Month: June 2024

A high-profile charity that speaks out against gender ideology has had its Instagram page permanently deleted in what appears to be a platform-wide clamp-down on critics of transgenderism.

Sex Matters is a registered charity in the United Kingdom, and describes its mission as being “to promote clarity about sex in law, policy and language in order to protect everybody’s rights.” Part of its advocacy includes the use of social media campaigns to get the word out about their efforts.

But on June 3, Sex Matters staff discovered that their Instagram account, @SexMattersOrg, had been suspended for allegedly breaking the website’s “community guidelines.” The page was primarily used to disseminate information on the organization’s values and activities.

The social media team at Sex Matters immediately appealed the removal of the social media profile and within “8 minutes” of submitting the appeal they were rejected. In the response by Instagram, the organization was told that their account had been reviewed and that Instagram had “found that it still doesn’t follow our Community Guidelines. As a result, your account has been permanently disabled”

Immediately following the notification of the permanent nature of the account deletion, Sex Matters CEO, Maya Forstater, and the human rights charity Chair, Naomi Cunningham, sent a letter by email to Instagram Support imploring the Meta Platforms Inc. owned social media website to reinstate their Sex Matters campaigning profile.

In the letter, the representatives laid out their charitable aims which are “based on human rights” and “founded on “gender critical” principles: that is the belief that sex is real, immutable and important.”

The letter went on to describe how the charity has had its social media output appraised by the UK Charity Commission and it was found that Sex Matters Org ‘social-media use was “exemplary”’, in stark contrast to the allegations by Instagram. 

It is unclear what in particular Instagram found issue with, which led to the drastic deletion of the entire account. Sex Matter urged Instagram to “reinstate [SexMattersOrg] account as a matter of urgency.”

The Sex Matters deletion comes in an apparent wave of censorship of account users who hold similar views on the topic of “gender critical” beliefs and are critical of trans activism. Many users had their accounts suspended concurrently, with some reinstated on appeal while others remain permanently banned, impacting their ability to advertise artwork and their political views.

Writing to Instagram, Maya Forstater who is CEO and co-founder of Sex Matters, raised the legal issue that led to the founding of the company which was registered as a charity this year. In 2021 Forstater took her employer to an Employment Appeal Tribunal which found that she had been discriminated against on the grounds of “belief” in the workplace, and that her “gender critical belief” has “been recognised by the UK courts as being “worthy of respect in a democratic society” and is therefore protected by the Equality Act 2010”.

The swathe of bans come as a UK General Election has been called, therefore restricting Sex Matters in its “Stand up for single-sex services” political campaigning created for the Election, which they described on their website, “In this general election, let’s make sure that every candidate knows we want them to stand up for sex-based rights.” 

Raising this issue to Instagram, the charity stated in their letter “Our social-media accounts are a key part of our campaigning activity on our charitable objectives”

Speaking to Reduxx, Maya Forstater, CEO of Sex Matters described the impact of the ban on their campaign efforts.

“Sex Matters’ main platform for social engagement has been Twitter/X, but in recent years we have enjoyed building a community of 6,000 followers on Instagram and it has been an important platform to reach new audiences,” she explained.

“It is outrageous for Instagram to suspend a registered charity without any details of how we are supposed to have breached ‘community guidelines’. UK politicians have serious questions to answer on sex and gender in the runup to the general election on 4th July. Our Instagram community is now missing out on important advice about what to ask candidates and canvassers who turn up on their doorstep.”

At the time of writing, Sex Matters reports that it has received no reply to the letter sent to Instagram and their account remains “permanently disabled.”

https://reduxx.info/uk-gender-critical-charity-permanently-banned-by-instagram

Germany’s economic policy is a “sheer catastrophe” as a result of political “fundamentalists” running the country, a senior business leader has warned.

Theodor Weimer, CEO of the German stock exchange (Deutsche Börse), has slammed the economic conditions in his country, blaming it on the country’s left-liberal “traffic light” government.

In a speech at an April 17 meeting of the Bavarian Economic Advisory Council, Weimer said that the economic policies of the current administration are “a sheer catastrophe”.

The speech — which had initially went under the radar — has now gone viral on social media, with one user describing it on June 6 as “the speech of the year”.

