Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski has signed an order banning the display of religious symbols such as the Christian cross in public buildings. The move is said to be driven by a desire to combat discrimination.
“Warsaw is the first city in Poland to adopt such a measure,” Monika Beuth, the spokeswoman for mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, told daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
Under the rules, crosses cannot be hung on walls, something that is common in Poland, a country in which Catholics are a majority. Staff also cannot display religious symbols on their desks, and all official events are to be secular in nature, so they should not include any kind of prayer. Officials will still be able to wear medallions and other jewelry featuring images of saints. They do not have to cover religious tattoos either.
Trzaskowski’s move seems to be in answer to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s 2021 call for the removal of crosses from public buildings. The Polish mayor is the likely presidential candidate for Tusk’s Civic Coalition.
Officials in Warsaw are also now required to respect the choice of pronouns favored by someone they are dealing with. “In the case of a transgender person whose appearance may differ from stereotypical ideas related to gender recorded in official documents, address him or her with the name or gender pronouns that he or she indicates,” reads the document. A non-binary person should be asked for their preferred pronouns.
The measures have been criticized by figures associated with the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) opposition.
Tobiasz Bocheński, who unsuccessfully stood as the PiS candidate against Trzaskowski in last month’s local elections, called the mayor “a fanatical leftist ideologue who is trying to introduce extreme leftist ideology to Warsaw, contrary to the legal order and customs prevailing in Poland.”
Krzyż nikogo nie obraża. Chrześcijaństwo jest fundamentem – obok prawa rzymskiego i filozofii greckiej – cywilizacji zachodniej. Katolicyzm jest nieodłącznie związany z polską kulturą i tożsamością. Kościół wypełniał misje nie tylko eschatologiczne, ale również patriotyczne. To…
Former PiS government spokesman and MP Piot Muller said that the mayor of Warsaw was threatening religious freedom and attempting to enforce new cultural norms in the capital city, with the cross being the first target for removal.
Former deputy culture minister Jarosław Sellin said, “These are the effects of electing extreme leftists to power. Trzaskowski formally is a deputy leader of a party that is part of a Christian Democratic movement, what an irony. I always have a cross on the desk in my office, which means that I could no longer work in Poland’s capital city.”
The mayor of Warsaw himself answered his critics by saying that “Poland is a secular state and Warsaw is its capital.”
Każdy ma prawo do swojej wiary (lub jej braku). Także urzędnicy i urzędniczki. A każdy, kto przychodzi do urzędu załatwić swoją sprawę, ma prawo czuć się jak w neutralnym urzędzie. Po prostu.
Nie dajmy się zwariować. Nikt nie zamierza prowadzić w Warszawie walki z jakąkolwiek…
He argued that although “everyone has a right to their religious beliefs, anyone who comes into a public office should feel they are in a neutral place.” He also assured that “no one wants to combat any religion and that religious symbols will have their place when history is celebrated.”
Pope Francis represents the Catholic Church, its doctrine, and its storied almost two-thousand-year history. However, Pope Francis has consistently derided Catholic teachings on climate change and sexuality. In both cases, he speaks like a social Marxist, not the head of the Catholic Church—and he’s apparently at it again with his upcoming interview on 60 Minutes.
The Church’s strength, always, has been two-fold: Its fealty to its core religious doctrines and the glacial slowness with which it changes. Its teachings are meant to be primary and eternal, rather than to move with the fads of the moment. Changing those teachings is an enormously consequential act because each change raises doubts about the church’s prior infallibility. You’re not a spiritual or cultural bulwark if you change policies according to the polls and the whims of the crowd.
However, there’s long been a movement within the church itself to force a fundamental change upon it. That movement is “Liberation Theology,” which tacks Marxism onto Catholicism. Liberation Theology was profoundly influential in Latin America beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, just when Pope Francis was coming of age religiously in Argentina.
