After winning praise at the COP 28 UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai for announcing €173 million in donations to multilateral climate funds, France’s President Macron has drawn criticism for “backtracking” on his environmental pledges at home.
Macron has been ambitious internationally in pushing for climate goals but, at home, he is constrained by budget deficits and opposition from French farmers, despite his protestations at December’s UN meeting in the Middle East.
In 2018, the UN named him a “Champion of the Earth” when he said there was “no Planet B” and, in 2022, he promised his second term would be “environmentally friendly or bust”.
A draft energy bill set to go to France’s Cabinet in February has drawn criticism for dropping any targets for solar and wind power and other renewables.
Environmental journalist Juliette Portala, who has written for Clean Energy Wire among others, said France “continues to lag behind its European neighbours when it comes to the rollout of renewables”.
The country, therefore, “now faces financial penalties for not taking any measures to make up for the 2020 gap towards its renewables target”, she added.
France’s Réseau Action Climat (Climate Action Network) posted on X that dropping a target for renewables was “regrettable” because “the challenge is to replace fossil fuel consumption as soon as possible”.
Nuclear power forms the basis of Macron’s draft bill but renewables “have a potential for faster deployment than nuclear”, added the climate body.
On the fossil-fuel side, France “was also found to be Europe’s largest supporter of major oil, gas and coal extraction projects”, Portal said.
In September last year, Macron pushed back closing France’s last coal power plants – originally scheduled for 2022 – to 2027.
This was despite the President previously urging other leaders at the May G7 summit to “commit to ending coal” before 2030.
“Macron must first sweep in front of his own doorstep,” wrote Greenpeace France on X.
Macron’s coalition currently polls 9 percentage points behind Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, which has seen environmental policy and immigration as a “wedge issue” to attract rural and suburban voters.
Le Pen has preferred “localism” and “common-sense ecology” to unpopular moves to change French people’s lifestyles and consumption patterns, while describing the “green” agenda as “the fight against humans”.
In this context, Macron has in recent months backed away from a number of his greener policies.
In May, the Government said it would prohibit short domestic flights for journeys that would take fewer than two and a half hours by train.
This ban has since been limited only to routes offering a direct train service running several times a day.
Macron also in May called for a “regulatory pause” in European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Green Deal, saying Europe had “done more than most industrial powers” and now “needed stability”.
In September, the French Government said it would “no longer pursue” a ban on fossil-fuel heaters and would instead rely on incentives rather than coercion to move France towards more environmentally-friendly systems.
In December, it similarly discarded a planned reduction in motorway speed limits from 120kph to 110kph.
Macron’s environmental record may be perceived as somewhat better on less controversial matters, such as waste management.
Ceri Davies, a policy consultant in Wales who works on environment and renewables policy, told Brussels Signal: “E-waste is a big problem,” and Macron has been successful in “reducing it, encouraging longer use, recycling”.
Macron has “supported the end user rather than intermediaries,” thus “encouraging wider behaviour change in the population rather than higher up”, Davies added.
Still, on the issue of carbon emissions, renewables and fossil fuels, campaigners previously used to seeing the Élysée Palace incumbent as an ally in their fight against climate change now accuse Macron of “selling out”.
Independent bodies within his own Government agree that, to meet the EU’s carbon emissions targets, France will need to do more in the next seven years than it has in the past 33.
The country will struggle to meet its EU commitments for a 55 per cent reduction from 1990 levels of CO2 emissions by 2030, said the independent French governmental body Haut Conseil pour le Climat (High Council for the Climate).
Outside Government, campaigners are more frank; Greenpeace France called Macron’s record in office on climate change “une catastrophe”.
The political adage “If you cannot beat them, join them” has been well-known for centuries. So, the Left made one extra step and arrived at the “if you cannot beat them, lead them.” The Left has been trying (unsuccessfully) various methods to eliminate capitalists and private property.
Eventually, Leftists learned their lesson and decided to preside over private property instead of confiscating and spreading it around. Lenin used it (the so-called “New Economic Policy” in the Soviet Union 1921-1928), Mussolini used it, Hitler used it, and the Chinese used it. It blatantly violates a well-demarcated borderline between the government and the governed. However, by now, it is the cornerstone of globalism.
