Month: May 2023
The right wing triumphs in local elections in Italy
The right wing was the big winner in the second round of municipal elections in Italy on Monday (29), winning in six provincial capitals and conquering strongholds of the left, such as Ancona, the capital of the Marche region, where progressives have ruled for more than three decades.
Between Sunday and Monday, Italy held an election in which the inhabitants of 41 municipalities went to the polls in a second round of voting after none of the candidates managed a majority of more than 50% in the first round held on May 14 and 15.
The main disputes took place in seven provincial capitals: Vicenza, Massa, Pisa, Siena, Terni, Ancona, and Brindisi, as well as in about one hundred municipalities in Sicily and Sardinia.
With counting completed, the candidates supported by the conservative coalition formed by the Brothers of Italy, the League, and Forza Italia parties won most of these contests: Massa, Pisa, Siena, Brindisi, and Ancona, while in Terni, an independent but close to right-wing civic list won.
Therefore, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni interpreted the results nationally as an endorsement of her government just nine months after her victory in the general elections.
“I want to thank all the citizens who have chosen to trust the center-right, rewarding our good government, our proposals, and our concreteness,” Meloni celebrated in a video posted on social media.
Of all the victories, the most symbolic is that of Ancona, run by the left for over three decades and that the new Democratic Party (PD), led by Elly Schlein, wanted to keep.
The new leader of social democracy in Italy not only lost this important seat but also failed to win back the Tuscan cities of Pisa and Siena, where the first round results were very close, and only won, with a 1% margin, in Vicenza, where her party ran on a list together with the center-left legends of Italia Viva and Azione.
In the first round, the progressives only managed to keep Brescia and Treamo among the largest municipalities.
“It’s a clear defeat. These are local elections, but they show that the wind is still blowing strongly in favor of the right,” admitted the leader of the Italian opposition at the party’s national headquarters in Rome.
In the first round, the right won in Treviso, Imperia, Sondrio (north), and Latina (center), confirming the good electoral performance of the conservative coalition.
In addition, elections were also held in 39 municipalities in Sicily, four of which are provincial capitals: Catania, Trapani, Ragusa, and Syracuse, and 128 other localities in Sardinia.
According to exit polls, the right would have swept Catania, Sicily’s second most populous city, with more than 60 percent of the vote, making a second round unnecessary.
The result in this city was especially symbolic because the three conservative leaders – Meloni (Brothers of Italy), Matteo Salvini (League), and Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia) – traveled there to promote their candidate, Enrico Trantino, who faced Maurizio Caserta, supported by the PD and the 5 Star Movement (M5S), in a new attempt at an alliance between the two opposition parties.
Bud Light sales decline ’accelerating’ — parent company shares fell nearly another 5% in worst day yet on Wall Street
By Thomas Lifson
There was a widespread expectation that the outrage over Bud Light’s pushing of transgender icon Dylan Mulvaney would fade over time, as often happens with boycotts. But not this time. Nielsen, which tracks sales scanner data released new data Tuesday showing the nightmare for Bud Light and its parent AB InBev is deepening. Josh Schafer writes at Yahoo Finance:
Bud Light sales declines are accelerating, and shares of parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) are falling alongside them.
New data from Nielsen revealed Bud Light sales declined 24.3% year-over-year in the week ending May 20 while Budweiser sales were down 20.4% during the same period. Last week sales were down 21.6% and 17.6% respectively. Driven by backlash from an advertising campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light sales have now declined for six weeks, per Nielsen.
Shares of AbInBev fell nearly 5% on Tuesday, the worst intraday action on the stock since Mulvaney’s post on April 1. Since the day of the post, ABInBev shares have fallen roughly 18%.
Even worse for the company, other brands in its portfolio are also being hit, as Janet Freund writes for Bloomberg in a notice to subscribers that is not online:
The broader InBev beer portfolio also continues to see weakness, while Molson Coors’ Coors Light beer continues to see market share gains accelerate, he says
My guess is that ordering or drinking in public a Bud Light, or even a Budweiser or other identifiable sister brand, subjects a person to mockery. So, even those who are indifferent to the transgender propaganda tidal wave are being influenced to stay away from the brand. But it is not only in bars and at sporting events. As we showed yesterday, even when customers are paid to take the beer off the retailer’s shelf, consumers are shunning it.
