester. But on 5th October, when incorrect news spread that a Hindu temple was burned in Birmingham by Muslims, Reuters came alive and immediately fact-checked it. As if only fake news inconvenient to Muslims is worth fact-checking but not fake news spread by Islamists.

Now we have seen the same pattern of “selective fact-checking” in India too. But then Reuters is mainstream news media, and their anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim leanings are no more a question of debate, it’s now a mundane fact. The full extent of bias and sophistry of Reuters can be understood from the propaganda piecethey got a Rina Chandran (of course) to write recently. In this ridiculous piece, the author alleges fake news mainly came from India because most tweets about the Leicester riots were from India (where a billion Hindus live!). But the author does not explain if fake news came from India, why did Reuters Fact Check not debunk ANY of it? Did they not want to identify the nature of fake news and the exact people who were spreading it? The answer is YES. It serves their agenda much better to instead write vague opinion pieces where out-of-context conclusions can be posted without any proof.

The second British fact-checker, Fullfact, is an ‘independent fact-checker’. It is not linked to any news organisation. Just like AltNews, it also has past associations with IFCN (International Fact-checking Network), a body associated with billionaire George Soros. A search on their website using both filters – date and relevance, returned no results on Leicester’s fake news.

So, I wrote to their media team. They replied that while they were concerned about Leicester’s fake news, they did not fact-check any as it was already fact-checked by others. My further queries about specific examples and instances have gone unanswered.

Some of their older Leicester-related fact checks are about how Muslims did not cause Covid spread in Leicester etc. See the pattern?

Conclusion: UK fact-checkers are no different to Indian fact-checkers. When it comes to fact-checking anti-Hindu news, they simply ignore it. But they will go out of their way to fact-check any anti-Muslim news, real or fake. It is my opinion that fact-checking is not being used for cleaning up news streams, but to manipulate and colour them using the ultimate power these organisations possess – the ability to select which news to fact-check. Their dubious links to virulently anti-Hindu billionaire Soros is just more substantive proof of their bias.

One has to then ask the important question – Did British fact checkers not want to fact-check Leicester fake news because they did not want to create a permanent record of the anti-Hindu nature of it and who was spreading it? One has to believe that this is not beyond the realm of possibility because it would be strategically tricky to fact-check the very narrative that they seemingly want to be furthered.

Let us all remember, selective fact-checking is just ‘fake news by other means’. As long as fact-checkers do not become transparent and give the power to readers to demand fact-checks, it will remain a tool of news manipulation. But it’s not all bad news. The good news is OpIndia will keep unapologetically writing about Leicester-like events to document global anti-Hindu attitudes. Keep reading.

https://www.opindia.com/2022/10/uk-leicester-anti-hindu-violence-fact-checkers-silence/