On today’s Deprogrammed, hosts Harrison Pitt of the European Conservative and freelance journalist Evan Riggs are joined by writer and commentator Lois McLatchie Miller, a spokesman for the Alliance Defending Freedom
Month: May 2024
Policeman critical after being stabbed by a Moroccan in Milan, Italy
A 35-year-old policeman is in a critical condition in Milan’s Niguarda hospital after being stabbed by a man in the area of the city’s Lambrate station overnight.
The policeman intervened after the attacker, a 37-year-old Moroccan, started throwing stones at trains and one hit a 55-year-old woman in the head.
The cop was stabbed three times in the back and underwent emergency surgery for organ damage.
The 37-year-old was tasered and arrested.
The woman hit in the head was taken to another hospital, but her condition was not reported to be serious.
Policeman critical after being stabbed in Milan – General News – Ansa.it
Germany: ‘If Gaza burns, Berlin burns!’ — Town hall set on fire by anti-Israel vandals
Firefighters were tackling a blaze in the early hours of Thursday morning at the Berlin-Tiergarten town hall in the German capital, believed to have been started by anti-Israel vandals.
Emergency services responded to a call made at 1:45 a.m. by a witness who heard glass shatter before a room adjacent to Jonasstraße erupted in flames. Two suspected perpetrators were then seen jumping down from scaffolding attached to the building and fleeing the scene.
Around 30 firetrucks attended the scene and extinguished the blaze; no injuries were reported.
An initial investigation found the fire was likely started by a Molotov cocktail being thrown through the broken window, leaving extensive damage to the targeted room and the hallway of the building while parts of the affected exterior wall crumbled due to the heat.
According to Bild, Several threatening messages had been scrawled on the sides of the building that read, “If Gaza burns, Berlin burns.” Others read “Free Hamas” and “Warning Berlin, we’ll burn it down.”
A spokeswoman for the Berlin police office revealed the investigation had been taken over by state security services, who are investigating intentional arson.
Pro-Palestine protests by far-left and Muslim activists have erupted across Europe following Israel’s retaliation for Hamas’ terror attack on Israeli soil on Oct. 7 last year.
On Wednesday, troubling scenes were witnessed in the Netherlands after an activist mob stormed the University of Amsterdam and demanded it cut all ties with Israeli institutions.
Significant damage was done to the university, and footage showing activists attacking people with planks of wood went viral on social media, causing Dutch conservative politician Geert Wilders to ask, “When did the Dutch people vote to let all those Jew-haters with sticks and beards in? Which election manifesto was that in? Why do we let them destroy the Netherlands?”
The protest was eventually dispersed by Dutch riot police, but activists then congregated on Rembrandtplein in the Dutch capital before further clashes with the authorities.
https://rmx.news/article/if-gaza-burns-berlin-burns-town-hall-set-on-fire-by-anti-israel-vandals
Austrian Greens’ Top Candidate Accused of Being Compulsive Liar
It’s safe to say that the gods of politics have not been favoring European green parties during this campaign period. Not only is the Greens group expected to lose the most seats in the European Parliament after the election, but member parties around Europe have been caught up in some of the most embarrassing scandals as well, from sexual harassment to Russian spying.
The latest episode is currently unfolding in Austria, where a comprehensive investigation undertaken by the local daily Der Standard shed light on the Greens’ number one EU candidate, Lena Schilling, and her problematic relationship with the truth. While the party tries to downplay the allegations to soften the blow of the growing scandal, the police and court documents, confidential chats, as well as dozens of interviews with the victims of Schilling’s intentionally harmful lies tell a different story.
One document to open the rabbit hole
Schilling, a 23-year-old climate activist with no political experience, surprised Austria when the Greens put her, a non-party member, in first place on their EU candidate list. Her name alone was enough, apparently, as she previously worked for several NGOs and advocacy groups, led some of the loudest climate protest movements, and has been described by media as “perhaps the most politically active young woman in the country”—Austria’s very own Greta Thunberg.
However, Schilling’s road to Brussels might not be as smooth as it was to Instagram stardom. The story begins with a court sentence, dated April 12th, 2024, less than two months before the coming EU elections. The document, obtained by Der Standard, shows that Schilling had been served with a cease-and-desist order and forced to pay compensation of €20,000.
