Month: March 2023

(…) An initiative that inspires some Belgian politicians. For example, Pascal Smet (Vooruit), Brussels State Secretary for Urban Planning, wrote this message on his Twitter feed. “Very cool concept in London. It brings more comfort to the city and brings people closer together. A nice idea for Brussels”.

💡Very nice concept in London. It adds cosiness to the city and brings people closer together. A nice idea for Brussels @PhilippeClose @AnsPersoons ?! 😉#BrusselsForPeople pic.twitter.com/1gUrlpCFzh

— Pascal Smet (@SmetPascal) March 27, 2023

Brussels Mayor Philippe Close was asked by Pascal Smet to think about the idea, and he replied to Sudinfo. “We have the nativity scene at Christmas in the Grand’Place. There is the Festival of Lights in Schuman at Hannouka. So why not have something for Ramadan. There has to be a balance between the secularity of the state and popular religious festivals. But I am not averse to the idea”. www.lesoir.be

https://www.fdesouche.com/2023/03/29/des-illuminations-pour-le-ramadan-a-bruxelles-la-proposition-de-pascal-smet/

After a father filed an emergency appeal against Critical Race Theory (CRT) in his son’s classroom, the Berlin Administrative Court has ruled that the racist theory is permitted in Berlin’s classrooms.

The court argues that children should “basically be expected to be confronted with the views and values of a pluralistic society – despite a possible contradiction to their own convictions.”

Critical Race Theory, first popularized in the United States, comes in various permutations but is overall defined as anti-White hate theory, which posits that White societies are inherently racist and systematically oppress minorities. The theory arises in the U.S. despite programs like affirmative action, trillions funneled into inner cities to improve minority outcomes in education over the last decades, programs from universities and corporations to recruit minorities to the exclusion of Whites through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) schemes, government discrimination against Whites, and even preference in medical care for minorities over Whites.

Although CRT is not as widespread in Germany, it is increasingly incorporated into classrooms, especially by activist teachers influenced by progressive trends in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

In the U.S., books like “Not My Idea” have been promoted in classrooms, which explains to readers that “whiteness” is what drives White people to make “deals with the devil” for “stolen land, stolen riches and special favors.” The book also claims White people get to “mess endlessly with the lives of your friends, neighbors, loved ones, and all fellow humans of color for the purpose of profit.”

In Cupertino, California, third graders were required to rank themselves on a scale of “power and privilege” based on their race, and schools in Buffalo, New York, taught students that “all white people” perpetuate “systemic racism.” The program also required kindergarteners to view a video of dead Black children with the warning that “racist police and state-sanctioned violence” were responsible.

The education state department in Arizona also distributed “equity toolkits” to schools, claiming that infants as young as 3 months old begin to show signs of racism and “remain strongly biased in favor of whiteness” by the time they turn 5 years of age.

Court rules gender-neutral language also permitted in German classrooms

As a part of the emergency appeal in Germany, the father also attempted to halt forced teaching of gender-neutral language in his son’s school, but the court also rejected this appeal, according to Berliner Zeitung. The German language has words with both the male and female form, and this also applies to professions. For instance, the word “teacher” has both a male (Lehrer) or female (Leherin) version. Left-wing activists and feminists have been attempting to modify the language towards a gender-neutral form, which has produced words like Lehrperson or Lehrer*innen to denote both genders in one word.

Such a move has been a major point of contention in German society, with politicians, academics and the news media entering a heated debate about attempts to change the German language.

In the case in Berlin, the court argued that the use of gender-neutral language for teaching materials and worksheets does not exceed “the leeway granted by the framework curricula in the design of teaching materials.”

Schools are required to be politically neutral, according to German law, but the court also rejected the claim that the use of gender-neutral language is politically motivated. The father argued that gender language conflicted with the requirements of German as an official language. The court found that “the school administrators expressly allowed the teachers to use gender-neutral language in the classroom and at the same time clearly pointed out” that “the rules of German spelling must be observed in the teaching and learning process.”

The court wrote that gender-neutral language “does not involve the expression of political opinion and, moreover, nowadays both the use and non-use of gender-neutral language allow for political attribution.”

The father disagrees with the ruling, telling Berliner Zeitung, “On the one hand, the court says that the official spelling is binding and thus clearly contradicts the Senate Administration, which had rejected a binding nature for lack of an act of implementation. On the other hand, (the court claims) every teacher should be allowed to write and speak with asterisks in class, deviating from the official spelling.”