Note that the systematic and deliberate infiltration of the state into private economic affairs did not begin with Mussolini. In 17th-century France, for example, Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu established state-sponsored and state-directed cartels. That resulted in public-private entities that were granted monopoly status in their respective fields. Richelieu aimed not to build a proto-fascist state per se; his cravings were more down-to-earth: France had a war to win. (The following definitions are used: “Socialism is a state of society where most wealth, either de jure or de facto, belongs to a government. Fascism is a form of Socialism where most wealth de facto but not de jure belongs to a government.)
Nevertheless, Cardinal Richelieu deployed state power to consolidate state power even more. His offer to the French merchants was one they could not refuse: guaranteed profits under the protection of the state or guaranteed imprisonment at the Bastille.
The resultant economic landscape in France in the middle of the 17th century comprised numerous stable, privately-owned cartels controlled directly or indirectly by the government. Nevertheless, it did strengthen and consolidate French economic power, especially concerning rivals — the Habsburgs and England. However, the other side of the same coin was unavoidable — the government-chartered monopolies, insulated by the state from external competition, pressed the brakes on innovations. In the end, Cardinal Richelieu led the Habsburgs to bankruptcy and France to the dominant power on the European continent.
England and her colonies were provided more economic freedom during the same period. That sealed the fate of two revolutions at the end of the 18th century. The French had no choice but to continue their Left turn. On the other hand, the thirteen overseas British colonies turned Right.
The story of the proto-fascist policies of Richelieu demonstrates the theme observable in all future left-wing economies: a short-term boost in economic activity due to crushing, inescapable state intervention, and then, in the long run, unavoidable decline and stagnation. As it is known, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Cuba, Venezuela, and the entire Soviet bloc post-World War II followed this course. The demise of Communist China is inevitable for the same reason. A similar fate is awaiting the Davos Oracles of “stakeholder capitalism.” From that outlook, all four of Dumas’s three musketeers were the first proto-anti-fascists.
State-managed “stakeholder capitalism” was known in the 1600s as mercantilism. To use 21st-century terminology, Cardinal Richelieu established a form of stakeholder capitalism in France, where the government served as the only principal stakeholder.
Karl Schwab publicizes “the third way,” “stakeholder capitalism,” as the ultimate solution. His “capitalism” must be quoted because it corresponds to free-market capitalism in only the remotest sense. Note that National Socialists of the Third Reich also run under the banner (or, rather, the smokescreen) of “the third way.” Schwab is painfully aware that “the stakeholder concept competed head-on with Friedman’s notion that ‘the business of business is business’—and it ultimately lost out.”
There are no surprises here. Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism” is just a reformulated branch of leftism, rebranded for the 21st century, commonly known as Fascism. Of course, it is not a replica of 20th-century Fascism; it has been updated and modified to incorporate “climate change,” digital technologies, and the pandemic, and has expanded global outreach. “Planet’s health” becomes the central stakeholder in the global economic system.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 provided conclusive evidence of the unsustainable character of the socialist economy. With its fall, progressive intellectuals were forced to find a new source of inspiration and income, with the latter being their primary concern. Therefore, the myths conceived by the previous generation of leftists had to be revised so that “global cooling” quickly turned into “global warming.” As for the new source of income, the international Left panicked for many years until it realized that its quintessential enemy — capitalism — could be exerted to combat capitalism.
From that account, the WEF’s ascendance as the international Left’s de facto leader directly resulted from the Soviet Union’s crash of 1991. The WEF was founded in 1971 under the name of the European Management Forum when cracks in the Soviet Union became an open secret. Shortly after, a campaign began to rehabilitate corporatism. By the time of renaming the European Management Forum into the World Economic Forum in 1987, the term “neo-corporatism” had sufficiently emasculated from any links to old corporatism/fascism.
Despite this, the organization went unnoticed for over two decades, remaining in the shadow of more powerful socialist organizations. The tool the WEF used to win the international socialist race was not its invention: they just modernized the old 1930s Leftist “guaranteed profits” thesis of getting political power from the semi-educated by utilizing control mechanisms instead of ownership redistribution. Thus, the evolution of the WEF runs in parallel with the revival of corporatism.