To make the story more colorful, the lawsuit in question was brought against her by a former best friend after Schilling claimed that the other woman’s husband beat her up so badly that she suffered a miscarriage. It was nothing but a lie, apparently, yet the Greens’ official statement tried to salvage the situation by saying Schilling only acted “out of concern for a friend,” but is ready to pay the compensation out of her own pocket to show that “she regrets” the harm done by the unfounded allegations.
“Just the tip of the iceberg”
It would have been all over if it was a one-time hiccup, but as you can guess, it wasn’t. The media investigation prompted by the sentence exposed that the wild story is really “just the tip of the iceberg,” as unnamed Green members who’ve known Schilling for some time phrased it.
Weeks of research and over 50 interviews with former friends, colleagues, and victims of her frequent slanders revealed that there are a great deal of people who have been hurt one way or another by Schilling’s compulsive lies. As Der Standard put it:
People who do not know each other and whom Schilling has met in different contexts almost unanimously tell of similar incidents: Schilling has a problematic relationship with the truth, plays people off against each other and leaves scorched earth in her wake.
Invented love affairs and harassment allegations
For one, Schilling has upturned the lives of several journalists and politicians with completely out-of-the-blue allegations, who, at least now, can feel vindicated by her downfall.
For instance, she accused one of the top journalists at an undisclosed private media organization, with whom she had regular professional cooperation, of sexual harassment. The case went up to HR which immediately started an internal investigation, threatening the job and livelihood of the journalist. Luckily, when he handed over all his chats and messages with Schilling to HR, the investigation quickly concluded that the man was innocent. Asked for a comment by Der Standard, the company only said: “We don’t want to talk about that.”
In another case, Schilling allegedly invented an affair between her and a well-known television reporter. Fearing for his reputation, the reporter considered suing Schilling but decided not to, lest he attract even more attention.
Most people who knew Schilling during her activist years, as well as from the student council she once chaired, also recounted some bad memories. They describe how she often played people against each other to cement her position without caring one bit for what she left behind. They also say she took advantage of the trust of younger activists to carefully cultivate an army of followers mesmerized by her charisma.
MP’s mystery resignation
Considering everything that came to light, it’s not surprising that Schilling might have even had a hand in the Austrian Greens’ only scandal these past years that ended with a resignation. In October 2023, the party announced that MP Clemmens Stammler had harassed a young activist in Vienna’s Club U4 and then injured a journalist who tried to intervene on her behalf, prompting his resignation and complete withdrawal from public life.
At the time, the impression was that the victim had been a complete stranger, only for it to emerge that it was actually Lena Schilling, who was already considered to be a top contender for the EU candidate list at the time. Messages between the two also reveal that Schilling regularly contacted Stammler before the event, had a generally good relationship, and it was her who invited him that night to U4. Once in the club, however, she wanted to have nothing to do with him and spoke badly about him to others, the people who were present recalled.
Stammler might have still been guilty, but Schilling’s personality suggests that he might have been provoked all night just for a bit of drama to put her in the spotlight again.
“Not a moral assessment”
While some party members have decried that the scandal has no political dimensions and the opposition is only using Schilling’s private life to dirty the campaign, other Greens think differently.
As a person of public interest who strives to be the leader of the Austrian delegation in Brussels, Schilling is one of the most important representatives of the entire party which has the trust of about half a million voters in the country. Her behavior toward others is no longer a private issue, but a public one of the highest importance, and should be viewed accordingly.
“This is not a moral assessment of Lena’s behavior,” another EU candidate told the paper, but about how she deals with colleagues in a specific political and professional context.
Day by day, the pressure on the party grows to replace Schilling on the candidate list, but playing defensive has so far remained the Greens’ official stance. Still, as a long-time acquaintance of Schilling’s told Der Standard, the stakes have never been higher. “If you don’t pull the emergency brake now, there will be enormous damage: for the Greens, for the climate movement—but especially for Schilling herself.”
