Approaching Sodom - #PCMadness - Biden's Equality Act an Attack on Women, Children, and Christians

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Biden’s ‘War on Women’: Equality Act to End Legal

Recognition of Biological Sex

BOSTON, MA - FEBRUARY 14: Runners cheer on their teammates during the High School Girls' Sprint Medley Relay

during the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix at Reggie Lewis Center on February 14, 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts.

(Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

DR. SUSAN BERRY

19 Feb 202117,253

President Joe Biden released a statement Friday urging Congress to “swiftly pass” the Equality Act, a bill that would eliminate the legal recognition of male and female sex, cater to gender ideology, and designate protection for the unborn as “pregnancy” discrimination.

Biden said:

I applaud Congressman David Cicilline [D-RI] and the entire Congressional Equality Caucus for introducing the Equality Act in the House of Representatives yesterday, and I urge Congress to swiftly pass this historic legislation. Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, and this bill represents a critical step toward ensuring that America lives up to our foundational values of equality and freedom for all.

Full equality has been denied to LGBTQ+ Americans and their families for far too long. Despite the extraordinary progress the LGBTQ+ community has made to secure their basic civil rights, discrimination is still rampant in many areas of our society. The Equality Act provides long overdue federal civil rights protections on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, locking in critical safeguards in our housing, education, public services, and lending systems — and codifying the courage and resilience of the LGBTQ+ movement into enduring law.

The House is expected to vote on the Equality Act, H.R. 5, next week. The legislation, which would rewrite civil rights law to include “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes, would likely upend the national culture as Americans have known it.

“The so-called Equality Act is legislative malpractice that turns equality on its head,” said Ryan Anderson, president of Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC), in a statement. “It isn’t drafted as a shield to protect vulnerable minorities from unjust discrimination, but as a sword to persecute those who do not embrace new sexual and gender ideologies.”

Anderson underscored the tremendous impact the legislation will have on the privacy of women and girls, as well as the punitive consequences to which faith-based institutions and organizations will be exposed at its hands:

It sacrifices the equality, safety, and privacy of women, while privileging men who identify as women: If this bill becomes law, they’d have a civil right to spend the night in a battered women’s shelter, disrobe in a women’s locker room, and compete on a women’s sports team—even children at K-12 public schools.

Religious institutions fare no better. Religious schools, adoption agencies, and other charities would face federal sanction for operating according to basic biology and mainstream Biblical teaching on sex and marriage. Outrageously, this act exempts itself from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Pope Francis would be treated as the legal equivalent of a Jim Crow segregationist.

Anderson noted that any questioning of transgender medical treatments and surgeries would be labeled “discrimination” if the Equality Act becomes law.

“And any refusal to support or provide abortions would now be treated as ‘pregnancy’ discrimination,” he continued. “And no one—not even the act’s sponsors—can tell us what would be required under the act to avoid committing ‘discrimination’ in the case of ‘non-binary’ gender identities.”

Terry Schilling, executive director of American Principles Project (APP), explained further the Equality Act will make permanent in federal law Biden’s executive order on his first day as president regarding “Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation.”

Schilling said in a statement:

Of course, this has been their goal for a long time, and we know by now the very terrible consequences which will occur if the ‘Equality’ Act passes. Female athletes will be forced to compete against biological males; women will be forced to share private spaces like bathrooms, locker rooms, and shelters with men; and religious charities will be coerced into violating their beliefs or else be shut down.

Schilling warned while the “Equality” Act sounds virtuous, “every member of Congress should recognize” that a vote in favor of it “is a vote against women, particularly women and girl athletes, as well as a vote against Americans of faith.”

There is much more on this on Breitbart.

Pandemic - Big Pharma - Price Gouging; Competition; Only Need 1 Shot; No Deep Freeze; Over 65s; Shameless

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Pfizer-BioNTech tried to gouge the EU with $65 vaccine doses,

German media report

19 Feb, 2021 18:47

FILE PHOTO: Vials labelled "COVID-19 Coronavirus Vaccine" and a syringe are seen in front of the Pfizer logo in this illustration taken February 9, 2021 © Reuters / Dado Ruvic

Drugmakers Pfizer and BioNTech wanted to charge the EU Commission €54.08 per dose of their Coronavirus vaccine, according to German media reports. The jab would have cost more than 20 times that of a rival shot from AstraZeneca.

The prospective price tag was revealed on Thursday by German broadcasters NDR and WDR, and the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. The paper claims that Pfizer and BioNTech submitted a bid to the EU offering 500 million doses at €54.08 ($65.58) per dose, for a total cost of €27 billion ($32.74 billion).

