Month: October 2023

The Bavarian Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) parliamentary group on Friday, October 27th, issued a public statement revealing that the Würzburg public prosecutor’s office had issued an arrest warrant against newly-elected AfD MP Daniel Halemba without providing a reason why.

The law firm representing the 22-year-old AfD lawmaker, who is set to become the youngest politician in the Bavarian chamber when it sits for its first session next week, said the investigation was being carried out for “politically motivated reasons during election campaigns on suspicion of incitement to hatred for the use of symbols of unconstitutional organization,” Berlin-based daily Junge Freiheit reports. 

The court proceedings allegedly stem from a photograph that was taken of a wine bottle upon which a symbol prohibited by Section 130 of the Criminal Code, pertaining to incitement to hatred, was shown. According to authorities, the photo was taken at the residence of the Teutonia Prague fraternity, where Halemba was living, in Würzburg. 

Police, however, during a raid of the residence last month, failed to locate the alleged wine bottle adorned with the illegal image. Apparently, and rather conveniently, other material authorities called “suspicious” was found while the search was being conducted, Lubravko Mandić, Halemba’s lawyer said.

Additionally, Mandić said that following a “preliminary assessment, there is no truth to all the allegations of the members of the Prague Teutonia,” and added that there is “no urgent suspicion whatsoever.” He also alleges that police exerted undue pressure on individuals facing charges to compel them to make an incriminating statement that would implicate others. When both coercion and the proposal of a ‘deal’ proved ineffective, an arrest warrant was issued for Halemba.

Mein Mandant Halemba wurde heute früh um 08:00 festgenommen. Er bat mich dieses Video zu veröffentlichen pic.twitter.com/tnJVTklsus

— Dubravko Mandic (@RAMandicDu) October 30, 2023

Halemba, for his part, commented on the matter in a video message posted to social media networks, saying that the state was using its might to suppress the AfD. He argued that the state sought to imprison him three days before the beginning of the new parliamentary session with a “completely arbitrary arrest warrant” and accused the CSU of “hunting” the democratic opposition.

“This is yet another case of abuse by the police apparatus, which seeks to intimidate and defame its enemies, against the democratic opposition,” AfD MP Petr Bystron, who serves as the party’s federal foreign policy spokesman, told The European Conservative:

The AfD is the opposition leader in Bavaria. In the state parliament. Halemba would have been the youngest member of parliament to lead the opening session. Now, this news has been replaced by headlines about this political arrest warrant. While one might expect to see the weaponization of the states against the opposition in states like Turkey, it’s shocking to see it happening in Germany.

Bavarian AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner called the proceedings against her colleague an “indictment of our democracy.”

Sven W. Titschler, the deputy chairman of the AfD’s parliamentary group in North Rhine Westphalia compared the Bavarian state’s actions, correctly or incorrectly, to Nazi Germany, writing on Twitter: “Fun fact: The last time German MPs were locked up shortly before the constitution of their parliament was in 1933.”

#FunFact: Das letzte Mal, als deutsche Abgeordnete kurz vor der Konstituierung ihres Parlaments weggesperrt wurden war 1933.#Halemba #Bayern #Landtag #Söder pic.twitter.com/aJJJZzSQkS

— Sven W. Tritschler 🥝💙🇩🇪🗽 (@twittschler) October 30, 2023

Halemba, after having turned himself in on Monday, October 30th, is expected to be brought before a judge the same day. 

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/arrest-warrant-issued-for-afd-bavarian-parliamentarian/

The family of Shani Louk, who were confident that she was one of the 234 Israelis taken to Gaza as hostages, has been informed that she is no longer alive.

The Louk family were convinced that Shani was alive, based on footage which showed her being dragged naked towards Gaza. On Monday morning, they received the bitter news that her body has been partially identified, in a way which does not leave room for doubts regarding her fate.

Shani’s sister, Adi, wrote on Instagram, “With great pain, we announce the death of my sister, Shani Nicole Louk, of blessed memory, who on the seventh of October, 2023, was at the bloody party in Re’im.”

