There are only a few countries in the world where an art fair director could even conceivably have such opinions. And America hasn’t been one of them in quite a while.
Still, our cancel culture stepped in and did its job.
Bart Drenth has resigned as global managing director at Tefaf less than six months after taking on the role at the Dutch company, which owns and runs Tefaf Maastricht and Tefaf New York art fairs, in December….
Drenth’s resignation comes days after Artnet News posted an article which chronicled his “anti-woke” Tweets (his account @bardrenth has since been made private). Annie Armstrong translated the Tweets, originally written in Dutch. One, posted in August 2022, reportedly read: “Just as with the Iranian revolution in 1978, left-wing do-gooders stand hand in hand with jihadists. Not knowing that after the success of the revolution they will die first.”
Other tweets, according to Artnet News, read: “Speculating about the transition of the population is only a problem when you are not a Muslim,” and: “Woke is the new Westboro: Hyper-Calvinistic hagglers.” Another said: “Really, your L+ rights are best protected if you are waving around Palestinian flags on the pride parade.” And, last month, Drenth reportedly wrote: “Normalise criticism of the Quran and the Prophet.”
Muslims will kill you for saying such things, wokes will just see to it that you’re forced out of your job.
You’ll be absolutely surprised to learn, I’m sure, that Annie Armstrong has done nothing except blog for assorted publications, including Vice, and has now hit the big time, not by creating something, but by destroying it.
Islamists and leftist wokes have that in common. Incapable of creating, all they can do is destroy.
With permission from and sponsorship by several South Carolina congressmen, the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir, which is headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, traveled to D.C. and assembled to perform The Star-Spangled Banner in the United States Capitol. Instead, the Capitol Police shut them down because (allegedly) they claim our national anthem is an illegal protest song. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) needs to bring these partisan pistol-carriers to heel.
The Star-Spangled Banner isn’t our national anthem just because a lot of people enjoy singing it. Given that it’s a song with a melody favored by drunk Brits in the 18th century—that is, people who would willingly strive for the High C, and then be unembarrassed when they missed it—many people fear it. The reason it’s our national anthem is because, in 1931, Congress used its constitutional authority to make it so: “The composition consisting of the words and music known as the Star-Spangled Banner is the national anthem.”
In that capacity, the song, by law, demands respect:
(b) Conduct During Playing.—During a rendition of the national anthem—
(1) when the flag is displayed—
(A) individuals in uniform should give the military salute at the first note of the anthem and maintain that position until the last note;
(B) members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present but not in uniform may render the military salute in the manner provided for individuals in uniform; and
(C) all other persons present should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, and men not in uniform, if applicable, should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart; and
(2) when the flag is not displayed, all present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed.
The Rushingbrook Children’s Choir, with help from South Carolina Representatives Russell Fry, Joe Wilson, and William Timmons, had received permission to sing a short set of patriotic songs in the statutory hall at the U.S. Capitol. There is, of course, no song more patriotic than our official national anthem.
Last Friday, the children, all clearly under 13 years old, were doing a beautiful job of singing The Star-Spangled Banner, when the Capitol Police stepped in and stopped them. That’s bad. What’s worse is that they apparently did so by claiming that the song was an illegal protest song:
NOTE: This was a pre-arranged and pre-approved performance of a set of patriotic songs that was coordinated with the offices of at least three different Congressmen. I believe a call was even placed to the Speaker's Office the same morning to confirm that all preparatory steps had been completed and that the visit/performance could proceed.
In case the text doesn’t display, here’s the commentary accompanying that video (emphasis mine):
NOTE: This was a pre-arranged and pre-approved performance of a set of patriotic songs that was coordinated with the offices of at least three different Congressmen. I believe a call was even placed to the Speaker’s Office the same morning to confirm that all preparatory steps had been completed and that the visit/performance could proceed.
Have you ever heard of a children’s choir being stopped mid-performance while singing their National Anthem????