It appears to me that a widespread revolt against the transgender propaganda push is underway. People are saying that enough is enough. It’s easy to switch beer brands, and Bud Light never had a devoted following. It was always been just good enough, considering it is less caloric than regular beers.
Target, which has also been suffering a sales decline over pushing transgender clothes for children at the entrance to its stores, has got to be concerned.
I suspect a major quiet rethink is taking place in the C-suites of major companies that have signed on to the transgender agenda in hopes of a good ESG score from Blackrock and other giant find managers.
France’s migrant redistribution policy eases pressure on Paris, but at what cost to other regions?
Despite widespread public criticism of the French government’s plans to redistribute a large cohort of asylum seekers across multiple regions to live among rural communities, lawmakers in the country continue to endorse the controversial scheme.
According to a parliamentary information report seen by Le Monde newspaper, the Renaissance deputies of Val-de-Marne and Maine-et-Loire, Mathieu Lefèvre and Stella Dupont, respectively, made a “favorable” assessment of the plans to move asylum applicants out of the saturated Île-de-France region, in which Paris is located, to all other regions with the exceptions of Hauts-de-France — home of the infamous Calais jungle — and Corsica.
The report recommends a continuation of the “directive orientation” policy adopted by the French government back in January 2021, which involves offering greater support to regions where local leaders agree to receive higher numbers of migrants.
The policy has caused significant civil tension in a number of regions, not least in the department of Loire-Atlantique, where the home of the left-wing mayor of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, Yannick Morez, was the target of a suspected arson attack by local residents incandescent with rage at his support to establish an asylum reception center in the small seaside town.
Under the redistribution plans, as Le Monde describes, regions are categorized based on the accommodation capacity in the area, as well as the unemployment rate and the local GDP of each region.
While the personal circumstances of asylum seekers are supposed to be taken into consideration, the destination allocated to each individual is “chosen randomly by an algorithm,” the parliamentary report states. Those who refuse to adhere to the plans are consequently deprived of benefiting from accommodation and a subsistence allowance for the duration of their asylum claim.
The authors of the report justify the continuation of the “directive orientation” policy due to its perceived successes, at least on a superficial level. They claim that in the last two years, 48,230 asylum seekers have been offered accommodation in an alternative region of France to where they had been residing, of which 30,402 individuals took up the offer.
The policy has reportedly seen the percentage of asylum seekers living in the Paris region drop from half of all new arrivals to around a third, and the government aims to reduce this further to 23 percent by the end of this year.
While the French government may hail this as a success, the policy is hugely unpopular among the electorate, particularly those residents in rural communities who feel they are having new arrivals forced upon them and are having to deal with the social ramifications.
In February, there were reports of strong opposition to plans to convert a disused inn into a 40-berth asylum center in the small French town of Beyssenac.
“We don’t know who the people will be, so we don’t know what it will look like around the village and that worries us. People are used to leaving their doors open, and they won’t be able to do that anymore,” one opponent, Philippe Ponge, the founder of the “Save Beyssenac” association, told France Bleu.
A plan in January to settle up to 70 refugee families in the rural French town of Callac was ultimately withdrawn after mass protests from residents, and there have been several demonstrations from right-wing groups in Brittany, Corrèze, Indre and Paris.
Publisher of Unique Literature Worldwide Blocked by International Distributor
Arktos has distinguished itself by publishing groundbreaking philosophers and social critics. Now, the publisher’s international distributor has abruptly terminated the cooperation, and more than 400 already printed titles cannot reach their audience. There is strong evidence that the distributor has been under pressure, something that has also happened in Sweden. We have spoken with Arktos founder Daniel Friberg about the ongoing struggle for freedom of speech in a shrinking cultural corridor.