Shani’s cousin Ruthi told Ynet, “Yesterday, we received an official notice from the IDF and ZAKA, with a written letter in which it said that a bone from the base of the skull had been found, which had DNA identical to Shani’s.”

“The doctors have declared that a person cannot live without this bone, and so they have concluded that she is dead. They spoke with two additional experts who confirmed this, as well as with a rabbi.”

Also on Monday morning, the family of Alina Palhati, who has been missing since the Re’im music festival, was informed that her body had been identified.

Shani Louk, previously assumed captive in Gaza, declared dead (israelnationalnews.com)

Vacant properties in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia are being confiscated by the authorities in order to accommodate an influx of migrants to the area, the CDU general secretary for the state has revealed.

“We are confiscating apartments. We are at the end of our capacity there,” Paul Ziemiak told the Markus Lanz talk show on ZDF in response to a question about the asylum crisis in his Iserlohn constituency.

He explained that the municipality of Nachrodt-Wiblingwerde, which he claimed has a “super-committed mayor” and a community “that is committed to refugees,” has been confiscating apartments “in order to create living space so that people are not on the streets.”

Elaborating on the issue, Ziemiak revealed that landlords who had chosen not to rent out second homes in the area were having their properties seized by the authorities and used as refugee accommodation, as social services in the area have become saturated.

“They are empty and they will be confiscated so that people can be accommodated there,” he said.

On the wider asylum issue, the CDU politician criticized the federal government’s current immigration policy, which has left local administrations across Germany at breaking point.

“We can only manage this system if we know there is a limit,” he told the show. “The numbers have to come down. We cannot go on like this.”

Ziemiak echoed a proposal recently put forward by several leading CDU politicians including opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who back in July supported an EU-wide ban for those entering the bloc without permission from applying for asylum.

“They are empty and they will be confiscated so that people can be accommodated there,” he said.

On the wider asylum issue, the CDU politician criticized the federal government’s current immigration policy, which has left local administrations across Germany at breaking point.

“We can only manage this system if we know there is a limit,” he told the show. “The numbers have to come down. We cannot go on like this.”

Ziemiak echoed a proposal recently put forward by several leading CDU politicians including opposition leader Friedrich Merz, who back in July supported an EU-wide ban for those entering the bloc without permission from applying for asylum.

https://rmx.news/germany/vacant-apartments-are-being-confiscated-to-accommodate-migrants-in-germany-prominent-cdu-politician-reveals/

Shani Louk, a 22-year-old German-Israeli woman, who was abducted to the Gaza Strip and paraded naked during Hamas’s 7th October terror attack, was found dead in Gaza, reports quoting the Israeli military said.

On Monday, the members of Louk’s family disclosed that they had received a heartbreaking letter from the Israeli Zaka rescue service, confirming the recovery and identification of a critical bone from the base of her skull, essential for a person’s survival.

“Regrettably, we were informed yesterday that my daughter is no longer with us,” Louk’s mother, Ricarda, conveyed to the German media outlet RTL.

Shani’s sister, Adi, also confirmed Shani’s passing in an Instagram post.

“With deep sorrow, we announce the passing of my sister, Shani Nicole (Z.L. – may her memory be a blessing), who tragically lost her life at the party massacre in Re’im on October 7, 2023.”

As of now, there has been no official confirmation from the German Foreign Ministry, and Shani’s remains have not been repatriated from Gaza.

Her mother first raised alarm after identifying Louk from her distinctive tattoos and dreadlocks while horrifying videos surfaced depicting a partially unclothed body being paraded through the streets in a pickup truck by Palestinian gunmen.

The video surfaced in the wake of the massive terror and on-ground assault on Israel, the streets of Sderot and several border towns of the Jewish-majority nation after Hamas terrorists raided the southern Israeli border. Among one such disturbing visual was the naked and battered dead body of an unidentified woman who was being paraded by the Hamas terrorists in a pickup truck. 