In the talk, Weimer said that he was initially optimistic when the current government took power in 2021, but that his enthusiasm dissipated as “fundamentalists increasingly got their way”.

“Our reputation in the world has never been as bad as it is now,” Weimer explained, adding that major international investors today ask him where Germany’s economic sense has gone.

“The talks with [international] investors have a fatalistic character,” Weimer said.

“The investors say, ‘If you continue like this, we will avoid you even more, we will go even further out of Germany.’

“The truth is this: International investors say, ‘We only invest in Germany because you are so cheap.’

“We have become a junk shop,” he added.

Weimer reported that investors now demand “a risk premium” when they invest in Germany.

“We used to have a risk discount, because everyone said Germany was great,” he said.

The business leader claimed that what Germany was doing was “crazy”, adding that most investments in German companies were today “only opportunistic”.

“Politically, [they say], ‘You no longer show any leadership at all,’ while people in Singapore say, ‘What kind of government do you guys have over there?’,” Weimar stated.

“From an economic point of view, we are on the way to becoming a developing country. We shrink ourselves for the sake of Brussels and Berlin, specifically [regarding] the entrepreneurs.

According to Weimer, Germany was in a far worse position than other Western countries. He cited the example of America, saying that even with the current US culture war, many investors feel confident that the economy will grow regardless of who ends up in the White House in 2024.

“Economically speaking, the next decade will be a bonanza in the US, that’s perfectly clear, no matter who’s president.

By contrast, Weimer expressed concern that Germany’s green agenda — especially concerning the push to abolish combustion engine cars — had undermined the country’s competitiveness.

“We have destroyed our car industry,” Weimer claimed, adding that it pained him deeply to talk to the leaders of Germany’s major automobile manufacturers, with the industry having been pushed “into a corner from which they can no longer escape”.

And, he claimed, that all the damage done would ultimately amount to nothing as “we will still have combustion engines for the next 35 years”.

“What we’re doing is madness,” he said.

Weimer said the fact he had been forced by his supervisory board to use a smaller car, based on CO2 policies, was “stupid” because such policies stifled growth.

He went on to talk about other issues such as the burden Berlin’s migration policies have put on the country.

“It is perceived [outside Germany] as completely wrong on all sides, [that’s] completely clear,” he said. “Our orientation towards humanitarianism is not shared anywhere.

“In economic terms, migration means addressing a shortage of skilled labour by bringing in workers who are proficient in your language and contribute.

“It does not mean bringing in people who take 50 per cent of citizens’ money and send it elsewhere.”

Regarding Germany’s deteriorating defence capabilities, Weimer said the government had “slept” on the issue. He accused the administration of “cheating” on NATO’s 2 per cent target by including pensions in its calculations.

“Do you think no one in the US will notice what we are doing? It’s madness,” he said.

“We only have ammunition for one and a half to two days.”

Regarding digitalisation, Weimer claimed “nothing was done” — in stark contrast to Estonia, for example, where he said citizens could file a tax return in three to five minutes online.

Regarding the German economy, he concluded: “It’s over.”

https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/06/its-over-german-economic-policy-a-sheer-catastrophe-stock-exchange-chief-claims

In the 1990s, people blamed “violent video games” like Doom for school shootings. Then it was Prozac.

Were those assumptions entirely wrong? Probably not. They were a piece of a larger puzzle.

(The leading cause of school shootings is still the media turning school shooters into celebrities beginning with the Columbine duo. But that’s just a vector, it’s not necessarily the motive. Some school shooters might have instead become serial killers or committed other violent crimes.)

We’ve had a rash of violence by mentally disturbed people convinced that they were transgender. The most notorious of these was Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale who had convinced herself she was a boy.

After keeping her manifesto secret to avoid “spreading conspiracy theories”, more of it has leaked and the portions published by the Tennessee Star make it abundantly clear that she was obsessed with her delusions.

“A terrible feeling to know I am nothing of the gender I was born of,” Hale wrote in the entry. She continued, “I am the most unhappy boy alive. I wish to be dead.”

She also wrote an entry titled “My Imaginary Penis,” in which Hale wrote about her gender struggles and detailed sexual fantasies she expressed using stuffed animals.