Since its foundation in 2009, Arktos has managed to establish itself within a unique genre by publishing authors and philosophers such as Sir Roger Scruton, Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Guillaume Faye, Ludwig Klages, and Carl Grimberg. A consistent critique of modernity and support for the European New Right have contemporaneously labeled the publisher as controversial. Now, the distributor that Arktos used for its international sales, Ingram Content Group (ICG), has terminated the collaboration on unclear grounds.
ICG is the world’s largest book distributor, and Arktos is one of the countless publishers relying on its services. The terminated collaboration means that 430 publications currently cannot reach their readers.
ICG first contacted Arktos in 2021 with the news that they wanted to end the collaboration. No explanation was given as to why. Arktos opposed the decision, and for 14 months, they heard nothing more from the distributor. The publisher then assumed that the termination would not be carried out. But in February this year, ICG returned with the news that the books would stop being distributed from March 25 this year. No explanation was given this time either.
Arktos founder Daniel Friberg tells us that the publisher sees clear indications that the distributor has been under pressure.
“The first is that the termination letter was copied to two of the top executives in the Ingram Group, who normally never handle this type of case, but who are natural targets for pressure. The fact that the letter was copied can only be because the order came from them,” he adds.
The boycott also seemed to be coordinated, as other distributors and booksellers at the same time removed Arktos book titles. Above all, it was immigration-critical and politically controversial books that were stopped from distribution, says Friberg.
This is not the first time Arktos has been subjected to censorship attempts. The far-left intelligence service Expo attacked when they discovered that the publisher could distribute books in a normal way. This was done a decade ago and resulted among other things in several Swedish distributors removing Arktos books from their range, Friberg explains. The Swedish distributors gave no explanation either, but it was apparent to the Arktos founder that they had been scared into doing it.
Attacks on uncomfortable literature do not stop at attacks on the companies and their infrastructure. Friberg’s own private bank account in Swedbank was closed in 2021, without apparent reason. This has also affected the editor-in-chief of the online newspaper Fria Tider, and most recently the Swedish accounts of the online newspaper Nya Dagbladet have been closed. None of these cases have been highlighted by mainstream media from a freedom of speech or even a right to livelihood perspective. It thus appeared that the interventions were seen as acceptable by “the free press” in Sweden.
Daniel Friberg has also noticed a pattern among censorship activists. They consistently avoid direct debate with ideological opponents. Instead, they choose methods presented as investigative journalism and social education, but which aim to demonize ideological opponents and intimidate business partners and others who can in any way be linked to them. The articles are then published through their own channels, where they are noticed and distributed by established left-liberal media.
This time, it is primarily a hostile actor that has emerged. It is the globally influential organization Anti Defamation League (ADL), which is described by Wikipedia with the words: “ADL was founded by B’nai B’rith in 1913 with the aim of stopping ‘defamation of the Jewish people.’” ADL has been instrumental in several attacks on social critics over the years, ensuring, for instance, that Adidas terminated its collaboration with rapper Kanye West last fall, and the organization has also attacked cartoonist Scott Adams. Both have expressed social criticism that does not comply with established guidelines – one about Jewish influence, the other about anti-white racism among black people. With the help of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, ADL has also lobbied to limit the freedom of speech generally for users of social media.
The organization has attacked Arktos on its website, but most of all Friberg himself. In the smear campaign, they rely on stigmatizing epithets and guilt by association. Friberg is described as a “white supremacist”, and despite being a publisher who advocates for the importance of open debate, he is linked to mass murderers like Anders Behring Breivik. However, the publisher is not alone in being indirectly accused of insanity. To be listed by the ADL as a “spreader of hate”, which the organization claims inspires confused perpetrators of violence, it doesn’t take much. It could be enough to have held an immigration-critical conference or to have publicly commented in positive terms on statements from a person who is already on the ADL’s list.
Being a publisher of authors and philosophers who criticize the political hegemony in the West has been difficult in the past. Now, the goal seems to be to make it entirely impossible. Arktos has therefore chosen to counterattack and broaden its operations. Daniel Friberg says they now intend to start an online magazine. The focus of it is on culture and politics from a pro-European and anti-globalist perspective.
“To begin with, we will publish two new articles per day. As soon as we reach 500 subscribers, we will double the number to four articles per day and launch a new podcast.”