Our kiddos as part of Rushingbrook Children’s Choir were privileged to sing today in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol … until they were interrupted mid-Anthem by Capitol Police who insisted they stop singing. The visit and Choir performance was all planned and approved … but it’s possible that there was some type of “permit” or communication mixup. Either way …
1) the kids sang brilliantly
2) Capitol Police not even letting them complete the song and trying to explain that singing the Anthem could be considered a form of protest is telling and embarrassing
3) when you need a permit to sing your National Anthem in your nation’s Capitol something’s gone wrong
#RushingbrookChildrensChoir
The Capitol Police have not distinguished themselves in the last few years. One of their members literally got away with murder when he shot and killed an unarmed woman, and another one violently beat a woman who was not doing anything other than standing (that’s not crowd control; that’s brutality). There was also the embarrassing, tearful performance in which some engaged before the January 6 committee. Rep. McCarthy needs to investigate what happened and, if the charge is true, he must address what happened.
Speaking of protests, I’ll just leave you with this video, showing Democrats draped in African symbols (not American ones) kneeling in the U.S. Capitol to honor a heavily drugged-up ex-felon who died when his diseased heart simply gave out while he was resisting arrest:
(On a related note, which I meant to mention regarding Charles III’s coronation, was I the only one who thought it disgraceful and disgusting that Jill Biden and her granddaughter showed up wearing Ukraine’s colors rather than the colors of the nation they were representing; that is, our United States? After all, we Americans paid the expenses associated with their little jaunt.)
Morocco fans celebrate a victory for their national football team in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022. Screen grab youtube
A deal negotiated in secret between Morocco and the Dutch government to facilitate the easier expulsion of illegal migrants from the Netherlands has had “hardly any effect,” according to an analysis conducted by the joint research editors of NOS and Nieuwsuur.
The agreement on greater cooperation between the two countries was signed in July 2021 but was only made public in December last year.
The basis of the deal would see Morocco provide emergency travel documents for its own nationals illegally residing in the Netherlands, and in exchange, the Dutch government would refrain from commenting on internal affairs in Morocco and would support a Moroccan cultural center in Amsterdam.
However, a NOS/Nieuwsuur investigation into how effective the agreement has been in practice makes grim reading for Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s administration.
Between January 2022 and March 2023, less than 10 percent of the Moroccan nationals that Dutch immigration officials asked Rabat to provide emergency travel documents for were forcibly deported.
A total of 375 individuals were deemed eligible by the Dutch government for deportation, but just 43 received the necessary documentation to be accepted back in Morocco, and only 32 people eventually left the Netherlands with some seeking judicial intervention to prevent their deportation.
The agreement, described by Dutch State Secretary for Asylum Eric van der Burg as the “bilateral action plan,” also “appears to have no deterrent effect,” the investigative report states. In the first three months of this year, asylum applications in the Netherlands by people from Morocco have increased.
During a visit to Rabat earlier this year, van der Burg told reporters that since the action plan had come into force, 125 Moroccan nationals had returned to the country. However, the NOS/Nieuwsuur report states that the majority of these were voluntary deportations, many of which would have been based on deals reached between convicts and the Dutch government in exchange for shorter prison sentences.
The report states that asylum centers across the Netherlands, most notably in Ter Apel and Budel, have not noticed the effects of the deal with Morocco, and local government officials in large Dutch cities are still finding it almost impossible to expel unwanted migrants from the Arab nation.
State Secretary Van der Burg has reportedly admitted there are still many difficulties with ejecting Moroccan nationals found to be residing in the country unlawfully, and he highlighted the fact that many attempt to block their deportations in the courts or continuously evade authorities.
He further explained that the Moroccan embassy will still only issue emergency travel documents for those they can personally identify, and thus, if an individual refuses to cooperate with attempts to identify themselves to the authorities, there is no other alternative but for them to remain in the Netherlands.
The Rutte administration is reportedly seeking to introduce a legal requirement for foreign nationals to cooperate in identification processes. The government also insists it is exploring ways to introduce new powers to detain such individuals to mitigate evasion tactics. However, without such measures in place presently, the agreement reached almost two years ago isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
Following the report’s publication on Friday, critics of the government took the opportunity to slam the Rutte administration for its record on immigration.
Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders tweeted: “What a loss for Rutte. The borders are wide open. There is no asylum stop. A lousy Morocco deal. The Netherlands is in decline.”
He called on “the prime minister of false promises” to resign, and urged voters to let him take the reins.
“Let me do it. Necessity knows no law. Ignore EU rules. Close borders. Zero asylum seekers and the scum out!” he added.
Man from Gambia vandalized a Japanese shrine, confronting a woman mid-prayer with a chilling declaration: “There is only one God, the Muslim God, and here, there is no God.” Screen grab twitter
Japan’s religious landscape is undergoing a transformative shift, which is all the more evident by looking at the growing number of mosques that have emerged in the country over the past two decades.
The change can be attributed to a lesser degree to increasing intermarriage between Muslims and Japanese citizens (many Japanese converted to Islam through marriage), but mostly to the rising number of immigrants coming from Islamic states.
The number of Muslims in Japan was estimated to be between 10,000 to 20,000 in the year 2000 while the current estimates are of over 200,000. That is a ten-fold increase in less than one generation.
Also, mosques that used to be an uncommon sight in Japan are no longer rare. As of March 2021, there were 113 mosques in Japan, up from only 15 in 1999.
A notorious case is the Masjid Istiqlal Osaka, which came up in Osaka’s Nishinari Ward last year. It is housed in a structure that was once a factory. Donations from Indonesians mostly funded the costs of the renovation work, and we know that the largest Muslim population in the world is found in Indonesia.
While this trend reflects a more inclusive Japanese society, it also presents challenges and friction.
An unsettling incident unfolded recently when a man from Gambia vandalized a Japanese shrine, confronting a woman mid-prayer with a chilling declaration: “There is only one God, the Muslim God, and here, there is no God.” This was all caught on camera and the video went viral online.
The comments from Japanese social media users were not pleasing.
“Maintaining unwavering beliefs can sometimes blind us to our surroundings and lead to inflexible thinking. It can make us resistant to accepting other perspectives, leading to friction. Islam serves as a prominent illustration of this phenomenon,” read one comment.
Another comment was: “In Japan, the basic human right called ‘freedom of religion’ is guaranteed, and this is based on the idea that ‘allowing other people’s beliefs’ is the basis. Those who attack the beliefs of others cannot share our values, so we cannot live together. The existence of such a dangerous Muslim person endangers also the living environment of all Muslims.”
And one more comment read, “The goal of Islam is world domination. None of this is compatible with the way of thinking that has been rooted in Japan since ancient times.”
I have chosen specifically the least “heated” comments.
Islam and Shinto are two distinct religious traditions with unique beliefs and practices. While both religions offer guidance and spiritual meaning to their followers, they differ significantly in their origins and core beliefs.
Islam originated in the 7th century, it emerged as a monotheistic religion centered on the belief in one God, Allah, and the teachings of the Quran, considered the holy book of Islam.
Shinto on the other hand is the indigenous religion of Japan with roots that trace back to ancient times. It developed organically from Japanese folklore, rituals and animistic beliefs. Shinto does not have a specific founder or a single authoritative scripture but is characterized by reverence for kami, the divine spirits or forces present in nature and various aspects of life.
Also, Shinto does not have a comprehensive set of doctrines or a rigid belief system. Shinto emphasizes purity, gratitude and living in harmony with the natural world.
One notable aspect of Shinto is its inclination to embrace other religions, considering itself as a religion encompassing eight million gods. This inclusiveness is exemplified by the presence of the iconic torii (the traditional Japanese gate that marks the entrance to a Shinto shrine) inside many Buddhist temples.
Although it may seem inconceivable today, for over a millennium Shinto and Buddhism were in fact intertwined, with individuals visiting temples expecting to pay reverence to both Shinto kami and Buddhist deities.
However, this harmonious coexistence becomes inconceivable from the perspective of a Muslim. The concept of polytheism in Shinto is incompatible with the monotheistic nature of Islam. Islamic teachings emphasize the oneness of God and strictly prohibit the worship of any other entities.
This potential clash of faiths and divergent theological perspectives can make the idea of peaceful coexistence between Shinto and Islam difficult to conceive from a Muslim standpoint.