“I finally found the answer – that changing one’s gender is possible,” wrote Hale in the March 11, 2023, entry. She later described simulating intercourse between a “stuffed boy doll” she named Tony and another stuffed animal over the course of hours.

At the top of the entry, Hale also seemed to question whether her alleged autism diagnosis was a result of her “male brain.”

On the first page of the notebook, Hale questioned, “why does my brain not work right?” Then wrote, “Cause I was born wrong.” She then wrote, “Nothing on earth can save me… never ending pain. Religion won’t save.”

In an undated, two-sentence entry approximately 60 pages later, Hale wrote, “The [cocoon] of my old self will die when I leave my body behind and the boy in me will be free; in the butterfly transformation; the real me.”

Like a lot of violent teens, Audrey Hale was obsessively self-involved, was living in a fantasy world and had been diagnosed with assorted psychological problems. And was on meds for them.

While the source of Hale’s purported discomfort is unclear, musculoskeletal pain is a possible side effect of a medication The Star learned was prescribed to Hale by staff at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC).

In addition to musculoskeletal pain, the National Institutes of Health explains side effects for that medication, the anti-anxiety drug Buspirone, include abnormal dreams, outbursts of anger, tremors, and physical weakness.

Hale was additionally prescribed Escitalopram, better known as Lexapro, and Medical News Today explains that using the depression drug with Buspirone could “increase the risk of side effects” for both medications.

One of the dirty secrets of the transgender movement is that the new ‘recruits’ are often depressed teens prone to obsessive fantasies who often oscillate between manic and depressive states.

In other words the population likeliest to be school shooters anyway.

Transgenderism is just the latest mania, a delusion around which some build an identity, enabled by a corrupt woke political and medical class eager for a new ‘identity’ to affirm.

Did Audrey Hale kill a bunch of kids because she was in the depths of a transgender delusion or was she in the depths of a transgender delusion because she was a disturbed person who would go on to pursue a plot for a horrific murder-suicide sure to make her mark on society? Likely the latter.

But would Hale have killed a bunch of kids if we were in the 1980s in which there were no social media rabbit holes, the transgender movement was an obscure fringe (and medical experimentation on gender shifting had been discredited a decade earlier) and doctors were also less likely to shove cocktails of brand name drugs at every depressed teen? Hard to know, but the statistics speak for themselves.

Audrey Hale was a monster, but she was a monster woke culture and its allied medical establishment helped create.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/did-enabling-covenant-school-shooters-transgender-delusions-cause-massacre

The European Elections are on: voters from across the continent will chose their MEPs to represent them in the EU legislative body in Strasbourg and Brussels.

The elections started with the Dutch voters kick-starting the four days of voting across the Union

Exit polls in the Netherlands suggest a tight race between a left-green alliance and the conservative party of populist Geert Wilders.

Results will only be released when every country has finished voting on Sunday evening.

“The next European Parliament will have 720 seats, with each country having seats proportionate to their population. Germany will have 96, France 81 and Italy 76, while the Netherlands has 31.”

Ireland and the Czech Republic voted today (7), and the rest of the EU votes over the weekend.

“A shift to the right has been widely expected in this election, with far-right parties eyeing victory in France, Belgium, Austria and Italy.

Their opponents are likely to take some satisfaction from Thursday night’s exit poll, because of the Green/Labour alliance’s performance. Geert Wilders’ party came first in Dutch national elections last November, and has secured a cabinet deal with three other parties, even though he will not be prime minister.”

A shift to the right in the European Parliament would upset the cart of the Globalist policies of green alarmism, crippling regulation in agriculture, unchecked mass migration and the impetus for war against Russia.

Meanwhile, the campaign in Denmark isn’t going so well, with the Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen getting assaulted today (7) by a man in central Copenhagen.

Read more:

EU ELECTIONS WATCH: Dutch Right Wing Head to Head With Centre-Left in Exit Polls – Danish PM Assaulted While Campaining

The western German city of Essen has terminated a rental agreement with the anti-globalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party for an events centre where the party is planning to organise its congress at the end of June. The cancellation bears similarities with attempts to ban the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference in Brussels in April, and is another sign of how liberal elites try to silence their political opponents instead of debating them.