The gruesome video showed terrorists shouting the Islamic slogan ‘Allah Hu Akbar’ while the partially naked body of a woman, later identified as Shani Louk, being paraded in a pickup truck. In some videos that surfaced on social media, a murderous crowd of Hamas terrorists could be seen surrounding the vehicle, chanting slogans and spitting on the woman’s body.

https://www.opindia.com/2023/10/german-israeli-woman-who-was-paraded-naked-by-hamas-terrorists-during-7th-october-attack-dead/

By Jeremy B. Kay

There has long been an assertion, mostly advanced by people who also deny the scope of the Holocaust, that some Jews actually supported the Nazis in the early days.

It is mostly the stuff of anti-Semitic legend, although certainly Jews, like everyone else, did not really see the true dangers of the decades to come. 

I think about these mythical Jews when I view the scenes of protests on city streets and college campuses that are beginning to resemble pogroms and I am stunned to see, among the obvious haters of Jews and Israel, signs proudly announcing that they are Jewish supporters of Hamas, essentially calling for the destruction of their fellow Jews.  The self-loathing, ignorance, and naïveté that is on display is beyond belief.

It is as if a Jew in the early 1920s actually supported the German Workers Party — before they added the National Socialists to their name — because they supported increased old-age pensions (sounds a little like “Social Security”), or better healthcare, or a stronger middle class, political positions of the party all the while ignoring another political statement — number four on the list: “Only those who are our fellow countrymen can become citizens. Only those who have German blood, regardless of creed, can be our countrymen. Hence, no Jew can be a countryman.”

This at a time that Jews in the Weimar Republic had gained an unprecedented freedom and equality and were growing somewhat more prominent in public life.

Paradoxically, or not, the more Jews removed the shackles that restricted them, the more they faced virulent and increasingly open Jew-hatred and discrimination.

Much like today, Jewish parents back then were probably stunned and frightened by what was going on in colleges their children attended. In 1920s Berlin, one headline screamed: “Anti-Semitism among German Students at its Height,” with a student group issuing an “edict” forbidding men from being “generally engaged or mingling with Jewish girls or those suspected of being of Jewish extraction on pain of being forever disgraced among their fellow students.”

Germany’s Jews were often modern, proud, assimilated, but not ignorant. Anti-Semitism reappeared across Europe in the aftermath of World War I.  Poland, Hungary, Austria, Romania, and others all discriminated against Jews as well as attacked them physically. And Jews from Eastern Europe, different in dress and custom — more easily identifiable — steadily migrated to Germany.  If German Jews didn’t experience the hatred directly, they certainly were aware of it; the violence was out in the open.

A shocking riot took place in a Jewish Berlin neighborhood as reported on November 6, 1923: “Howling mobs in all side streets. Looting is going on under cover of darkness. A shoe shop on the corner [a Berlin street] has been ransacked and shattered fragments of glass from the shop are littered on the street.  ‘…clear the street an officer calls. Everyone indoors.’ The crowd moves on slowly. On all sides the same cry: ‘Kill the Jews!’ If anyone with a Jewish appearance walks past, he is followed by a group of youngers who pick their moment and then fall on him.”

Let’s take a moment and consider. How much has really changed in one hundred years? Certainly, one thing is different. Jews now have enemies in their midst, collaborators who know very little history and combine self-hatred with resentment towards America.

Surely, their placards will protect them.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/lessons_from_1920s_germany_and_today.html

Like the sun rising in the morning and Eurostat getting everything utterly wrong, one of the truisms of the EU is that it never wastes a crisis.

Sure enough, the horrors of the past few weeks in the Middle East have provided it with almost exceptional opportunities to accrue more power to the centre and from the Nations, sorry Member States.

So it is no surprise at all that the slaughter of the innocents in the deserts of Judea, has resulted in supercharging the Digital Services Act to harass and bully the major digital platforms. As reported in Brussels Signal, the Commission’s proposals mean that any but the most anodyne references to Hamas might be regarded under the new rules as “hate speech”.

Given the confusion over whether or not to cut aid to the Palestine Authority in the wake of the attacks, this appears nothing if not desperate and dangerous face saving.