By the second Obama presidential term, the WEF had decisively won the evolutionary struggle with fellow left-wing peers. Davos became the ecumenical council of the New Left Caliphate, and the race for Assets Under Management was catapulted to the top leftist strategies. Davos is where the blossoming romance between the rich and the left-wing beau monde happens.
The Davos gatherings are a microcosm of what the Left has in mind for the rest of the world. Davosians cling to one of the strictest caste societies, indicated by the color of their badges. Meritocratic considerations do not solely determine the ranking of these individuals in the WEF hierarchy. The color ranking in Davos is loosely based on a person’s position in the outer world. However, like all other left-wing movements, the actual hierarchy in the WEF strictly adheres to inner-Davos priorities — the distance from the party Führer.
The Alpine resort town of Davos has emerged as a symbol of modern anti-capitalism, but that is only half true. Indisputably, Davos has been propelled to the top of Left Imperialism executives and become the de facto Olympus of left-wing half-men-half-gods. They genuinely believe they have found the cornucopia and met Goddess Abundantia, who has changed her name to State.
Almost half of all illegal border crossings into the European Union last year were from citizens of non-warring sub-Saharan African nations, the EU’s border agency Frontex has revealed.
In a report published on Tuesday, Frontex wrote it had recorded a “noticeable increase in African migrants, particularly from West Africa, who now represent nearly half (47 percent) of all detected migrants.”
Irregular border crossings into the European Union increased in 2023 by 17 percent over the previous year, with 380,000 recorded cases. This is a conservative estimate and does not account for those who evaded the authorities to enter the bloc.
The figure is the highest since the migration crisis of 2016 and continues the upward trend in recorded cases over the past three years.
The nations from which the most illegal migrants originated were Syria, Guinea, and Afghanistan, comprising 37 percent of all irregular border crossings.
The most traveled migratory route last year was the Central Mediterranean corridor from North Africa to Italy — a total of 157,479 migrants were recorded embarking on this journey, up 49 percent from 2022.
The Western African migratory route — where migrants typically depart from Senegal to the Spanish Canary Islands — experienced the sharpest rise, an increase of 161 percent, as 40,403 migrants landed on the archipelago.
Frontex also noted that the number of migrants claiming to be “unaccompanied minors” had increased by 28 percent compared to the previous year, totaling more than 20,000 minors in 2023.
The Western Balkans route into Hungary experienced less traffic last year with a 31 percent drop; however, 99,068 migrants were still recorded using this path to breach the EU’s external border.
“The numbers presented today show the evolving challenges we face in managing the EU’s external borders,” said Frontex Executive Director Hans Leijtens.
“We remain committed to ensuring the security and integrity of the EU’s borders,” he added.
What seems to have created the current chaos is the well-meaning but calamitously unthinking jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), combined with the disastrous “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”) of Germany’s then Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The ECHR’s extreme interpretation of “open borders” hinders the development of a workable asylum policy. Pictured: An inside view of the ECHR, in Strasbourg, France., Wikimedia Commons, Adrian Grycuk, CC-BY-SA-3.0-PL
In New York, as in the Belgian parliament, you can meet more and more people who are convinced that the Islamization of Brussels — and London and other capitals, they often add — is now inevitable and only a matter of time.
The growth of the Muslim population in Brussels has been both enormous and meteoric. Over the past 50 years, the number of Muslims has grown steadily, and given the erasure of Europe’s borders, thanks to the 1985 Schengen Agreement, there seems to be no end in sight.
The figures
As many countries in Europe do not designate people by race or ethnicity, figures are not easy to establish. If we want to remain scientific and factual, it is not by noting the popularity of the first name Mohamed. The last reliable study on the number of Muslims, unfortunately, was done by Prof Jan Hertogen, dates from 2015/2016, and has been adopted by the US State Department. According to that study, the percentage of Muslims in Brussels in 2015 was 24% of the population. More recent figures have been provided by the Pew Research Center, but only for Belgium as a whole, without details by city. In another, 2016 poll, 29% of Brussels residents claimed to be Muslim. Looking at the growth curve, we can estimate that the percentage of Muslims now in Brussels is likely to be slightly beyond 30%.