The agreement to rent out the Grugahalle, a multi-purpose indoor arena, was established last January between the AfD and the city of Essen, which is a majority shareholder of the exhibition area that incorporates the Grugahalle.

The first mention of a possible ban came early this year, following a hit piece on AfD by the left-wing, government-funded media outlet Correctiv, which falsely accused the party of being involved in a right-wing plot to deport millions of migrants, including those with German citizenship. The article led to nationwide-demonstrations against the AfD, with more and more mainstream politicians calling for the party to be banned.

This political pressure led to the city of Essen debating whether they should ban the party congress due to “current developments” and “security concerns.” A protest against AfD outside the events centre is also expected, and Essen’s Mayor Thomas Kufen (of the centre-right CDU) announced that “AfD is not welcome” and that he would not just be participating, but be “at the forefront of” such a demonstration.

Despite the threats, AfD went ahead with plans to organise the congress, but weeks before the event was set to take place, the city of Essen made a peculiar demand: the party would have to agree to prevent banned Nazi slogans from being used during the conference, such as “Everything for Germany,” otherwise they would be forced to pay a fine of €500,000 for each such remark. The AfD refused to sign such a statement, and Essen terminated the contract this week.

AfD federal executive board member Roman Reusch called the actions of the city of Essen “illegal,” saying “a legally valid contract cannot be modified unilaterally.” The party is taking legal action against the city. Party co-chairman Alice Weidel told daily Bild she was convinced that the court would deliver a verdict in AfD’s favour, meaning that the congress could commence as planned.

The events are reminiscent of attempts to cancel the National Conservatism conference in Brussels in April, attended by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. Two venues were pressured into cancelling the event at the very last minute, and when a third venue accepted to host it just hours before the start, local district Mayor Emir Kir tried to shut it down by sending the police to the event. He admitted that he was not doing it to prevent public disorder (as the official excuse stated), but simply to strip the “far right” of its platform. A legal intervention by the organisers and a favourable court verdict was needed for the conference to resume.

AfD has been growing in popularity in recent years due to its criticism of the left-liberal government’s policies which have resulted in a cost-of-living and energy crisis, and an influx of migrants to the country. The party is projected to finish second at this weekend’s European elections, with around 15-16% of the votes, but polling suggests it may have had its wings clipped by a recent scandal that resulted in the party being expelled from the right-wing Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/natcon-2-0-city-of-essen-cancels-venue-contract-for-afd-party-conference

Ireland’s upstart immigration sceptics looked set to gain a surprise two MEP seats, based on a recent analysis.

Dublin political commentator Keith Mills told Brussels Signal that the populist Independent Ireland (II) party would likely be the European Parliament election’s big winner in the country.

The new group had put out “strong messaging” regarding “protecting rural Ireland from the excesses of climate mitigation, a bit like the Dutch farmers’ movement”, said Mills.

The party is fielding three MEP candidates – one in each of Ireland’s three distinct electoral constituencies — as well as 60 councillor candidates for the country’s local elections, which are also taking place alongside the EP vote.

Unlike most European Union Member States, Ireland does not operate a nationwide list system for electing representatives, opting instead for a proportional representation system where individuals get to pick from MEP hopefuls running in their local area.

Under the forecasts, Ciaran Mullooly — a former correspondent for the country’s primary state-funded broadcaster — appeared likely to win an MEP seat for II in the Midlands North-West constituency.

Another professional journalist, late-night radio talk show host, Niall Boylan, also appears likely to pick up a seat for the party in Dublin.

Mullooly claimed he was winning support based on his backing of farmers in the West of Ireland and his “track record of 30 years as a volunteer in community development”.

The party is also in contention for a seat in Ireland South, where former farming association official Eddie Punch appears to be closing in on sitting Independents for Change MEP, Mick Wallace.

Having made a name for himself across Europe for his heterodox positions on Russia, China and the Ukraine war, the left-wing politician now looks in danger of losing his seat. The same goes for his colleague Clare Daly, who risks losing a tight race in Dublin.

Independents are topping the polls in Ireland amid a backlash against EU ‘careerists’.

Support for non-aligned candidates has spiked largely due to anger attributed to the refusal of mainstream groups to address immigration.