A think tank will also be established. It will arrange seminars, meetings, and conferences similar to the previous event series “Identitarian Idea”. An online university is also to be launched in the near future, in which online courses on relevant topics will be offered.
Friberg emphasizes that those who want to help accelerate the development can subscribe now on arktos.com for 5 dollars a month. Subscribers will then have access to exclusive articles, free e-books, and audiobooks among other benefits.
28,000 dangerous persons: major raid against Islamists all over Germany
Since the early hours of this morning, a major nationwide raid has been underway among our German neighbors. As the police have already confirmed, Islamists are the target of the investigators.
As reported by the newspaper “Berliner Zeitung” on Wednesday, house searches are currently being conducted throughout Germany in the Islamist community. According to information from the newspaper “FAZ”, it is about an internationally operating fundraising network that is said to have collected funds for a terrorist organization.
As reported by the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany continues to be a direct target of various terrorist organizations, jihadist groups or individual perpetrators – first and foremost the “Islamic State” (IS). According to the most recent, sufficiently reliable figures, there are 28,290 Islamist dangerous persons living in Germany.
https://exxpress.at/28-000-gefaehrder-gross-razzia-gegen-islamisten-in-ganz-deutschland/
Half of All New German Citizens are Muslims – There will not be a Germany in a generation
This is what national suicide looks like.
Germany saw a 28% increase in the number of people gaining its citizenship last year, with people from Syria accounting for more than a quarter of those who were naturalized, official data showed Tuesday.
Preliminary figures show that about 168,500 people were granted German citizenship in 2022, the Federal Statistical Office said. That was the highest number since 2002.
Of those, 48,300 — or 29% — were Syrian citizens. That was more than double the previous year’s figure and seven times as high as in 2020, as increasing numbers of people who migrated to Germany between 2014 and 2016 fulfill the requirements for citizenship.
Turkish citizens were the second-biggest group of people gaining German citizenship last year — 14,200 of them, a 16% increase compared to 2021, and with an average of more than 24 years living in Germany…
Germany’s socially liberal government plans to ease the rules for obtaining citizenship, reducing to five years from eight the number of years people are supposed to live in the country before gaining a German passport. People with “special integration accomplishments” would be eligible after three years.
A rough calculation pegs the number of new citizens from Muslim countries at around 80,000 or half the 168,500 number of total citizens. This is fairly consistent with the 2021 numbers.
In 2021, roughly 131,600 foreigners became naturalised German citizens. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that this was an increase of roughly 21,700 naturalisations, or 20%, compared with the previous year. Just over half of the increase is attributable to the large number of naturalisations of Syrians.
The migration crisis didn’t go away with Merkel, if anything it’s worse.
At the end of 2022, roughly 3.08 million people were registered as seeking protection in the Central Register of Foreigners. The number of registered people seeking protection rose by 1.14 million compared with the previous year, according to the Federal Statistical Office…
In 2022, 20.2 million people with a history of immigration were living in Germany. Based on microcensus results, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that this was an increase of 1.2 million, or 6.5%, compared with the previous year (2021: 19.0 million).
Following a rise of 1.3 percentage points, this group of people thus accounted for 24.3% of the population (2021: 23.0%).
For all intents and purposes, there will not be a Germany in a generation. There will be some Russians and Ukrainians and a whole lot of Iraqis, Syrians, and Turks. The former may prove to be less suicidal than the Germans. If so they’ll actually secure their newfound country. But considering their birth rates, the battle will likely be over by then.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/half-of-all-new-german-citizens-are-muslims/
Peer-Reviewed Study Finds Substantial “Sudden and Sustained” Increase in Excess Mortality in Early 2021
Taharrush in Nantes,France: Three 15-year-old girls were groped on the buttocks, breasts and private parts by about ten men as they left the kebab store; witnesses intervened; only one man of no known residence was arrested
The three female friends, aged around 15, had decided to dine together on a kebab in Nantes on Saturday evening, May 27. As they were walking home after the meal at around midnight, they were surrounded and harassed by a group of about ten men near the Place du Commerce.