At €54.08, the BioNTech vaccine would have cost more than 20 times as much as the rival vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, and 500 million doses would have cost the EU €3 billion more than the annual GDP of Iceland. In comparison, Russia’s ‘Sputnik V’ vaccine was expected to be priced at no more than $10 (€8.26), according to its backers.

“I see it as a pursuit of profit that is in no way justified in the current situation of the pandemic,” Wolf Dieter Ludwig, drug chairman of the German Medical Association, told the newspaper.

Come on, Wolf, it's a pandemic, they can charge whatever they want.

Pfizer-BioNTech has made no profit on the sale of vaccines, according to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, and during negotiations last year reportedly told EU officials that the €54.08 price tag already included “the highest percentage discount” offered to any developed country.

So, does that mean other countries are paying even more?

The final cost per dose of the vaccine is still unknown, though a document leaked by Belgian MP Eva De Bleeker in December suggested that Pfizer-BioNTech had been bargained down to €12 ($14.55). Reuters later stated that it had reviewed documents showing the price at €15.50 ($18.79) per dose, “slightly lower than the $19.50 per shot the United States agreed to pay for a first shipment of 100 million doses of the same vaccine.”

The European Commission has thus far secured 600 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 460 million Moderna shots, and 400 million AstraZeneca doses. A further 1.1 billion doses of vaccines by other manufacturers, including Johnson & Johnson and CureVac, have been reserved, but these vaccines are still under development or evaluation.

Individual countries have set their sights further afield, however: Hungary last week became the first EU country to start administering Russia’s ‘Sputnik V’, and will soon deploy China’s Sinovac shot too. The Czech Republic is also considering buying the Russian vaccine, should it be approved by EU regulators.

Pfizer revises ultra-cold storage guidance for Covid-19 jab, says vaccine is stable at refrigerator temperatures

19 Feb, 2021 14:21

(FILE PHOTO) © REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

Vaccine partners Pfizer and BioNTech have said they’ve submitted new data to the US health regulator showing their jab can be stored at “refrigerator temperatures” rather than the ultra-cold levels currently mandated.

In a statement on Friday, the pair claim that their jointly developed Covid-19 vaccine can actually be stored safely between -25ºC and -15ºC – a substantial change from the -80ºC and -60ºC temperatures previously thought necessary.

BioNTech-Pfizer is now telling its customers that they only need 1 shot, not 2. 

How much does that affect the efficacy rate? It seems obvious that competition is heating up in Big Pharma Covid-19 vaccine industry. 

The companies said they have shared their new data with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “If approved, this new storage option would offer pharmacies and vaccination centers greater flexibility in how they manage their vaccine supply,” said Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer.

Under current guidance, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine must be stored at ultra-cold temperatures, and the extreme requirement has impacted the jab’s usage in many countries around the world, as the necessary cold-chain capability is not universally available. 

In early November, Pfizer’s jab became the first Covid-19 vaccine candidate to release its complete phase three trial data. The shot is now widely used around the world.

The company has vowed to help deliver doses to poorer nations, but UNICEF has warned that many countries face challenges storing the solution at such ultra-cold temperatures and quickly administering the shots once they arrive.

France advises AstraZeneca vaccine only for those under 65

The Associated Press

Published Tuesday, February 2, 2021 3:34PM EST

This July 18, 2020, file photo, shows the AstraZeneca offices in Cambridge, England. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant, File)

 

PARIS -- France's top health advisory body is recommending that the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine only be used on people under 65, citing lack of sufficient data about its effectiveness in older people.

The decision could shake up the French vaccination strategy, because the country has prioritized nursing home residents and people over 75. France had counted on the AstraZeneca vaccine for a large part of its upcoming inoculations, until the company announced delays affecting countries around Europe and the world.

The French guidance differs from that given by the European Medicines Agency, which authorized AstraZeneca's vaccine for use in all adults throughout the European Union on Friday, amid criticism the bloc is not moving fast enough to vaccinate its population.

Health authorities in Germany and other countries have raised concerns that the Anglo-Swedish company didn't test the vaccine in enough older people to prove it works for them, and indicated they would not recommend it for people over 65.

By not having a full complement of seniors in the test sample, the efficacy rate would be exaggerated.

Sweden, Greece, Iceland, Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, also limit Astra Zeneca shots to under 65s. All these European countries have rejected A-Z for seniors, yet the EU continues to approve it, unrestricted. Don't suppose something nefarious is occurring?

It is alarming that most countries in the world are racing to vaccinate over 65s with anything they can find, while A-Z may be worse than useless for this demographic.