Read more 👉🏼 https://t.co/nMX8jbOG8l #eu pic.twitter.com/AQQY4pHPTH

— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) May 10, 2024

Reflecting trends across Europe, the Green Party appears likely to lose both of its two MEPs in the election, with Mills predicting the party will also haemorrhage half of its councillors after what he called a “poor campaign”.

Dublin’s current Green Party MEP Ciáran Cuffe “benefited from the ‘green tide’ in 2019”, he said.

“But that has now receded, so they could lose both MEPs and half their councillors.”

The governing Fine Gael party also seemed likely to lose three of its five seats.

This is despite the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Simon Harris campaigning vigorously alongside sitting Fine Gael candidate Maria Walsh in Midlands North-West, as well as her party colleague Senator Regina Doherty in Dublin.

His efforts have not been for nothing, with the extra push appearing to have buoyed both Walsh and Doherty in the polls.

“I think Fine Gael thought they could hold their two seats in Midlands North-West, but when that became unlikely, they went all in behind Walsh,” Mills explained, adding that the party seemed to have ditched another Fine Gael hopeful running in the region.

Doherty has specifically targeted the Green Party — despite it being a coalition partner of her group — picking a particularly high-profile fight with its leader Eamon Ryan, currently Ireland’s transport minister.

She likened new cycle lanes in Dublin City to the Berlin Wall, telling the Irish Mail on Sunday that the infrastructure had turned the city into a “spaghetti junction”.

There was now a need to “combat the over-mighty Greens in Europe”, she added.

It has been far from a smooth campaign for the government. Harris faced heckles on the campaign trail from protesters in County Mayo towns Westport and Castlebar over state provision of asylum-seeker accommodation in the county.

It has also been a difficult time for Left group member Sinn Féin.

Having been by far the country’s most popular party for a period of months, its polling collapsed during the EP election campaign, seemingly in part due to its failure to capitalise on the migration issue.

“There is a scenario where Sinn Féin don’t hold their seat in Midlands North-West, and don’t regain a seat in Dublin, and that could be curtains for [party head] Mary-Lou McDonald,” Mills said.

The party is nevertheless expected to win three seats, up by one compared to 2019.

Irish immigration sceptics predicted to win MEPs (brusselssignal.eu)

In the late afternoon of Monday February 1, three musicians performing at the Pride march in Bordeaux in the Gironde department were pelted with projectiles, tear gas and homophobic abuse by three pro-Palestinian protesters, one of whom was a minor, according to a police source who told Valeurs actuelles. Two of them were arrested and immediately taken into police custody. The third, however, is on the run.

[Info VA] Bordeaux : trois manifestants pro-palestiniens interpellés pour injures homophobes – Valeurs actuelles

On Thursday evening, a police patrol in the first arrondissement of Marseille was called by a passer-by who reported an aggressive person. The man had just punched a passer-by, as Valeurs actuelles learnt from police sources. The man, who had also tried to bring down a cyclist, was allegedly carrying a knife. When the police arrived at the scene, the man approached and shouted ‘Allah Akbar, Viva Palestine’. One of the police officers drew his weapon, whereupon the man raised his hand and left the other in his pocket as if he wanted to reach for a weapon.
Suddenly, he approached the policemen and tried to reach the police officers while showing an object. After the police officers pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him, they discovered the object the man was holding. It was not a weapon, but a toothbrush. The man was taken to a sobering-up cell due to his drunken state and then taken into police custody, reports La Provence.

Marseille : un homme se jette sur des policiers avec… une brosse à dents – Valeurs actuelles

The 23-year-old man from Bordeaux was arrested on Sunday the 2nd of June on the Place des Quinconces. He had already been arrested on the day of the Olympic torch relay for violating the supervision measure imposed on him. He is now in prison

Two 13-year-old girls from Eysines and Le Taillan-Médoc were waiting at the Place des Quinconces tram stop in Bordeaux late on Sunday afternoon, the 2nd of June, when they were approached by a young man who accused them of being dressed improperly.

The man insulted them in the worst possible way, then grabbed one of the girls by the arm and pulled on her skirt. He did the same to the other girl.

Bordeaux : issu de la mouvance islamiste, il reproche à des adolescentes de 13 ans d’être vêtues trop court et les agresse à un arrêt de tramway – Fdesouche