The recent act of vandalizing the Shinto shrine highlights the challenges in envisioning a peaceful coexistence between these two faiths.
According to a German newspaper report, Pope Francis ordered Archbishop Georg Gänswein to leave the Vatican and return to Germany by the end of June.
The longtime private secretary of Pope Benedict XVI has been told to return to his home diocese of Freiburg in southwest Germany, but has not been given any role or assignment, the Welt newspaper reported on Friday.
According to CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language partner agency, the report claims Pope Francis informed the 66-year-old Gänswein of his decision during a private audience on May 19.
Archbishop Gänswein had not responded to a request by CNA Deutsch by the time of publication, and the Vatican has not issued any communication on the matter.
The future role of the late Benedict’s secretary has been the subject of rumor and gossip across Rome and the Church in Germany for months. Previous speculations included the claim that Gänswein would serve as papal ambassador in Costa Rica. The eloquent prelate is fluent in several languages, including German and Italian.
According to the German media report, Pope Francis “referred to the custom that the former private secretaries of deceased popes did not remain in Rome.”
A longtime secretary to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Archbishop Gänswein also served as prefect of the Papal Household to both Benedict and his successor, Pope Francis, until February 2020.
Hailing from the Black Forest region of Germany, the son of a blacksmith was ordained a priest in 1984 by Archbishop Oskar Saier in Freiburg and holds a doctorate in canon law from Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.
Archbishop Gänswein is expected in Germany this weekend. He is scheduled to preside over Mass on Sunday, June 4, for an annual pilgrimage to the Cistercian monastery of Stiepel near Bochum, in Western Germany.
A health centre in England provided new parents with questionnaires asking if they considered their babies to be transgender or non-binary.
A form offered by a general practitioner practice in Birmingham to parents of newborns quizzed them if they considered their child to be either “male (including trans man)”, “female (including trans woman)”, “non-binary”, “other (not listed)” or “not stated”.
Sharing a screenshot of the form, a woman posted on Twitter: “So my mate has had a baby recently and had to register this precious new life. This is the newborn registration form she’s faced with.”
“I think she’s going to register baby as Other = dinosaur gender,” she joked.
The Woodgate Valley Health Centre insisted the form was used by new patients of all ages wishing to register, not just newborns, tellingThe Sun that it was a “standard new patient registration form for any new patient” that “includes, but is not limited to, parents registering a newborn baby”.
According to the Daily Mail, the woke form is not part of a wider policy of the National Health Service (NHS), with each local surgery being given the option to add additional gender options to their own forms.
So my mate has had a baby recently and had to register this precious new life. This is the newborn registration form shes faced with.
Male (including women) Female (including men) Non-binary = nonsense Other = 🤷🏽♀️
Free Speech Union director Toby Young criticised the practice, saying the woke forms were “an invitation to woke parents to impose their crazy ideas about sex and gender on their newborns”.
“Wouldn’t it be more responsible of this GP practice to refer parents who cannot tell the sex of their babies by looking at their genitals to a psychiatrist?”
The country’s socialised healthcare system has increasingly become infected with woke culture, with the NHS previously coming under fire for adopting so-called gender-free language on its health advice site, removing references to women for the pages concerning female-only cancers such as ovarian, womb, and cervical.
NHS has also been at the forefront of the transgender movement, with its Tavistock Centre and the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), which has been accused of offering puberty-blocking drugs to children after as little as just one consultation.
The disgraced centre, which is set to be shut down for failing to protect the safety of children, is facing lawsuits from up to 1,000 families for allegedly misdiagnosing their children as transgender.
What our police officers have to deal with every day is once again shown by an incident in the Floridsdorf district of Vienna. The aggressor was once again a migrant from a Muslim country. The police report reads like this:
Officers of the Floridsdorf municipal police command and the WEGA special unit were alerted yesterday, Tuesday, at around 11 p.m. in the evening, because a man was reportedly walking around on Mengergasse in Floridsdorf with a large knife. The man (41, Egyptian nationality) was detected. Without any reason he ran towards the police officers and apparently wanted to attack them, which is why the police officers had to use physical force against the 41-year-old. Suddenly, the suspect pulled out a knife and only dropped it when he was ordered to do so by the police officers with drawn service weapons (taser and firearm).