These figures obviously are not evidence of a Muslim majority in Brussels – or anything near it – at least for now – although birth rates still remain higher for Muslims than for “native” Belgian women.
Immigration
So far, Brussels is not predominantly Muslim. Immigration is not, like gravity, an immutable fact. Across Europe, with the exception of Wallonia, we are witnessing an awakening of the population and the rise to power of parties and personalities seeking zero immigration, or at least a moratorium on immigration.
Despite the claims of many that in Europe, immigration is inevitable, there may be nothing necessarily inevitable about it. What seems to have created the current chaos is the well-meaning but calamitously unthinking jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), combined with the disastrous “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”) of Germany’s then Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The ECHR’s extreme interpretation of “open borders” hinders the development of a workable asylum policy.
In 2012, the ECHR introduced the “Hirsi ruling,” named after the legal case of Hirsi Jamaa and Others v. Italy. This ruling asserts that European states are legally obligated to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, even if they are just 200 meters from the Libyan coast, and transport them to a European port, allowing these individuals to claim refugee status. When the Italian Navy intercepted illegal migrants in the Mediterranean and returned them to Libya, the ECHR not only condemned Italy for what it considered an “evident” violation of human rights but also required the Italians to pay 15,000 euros ($17,000 at the time) to each of these illegal migrants as compensation for “moral damage.” This amount is equivalent to more than 10 years of income in the home countries of Mr. Hirsi Jamaa and his companions, Somalia and Eritrea, and most probably the reason they wanted to come to Europe in the first place. (In 2016, Somalia’s GDP per capita was estimated at $400, and Eritrea’s at $1,300.)
The Hirsi ruling became widely known, particularly in Africa, leading many to understand that if they could just reach the Mediterranean, European navies would now be obligated to transport them directly to Europe. Before the Hirsi ruling, individuals attempting to reach European shores each year faced tragic deaths at sea – sometimes in the hundreds. After Hirsi, the goal of many migrants shifted to being intercepted and rescued. Consequently, literally millions of people now make this journey, often with the assistance of non-governmental organizations, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), whose activists wait for boats near the Libyan coast.
Immigration is not a natural disaster that befalls Europe, like a plague of locusts or a drought. The migration chaos we are experiencing in Europe is purely a human catastrophe, caused by dreamy policies and faceless judges who are accountable to no one.
The migrants already here are here, but further mass influxes of migrants, such as many countries are experiencing, can be stopped the day after tomorrow by neutralising the ECHR — simply by opting out of it. It will be interesting to see what Dutch MP Geert Wilders brings to the Netherlands. He may have watered down his most extreme views, but still might want to end the flow of migrants to his beautiful country. In any event, leaving the ECHR is at least one option.
The European Union, by the way, and the Council of Europe — on which the European Court of Human Rights depends — are two distinct international organizations. The Netherlands could leave the Council of Europe, if they wished, while remaining a member of the EU.
The temptation to prejudge
The massive settlement of Muslim populations in Europe — 57 million people by 2050, as projected by the Pew Research Center — is being experienced dramatically by attacks on civilians, harassment of civilians, no-go-zones with inhabitants who appear not to wish to assimilate, and outspoken concern that a significant proportion of the newcomers are, or are becoming, radicalized.
This new sentiment in Europe could be seen long before the current Israel-Hamas war, with the proselytization of these new Europeans by programs from the Middle East (such as here and here). In Belgium, anti-Semitic prejudice is reportedly more widespread among Muslims. Pro-Palestinian marches since October 7 have all too often been the pretext for raw anti-Semitic slogans not seen since Nazi rallies in the 1930s and 1940s. In France, sadly, the vast majority of anti-Semitic acts and attacks have apparently been committed by Muslims.
In London, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to his great credit, condemned the “Hamas sympathisers” who joined these demonstrations and were “singing antisemitic chants and brandishing pro-Hamas signs and clothing”.
We all, however, must guard against the temptation to oversimplify and prejudge – a tendency that appears widespread. Although Islam is a religion, with laws and a doctrine like other religions, one cannot, however, leave it in the same way as one might leave socialism, environmentalism or Catholicism. In Islamic law, apostasy can be punishable by death.