Reading how leftist Wikipedia describes the doctrine will help you understand that it’s the fulfillment of Marxism, as you can see through the terms I emphasized (hyperlinks and footnotes omitted):
Liberation theology is a theological approach emphasizing the “liberation of the oppressed”. It engages in socio-economic analyses, with social concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed peoples and addresses other forms of perceived inequality.
Liberation theology was influential in Latin America, especially within Catholicism in the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council, where it became the political praxis of theologians such as Frei Betto, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Leonardo Boff, and Jesuits Juan Luis Segundo and Jon Sobrino, who popularized the phrase “preferential option for the poor”.
The option for the poor is simply the idea that, as reflected in canon law, “The Christian faithful are also obliged to promote social justice and, mindful of the precept of the Lord, to assist the poor.” It indicates an obligation, on the part of those who would call themselves Christian, first and foremost to care for the poor and vulnerable.
As you can see, Liberation Theology has nothing to do with the church as a spiritual caretaker. This is pure Marxism, trading on oppressor and oppressed as seen through the Marxist economic lens. By the 1980s, the Latin American Church was starting to dive into the whole racial oppression issue, which the Vatican explicitly rejected along with Liberation Theology’s focus on Marxist precepts over spiritual guidance.
Also in the 1960s, while the Latin American church was obsessed with incorporating Marxism’s economic and racial ideology, the church in Western Europe, which was then a racially homogenous and affluent area, was already working to bring homosexuality and pedophilia into Catholic doctrine.
Pope Francis represents the culmination of both these trends—economic and social Marxism. He’s also tossed in Gaia worship—the antithesis of Biblical monotheism—via the vehicle of climate change madness.
Now, the Pope has upped the ante by contending that American bishops who insist upon maintaining traditional church doctrines are “suicidal.”
“Conservative,” he says, means “one who clings to something and does not want to see beyond that.” Nope. Conservative means conserving something worthwhile…such as the Church’s eternal teachings. Refusing to abandon two thousand years of Catholic doctrine, according to the Marxist Pope, is “a suicidal attitude.” He castigates the church’s own teachings as “a dogmatic box.”
In the same interview, Francis explains that, while he still opposes blessing same-sex unions, what he actually did was authorize blessing the people involved in those unions.
What Francis said is pure sophistry. If you’ve got a priest standing there blessing two people who are going through the form of a traditional marriage ceremony, everyone understands that the blessing goes beyond the individuals and extends to the ceremony itself.
Marxism corrupts everything it touches. Pope Francis reflects that fact and he’s exposing the rot with his statements and sophistry on 60 Minutes. Once, the Catholic church stood for something unique, intangible, and permanent. Under Pope Francis’s aegis, it’s beginning to stand for nothing at all.
Ecologie : Après avoir milité et voté pour le plan Good Move (plan de mobilité écolo bobo), le PS bruxellois retourne sa veste car il y a une tendance culturelle chez les musulmans d'utiliser la voiture.pic.twitter.com/Mnx59UK6Ow
— Fdesouche.com est une revue de presse (@F_Desouche) May 17, 2024
Translation: Ecology: After campaigning for and voting in favour of the Good Move Plan (Bobo eco-mobility plan), the Brussels SP reverses its position because there is a cultural tendency among Muslims to use the car.
The Socialists are joining the ranks of the anti-Good Move movement. The mobility plan for the capital adopted by the PS and its partners seems untenable one month before the election. Paul Magnette’s eco-socialism is unlikely to ever be realised.
After months of struggling with a long and serious illness, we have learnt of the death of a concept. Belgian-style eco-socialism has not withstood the blow of the Brussels PS and its chairman Ahmed Laaouej. A few months ago, he refused to implement the government’s mobility plan, the so-called Good Move, in his municipality. He also tried to postpone the deadlines for the low-emission zone, which provides for a ban on the most polluting cars. He now believes that Good Move has failed and is a failure. In short, eco-socialism as a concept seems to be dead in Brussels, at least under the leadership of Ahmed Laaouej.