The father said that when the teacher uses a specific form of the language, it creates pressure to conform among the students. The father said that his son was being bullied both by teachers and classmates for his refusal to use gender-neutral language in class and was forced to write gender-neutral words on multiple occasions.

https://rmx.news/germany/germany-berlin-court-rules-anti-white-critical-race-theory-can-be-taught-in-schools/

A single asylum centre in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel has had a major impact on local crime rates, according to statistics from last year showing asylum seekers living there disproportionally involved in criminal activity.

The asylum home in Boudry, a town that lies on the coast of the Lac de Neuchâtel, is home to a number of asylum seekers who have been described as prolific criminal offenders.

In 2022, a total of 13,600 criminal offences were committed across the entire canton, with 2,931 in the coastal area along the Lac de Neuchâtel. Of the latter, 48 per cent of the suspects were asylum seekers and 38 per cent were living in the Boudry asylum centre, RTS reports.

Attorney General Pierre Aubert claimed that “97% of the applicants housed in Boudry have nothing to do with the slightest aspect of criminality,” and added, “3% of applicants unbalance the image that we have of asylum.”

According to RTS most of the criminals are from North African countries and many only live in the area for a short time before going to other areas, and have been recorded committing various crimes like shoplifting, theft, and burglary.

Authorities are reacting to the criminality by increasing police presence in the area as well as simplifying judicial procedures to grant immediate convictions. Deportation orders have also been issued, with around 40 deportations carried out last year.

Criminal migrants have been a problem in Neuchâtel for several years and in 2020 local residents told authorities they had seen enough of the rampant criminality, stating that if nothing was done locals would take matters into their own hands.

Dozens of posters were placed around the town of Neuchâtel, the canton’s capital, which stated, “We are proud, organized and angry. We have the capacity to be dangerous for those who disturb social peace so much.”

The posters were largely condemned by local police, with Georges-André Lozouet, communications officer for the Neuchâtel police, calling them unacceptable and saying, “No one can take the place of the police. We are in a democracy and the system is bearing fruit.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/03/29/switzerland-finds-just-one-asylum-centre-pushing-up-local-crime-statistics/

Marriages contracted between minors cannot be banned across the board by the German state. Marriages between children or adolescents under the age of 16 that took place abroad do not fundamentally lose their validity when these children or adolescents immigrate to Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday.

It said that, in principle, the German state had the right to set a minimum age for marriage and to apply this rule to immigrants. However, the Constitutional Court ruled that it must also clarify the consequences of this. It would have to be clarified, for example, whether maintenance claims exist for one of the spouses after the annulment of such a marriage. It must also be clearly regulated whether the partners may have their marriage recognised after they have reached the age of majority.

The German Bundestag now has until June 30, 2024 to create clear regulations for these issues. Until then, the blanket ban, which is actually unconstitutional, is to remain in force for the time being.

The background to the ruling is a family law case involving two Syrian immigrants. In 2015, they entered into a marriage in Syria according to the local Sharia law. At that time, the man was 21 years old, the woman 14. When they arrived in Germany in August of the same year, the woman was taken into care by the local youth welfare office and placed in a special youth facility for underage refugees.

Subsequently, the Youth Welfare Office acquired custody of the girl in court. The man sued, referring to the valid connection between him and the 14-year-old according to Syrian law.

https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2023/kinderehe/

Police in Prayagraj have arrested a 58-year-old man for allegedly killing his 19-year-old daughter and then burying her body in the city’s Karchana area.

The man identified as Lallan Ali was apparently annoyed over his daughter’s relations with a youth.

Ali has been booked under section 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) of IPC.

ACP (Karchana) Ajeet Singh Chauhan said: “The series of incidents unfolded since February 25 when one of the daughters of Ali, along with his lover and a younger sister had escaped to Mumbai.

“The girl had befriended the youth through a social networking site and decided to escape to Mumbai. However, when the daughters realised that they had no money to stay in Mumbai, they called up their step brother and asked him to reach Haji Ali Dargah and pick them up.”

The step-brother then brought his sisters back to Hindpur on March 2. But the girl did not stop talking to her lover despite stern warning by father who even destroyed her mobile phone.