The proposals coming out of the Foreign Affairs Council of expelling people – particularly asylum seekers – in a “out of one [Member State], out of all” approach, may at first appear a sensible response to recent terror attacks.

But it is also a direct assault on the ability of individual nation states to decide who they do want, or indeed who they do not want, within their borders. The proposed new expulsion rules, says the Commission, should be mandatory – no nuance, no national view, no doubts, but mandatory.

The current situation makes it almost impossible for countries to defend themselves from people that they, Interpol, and every national security service know are wrong ‘uns. The problem is that today the system is rigged in favour of asylum seekers and against law abiding citizens and the national governments that try to protect them.

So instead of weakening the power of the European Court of Human Rights, the Commission is pressuring the Council and the European Parliament to accept the idea that if one country decides that an asylum seeker is a threat, then all must.

Amongst sovereign nations this would be entirely unnecessary, but with free movement of people the policing of borders is impossible.

This produces situations like the horror show in Belgium, where the murder of the two Swedes was committed by a man, Abdeslam Lassoued, who had been imprisoned in his home country of Tunisia, was suspected of people trafficking and had radical links. Lassoued went to Sweden, where he was imprisoned for serious drug offences, and was sent not back to Tunisia – but to Italy. On appeal he was able to stay as an asylum seeker, rather than be deported back to Tunisia.

So two innocents were murdered in Belgium by someone who had been refused asylum, but disappeared. That the Belgian PM, Alexander de Croo, has said he wants to make expulsion orders “more binding” shows us the humpty dumpty world in which we all live.

Expulsion means, well right now it doesn’t mean anything. And making it compulsory that all countries in the EU abide by one country’s decision is guaranteed to fail. In part, this is a matter of basic practicalities – of the 400,000 immigrants supposedly designated for return to their home countries last year, only 60,000 in fact left.

Of the others, tens of thousands have vanished into the black economies of Europe. Some of these, like those who have come and vanished before, will go on to be terrorists and will kill innocent civilians on European streets.

But the Justice Council, instead of recognising that it is free movement itself that is the problem, has doubled down on demanding that countries take a full part in the EU’s migration pact.

They are delighted that Donald Tusk has won the Polish election, stripping Hungary of an ally against the EU’s demands of migrant burden sharing. But their smiles are freezing to their faces as the realisation that Robert Fico’s new Left-nationalist government in Slovakia has no intention of allowing possible terrorists into the country.

Again we see the problems created by the EU and its ambitions: mass migration, open borders and an activist legal zone that prioritises the interests of migrants over the settled population. These policies have yet again allowed terrorists to enter and move untroubled across the continent.

The EU’s answer is that these problems can only be solved by granting it more powers: more centralisation, a single asylum policy, a single expulsion policy and so on.

However individual nation states are behaving in a way that shows they do not trust the centre to have their citizen’s interests at heart. Ylva Johanssen, the Commissioner for Home Affairs, admitted at the Council that Schengen countries are reinstating border controls in the light of the terror threat – sending her letters to inform her that they have done so.

But she glossed it by saying that it was all being done in a Co-operative manner.

https://brusselssignal.eu/2023/10/from-curbs-on-free-speech-to-centralising-asylum-policy-the-eu-is-leveraging-hamass-assault-on-israel-to-give-itself-more-powers/

A teen girl was suspended from her school in Gosport, United Kingdom, following her refusal to use a gender neutral bathroom and contacting a parent for help. The girl, who attends the Brune Park Community School, told her father she was given the option of either using the unisex facility, or not being allowed to go to the bathroom at all.

Speaking to the News, the father of the girl, who has not been named, reported that his daughter received a 1-day suspension on October 11 in an incident that began with her refusing to use the mixed-sex lavatory.

“A male teacher at my daughter’s school refused her access to a female toilet, giving her an ultimatum to use a unisex toilet or not to go at all,” the father said, outraged. “To add to the problem, my daughter was subsequently suspended because she contacted me to tell me what was going on and refused to hand over her phone.”