Muslim migrants caught ‘red-handed’ burning down forests as an act of jihad
By Olivia Murray
According to a RAIR report by Amy Mek out this past Saturday, Muslim migrants from the Indian state of Bihar were caught “red-handed” burning down large swathes of forestland in the state of Uttarakhand, all as an act of jihad. Mek also iterated that the damage done to the environment has been a “severe blow” to the region, “consuming thousands of trees” and causing the “destruction of over a thousands hectares of forest land” which is roughly equivalent to 2,800 acres.
Now Uttarakhand is very biodiverse, and is the home to many “rare or threatened” plant species and a number of “highly endangered” animal species (e.g. Asian elephant, snow leopard, tiger, King cobra, Himalayan monal, etc.), and one can only imagine how many different flora and fauna species perished in the flames and smoke.
Here’s a bit of the damage:
And here’s one of the suspected culprits, bragging about his handiwork:
(What is it with people recording themselves while in commission of a crime? First it was Hunter Biden, now it’s these dopes.)
Yet I haven’t heard a peep from the progressive left on these willful acts of destruction; why?
Now to be fair, leftists themselves often resort to arson to make their point, and we see this all the time—they too light forests on fire, to “prove” that “climate change” is real. Perhaps the leftists saw this and thought it would fuel the hysteria and advance their agenda—but I don’t think so.
To me, it obviously comes down to this: when you’re embracing conflicting interests (“Queers for Palestine”), which basically sums up the collective left because they’re suffering from a superiority complex and they’re not thinking for themselves, the terrorist interest always triumphs.
They’re against the patriarchy…until a designated terrorist group launches an attack against civilians and raping all the way because, free Palestine or something.
They’re friends of the gays…until practitioners of Sharia law toss them from rooftops, or crucify them in the public square.
They love the environment…until Muslim arsonists burn down thousands of acres of forest, killing who knows how many endangered species in the process, because they’re virtuously “tolerant”and accepting.
They’re “for the children” (Nancy Pelosi’s go-to guilt trip line)…until cross-dressing pedophiles embed themselves in elementary schools and kid’s museums because, “visibility” and “acceptance.”
They champion the cause of the common man, being exploited by a powerful overlord…until that common man is an American citizen and that powerful overlord is a tyrannical and thieving federal government.
They’re against the death penalty…unless the person slated for execution is a baby in the womb.
They stand against the oil companies…by utterly destroying priceless works of art on display.
Because, when it really comes down to it, they’re not beholden to virtue, morality, or progressivism, but terrorism, wickedness, and death—plain and simple.
Transgender support is crumbling over controversies around men competing in women’s sports
Female sporting events remain one of the key conflicts in the transgender culture war touching nearly every aspect of public life.
On May 4, a trans-identified male won two National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) events at the Liberty League track and field championships, the 400 meters in 55.07 seconds and the 200 meters in 24.14 seconds. Sadie Schreiner, a male who previously went by the name Camden, earlier in the season set the “women’s school record” in the 300 meters at Nazareth Alumni Opener Invitational with a time of 41.80 seconds.
Schreiner was representing the Rochester Institute of Technology. Both of his times would have put him dead last in the men’s events at the same meet but instead were women’s school records, with the 200 time becoming a Liberty League women’s record, exceeding only Schreiner’s previous time of 24.50 from this same season. Schreiner previously competed against fellow males.
Schreiner insists, however, that he has no advantage over female competitors, posting that “Out of all the hate that’s been shared of me ‘cheater’ is the most common word used… In my eyes, the discussion of trans inclusion in athletics shouldn’t even be a debate… As more research is done the more evident this becomes. There’s a reason I’m only as fast as I was in middle school, and the only variable that’s changed over my 9 years of running is my medication.”
“Even as Olympic studies prove the disadvantages of trans athletes, it’s not enough,” he continued. “Policies are being changed before research is done and the only way to stay educated in this process is to talk to the few trans athletes that are competing and hear their stories, bring them into the conversation. The only way to make an educated decision on a small handful of athletes is to hear their voice, not speak for them.”