The enraged father then killed the girl and buried her body.

The police spokesman said that the body would now be exhumed and sent for post-mortem.

https://hindupost.in/crime/honour-killing-lallan-ali-58-kills-daughter-19-buries-her-in-prayagraj-up/

France’s public debt remains uncomfortably high at close to €3 trillion, according to data published on Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE).

Government debt stood at €2.95 trillion at the end of last year, and despite the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio dipping slightly last year compared to 2021, it remains at a historically high level of 111.6 percent. For context, public debt as a percentage of the country’s gross domestic product was well under 100 percent in the years preceding Emmanuel Macron’s presidency.

However, a slight decline in public spending and a rise in tax revenue last year kept the debt in line with the French government’s long-term deficit reduction targets.

The government’s budget deficit last year declined to 4.7 percent of GDP compared to 6.5 percent in 2021, now under the government’s target of 5 percent, while public spending fell from 59.1 percent in 2021 to 58.1 percent last year.

Revenues increased from 52.6 percent in 2021 to 53.4 percent last year, while taxes also rose from 44.3 percent to 45.3 percent.

“INSEE’s figures for 2022 confirm that French growth is holding up well, so is our tax revenue, particularly the corporate income tax,” said French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire on Tuesday. “Our strategy remains the same: Improve France’s growth to reduce debt and control spending,” he added.

While vast public spending was considered a necessity through the Covid-19 pandemic, France’s national debt is well above its European rivals, and the country continues to rank as one of the biggest debtors in the developed world. In contrast, the U.K.’s public debt-to-GDP ratio was 99.2 percent at the end of February 2023, while Germany’s public debt accounted for 66.4 percent of the country’s GDP, last reported in September 2022.

One major problem that lies ahead for the French government in its attempts to reduce debt is that the French public doesn’t really care. “In our November 2022 barometer, reducing public debt came at the bottom of priorities of those surveyed, only ahead of the fight against Covid-19 and the European Union,” Frédéric Dabi, a director general at the polling institute IFOP, revealed to Le Monde newspaper.

The French people believe the country can “live with the debt” and appear to object vociferously to any major government initiatives to reduce the country’s debt burden, as can be seen in the public response to Macron’s controversial pension reforms.

“The macroeconomic argument did not work this time to justify the pension reform, whereas it was very present when the (retirement) age was raised to 62 in 2010,” Dabi added.

Despite the government’s plummeting popularity, it remains defiant in its attempts to push through government policy to bring the country’s finances back under control.

“We reaffirm our targets, namely for the deficit to stand at 3 percent in 2027 and an ongoing reduction in public debt,” Le Maire tweeted on Tuesday.

“The finance bill for 2024 should mark our ambitions in this area,” he added, suggesting that this month’s revolt over the country’s pension reforms could be just the beginning.

https://rmx.news/article/french-debt-remains-out-of-control-but-the-governments-main-issue-is-that-the-public-doesnt-seem-to-care/

Greek police told AFP on Tuesday that they had arrested two young Pakistanis of Iranian origin over planned anti-Semitic attacks in central Athens, as Israel accused Tehran of being behind the plot.

The Jewish state said it was a fresh attempt by arch-foe Iran “to promote terror against Israeli and Jewish targets abroad”.

“After the investigation of the suspects in Greece, the Mossad helped untangle the intelligence of the network, it’s operational methods and ties to Iran,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said referring to Israel’s national intelligence agency.

“As part of the investigation, it emerged that the infrastructure in Greece was part of a broad Iranian network, operated from Iran toward many countries,” a statement said.

Greek police spokeswoman Konstantina Dimoglidou told AFP the “mastermind” of the cell is “a Pakistani who lives outside Europe”.

A police source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the person lived in Iran.

“After coordinated actions by the Greek police and the National Intelligence Service, a terrorist network was dismantled which, from abroad, was planning strikes against carefully selected targets on Greek territory,” a police statement said.

Police said the network had “already chosen the target of the attack” and were planning how to execute it.

Greece’s Jewish community numbers around 5,000. The government has good relations with Israel, including a number of security and military agreements.

The Greek police source told AFP the two Pakistanis of Iranian origin were aged 27 and 29 and were planning attacks on areas frequented by Israelis in central Athens.

The source said the men were targeting a building which houses a synagogue and a Jewish restaurant.