The girl had reportedly told her teacher that she felt unsafe using the unisex washroom, and that she had concerns about its hygienic upkeep. While the exact age of the girl is not known, Bune Park’s student body ranges from 11 to 16 years old.

“My daughter now has a suspension on her school record for stating she wanted to use a female toilet because the unisex ones make her feel unsafe and dirty, without so much as a question asked of this teacher,” her father said, adding that while the unisex washrooms are “always open,” the single-sex options are sometimes closed off to students for unknown reasons.

The father said there had never been any issues before with his daughter using female toilets, adding: “I’ve spoken to a lot of other parents who aren’t even aware of the unisex toilets being introduced, let alone male teachers having control over what toilets their sons and daughters can use.

“If a girl wants to use a female toilet she should be able to – especially at a sensitive age when they are going through changes. The same applies for boys, some might be too shy to use a unisex toilet … There is absolutely no excuse in today’s world for a male teacher trained in safeguarding children to refuse a young girl access to a female toilet. There has been no repercussions for the teacher whatsoever, so they can do this again.”

The school declined to comment, instead sending a letter justifying the suspension to the child’s parent.

“The decision to suspend (the child) has not been taken lightly. (She) has been suspended for this fixed period because on October 11 (she) was persistently defiant,” they told the girl’s father.

Issues concerning the introduction of unisex toilets in schools have been persistent over the past year, with many reporting incidents at schools across the United Kingdom.

Earlier this year, a mother in Coventry reported that her 13-year-old daughter had been assaulted in the mixed-sex washrooms at the Caludon Castle School in Wyken.

The mother explained that a teenage boy had kicked the cubicle door open to take photographs of her daughter while she was using the toilet. He kicked the door so hard that it hit the teen in the face, leaving her with marks on her arm and a large cut on her forehead.

The girl had to be taken to hospital after being attacked while using the facilities.

https://reduxx.info/uk-girl-suspended-from-school-after-refusing-to-use-unisex-facilities-calling-parents-for-help/

A woman was the victim of a knife attack in Elange on Thursday October 19. She was chased by her attacker to a shop where she was able to escape and call the police. She asserts that he shouted “Allahu akbar” before the attack. A witness to the scene confirmed the statements of the very shocked victim.

The 20-year-old Italian national, who lives with his brother in the village district, will be brought before the North Moselle court on Monday October 30, after a medical expert has decided whether or not he is a person liable to prosecution. Républicain-Lorrain

https://www.fdesouche.com/2023/10/30/il-a-crie-allah-akbar-a-thionville-57-une-femme-agressee-au-couteau-en-pleine-rue-par-un-ressortissant-italien/

Never has the longtime criticism that Israel’s response to Muslim terrorism been as ghoulishly absurd as it is now

Norway’s prime minister says the Israeli army’s response to the deadly Hamas attack that killed 1,400 people and saw over 230 abducted by terrorists has been disproportionate, and denounces a “catastrophic” humanitarian situation in Gaza.

“International law stipulates that [the reaction] must be proportionate. Civilians must be taken into account, and humanitarian law is very clear on this. I think this limit has been largely exceeded,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store says on NRK public radio.

Turning terrorism into a math problem never made any moral, logical or strategic sense.

How many Arab Muslim women should Israel rape to be proportionate?

How many children should it kidnap and hold hostage?

Wars should be fought and won against military personnel. When terrorists hide behind civilians, then they have to be fought and destroyed. And the civilian casualties are their fault and the fault of those who don’t evacuate.

There is no proportion in fighting an enemy who brutally tortures and massacres your women and children. You utterly defeat and destroy them instead of proportionally trading crimes for crimes and evils for evils until the UN and the prime minister of Norway approve.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/norway-pm-complains-israel-isnt-beheading-and-raping-palestinians/

By Monica Showalter

The Vatican Synod on Synodality is over, the 41-page synthesis (or summary) document is out, and the Catholic Church’s advocates for LGBTQ+ don’t sound as though they got what they wanted:

“The document, as it turns out, does not reflect the fact that the topic of LGBTQ people came up repeatedly in both many table discussions and the plenary sessions, and provoked widely diverging views.” (2/2) #Synod2023

— Christopher Lamb (@ctrlamb) October 28, 2023

It had been going pretty badly for them — as I wrote about in early October.