Plenty of female athletes are making their voices heard, although Schreiner likely doesn’t care for their perspective on his participation. In West Virginia recently, five female students at a high school track meet declined to compete against a trans-identified male in Harrison Country’s middle school shot put event. Each girl stepped up to the circle and then refused to throw. All five girls have since been banned from future track meets.
Across the pond, 64-year-old British darts star Deta Hedman forfeited her opportunity to win the Denmark Open after refusing to play against a trans-identified male. Hedman, described by the Daily Mail as “one of the most well-known figures in the women’s darts scene,” has previously called on organizational governing bodies to restrict participation to women only. “I’m not playing against a man in a women’s event,” Hedman told the German newspaper Bild. The stand attracted praise from Lynne Pinches, who recently forfeited her winning spot during the pool competition Ladies Champions of Champions for also refusing to play a trans-identified male.
The latter events, of course, have less to do with the physical advantages that males have in competitions such as running and throwing and more to do with the principle of the thing. Increasingly, well-known female competitors are simply opting out of tournaments in which they are asked to compete against males. They want their own spaces; they are not using the language of “transgender women”; they are not debating testosterone levels or engaging in arguments about specific physiological points. They are just opting out entirely, and they are willing to sacrifice money, prizes, and prestige to do so.
This is precisely the sort of pushback that is necessary — and this is precisely the moment to do it. The consensus is crumbling.
Reducing Immigration Now More Important to Europeans Than Climate Change
Concern about immigration and terrorism is rising in Europe while “fighting climate change” as a priority is falling by the wayside among voters, research led by the former Secretary General of NATO has found.
A massive global survey of 63,000 people in 53 countries by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation (ADF) uncovers remarkable global trends including falling interest in the Ukraine war, concern about the damage to democracy done by “global corporations”, and growing belief governments only seek to serve a “small group of people”, not the majority. Among these findings is fresh data on the feeling of Europeans on the threats to their continent, and the priorities they have for their governments.
The ADF, founded by former NATO Secretary General and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen published its annual Democracy Perception Index this week and it reported “many European countries have seen a sharp rise in the share of people who say that ‘reducing immigration’ should be a top government priority”. At the same time, it said, interest in “fighting climate change” was falling.
While reducing immigration is a priority for just 16 per cent of people globally, it is trending towards 50 per cent in some European states. As a policy area, in Europe as a whole it overtook fighting climate change this year, and is on course to easily overtake promoting economic growth by 2025, leaving only ‘reduce poverty’ as a greater priority for European voters.
This is a remarkable turn of events, not least because many Western governments have said they are pushing for open borders and high immigration levels precisely to promote economic growth. While this is being ever more widely acknowledged as either a lie or at least misguided, the new report findings suggest even if mass migration was proven to boost Western economies, Europeans may still rather see arrivals cut than economic growth at any price.
While concern about immigration varies across Europe, the countries ahead of the continent-wide trend on calling it a top priority citizens think their government should address included Germany, Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. Tangentially, those interviewed in Germany, Ireland and France were at the forefront of people worldwide calling migration a top global — as opposed to just national — issue, while concern about terrorism is also rising in the continent, and particularly in France.
The study may make particularly uncomfortable reading for the Germany government — a left-wing coalition featuring both the establishment-left Social Democrats and the hard-left Green Party — where encouraging migration and radically changing the economy to suit the environmentalist agenda remains top priorities. This ideological drive has seen some remarkable decisions reached, including shutting down Germany’s remaining fleet of nuclear power stations during an energy crisis and a gas shortage.
Germany’s Green Party Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection Robert Habeck subsequently claimed nobody had warned him shutting down nuclear power during a power crisis was a bad idea. While this may seem obvious, further revelations have suggested the minister may even have been deliberately kept in the dark about such things, allegedly to force the policy through, leading into question both his judgement and the malign influence of his aides.
The disconnect between the German people — the most likely to say controlling immigration is a priority of any country in Europe, the Democracy Perception Index figures state — and the principles of the government is handily expressed in polling. While the Red-Green-Yellow coalition picked up 51.8 per cent of the popular vote in the 2021 Federal elections leading to the present coalition government, polling today puts those parties at just 34 per cent.
The ‘reds’ Social Democrats have even surrendered their position as the second-largest party in German politics in the past year, with the right-populist Alternative For Germany (AfD) now polling at 18 per cent.