After dropping the knife, he ran towards the police officers again and tried to attack them with a punch. He was temporarily arrested. He violently resisted arrest. The 41-year-old is being held in custody by the police and has not yet been questioned.
The group of migrants barricaded the front entrance to the Comfort Inn hotel in Pimlico with their suitcases. (Credit: Twitter, @RachaelBurford)
Better Wi-Fi, more financial assistance, and private rooms were just some of the demands made by migrants who demonstrated outside the doors of their new hotel accommodation in an upscale residential area of central London on Thursday.
The group of adult men, many of whom arrived in Britain illegally in small boats via the English Channel with a view to claiming asylum, used their suitcases to barricade the front doors to the Pimlico Comfort Inn and staged a pavement protest against what they consider to be offensive living standards afforded to them by the British government.
The group was recently transferred from a hotel in Ilford, Essex, but told reporters that their new accommodation was not to their taste and refused to return to their rooms until they are each provided with private accommodation.
“They said we’re going to move you to another, better place. They gave us this postcode. When we checked on Google Maps, we said, oh this is very nice. But when you get in, it’s like a jail. And they treat you very, very bad. They treat you like an animal,” a 21-year-old Iranian national who arrived in Britain via small boat told The Telegraph newspaper.
Some complained that they had previously been assigned two people to a room, but were now expected to share an en-suite room with three others. The group also bemoaned the smell from the toilet and poor internet access.
“We are not kids, everybody had a private room. We need a private room. How do you live with four men?” asked a 26-year-old African male.
A local resident who lives close to the hotel told Remix: “I live very close to this hotel (3 or 4 mins away) in London, and the scene yesterday really was bizarre. Lots of migrants sitting on the street outside the hotel said they would not go back in, as the taxpayer-funded accommodation was substandard.
“When I asked one of them, they went into a long rant about the bathrooms being dirty. Frankly, it does look like a terrible hotel, but tourists used to pay £100 plus to stay there.”
Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform Party founded by Nigel Farage, filmed an exchange with an Iraqi national named Dia, one of the migrants objecting to the living conditions.
“These people come from another hotel and this hotel is not good,” Dia told the politician.
He explained that the migrants had come from a hotel with big, nice rooms where he had been living for two years, but considered their new accommodation to be “very small” and the Wi-Fi “too weak.”
Asylum seeker complains: size of room, bathroom too small & bad wifi in his Central London hotel & not enough weekly money. Been here 2 years
He added that he “can do nothing” with the government allowance of £8 per week, as London is “too expensive,” although he noted that his hotel accommodation and food — which he said is reasonable — are paid for on top of this.
Tice wryly apologized on behalf of the British taxpayer for the poor accommodation and offered to go and talk to the manager on the migrants’ behalf.
Commenting on the stunt, backbench Conservative MP Lee Anderson tweeted: “The bare faced cheek. If you don’t like our tax payer funded rooms then there is your old tent waiting back in France. You know where France is? It’s that safe country you left where they will accept an asylum claim.”
The Home Office has sought to alleviate the financial burden on the U.K. taxpayer to accommodate the large influx of migrants seeking asylum in Britain in recent months, with the current bill estimated to be approximately £6 million (€7 million) per day.
Efforts have been made to relocate existing migrants to more cost-effective accommodation, for example by doubling room capacity. The governing Conservative party has also announced plans to house new arrivals on floating barges and in disused military bases in rural locations, despite widespread public criticism from local residents concerned about the social ramifications arising from such a proposal.
“We are trying to drive down the costs and number of hotels by various mechanisms,” a government source told The Telegraph. “You see on TikTok, you get the people smugglers saying you will get your own hotel place.
“We are trying to cut down on the costs. If they say they don’t want to go to the accommodation that they are offered, we can withdraw support.”
Commenting on the pavement protest, a Home Office spokesman insisted the accommodation offered to the migrants in question is “of a decent standard and meets all legal and contractual requirements.”