Theological Incitement Within the World Council of Churches in Their Astonishing Anti-Semitism

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Christian leaders remain silent as another church figure recycles its oldest hatred

Melanie Phillips

Feb 19

Jews being persecuted; Rochester Chronicle, 13th century

The World Council of Churches has gone full theological incitement against the State of Israel.

In a recent Zoom webinar with more than 300 Christian activists to promote a film about the pro-Palestinian activism of Michel Sabbah — the former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem — Rev. Frank Chikane, the moderator of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, went much further than the usual falsehoods about Israel’s “brutality” towards the Palestinians.

“We need to begin to say to those who support Israel to brutalise Palestinians that the blood of the people of Palestine will be sought from them because they collaborate by allowing this system to continue,” he said.

Chikane’s apparent incitement to violence clearly channelled Matthew’s infamous curse in the New Testament: “His blood be upon us and on our children!”

This curse, calling for retribution in perpetuity against the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus, resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews through the centuries.

Since Jesus was held to be the son of God, the charge of deicide justified the slaughter of the Jews on theological grounds and turned them into devils.

Indeed, Chikane, a South African priest, openly suggested that Israeli Jews were demonic. He said the Palestinians were “dealing with the same demons we dealt with in South Africa, except that in their case, the demons have invited many other demons to make their struggle much more difficult”.

So Chikane’s choice of words targeted Israel’s Jews with the same genocidal incitement.

This shocking conflation of inflammatory falsehoods about Israeli crimes against humanity with the infinitely more incendiary charge of deicide is by no means new in the Christian church. It is part of what’s called “supersessionism,” also known as “replacement theology”.

This is an ancient Christian calumny against the Jews which, over the past few decades, has been revived and adapted to the Palestinian cause.

The doctrine holds that the Jews were stripped of God’s favour because they denied the divinity of Jesus. Christians, therefore, inherited God’s promises and became the “new Israel” while the Jews were damned.

This murderous doctrine was driven underground for a time by the Holocaust, but was given new life by the emergence of Palestinian Christian liberation theology. This fused the falsehood that the Palestinian Arabs were the original possessors of the land of Israel with theological, anti-Jewish supersessionism.

Such fusion gave the Palestinian Arab claim to the land of Israel the status of supposedly holy writ, turning the State of Israel into an ungodly interloper and its defenders into the enemies of God.

Giving rise to the patently ludicrous claim that “Jesus was a Palestinian” — whereas he was, of course, a Jew from ancient Judea — it has fuelled grotesque Palestinian propaganda that presents the Palestinians as being “crucified” by the Israelis. This image provokes a visceral revulsion against Israel among some western Christians, whose ignorance of Judaism and Middle East history turns them into the useful idiots of murderous incitement against Israel and the Jews.

The hybrid of Christian theological and Palestinian political demonisation of Israel and the Jews has been pumped out for years by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem. The Zoom webinar was organised by Sabeel and other venomously anti-Israel Christian groups and activists.

This Palestinian “liberation theology” has been adopted wholesale by the World Council of Churches.

For decades, the WCC has promoted anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric and activism. Through its “liberation theology” propaganda, it has infused liberal churches with neo-Marxist, anti-capitalist, anti-west attitudes — thus placing a virtual halo over the antisemitism and anti-Zionism of the left.

As the Christian historian Paul Merkley has chronicled, the WCC played a key role in bringing about the anti-Zionist hate-fest in Durban, South Africa a few days before 9/11, when representatives attending the UN Conference on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance demanded that the United Nations denounce Israel for “systematic perpetration of racist crimes, including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing”.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has noted that, while the WCC has doubled down on Israel, it has made little or no criticism of the brutal regimes in places such as Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, China and Iran.

When Islamic extremists kept blowing up Coptic churches in Egypt, traumatised Copts said that the WCC was apparently too preoccupied with Israel to give them support.

Indeed, its flagship project, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), has sent at least 1,800 volunteers to serve as observers in Jerusalem and the “West Bank” over the past couple of decades.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance states that “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is an example of antisemitism. The WCC says it “does not countenance equating Israel to Nazi Germany, neither in the training of participants in the EAPPI nor otherwise”.

Yet in 2019, the pro-Israel watchdog NGO Monitor reported that WCC leadership and EAPPI volunteers had repeatedly made comparisons of Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany in their advocacy sessions.

In 2012, Vivian Wineman, president of the UK’s Board of Deputies, said members of Jewish communities across the country had “suffered harassment and abuse at EAPPI meetings,” and that the EAPPI “helped to create a climate of hostility towards Israel within the Church of England”.

The WCC’s Zoom event was reported last week in the Algemeiner by Dexter van Zile, the specialist in Christian affairs for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) and who has long charted the conflation of Christian antisemitism with anti-Israel incitement.