Ecosocialism is a concept that has existed since the 1970s. It aims to rethink Marxism in the face of new climatic and ecological realities. A rejection of productivism that Paul Magnette has taken up to try to reshape the software of Belgian socialism for several years now. A strategic reform in the face of challenges. A tactical reorientation also in view of the rise of Ecolo in 2019.
In practice, however, eco-socialism has struggled to find concrete realisations. It has also found it difficult to convince within the socialist forces, particularly in Brussels.
In Brussels, because there, more than in Wallonia, Ecolo succeeded in giving the government agreement a green touch. Five years ago, under the patronage of Laurette Onkelinx, the Socialists had agreed to an ambitious mobility plan aimed at rebalancing soft mobility towards the car. In plain language, this means reducing the car’s place in public spaces. Generalisation of 30 km/h, new cycle paths instead of lanes, Good Move Plan, reduction of parking spaces and increase in charges. All these political measures have led to frustration among many motorists.
In the municipalities in the north of Brussels, the PTB has won back part of the PS electorate with openly car-friendly rhetoric and portrayed the lower classes as victims of the cycling bobos. The MR, which also performs well in the polls, maintains a car-friendly rhetoric in favour of other population groups.
Ahmed Laaouej, who has replaced Laurette Onkelinx in the Brussels PS, attributes the spectacular erosion of the Socialists in the polls to this mobility policy. This makes many Brussels socialists doubt and question this eco-socialism from above. Many, but not all. Philippe Close and Caroline Désir, for example, remain committed to eco-socialism, but in view of the polls, they are giving Ahmed Laaouej a try.
The PS is therefore in trouble in Brussels. And a month before the elections, it is full of self-doubt. For over a year now, the PS has been estranged from the Greens. The Josaphat dossier, which the government blocked for several weeks, shows this. But the statements made by Ahmed Laaouej a month before the election in this polarised debate now place the PS, together with the MR and the PTB, in the camp of the pro-car parties vis-à-vis the Greens. The voters will show whether this clarification was salutary for the PS or whether it was a desperate manoeuvre by a party that doubts its political identity.
NCF National Coordinator Stephen Balogh discusses our NCF Locals programme and how it provides an opportunity for the public to help defend their local community as well as meet like-minded citizens who share similar views and beliefs.
A trans-identified male inmate appears to have been transferred back to a men’s prison after being charged with rape while in custody at a women’s prison. Tremaine “Tremayne” Deon Carroll, a male who identifies as a woman, was housed at the Central California Women’s Facility when the sexual assault took place but has since been moved to Kern Valley State Prison.
Carroll’s criminal history dates back to 1988, when he began participating in organized crime at just 15 years old. In 1990, Carroll would be convicted for his participation in an armed robbery where he and several other men broke into an apartment occupied by two women. The women were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held under demand of ransom.
Despite being only 17 years old, the brutality of the crime resulted in Carroll being charged as an adult with three counts of kidnapping for ransom, two counts of robbery, and three counts of oral copulation by force. However, a hung jury along with a number of other technical issues during the trial process resulted in the need for a retrial. Carroll ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of kidnapping in an effort to avoid a retrial on all of the charges.
Photo courtesy of OPEC/CDCR.
In 1998, Carroll committed his third violent felony, but while in prison awaiting trial he was found in possession of a metal wire shank he had crafted with the intention of stabbing someone.
Because of his extensive criminal history, Carroll was ultimately sentenced to 25-to-life under California’s Three Strikes Law. The law dramatically increases punishment for persons convicted of a felony who have previously been convicted of one or more “serious” or “violent” felonies.
While in the custody of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), Carroll filed dozens of legal complaints alleging mistreatment, discrimination, and even sexual abuse at the hands of CDCR officials and prison staff, along with demanding his conviction under the Three Strikes Law be overturned. But Carroll was a problem inmate, and between 2001 and 2015, he received over a dozen Rules Violation Reports, one of which was related to filing false reports against a Peace Officer.