The polling showing the new priorities for Europe also comes just weeks before nearly the whole continent is due to vote in June’s European Parliament elections. The populist-right is predicted to make a breakthrough, apparently sending the globalist-centrist Brussels establishment into a panic.
France: The patrons of a village café seize an illegal Gambian migrant who threatened them with a knife and shouted ‘Allah Akbar’
The afternoon of the 27th of April 2024 was somewhat chaotic in Bosc-Le-Hard. A man from Gambia, who was under an obligation issued by the prefect of the Eure department to leave French territory, got furious.
After an argument started in a bar, he allegedly pulled out a knife and shouted Allah Akbar.
He was completely confused and had apparently demanded drinks and food from the guests. He then became very angry and moved on with his knife.
The customers were able to subdue him, while the police took him into custody and brought him to court in Dieppe.
He appeared in court the next day but remained silent in front of his judges. Apparently, he did not want to comment on his situation, the reasons that had led him to Bosc-le-Hard or his behaviour.
The public prosecutor demanded a prison sentence of eight months without parole and a permanent ban from French territory.
The judges considered that the threats and theft of which the defendant was accused could not be sufficiently proven, but he was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment for carrying a weapon and not leaving French territory. He will therefore spend his last days on French territory behind bars.
The College Hamas Riots Aren’t “Student Protests”: There’s a reason they were wearing masks
When I headed out to UCLA, the campus was quiet. A few students wandered in and out of buildings. A proud mother was taking pictures of her daughter. Students sunbathed on the lawn underneath Royce Hall, the center of the pro-terrorist riots days earlier, which had been secured by an LAPD and campus police presence. Apart from one smear of graffiti on a vending machine and a PLO flag hanging in the window of a dormitory, there was no sign of the riots.
What happened to the rioters? Some may have been sleeping it off, but most weren’t there.
When the NYPD broke up pro-Hamas riots at Columbia and City College, half of the rioters turned out not to be students. While the media has portrayed the terrorist encampments on campuses as the work of outraged students, it’s not clear how many anywhere are students.
The masks commonly worn by the supporters deliberately obscure their identities. But this did not help them when they were finally arrested. What it did do was initially shield the fact that many of the terrorist supporters were clearly older adults, not students, as these photos show.
A bearded 59-year-old man is clearly not a student, but put on a mask, drape a keffiyah around him, and keep him in the background, and he can pass as just another warm “student” body.
While the terror supporters have been careful to send students and faculty, especially sympathetic ones, unmasked in front of the cameras, the mugshots show what they’re hiding.
The truth is that few students support the antisemitic encampments and most want them to go.
Those are the results of a recent survey by Generation Lab which found that only 7% of students took part in them, only a quarter support them and a majority oppose them.
A majority of college students want to see fewer protests, oppose BDS, and don’t agree with most anti-Israel slogans. 34% of college students blame Hamas leaders for the situation in Gaza, as opposed to 19% who blame Netanyahu.
And, more importantly, 81% say that “students who destroyed property, vandalized or illegally occupied buildings should be held accountable”.
What the survey really shows though is that the majority of students don’t really care. When college students were asked to pick the issues they cared about the most, only 13% picked the war. The majority selected issues like free college, racial justice and social justice.
Of all the issues, the Hamas war was the least important one on the list to most students.
The pro-Hamas campus riots did not happen because of widespread support from college students, but because key campuses like Columbia and UCLA had become hubs for anti-Israel groups due to the presence of pro-terrorist faculty and some Muslim and Marxist students.
By setting up terrorist encampments on college campuses, terrorist supporters exploited the cowardice and ineptitude of the administrators who had allowed them to operate on campus all along while manufacturing the narrative that they were a student movement. And as a student movement, they could lay claim to the mantle of the Vietnam War protest movement.
But are they actually a student movement rather than a movement recruiting students?
The campus encampments deployed their own security to keep out not only Jewish students, but the press. Participating students were told not to speak to anyone without approval and when they did, the results were often embarrassing as it became clear that they knew nothing. In one famous video from NYU, a protesting student couldn’t explain why she was protesting.