Additionally, many Muslims in Europe feel an intensity about Islam that we do not feel about our Judeo-Christian tradition. Often, we even seem — dangerously — to take it for granted and risk throwing it away. Many Muslims, conversely, appear to take for granted that wherever they are should be Islamic. To many Muslims, Islam appears to be “very important” in their life. To many in the West, religion is not necessarily “very important,” but often somewhere in the periphery, except perhaps during the high holidays. Many Muslims also seem have the conviction, that the world should bend to Islam, not the other way around.
If, then, we assume Islam is an immovable and timeless concept that disregards all other factors and dominates all considerations, we are just reaffirming the mindset of Islamists. Perhaps it is important to remember that over time, nothing remains unchangeable.
To think now that Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Antwerp will inevitably become Islamic is to promise victory in advance. It is defeatist thinking, which Winston Churchill, in his six-volume series, The Second World War, describedas more threatening than all the Nazi divisions put together.
Tolerating the representatives of Islamist terrorism
One of the elements that lends credence to the idea of an “Islamist Brussels” — or anyplace– is the astonishing tolerance shown by the Belgian authorities towards representatives and individuals linked to Islamist terrorist organisations. For example, The London Times recently revealed:
“A British man has been accused by the German authorities of being Hamas’s key liaison in Europe with numerous alleged links to the terrorist organisation… Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, names Al-Zeer as the ‘person responsible for Hamas’ in Germany and across Europe.”
Al-Zeer has an office in Brussels that enables him to directly monitor events at the European Commission. According to a December 2023 report by 7sur7, Al-Zeer is the “real boss” of a non-profit association called EUPAC, which describes itself as the “European Palestinian Council for Political Relations”.
According to Laatste Nieuws, Al-Zeer, aged 61, is from Bethlehem, and fled to Kuwait with his family at the age of six during Israel’s Six Day War. In the 1990s, he settled in Britain, becoming an influential Palestinian activist, already, at the time, linked to Hamas.
According to The Times, in 2009, in an interview with Felesteen, a newspaper affiliated with Hamas, he spoke about a relative who had joined the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedin Al-Qassam Brigades.
In London, Al-Zeer was reportedly one of the founders of the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), a pressure group set up in 1996 to defend the “right of return” of all refugees to “Palestine.” In 2018, Germany’s internal security agency, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, described the PRC as a Hamas front organisation and a “central propaganda organisation for Hamas in Europe”, used by Hamas and its supporters in Germany and Europe for their activities. A photograph dating from 2008 shows Al-Zeer alongside Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, and another picture from 2015 shows him alongside Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
“A file from the German interior ministry, first reported by magazine Der Spiegel, named Al-Zeer as the ‘person responsible for Hamas’ in Germany and across Europe.”
EUPAC has other members close to Hamas, including the second and third members of its organisational chart — Mazen Kahel and Omar Faris — who have held senior positions in the PRC. One of them Mazen Kahel was also a co-founder of the Council for Euro-Palestinian Relations, a non-profit organisation based in Brussels, founded in 2010 and dissolved in 2016, but was on the European Union’s official list of pressure groups.
EUPAC, which also appears to be dedicated to lobbying, has its official headquarters on Place Robert Schuman in Brussels, overlooking the European Commission’s Berlaymont building — a perfect symbol of the Belgian authorities’ appalling laxity.
Islam and Islamism as a totalitarian ideology can be defeated. With its policy of open borders, Europe has taken the path of submission. The freedom of movement of Hamas’s “key liaison” in Europe is the ultimate symptom of this submission. A moratorium on immigration might be a good place to start.
A 32-year-old man from Stéphanois, who was convicted of robbery as a minor, has spent almost half of his life in prison. He had managed to reintegrate until this nightmare evening: a shot from a sawn-off shotgun, the communal rooms of a block of flats were vandalised, knives were lying all over the flat…
“A jihadist in your living room”.
The prosecutor suddenly became less unruffled. “And you have no problem saying that, sir, and for good reason. The defendant had just explained to the judges of the criminal court, without blushing, that he had become angry that evening because his car had been stolen. The 32-year-old man from Stéphanois has already been convicted eighteen times, including several times for theft involving weapons.