In a 2019 legal complaint, Carroll revealed he had been moved around within CDCR facilities over 200 times since 2009, something he claimed was “retaliation” for his allegations of employee misconduct. But many of those moves appear to have been to or from medical centers, where Carroll had been receiving treatment for mental health episodes.
In an earlier legal complaint, Carroll referred to himself as “mentally disturbed” and stated he was on high doses of anti-psychotic medication.
From a 2009 legal complaint filed by Carroll.
In another filing, an unnamed witness called upon by Carroll to provide a statement in support of his claim alleges that Carroll suffers from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, PTSD, and Rubinstein–Taybi Syndrome, a genetic condition characterized by physical and developmental issues.
In the vast majority of his complaints, Carroll refers to himself by “he/him” pronouns, and does not mention his gender identity or sexuality.
But in a case filed in March of 2021, Carroll suddenly invoked SB-132, also known as the Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act. The law had been implemented just three months prior, and formally established the ability of inmates to be housed on the basis of their gender identity in California.
In March of 2022, Carroll penned an article for the San Francisco Bay View, a newspaper serving the African-American community in the Bay Area. In the article, Carroll referred to himself as a “trans woman” and portrayed himself as the victim of systemic discrimination by the criminal justice system. He also claimed he was in prison for “non-violent” offenses, in contradiction of his criminal history.
Madera County court records obtained by Reduxx show that the District Attorney filed multiple charges against Carroll, including two counts of rape, and one count of dissuading a witness from testifying.
The incident is said to have occurred in January of 2024, and would have occurred while Carroll was incarcerated at the women’s prison. While the complaint by the District Attorney refers to the victim as “Jane Doe,” it is unconfirmed if she was a female inmate or a female member of the prison’s staff.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s inmate locator now shows that Carroll is housed at Kern Valley State Prison, a male-only facility almost two hours away from CCWF.
While CDCR did not respond to Reduxx‘s inquiry on the exact date of Carroll’s move, the transfer appears to have occurred after the rape charges were filed, as court records confirm that Carroll was still addressed at CCWF in late 2023.
Ironically, Carroll is one of the trans-identified males intervening in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent males from being housed in women’s prisons in California. The lawsuit, launched against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, includes four female inmates who all stated they had been victimized by trans-identified male transfers.
In 2022, the ACLU intervened in the case, suggesting that the state of California could not adequately fight the lawsuit and represent the interests of trans-identified males.
In his sworn testimony collected by the ACLU for the case, Carroll declared: “I know what it feels like to live in fear and to carry the weight of the past abuse by men. But I am not a threat [to women]. I strongly believe that everyone here at CCWF would benefit from more structured interaction — opportunities to sit and talk with each other and realize that we’re all in the same boat.”
In the recently released BBC documentary Better Off Dead?, disability rights activist Liz Carr interviewed Dr. Ellen Wiebe, Canada’s most notorious euthanasia doctor. Wiebe is also an abortionist and an activist with Dying With Dignity, the euthanasia lobby group seeking to expand eligibility for assisted suicide in Canada even further. Wiebe’s attempted defence of Canada’s euthanasia regime backfired when throughout her interview, she laughed and smiled as she discussed ending the lives of patients.
“I love my job,” she told Carr. “I’ve always loved being a doctor and I delivered over 1,000 babies and I took care of families, but this is the very best work I’ve ever done in the last seven years. And people ask me why, and I think well, doctors like grateful patients, and nobody is more grateful than my patients now and their families.” Her euthanasia patients, it must be noted, are dead. As one disturbed watcher noted on social media: “Enjoying her job a little too much, I felt.” Many others concurred.
Carr pushed Wiebe several times on the threat euthanasia poses to vulnerable populations, but Wiebe was having none of it. “I’ve certainly met people who are no more disabled than I am saying that life is not acceptable in this state,” she said. “And I would say, ‘Hm, you and I are different.’ But not different in the sense of wanting to have some control.” Carr responded: “For me, I’m concerned that giving the option and the right to a group of people puts another group of people at risk. But I don’t feel you see that as a worry.”