In a subsequent article this week, Van Zile reports that the WCC has now tried to distance itself from Chikane’s remarks by claiming that he was from the African National Congress and therefore wasn’t speaking on behalf of the WCC when he made his comments.

Van Zile reported that theologian Gerald McDermott expressed strong disagreement with Chikane’s statements and declared that he was “out of touch with the situation on the ground.”

In such circumstances, that would seem to be a considerable understatement. The situation on the church’s ground is that influential Christian organisations continue to pump out inflammatory falsehoods about Israel and Zionism which don’t just demonise and delegitimise Israel but draw upon the church’s own theology to demonise the Jewish people.

The most shocking aspect of this is that with just a handful of exceptions, the churches remain mute about it.

Church leaders usually flatly deny that Christian supersessionism has any contemporary resonance. Yet you don’t have to scratch very hard below the surface of the anti-Israel utterances by western church leaders to pick up the supersessionist allusions.

It’s true that some of the most passionately pro-Israel people in the world today are Christians, in America and elsewhere. But these tend to be the biblically faithful. The obsessive animus against Israel and Zionism, along with its supersessionist underpinning, is mainly to be found among liberal Christians.

And their influence — through Christian NGOs and a wide range of other public and cultural institutions — is immense.

It’s not just that they influence other Christians. Even in relatively godless places like today’s Britain, the assumption that Christians stand for truth, justice and compassion means that even secular people tend to believe what they say. The pernicious falsehoods that such Christians pump out about Israel are therefore regarded as unchallengeably true.

Extreme as it was, Chikane’s diatribe on Zoom illustrated an even more unpalatable state of affairs — the silent acquiescence of church leaders in the contemporary mutation of Christianity’s own murderous history, and its virulent spread into the cultural arteries of the west.

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Islam - Current Day - Dubai Princess Hostage; Arab Crime Family Raided in Germany; 42 Students and Staffers Kidnapped from Nigerian School

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Dubai Princess Latifa says she is being held hostage in video recordings

By Daniel Uria

Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, the daughter of Dubai's ruler, said she is being held hostage in a villa converted into a prison following a 2018 escape attempt. Photo courtesy Tiina Jauhiainen/Wikimedia Commons

Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The daughter of Dubai's ruler accused her father of holding her hostage in video messages released on Tuesday.

In the video footage shared with BBC Panorama and supplied to CNN, Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum -- daughter of United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum -- said she has been imprisoned after attempting to flee the country.

"I'm a hostage. This villa has been converted into jail. All the windows are barred shut, I can't open any window ... I've been by myself, solitary confinement. No access to medical help, no trial, no charge, nothing," she said.

Latifa's friend, Tiina Jauhiainen, told the BBC that she helped sneak Latifa the phone that the videos were recorded on but the messages have recently stopped and she is deeply concerned for her friend.

"She is so pale, she hasn't seen sunlight for months. She can basically move just from her room to the kitchen and back," she said.

Latifa, 35, traveled to international waters to board a boat owned by French businessman Harve Jaubert in Feb. 2018, before the boat was boarded by commandos off the coast of India and she was returned to Dubai.

The videos were recorded over a series of several months about a year after she was returned to Dubai, the BBC said.

In the videos, Latifa said she fought back against the soldiers who attempted to take her off of the boat and was ultimately tranquilized and placed onto a private jet where she did not awaken until landing in Dubai.

After the 2018 escape attempt, former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson visited Latifa, saying later that she was "troubled" and "regretted" her attempts to escape.

Robinson told BBC Panorama that she was misled by Princess Haya bint al-Hussein, the sixth wife of the sheikh who is not Latifa's mother, about her condition.

"Haya began to explain that Latifa had quite a serious bipolar problem. And they were saying to me, in a way that was very convincing: 'we don't want Latifa to go through any further trauma' ... I didn't know how to address somebody who was bipolar about their trauma. And I didn't really actually want to talk to her and increase the trauma over a nice lunch," she said.

Haya fled to London with her two children in 2019 and applied for a forced marriage protection order, fearing that they may be kidnapped as well.

Out of Islam: Stories of Women Attempting to Escape Their Uber-Misogynistic Muslim Families

Notorious Arab crime family targeted in early morning raid by 100s of German police in Berlin & Brandenburg

18 Feb, 2021 10:29

(FILE PHOTO) © REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

German police and special forces have raided more than 25 properties in Berlin and Brandenburg in an early morning offensive against the country’s most notorious crime group. Two people were arrested.

Thursday morning’s operation was primarily aimed at members of the large Arab crime family, Remmo, who are being investigated as part of a crackdown on organized crime. 