[…]
The prison sentence will be adjusted ab initio, he will not go back to prison. To explain his alcoholisation to the judges, the man from Stéphanois mentioned his car. “I loved it very much. I wanted to drink to its health”. Le Progrès
Following a week of farmer uprisings across Germany, disaffected farmers rose up in protest against the globalist government of Emmanuel Macron in France, with manure being dumped and hay set on fire in Avignon and Toulouse on Tuesday.
A veritable peasants’ revolt appears to be budding across the continent as overregulation, inflation and the green agenda are taking their toll on the ability of farmers to earn a living in — and consequently feed the people of — modern Europe. The latest protests to crop up in France came over the low payout from supermarket chains to food producers.
Sings hung on tractors read: “No farmers, no food,” and: “France, do you still want your farmers?” the local La Provence newspaper reported. Footage posted by video journalist Clement Lanot on X showed farmers dumping mature, agricultural waste and even wine on the streets of the city, while some set bales of hay ablaze to express their anger.
Brief clashes also broke out as farmers attempted to break into a chain supermarket, which they claim has been price gouging their produce and keeping the increased revenues to themselves.
An estimated 450 tractors and other vehicles in three convoys also rode into the city of Toulouse on Tuesday, with manure and straw being strewn across the city as well, Le Figaro reported.
The president of the Young Farmers of Vaucluse Audrey Piazza told broadcaster France 3 that “the consumer, if he pays 3 euros per kilo of apples, the producer will receive 30 or 40 cents.”
“I understand that there are intermediaries but at some point, perhaps we should stop leaving us crumbs and allow us to live on our own production. This is where the Egalim law should come into play,” he added.
The Egalim law, which was passed by the French National Assembly last year, attempted to increase the power of farmers in annual negotiations between producers and large retailers on the price of commodities. However, the unions protesting in Avignon on Tuesday claimed that so far the legislation has utterly failed in meaningfully increasing the amount of money received by farmers.
“The Egalim law should protect us but that is not what is happening at all, said Sophie Vache, the president of the National Federation of Agricultural Operators’ Unions of Vaucluse. “We are fed up. The stacking of regulations and everything added means that today we can’t take it anymore and we have to go out into the street.”
Florian Arnoux, a farmer from Caderousse said that amid years of inflation and rising costs, there has been little consideration given to the economic realities faced by farmers, saying: “It’s anger, it’s the fatigue of so many years of work for nothing… We always exhaust ourselves so much for nothing.”
French farmers have been protesting against the interference of the state in their ability to farm for many years, but these latest protests in Avignon come after a week of large-scale farmer civil disobedience in Germany, where farmers shut down major highways and cities after the left-wing government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced in December that it would be eliminating seven-decade-old tax exemptions on agricultural fuel to fill a gap in the federal budget, while at the same time increasing funding for the war in Ukraine.
Farmers throughout Europe have also increasingly become the vanguard in opposing the green agenda imposed by the EU, notably in the Netherlands where farmers have long staged mass tractor protests in response to attempts by the government to shut down thousands of farms to comply with environmental regulations from Brussels.
The Dutch protests led to the formation of the populist Farmer–Citizen Movement party, which became the largest provincial power and the top party in the Netherlands senate last year and is likely to become a coalition partner of the presumptive government of Geert Wilders.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a passionate and inspiring voice for freedom, shared a letter he wrote to Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics with The Gateway Pundit.
In his letter, Archbishop Viganò shares the challenges facing society and the worldwide coup d’état being attempted by global elites.