Carr is right. “What you’re saying is to protect what you consider vulnerable people you are condemning others to unbearable suffering,” Wiebe said. “But I am so glad, so glad that I’m a Canadian and that we have this law so that people can choose that or not choose that. But to say that somebody has to suffer like that is simply cruel.” In short, Wiebe rejects the case made by disability rights groups that they are vulnerable, and that social pressure and even coercion often accompanies euthanasia.
Consider a 2021 seminar from the leading group of "MAID providers" in Canada, a group that is funded by the gov't to train clinicians nationwide.
"How would folks interpret someone who… [is] shouting, pulling their arm away as one tries to insert the IV to provide MAID?" pic.twitter.com/mx4W3DDNJH
In 2017, Dr. Ellen Wiebe sneaked into a Jewish nursing home that does not permit euthanasia to give a lethal injection to an 83-year-old man. The event understandably terrified Holocaust survivors in residence at the home, and the appalled staff brought a complaint against Wiebe to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. The complaint against her was dismissed on the basis that MAiD is legal in Canada, and that thus Wiebe had not broken the law.
It is interesting that so many people were so uncomfortable by the glee Wiebe expressed about her work. Even many who support euthanasia felt that she should be more solemn and thoughtful about it, somehow. But why? If euthanasia—killing—is healthcare, why should she not cheerily dispatch her patients? Perhaps the discomfort in her cheery demeanor—the fact that she finds ending lives rewarding on both ends of life’s spectrum—is because we know, deep down, that there is something profoundly wrong about the normalization of medicalized killing. That discomfort just might be the conscience speaking. We should listen closely.
The Spanish government has been accused of violating basic religious rights after a group of peaceful protesters were fined for praying the rosary outside a church near the headquarters of the governing Socialist Party.
Spain’s Observatory for Religious Freedom and Conscience is petitioning for the UN to intervene, saying the government’s actions are part of a trend against public religious practice “which may soon reach levels of repression typical of dictatorial regimes.”.
Protests outside Socialist Party headquarters started late last year as the government planned to pardon Catalan separatists. The planned amnesty included not only the unrepentant leaders of the 2017 illegal referendum on the region’s independence but also perpetrators of a wide swath of crimes not directly related to the question of independence.
Alongside the protests, a group gathered every evening to pray the rosary at the doors of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church on Ferraz Street, a few doors down from Socialist Party headquarters.
In November, an elderly woman was arrested by the National Police while praying the rosary outside the headquarters. Others have received subpoenas, including the organizer who led the rosary and a 17-year-old. Their subpoenas are for disobedience and resistance to authority. They received fines amounting to 3,600 euros and 1,800 euros respectively.
“These events are part of a series of prohibitions and attacks by the Government against citizens who profess religious beliefs. It is necessary for these facts to be brought to the attention of the international community to ask for protection and to stop a trend which may soon reach levels of repression typical of dictatorial regimes like those in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Venezuela,” the petition to the UN states.
“Religious freedom protects that believers can pray when and where they want. All over Europe, they are trying to bring religion into the strictly private sphere and believers are not allowed to manifest themselves as such,” Maria Garcia, president of the Observatory, explained.
The Observatory for Religious Freedom and Freedom of Conscience is is an advisory organization to the Monitoring Commission of the Action Plan to Fight Hate Crimes, which is dependent on the Ministry of the Interior..belongs to the Monitoring Commission of the Plan against Hate Crimes of the Ministry of the Interior, according to Garcia.
It requested an explanation for the arrest and fines from the government. According to Garcia, the government justifies itself on the grounds that people who pray in the street are harassing others.
“As the Observatory for Freedom of Religion, we have been able to verify how these people are not harassing anyone, but only exercising their right to religious freedom, which is the most intimate right of the person, because it concerns their conscience,” she said.