When the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan visited Columbia University, she observed that unlike past student protesters, “these demonstrators would generally not speak or make eye contact with members of the press”. When she tried to talk to any of the younger members, none would reply except for one who said that she couldn’t talk because “I’m not trained.”
People who already know what they stand for don’t need to be “trained”.
The terrorist encampments were not just set up on campuses to keep Jews out, but to keep students in. Adjuncts held classes inside them to get more students inside the pen. And then used social pressure to try to convince them to stay. Tents and snacks were brought in to make the makeshift terror compounds seem like a comfortable camping adventure.
And masks were worn to make it hard to tell apart the students from the outside activists.
The compounds were not a form of protest, but of control. They did not arise organically from the student body, but were brought in from the outside. After a police crackdown, like the one at UCLA, there was little sign of any interest in the cause by the random students on campus.
And that is the difference between an actual student movement and a “Hello Fellow Kids” one.
Universities allowed Islamic terror states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia to trade money for control. And when foreign students and terror faculty promoted support for terrorism on campus, they turned a blind eye. And students all too often allowed extremists to take over student government and speak in their name. All of that made colleges a perfect target for the riots.
Now after the vandalism and violence, a lot of college students are unhappy with the consequences as graduations have been canceled and classes were replaced with virtual online learning. A fake student movement executed in their name doesn’t have their support.
And it never did.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-college-hamas-riots-arent-student-protests
An Algerian-born Daesh fan, prosecuted and convicted ten times for radicalisation, threatens to kill police officers in Saint-Chamond, France
A 28-year-old man was arrested on the night of Sunday, May 5, to Monday, May 6. He threatened to kill police officers and claimed to be in possession of explosives.
A man was arrested on Monday May 6 in Saint-Chamond in the Loire department for glorifying terrorism and threatening to commit an attack, BFMTV has learned from police sources.
The 28-year-old had arrived at the police station with the words that he wanted to kill police officers and claimed to be in possession of explosives. The arrest, which took place at around 4 a.m., went without incident, according to information available.
(…) The man was in possession of a walkie-talkie and a black flag with writing in Arabic. During checks in his vehicle, a machete and a sports bag were also discovered. Explosives experts were mobilised to check his car. BFMTV
(…) Pending his appearance before the criminal court in Saint-Etienne on July 3, the defendant was ‘placed under judicial control, in particular with a commitment to therapy’, said the prosecutor David Charmatz (…).
‘In the meantime, he will undergo a psychiatric evaluation,’ the magistrate further explained. He added that the suspect ‘benefited in 2021 from an acquittal for being criminally incapable for acts of the same nature as those with which he is charged today, due to his psychiatric disorders’.
The young man is being tried because, according to the magistrate, he ‘made death threats or threats of dangerous actions against property against officers of the Saint-Chamond police station and carried a category D weapon, in this case a knife, outside his residence without a legitimate reason’, among other offences.
‘The investigation revealed that he had posted a video on the internet in early January in which he presented himself as a terrorist, surrounded by Kalashnikov weapons and rocket launchers, and in which he named people of Jewish faith as targets’, the same source said.
In particular, ‘at the weekend, the man displayed black flags with inscriptions that resembled the imagery of the so-called Daech organisation’. This behaviour had ‘worried’ the PCF mayor of Rive-de-Gier, Vincent Bony, where the suspect lived. (…)
According to a source close to the case, the Algerian-born suspect, who was listed in the file of dangerous persons (Fichier des signalement pour la prévention de la radicalisation à caractère terroriste, FSPRT) for similar actions in the past, was the subject of a measure in October 2022 to freeze the assets of persons who ‘commit, attempt to commit, support or finance terrorist acts’. (…) Le Parisien
In addition, last weekend he had displayed black flags with similar inscriptions to the pictures of the Daesh organisation and had marked his vehicle with the inscription ‘RAKKA’. (…)
The person in question is known to the judiciary as he has already been convicted ten times, mainly for traffic offences and once for failing to comply with a measure for the administrative control and surveillance of persons (MICAS – Mesure individuelle de contrôle administratif et de surveillance). (…) Le Progrès