The Berlin public prosecutor’s office is investigating them for violating laws on the distribution of firearms, large-scale drug trafficking and violent crime. The federal tax authorities are also involved in the investigation concerning allegations of tax fraud against members of the family.  

Police said two men had been arrested during the raids and another suspect escaped. The raid also targeted Chechen clans in the region who were involved in brutal clashes with the Remmo family in November 2020. Authorities feared a gang war could break out after the Chechens attacked members of the Remmo family and they then retaliated. 

The two groups reportedly agreed to a truce after Syrian-Lebanese professional boxer Manuel Charr mediated negotiations between them.  

According to Der Spiegel, German authorities had been analyzing data from EncroChat for nearly a year, a discontinued app dubbed "WhatsApp for gangsters," by criminologists. 

French security authorities managed to infiltrate an EncroChat server in spring 2020 and secretly read the chat traffic of tens of thousands of participants for months.

Armed gunmen abduct dozens of students, teachers from Nigeria school

By Sommer Brokaw

A sign for the Government Science College is pictured Thursday in Kagara, Niger State, Nigeria, one day after a group of gunmen abducted students and teachers from the boarding school. At least one student was killed. Photo by EPA-EFE

Feb. 18 (UPI) -- An assault on a boarding school in Nigeria that killed one person and led to more than 40 kidnappings has again raised suspicions about Boko Haram and drawn a strong rebuke from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The attack occurred on Wednesday at the school in Kagara in north-central Nigeria, officials said.

Authorities said one student was killed and a total of 42 staffers and students were kidnapped.

The state governor said more than 600 students were enrolled at the school.

No group has yet claimed responsibility, but the attack is similar to others in the past carried out by the Boko Haram terror group.

The group abducted almost 300 schoolgirls in Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014, many of whom are still missing. Parents of some of those missing girls said last month that they had escaped from the group.

More than 300 schoolboys were abducted in Kanakar in December and later rescued. That abduction was blamed on local bandits.

The Kagara kidnappers demanded a ransom, which the government has refused to pay, saying the attackers would only use the money to buy more weapons and cause more harm.

Thursday, Guterres' office called the attacks on schools in Nigeria "abhorrent and unacceptable."

"The secretary-general urges the Nigerian authorities to spare no efforts in rescuing those abducted and holding to account those responsible for this act," a spokesperson said.

Yeah, right! 7 years and there has been very little effort by the government to rescue the girls. They rescued the 300 boys, but very few girls.

Islam - Current Day - Paris Police Attacked; US Base in Iraq Attacked; Islamo-Leftism; French Anti-Islam Bill; Massacre in DRC; 19 Arrested in Russia; 5 Death Sentences

New firework attack on French police reported in Paris suburb

as 2 arrested for chucking molotov cocktails at cop car

16 Feb, 2021 17:39

French gendarmes stand guard in front of the National Assembly in Paris, France

©  REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has spoken out for the second time in as many days after police have yet again been attacked with fireworks in a Parisian suburb. Two arrests have been made.

On Tuesday, police confirmed to French broadcaster BMFTV that a squad car had been hit with dozens of fireworks on Monday evening in the town of La Celle Saint-Cloud, Yvelines on the edge of Paris.

Police were reportedly attacked after being called by residents who reported squatters in a local building, but officers left the area once they had carried out their inspections.

The latest attack took place 10 kilometers away from the town of Poissy, where, around the same time, Darmanin was visiting police who had been attacked in a similar incident on Saturday.

Footage of the attack at the weekend, which reportedly involved up to 30 people, appeared to show police being pelted with stones and fireworks, with some of the assailants shouting “kill them, kill them.”

“Two individuals were arrested this afternoon in Poissy after throwing molotov cocktails at a patrolling national police vehicle,” Darmanin said in a statement released on Twitter on Tuesday.

A day earlier, during his visit to the police station, the interior minister condemned Saturday's attack in Poissy and said: “Our job is to make sure that the thugs do not win.”

No injuries have been reported arising from either attack.

Poissy, FR

Contractor killed, American soldier among 6 wounded

in rocket attack near US base in northern Iraq

16 Feb, 2021 00:24

Smoke rises over the Erbil International Airport, after reports of rocket blasts near the US-occupied base in Erbil,

Iraq, February 15, 2021. ©  Reuters / Thaier al-Sudani

Rocket fire near an airport in Iraqi Kurdistan has left one civilian contractor dead and six others with injuries, including an American soldier, a Pentagon spokesman said. Reports indicate the blasts targeted a US-occupied base.