The frightened teenagers were sexually groped. “The men touched them on their buttocks, breasts and private parts,” reported a police source who was informed about the incident. Witnesses chased the men away and employees of the transport company TAN took care of the traumatised girls. The brigade anticriminalité was deployed to the scene and the teenagers were handed over to their parents.
As for the attackers, the police managed to identify a single one who was arrested very quickly. The 18-year-old man, who has no known residence, was taken into police custody […]. Ouest-France
Fourth Reich disseminates ominous new report on ‘environmental policy’
By Olivia Murray
If you said that climate lockdowns would be next, you might be a conspiracy theorist.
If you’re making simple observations and drawing basic conclusions about the world around you, you might be a conspiracy theorist.
If you have even the most rudimentary understanding of big government leftism and limited government conservatism, you might be a conspiracy theorist.
If you make a point to remind your friends and family that reality is consistent and historical precedent is a good barometer for future events, you might be a conspiracy theorist.
If you speak up against the regime, you might be a conspiracy theorist.
On May 9th, the German federal government’s Advisory Council on the Environment issued a “special report” titled “Politik in der Pflicht: Umweltfreundliches Verhalten erleichtern”; roughly translated this reads, “Politics has a duty: Facilitate environmentally friendly behavior.”
Now, it’s worth noting that the report only appears to be published on the German site, and not on the English-speaking version of the page; is it perhaps an attempt to keep the document away from the prying eyes of America’s citizen journalists?
It wouldn’t surprise me — the opening of the introduction alone reveals quite a conspicuous agenda of authoritarian slavery. The German public’s overwhelming compliance to the government’s COVID “pandemic” measures and “energy crisis mitigations” taught the agents of the Fourth Reich a valuable lesson, and they intend to put it to use…again. This time though, the “emergency” isn’t a biohazard or the electrical grid; it’s the “climate crisis”!
Read below, from page 25:
Many common behaviors exacerbate today’s environmental problems. Conversely, changes in behavior can make a significant contribution to overcoming the environmental crises. However, the framework conditions that exist today, including those set by politics, often do not provide any incentive for environmentally friendly behavior or even make it more difficult [emphasis added]. It is therefore important to strengthen environmentally friendly behavior more than in the past through political measures and to spread it among the population. This special report by the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) deals with the starting points and instruments available to politicians to enable and facilitate environmentally friendly behavior. It also shows ways to increase the political feasibility of behavioral measures.
Also, this, which extends to page 26:
Although the central environmental crises…are less directly visible…than the energy crisis and pandemic, environmental policy can learn from these sometimes painful but also important experiences of recent years…. Behavioral changes in the population can contribute to the solution in all of these crises and it is possible to adopt and implement political measures aimed at behavioral changes.
In mid-2022, for example, a number of measures were introduced in Germany to defuse the energy crisis that arose as a result of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. These measures also targeted the behavior of citizens [emphasis added].
…
Extensive measures were already in place during the pandemic to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
…
Both crisis situations increasingly focus on the contribution of behavioral changes by citizens, for example in energy use or in their contact behavior, to combating a collective problem.
And here is the finishing touch:
Nevertheless, the two crisis situations show that political measures that can severely restrict the behavior of citizens are possible if the threat is correspondingly large and the importance of the protected good – as in these examples health and energy supply – is recognised.
…
It is also obviously possible to design and communicate political measures in such a way that they are supported by a majority.
Ahhh, and there it is: it’s just a matter of getting the messaging right. All the government needs to do is tap the varsity team, and compelling certain “desirable” behaviors from the public will be a breeze! This is Germany we’re talking about, so somehow I suspect they can find a propaganda whiz or two…..
As PJ Media columnist Kevin Downey Jr. noted just yesterday, the American Democrats of today have accomplished a rather remarkable task: they’ve persuaded “idiots” to accept the Orwellian idea that “tyranny is virtue”. (In all honesty though, how hard can it be to indoctrinate someone who isn’t thinking for themself?) However, that idea is an astute observation that applies to the global collective too.
Now, maybe it’s just the “conspiracy theorist” in me, but I’ll get a headstart: the climate tyrants aren’t confined to Germany…they’re coming for us too.