The mobile phones of the two arrested men had allowed investigators to capture conversations, videos and sketches of the places targeted, according to the same source.

The country has not been the target of any terrorist attacks in recent years.

Greek police said the suspects were trying to undermine state security and its “international relations”.

Earlier on Tuesday, Greece’s under-fire prime minister announced elections would be held on May 21, as popular anger seethes over government failures blamed in last month’s train tragedy that killed 57 people.

PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis, whose four-year term is to end in July, is seeking re-election on pledges of safety improvements after the nation’s worst rail disaster and strengthening the economy.

His government has also pledged to tighten security and prevent illegal migration by sealing its frontier with help from the EU’s border agency Frontex.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2408701/greece-arrests-2-pakistanis-for-planning-anti-semitic-attacks

The chair of Bamberg, Bavaria’s Jewish community has denounced a Green Party parliamentary leader for ignoring Islamic antisemitism while delivering a speech on anti-Jewish discrimination that solely focused on far-right Jew hatred.

Jewish leader Martin Arieh Rudolph slammed the Green Party’s leader in the legislature of Baden-Württemberg, Andreas Schwarz, for his recent speech “Baden-Württemberg takes a clear stance against antisemitism” in which he did not mention antisemitism coming from the Iranian government, Palestinian Arabs or those of Turkish background living in the German state, the Jewish Press reported.

But he noted that Schwarz is not alone among left-wing politicians, who frequently ignore antisemitism coming from Muslims while claiming that most of the antisemitism in Germany is due to far-right movements.

In a March 12 letter addressed to Schwarz obtained by the Jewish Press, Rudolph expressed dismay that the speech “didn’t comment anywhere… on Islamic antisemitism, Iranian antisemitism and Palestinian antisemitism, i.e. the entire eliminatory hatred of Jews.”

He questioned how “if you’re giving a speech on the subject of a ‘clear stance against antisemitism,’ why don’t you address the Iranian mullah regime’s worst hatred of Jews, which is about to destroy Israel, our religious and spiritual homeland, and is again targeting millions of Jews for murder, with atomic bombs?”

He also rebuked the lawmaker for not mentioning “the exponentially increasing number of incidents based on antisemitism among Muslims in this country.”

Rudolph also denounced the state’s antisemitism commissioner for failing to take action against anti-Jewish acts.

“Now it is well known that the government of Baden-Württemberg permits itself to have an antisemitism commissioner who, to put it mildly, has not properly done his job so far,” Rudolph said. “According to a decision of the Hamburg Regional Court, this antisemitism commissioner, his name is Dr. Michael Blume, can even be called antisemitic.”

The court ruling said that Blume could be described as antisemitic after he called German Jews “right-wing extremists” and called Orde Wingate, considered a father of the IDF, a “war criminal.”

Rudolph pointed out that Blume was also labelled an antisemite by the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

He wrote: “The Simon Wiesenthal Center in the US — this is not just any institution — had Dr. Blume on its list of the worst antisemites of all time, and there’s a good chance he’ll be on that list again this year. As a state official, Blume has not only failed to condemn the Iranian mullah regime’s eliminatory hatred of Jews, he even describes his critics as right-wing extremists!”

In 2019, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called for Blume’s resignation after he attacked a well known German Jewish activist who campaigns against the BDS movement, comparing Malca Goldstein-Wolf with Adolf Eichmann, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Rudolph also commented in his letter that Turkish antisemitism against Jews is being ignored in Baden-Württemberg.

“To this day the Turkish terrorist who carried out an arson attack on the synagogue in Ulm, which is my hometown by the way, has not yet been extradited from Turkey to Germany to be held accountable in a German court,” he wrote.

“We Jews in Bamberg, and not only in Bamberg, find this situation simply unbearable! Islamist hatred of Jews is more or less downplayed by predominantly left-wing actors of all stripes, while right-wing extremism is played up as almost the only present evil in such spheres,” he added.

German Jewish leader slams Green Party head for ignoring Muslim antisemitism | ערוץ 7 (israelnationalnews.com)

“Trans Rights Or Else” – Trans Advocate Posts Selfie Wearing Sweatshirt With Guns and a Shocking Threat https://t.co/In9WzR3VcU

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) March 28, 2023

https://vladtepesblog.com/