“Initial reports that Indirect Fire landed on Coalition Forces in Erbil tonight. There was 1 civilian contractor killed, 5 civilian contractors injured and 1 US service member injured,” said Colonel Wayne Marotto, spokesman for the US-led coalition’s Operation Inherent Resolve, in a tweet on Monday evening. He did not specify the nationality of the contractors involved.

A statement from the Interior Ministry of the Kurdistan Regional Government noted that at least three rockets struck near Erbil, the Kurdish capital in northern Iraq, late on Monday night, adding that “several people were injured” in the blasts. 

Reuters journalists based in Erbil also reported “several loud explosions” and a fire near the Erbil International Airport around the same time – confirmed to the outlet by Kurdish security sources – while other local reporters circulated footage purporting to show a “huge blaze” near the airport and the military base used by US forces directly adjacent to it. 

A militant faction dubbed Saraya Awliya al-Dam has claimed responsibility for the attack on the “American occupation,” pledging to carry out more strikes in the future, according to Reuters and local journalists. However, the Shia militia group, which has previously taken credit for other attacks on US forces in Iraq, offered no evidence to support the claim.

The Kurdistan region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani denounced the attack “in the strongest terms” in a tweet later on Monday, stating that an investigation would be launched and that he had discussed ways to coordinate the probe with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

French education minister sparks outrage with warning

about ‘Islamo-leftism’ in universities

17 Feb, 2021 15:30

© Getty Images/Andia/Contributor

The French minister for higher education has been criticized for warning about the spread of “Islamo-leftism” in France’s universities, raising concerns about the approach the government is taking in its fight against extremism.

Speaking to France’s free-to-air channel C-News, Frederique Vidal used the term, which has become popular among right-wing figures, in a discussion about the problem of radical Islam in the country, and President Emmanuel Macron’s mission to combat extremism. 

“What we observe in universities is that there are people who can use their titles and the aura they have… to carry radical ideas or to carry militant ideas,” Vidal warned.

I think that Islamo-leftism is eating away at our society as a whole, and universities are not immune and are part of our society.

The Conference of University Presidents (CPU), released a statement in response to Vidal’s remarks, condemning the term as an ill-defined label that has been “popularized” by right-wing individuals who wish to promote an anti-immigrant agenda. 

'Islamo-leftism’ is not a concept,” the group said, calling it “a pseudo-notion” that defies “scientific definition” and which should simply not be used.

Vidal’s comments came as Macron continues to push to reduce the threat of what he calls “Islamic separatism” from extremists in France after a number of terrorist attacks in recent years.

The term “Islamo-leftism” was also used by Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer in October 2020, where he accused it of “wreaking havoc” on the academic sector. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin took a similar stance to Vidal and Blanquer last week during a debate with the National Rally’s Marine Le Pen, where he accused the anti-immigration politician of being “soft” on Islam.

France approves controversial bill against ‘Islamist separatism’

Nearly 200 people protested in Paris on Sunday against the bill accusing it of

“reinforcing discrimination against Muslims”.

By Usama Hazari|   

Updated: 17th February 2021 8:27 pm IST

The French national assembly on Tuesday passed legislation to combat “Islamist extremism and separatism”, which the French government claims will put a leash on religious groups that undermine French republican and secular values.

 

However, critics of the French government say it restricts religious freedom and violates Article 18 (Right to freedom of thought, conscience and teaching, practice, worship and observance of one’s religion) and Article 19 (freedom to opinion and expression) of the United Nations declaration of human rights.  

 

With an eye on 2022 general election, French President Emanuel Macron’s centrist party passionately supported the bill which won 347 votes in favour of it, 151 against and 65 abstaining. Supporters of the bill say it has been passed in response to the wave of attacks seen in France and also to crack down on “religious funding” from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The law will require associations to declare donations over 10,000 euros and have their accounts certified.

France’s Muslim community, which is the largest Muslim community in Europe, has fears over the bill which specifically targets them and imposes restriction on every aspect of their life. It prevents families from giving Islamic education to children at home, which is a norm in Muslim homes around the world.

And is one of the reasons why Muslims often don't blend into western societies.

 

It also prohibits patients from choosing doctors based on gender. The bill gives French govt. the power to intervene and control finances of mosques and Muslim-run non-governmental organisations and the bill also makes “secular education” compulsory for all Muslim homes.

Critics say the French government is forcing its version of secularism and liberalism on the minorities of France and not allowing them freedom of thought and expression.

Nearly 200 people protested in Paris on Sunday against the bill accusing it of “reinforcing discrimination against Muslims”.

Isn't Muslim home-schooling a form of discrimination against the French?