Read his message:
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò Shares Powerful Message He Sent to Participants of “Medical Doctors for Covid Ethics International” Meeting via @gatewaypundithttps://t.co/hDRLYWFfz2
“Truth is being squashed.” “Deviation from the norm is to be punished.” “You’re being manipulated.” Laura Dodsworth & behavioural scientist Patrick Fagan are co-authors of the excellent new book: Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and How to Resist It. Book description: “There is a war on for your mind. You may not notice, but you are surrounded by manipulators: advertisers, politicians, big tech, even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’ “Free Your Mind is your field manual to surviving the information battlefield. In this indispensable book, Laura Dodsworth and Patrick Fagan draw on interviews with mind-control experts ranging from monks to magicians, infiltrate cults and forums to uncover their most deceptive techniques and expose the hidden tactics used to influence you, from social media to subliminal messages. “Learn how to recognise the nudges, dispel efforts to brainwash you and always question those who say the choice is yours. If you don’t control your mind, someone else will.” This is a clip from their longer #NCFWhittle interview. To which the full interview please click here: https://youtu.be/bQjhvncR5UU?si=zeth_… To order the book please click here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Your-Mi…
An academic who was forced to resign from a criminal justice assistant professorship after defending the “dignity” of “minor attracted people” has now published a paper accusing critics of gender ideology of engaging in a “moral panic.” Allyn Walker, a female-to-male transgender who identifies as non-binary, had once entertained theories about giving pedophiles “high quality child pornography” to stop offending.
Walker’s new paper, titled “Transphobic discourse and moral panic convergence: a content analysis of my hate mail,” was published by the journal Criminology in autumn of 2023 and incorporated outraged e-mails Walker had received as content.
“Recently, new social anxieties about transgender people have begun to emerge, framed as an issue of ‘grooming’—a term typically used in the context of child sexual abuse,” reads the paper’s abstract. “In this way, moral panic about transgender people seems to be merging with oft-repeated social fears about pedophilia.”
Walker first made headlines in November 2021 after she participated in an interview with activist group Prostasia – a registered 503c which has been called “pro-pedophile” for its advocacy towards legalizing child-like sex dolls, and for routinely comparing pedophilia to a sexual orientation.
She was invited by the organization to discuss her book titled “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity,” in which she features the perspectives of 42 individuals who describe themselves as having pedophilic desires. According to Walker, “a large takeaway from my book was that public stigma against MAPs can inadvertently increase child sexual abuse by discouraging those at risk of offending from seeking help.”
"I think we believe societally, that stigma against MAPs serves to protect children because we don’t fully understand the differences between MAPs and sex offenders. Again, we have this confusion between the attraction and a criminal behavior." https://t.co/62YZGg9tbYpic.twitter.com/pPwEOjJUCo
In the interview with Prostasia, Walker stated that she prefers to use the term “minor attracted people” out of consideration for the feelings of those who wish to sexually abuse children, noting “… I think it’s important to use terminology for groups that members of that group want others to use for them.”
She further stated that “MAP advocacy groups like B4U-Act have advocated for use of the term, and they’ve advocated for it primarily because it’s less stigmatizing than other terms like pedophile.” B4U-Act was founded in 2003 by convicted child rapist Michael Melsheimer for the explicit purposes of normalizing pedophilia as a sexuality and distracting from safeguarding efforts.
In Melsheimer’s own words, he wanted to ensure B4U-Act was never associated with the “prevention of offending.” Melsheimer died in 2010, but is considered a respected member of the “boy love community” to this day. Surprisingly, Walker appears to be unaware of B4U-Act’s history and has argued that increased acceptance of individuals with pedophilic desires should be promoted as a strategy to prevent sexual abuse.
“Using a term that communicates who someone is attracted to doesn’t indicate anything about the morality of that attraction,” Walker told Prostasia. “From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they’re attracted to at all.”
As news of Walker’s interview went viral, copies of Walker’s PhD dissertation quickly began to circulate, showing Walker had entertained theories regarding allowing pedophiles to access “high quality child pornography” in belief it may reduce offending, stating, “Child pornography as a harm reduction technique has previously been theorized to be a potential strategy for MAPs to maintain abstinence from sexual contact with children.”
In order to argue that outrage over both MAP activism and gender identity ideology constitutes a “moral panic convergence,” Walker’s most recent paper presents a content analysis of 231 letters and e-mails she received after the wider public became aware of her advocacy work on behalf of self-identified pedophiles.
“The information contained in my hate mail can help us further understand anti-queer and anti-transgender attitudes in our current era, as well as how media can blur the boundaries between multiple moral panics, converging them together,” Walker writes, before highlighting some of the most vitriolic examples of e-mails she had received.