If the quote is correct (it also appears in the National Catholic Reporter article, which Martin retweeted), Martin probably accidentally violated the Vatican rule on “what happens here stays here” for not discussing the internal Synod process in public. But it’s a useful point for the rest of us to know and it’s helpful that he made it, so I don’t want to be critical. The tone of the discussions there sounded like the tone of discussions from my local Catholic parish in San Diego, led by left-wing Cardinal Robert McElroy, at the local Synods being held there, too. The result is the same: The faithful are more conservative than their leaders.

So they talked and talked about LGBTQ+ and women priests and other changes the far left has been advocating for, and they held a Synod full of bishops, coupled with laity, meaning, based on what was visible in the press — handpicked leftwing activists, short-haired women with theology doctorates, progressive priests, and the Liberation Theology crowd — and they came away empty handed.

Instead of get all they wanted — women priests, gay marriage, married priests, Gaia and Pachamama worship, global warming, and other things you see in the kind of mainstream Protestant churches with empty pews — whoever these faithful were who attended the Synod, merely agreed to find ways to expand Church participation and attendence through “inclusion,” which pretty well opens the door to traditional forms of worship, which is drawing converts. The ‘trads’ as they are known, were excluded from “inclusion” in this gathering, but apparently not everyone there is hostile.

According to Catholic News Service:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A report summarizing discussions at the assembly of the Synod of Bishops said the church may need more welcoming pastoral approaches, especially to people who feel excluded, but also acknowledged fears of betraying traditional church teachings and practices.

Among the topics addressed in the report were clerical sexual abuse, women’s roles in the church, outreach to poor and the concept of “synodality” itself.

The assembly, with 364 voting members — 365 counting Pope Francis — met in working sessions six days a week Oct. 4-28 after a three-day retreat outside of Rome. They were scheduled to join the pope Oct. 29 for the assembly’s closing Mass.

They put this out, and seemed to have a pretty decent consensus:

The assembly’s discussions set the stage for a year-long period of reflection that will culminate in the second and final synod assembly in late 2024 on the same topic.

The 41-page synthesis report, voted on paragraph-by-paragraph Oct. 28, described its purpose as presenting “convergences, matters for consideration and proposals that emerged from the dialogue” on issues discussed under the headings of synodality, communion, mission and participation.

Every item in the report was approved by at least two-thirds of the members present and voting, synod officials said. They published the results of each vote.

  And they didn’t mention gays:

The synthesis report did not use the term “LGBTQ+” or even “homosexuality” and spoke only generally of issues related to “matters of identity and sexuality.”

Which, realistically, they shouldn’t — gays go by the same rules as non-gays in Church doctrine, so to single them out seems a bit precious. To be really serious about ‘inclusiveness’ for gays, gays (etc.) shouldn’t be singled out as something different from the rest of us. And in reality, nobody is. Nobody is being excluded from the Church for being gay. They are just excluded from the same acts the rest of us are excluded from doing, so yeah, that’s inclusive.

What it shows is that the Church faithful think a lot of this social change being foisted upon the Church is pretty irrelevant stuff. Church people are more concerned about morality, about community, about empty pews, about young people leaving the Church, and about how to make themselves closer to God. The gay stuff and women priests stuff is special interest group politics and trendy wokesterism, and since the press won’t shut up about it, it’s boring as heck. They’d rather focus on the life of the whole Church, not divvy it up into special classes of ‘oppressed.’

What it ultimately means is that maybe if they got rid of the wokesterism, they wouldn’t have the empty pews problem.

In any case, Pope Francis didn’t have much to say about this after his earlier statements that there weren’t going to be any women priests, which heartened a lot of the faithful. He said goodbye and bade them on their way, possibly sharing the disappointment of the progressives, but obviously knowing how

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/vatican_synod_leaves_lgbtq_advocates_and_other_leftists_empty_handed.html