Today's bill passed the lower house of parliament, and will reach the upper house by the end of March, where it is likely to pass.

Suspected Islamists kill ten people with knives, machetes in Congo

Written by Reuters 

17th Feb 2021-21

Pangas are often used in farm attacks.

Men armed with knives, machetes and pick-axes killed ten people in an overnight attack on a village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a witness and a local rights group said on Tuesday, blaming a Islamist militia.

Killings by armed groups more than doubled last year, according to the United Nations.

In late 2019 the Congo army began a campaign to eliminate the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan militia that has been operating in the vast country since the 1990s. The ADF has responded with a rash of retaliatory massacres of civilians.

“We are now preparing for the burial of our fallen compatriots. They were executed,” said Jean Manzekele, the head of Kalembo village in North Kivu, 45 km southeast of Beni.

“We realized that it was the ADF because of the way they attacked. They were shouting loudly in a foreign language which was difficult to understand.”

The army said it had secured the village and was pursuing the attackers, who also injured two people.

Violence in the three eastern provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu has “become part of a systematic pattern to disrupt civilians’ lives, instil fear and create havoc,” UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch said in Geneva on Tuesday.

People displaced by previous attacks have been targeted, Baloch told reporters. “Attacks by armed groups are carried out on the suspicion of collaboration with other groups or the Congolese security forces. Civilians find themselves trapped in the middle of confrontations between different groups.”

While the army’s operations against militia groups are more successful than in the past, they lack the capacity to maintain control of the areas they secure, leaving space for armed groups to return, Baloch said.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for several suspected ADF attacks in the past, but UN experts in the region? have found no direct link between the two groups.

Itiru, DRC

Russia detains 19 suspected Islamists for 'planning attacks'

By Deutsche Welle

2021/02/17 09:40

Russia's Federal Security Service detains suspected members of the Takfir wal-Hijra Islamist group

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) on Wednesday said it had detained 19 suspected Islamist militants planning attacks in the North Caucasus.

The FSB said it had seized a suicide belt, homemade bombs and automatic weapons from the suspects this month.

"Besides spreading ideological propaganda and recruiting new followers, they were plotting acts of sabotage and terror attacks in the North Caucasus," the FSB said.

Who were the people arrested?

The detainees are suspected members of the Takfir wal-Hijra Islamist group, an organization which was founded in Egypt and has ties to al-Qaeda.

Ten out of the 19 arrested were organizers, and the rest were active participants, Russian news agency RIA said.

The members were spread across the Rostov, Krasnodar and Karachay-Cherkessia regions, as well as Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Footage from the arrest showed FSB operatives climbing an apartment building and entering through a window to detain a suspect.

How often does this happen?

In November 2014, the FSB detained 14 members of the suspected members of the group under similar circumstances.

The group's targets include "civilians, media, mosques, journalists, political leaders, military, and Jews with assassination, armed assault, and bombings," according to trackingterrorism.org.

Russia has repeatedly been targeted by Islamist militant groups, including in an attack on a train in a St. Petersburg metro tunnel in 2017. The North Caucasus have also faced similar attacks in recent years.

Russian authorities have announced several operations to snuff out suspected Islamist cells, particularly in the south of the country and the Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya. The region's authoritarian head, Ramzan Kadyrov, has, however, been accused by rights groups of using the threat of Islamism to quash dissent.

President Vladimir Putin's war against Islamist insurgents in Chechnya in 1999 helped fuel Kadyrov's initial popularity.

Five Bangladesh Islamists receive death sentence for writer’s murder

Published on: Wednesday, February 17, 2021

By: AFP

Police escort a convicted man (2R) after a Bangladesh anti-terrorism court sentenced five Islamist extremists to death

over the brutal murder of Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-US writer and rights activist, in Dhaka.

DHAKA: Five Islamist extremists were sentenced to death on Tuesday over the brutal murder of a Bangladeshi-American writer and rights activist six years ago.

Avijit Roy, a prolific blogger and the author of 10 books including the best-selling “Biswasher Virus” (“Virus of Faith”), was hacked to death outside Bangladesh’s largest book fair by machete-wielding extremists in February 2015.

The murder, part of a reign of terror by extremists at the time, enraged the Muslim-majority nation’s secular activists who staged days of protests.

The judge at Dhaka’s Special Anti-Terrorism Tribunal found six people guilty, sentencing five to death and one to life in prison, prosecutor Golam Sarwar Zakir told AFP.

Two of them were tried in absentia, including sacked army officer Syed Ziaul Haque who was accused of leading the group that carried out the attack—known as Ansarullah Bangla Team, or Ansar al Islam. 