Though some messages were littered with anti-gay slurs and vulgar language, referring to Walker as a “pervert,” “pedo,” and a “child molester,” others took a more rational approach. One e-mail, allegedly written by a survivor of sexual abuse, asked for university officials to investigate Walker’s research.
“I would respectfully ask that you look into the university’s relationship with Dr Walker. Dr Walker’s rhetoric, while on the surface is said to have the intention of making it easier to identify and prevent child sexual abuse, I think it is a dangerous blur to a clear moral line of right and wrong,” the e-mail reads.
“I would encourage this research to continue, but I am concerned that Dr Walker’s past life, personal choice to go against the biological nature of our species has biased Dr Walker’s perspective. This bias has caused Dr Walker to normalize a mental state of mind that is not constructive. This research should be conducted from someone who has a track record of mental stability, not from someone who has accepted falsehoods as truth. While I deeply care about individuals, I also deeply am against untruthful ideas.”
According to Walker, “the desire to see my employment end was a major theme within my data.” Critics called for Walker to resign or to have her position in academia terminated: “much of the mail I received containing this theme was from people who indicated that my employment in academia was generally inappropriate.” Indeed, on November 24 2021, Old Dominion University President Brian O. Hemphill released a statement responding to the outcry in which he announced that Walker had been placed on administrative leave.
Walker’s rejection from the world of academia did not last long, however; the following May, the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at Johns Hopkins announced their decision to employ her as a postdoctoral fellow.
We are excited to share that Allyn Walker, PhD, will be joining the Moore Center as a postdoctoral fellow on May 25.
— Moore Center for Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse (@MooreCenter_JHU) May 12, 2022
While Walker’s views were being lambasted by the media, director of the Moore Center Elizabeth Letourneau published an op-ed in The Washington Post defending her. In the op-ed, Letourneau states she also prefers ‘minor attracted person’ to ‘pedophile.’
The Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse is affiliated with the John Hopkins medical establishment, which has a long history of endorsing theories related to child sexuality in addition to promoting transsexual surgeries.
John Money, who has been credited with coining the term “gender identity,” was a sexologist and psychologist who founded the Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins University in 1966 and started an extensive research program on the medical treatment of sexual paraphilias and on “sex reassignment” procedures.
In the 1990s, Money was interviewed by Paidika, a pedophile psychology journal named after the Greek adjective for “boyish,” and has been used by pedophile rights activists to refer to the younger partner in a pederastic relationship.
An MP in New Zealand has resigned after facing a series of shoplifting allegations.
Golriz Ghahraman (photo), a representative of the Green Party, is accused of stealing from high-end boutiques on at least three occasions.
The Iranian-born politician and human rights lawyer made history as the first refugee in the island nation’s parliament in 2017.
Since being elected, she was under particular pressure due to “continuous threats of sexual violence, physical violence and death threats”, co-party leader, James Shaw, said.
In a statement, Ms Ghahraman did not address the specific allegations but blamed mental health issues and work stress for causing her to behave “completely out of character”.
“I am not trying to excuse my actions, but I do want to explain them,” Ms Ghahraman said.
“The mental health professional I see says my recent behaviour is consistent with recent events giving rise to extreme stress response, and relating to previously unrecognised trauma.
“People should, rightly, expect the highest standards of behaviour from their elected representatives.
“I fell short. I’m sorry.
Advertisement “It’s not a behaviour I can explain because it’s not rational in any way, and, after medical evaluation, I understand I’m not well.”
Police investigating – as Green leaders support resignation
The politician is said to have shoplifted from Scotties Boutique in Ponsonby, Auckland, and Cre8iveworkz in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington.
New Zealand Police said in a statement that they were investigating the alleged incident at Scotties Boutique, which happened in December, but did not give further details.
They did not confirm the incident involved Ms Ghahraman.
An incident on 23 December last year is being investigated, according to the New Zealand Herald.
The outgoing MP has thanked staff at the Scotties store for their “kindness and empathy”.
In a joint statement, Mr Shaw and co-leader, Marama Davidson, backed Ms Ghahraman’s decision to step down.
“Green MPs are expected to maintain high standards of public behaviour,” they said.
“It is clear to us that Ms Ghahraman is in a state of extreme distress. She has taken responsibility and apologised.