AfD member of the state parliament Martin Schmidt and the wound on his head stitched up after the attack. Photo: AfD state parliamentary group Mecklenburg-Vorpommern / for private use
An Alternative for Germany (AfD) party member with the regional state Parliament in Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania was hospitalised after what is alleged to be a politically motivated attack.
At around 1 am on May 17 Martin Schmidt was attacked in a Schwerin restaurant.
An ashtray was allegedly thrown at Schmidt, causing a cut to his head and putting him in hospital until 5 am.
Nikolaus Kramer, the parliamentary group chairman of the AfD, said: “Such acts are not only cowardly but also a direct attack on the fundamental values on which our co-existence is based.
“Violence against politicians, regardless of which party, is an attack on freedom of expression and democratic discourse.
“Those who resort to such means show not only a frightening lack of respect for human dignity but also for the democratic processes that make up our society,” Kramer said.
“We must stand united against any form of politically motivated violence and make it clear: In a democracy, the argument wins, not the fist!”
AfD party chairman for Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, Leif-Erik Holm, claimed the incident marked a further escalation of political violence from the Left.
“The attack is also the result of months of incitement and propaganda against our party,” he said.
According to the police, the alleged attacker, a 52-year-old man, claimed to hold left-wing political views and to have acted out of political motives. He is also said to have been under the influence of alcohol at the time.
Officers said he first identified a group of AfD members, whom he then insulted. After a short argument, the man allegedly threw a glass ashtray, hitting Schmitt in the head and causing the laceration, media outlet Taggesschau reported.
The alleged attacker is under investigation on suspicion of causing insult and bodily harm.
With less than a month to go before the European Parliament elections in June, Germany is seeing a spike in apparently political violence and incidents of attacks on politicians of all stripes have been reported.
In Schwerin, The Left (Die Linke) has already equipped its election workers with defensive spray for protection, public broadcaster NDRsaid.
The most serious incident occurred in East Saxony on May 3, where Matthias Ecke MEP, the top candidate for the Social Democratic Party, was badly injured after being allegedly attacked by a group of four young men. Ecke suffered broken bones after being repeatedly punched and kicked, leaving him requiring surgery.
AfD activists are most frequently the most targeted in apparently politically motivated violence and suffered more attacks than any other party’s workers in 2019, according to official Government statistics.
Separately, Hannes Gnauck, a Bundestag MP for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party who also serves as the leader of the group’s youth wing, had his immunity lifted on the night of May 16 by the German Parliament’s Immunity Committee.
According to a report by news outlet Die Welt, the decision to pull Gnauck’s immunity was unexpected, with media initially left in the dark regarding the reasons behind the move.
It has since emerged that the action concerns historic accusations against Gnauck from his time in the German military, with which he served between 2014 and 2021.
Representatives within the AfD are calling foul play, with Gnauck and his colleagues claiming they had already written to the Bundestag’s President Bärbel Bas weeks ago asking for his immunity to be voluntarily lifted so the MP could address the accusations in court.
Bas is said to have written back to claim that the situation did not warrant Gnauck losing his immunity.
“Ms Bas let me know at the time that this step was not necessary at all,” the AfD MP said.
“Now, shortly before the EU elections, for no apparent reason, my immunity will be lifted in order to enable investigations into a procedure that has now been suspended for three years due to my mandate in the Bundestag.”
The mayor of Rouen, Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol, has called for a public rally in front of the town hall this evening at 6pm.
The mayor of Rouen, who was on site on Friday morning, spoke of ‘considerable damage’ inside the building and condemned ‘a deeply anti-Semitic act’.
The fire was successfully brought under control by the fire brigade, which ‘arrived on the scene extremely quickly’ together with the police. BFMTV
According to a source familiar with the case, the suspect in the arson of the synagogue, who was shot dead by the police officers he subsequently threatened, was a 29-year-old Algerian citizen who had been under an obligation to leave French territory (OQTF) ‘for less than a year’. However, this was not enforceable as he had filed a complaint with the administrative courts’.Actu.fr