Roy was born in Bangladesh in 1972 and moved to the United States in 2006 from where he continued to criticise the government for the jailing of atheist bloggers.

A defence lawyer said they would appeal the verdict in a higher court.

It comes less than a week after eight Islamist extremists were sentenced to death for the murder of a publisher who brought out books by secular writers, including two by Roy. 

The attacks were part of a wave of violence between 2013 and 2016 targeting secular activists, bloggers and atheist writers at a time of heightened political tensions.

Several top Islamist political party leaders were hanged over the violence under the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The Bangladesh government has since set up two major anti-terrorism police units to crack down on Islamist extremists.

More than 100 suspects have been killed in anti-terror raids and hundreds detained. Around half a dozen Islamist militant outfits have been banned.

Bangladesh cricket star Shakib Al Hasan has become the latest target of radicals, and had to be given an armed bodyguard after he was threatened for attending a Hindu ceremony in India.

Ozzone 4-3 > Are You Willing to Examine Yourself and Allow God to Show You Your Hidden Sins?

 

In more than one church, I have heard a pastor say that when memories of sin arise in your mind, that it is the devil attempting to drag you down. I never believed that as how could the Lord bring us to repentance over specific sins, or teach us how to avoid them in the future. 

It is the Lord that brings up old sins, usually. Think on them, on how they came about, and what you can do to prevent them from occurring again. Then promise the Lord that that is what you will do.

I pray Father, that You open our eyes to let us see our hidden sins, and give us the love for You, and courage to repent of them.

#PCMadness - De-Platforming, Cancel Culture, Safe Spaces, Universities, Progressives, Illiberals

..

UK government launches plan to fight ‘unacceptable silencing’

in UK universities

16 Feb, 2021 11:24

© Getty Images / Laurent Hamels

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has unveiled the UK government’s plan to tackle “unacceptable silencing and censoring” on university campuses after speakers have been no-platformed and censored for views deemed controversial.

The new measures could force universities to accept a free speech condition if they want to receive government funding, require student unions to guarantee that their members and any guest speakers are entitled to lawful free speech, see institutions that fail to protect free speech face fines and allow speakers who are denied a platform or academics who are dismissed to seek compensation in court. “Free speech underpins our democratic society and our universities have a long and proud history of being places where students and academics can express themselves freely,” Williamson declared while announcing the proposals.

I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses

of unacceptable silencing and censoring.

A 2018 report from the UK’s Joint Committee on Human Rights supported Williamson’s concerns, as it found numerous examples of censorship and debates being shut down, raising concerns about restrictions on free speech and the use of “safe space” policies in educational institutions.

Read: the exaggerated overuse of 'safe space' policies...

But, the new measures have received a critical response from some in the education sector, as they see the move as unnecessary, believing that concerns about censorship are overblown and there are bigger issues that need to be addressed, particularly given the challenges facing the industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There is no evidence of a freedom of expression crisis on campus,” the vice president for Higher Education at the National Union of Students, Hillary Gyebi-Ababio, said opposing Williamson’s proposals, claiming institutions are “constantly taking positive steps to help facilitate the thousands of events that take place each year.”

The National Union of Students currently has a no platform policy, which was introduced in 1974, to fight back against fascist and racist organisations, that allows members to vote on barring speakers from campus to “keep students safe” at the organisation’s yearly national conference.

There has been a growing list of academics experts and speakers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who have been banned or no-platformed by UK universities in recent years due to remarks they’ve made which have been seen as controversial or offensive by some students. 

Journalist Peter Hitchens had a talk at Portsmouth University indefinitely “postponed” when the Students Union claimed he shouldn’t speak during LGBT+ History Month due to previous views that he’d expressed in his published work. 

Labour politician Chris Williamson was denied a platform at the Royal Holloway Debating Society over comments that were deemed offensive and controversial by Jewish students. 

Nobel Laureate Professor Michael Levitt was “uninvited” from a joint university bio design conference for his “Covid claims” despite not planning to discuss the pandemic during his appearance.

Author and ethologist Richard Dawkins had a planned talk at Trinity College, Dublin cancelled due to his views on religion, particularly Islam. 

Dawkins is renowned for trashing religion, especially Christianity. That, however, apparently wasn't a problem for Trinity College, until they discovered he also trashed Islam. 

=============================================================================================

Scientist Richard Dawkins ditched: are university students stifling free speech?

Libertarian: UCD graduate Juliette Barnes, a keen debater at the university's Literary and Historical Society.

Photo by Steve Humphreys

John Meagher, The Independent

October 03 2020 02:30 AM

It is one of the oldest university societies in the world. The College Historical Society - popularly known as the Hist - has been a feature of student life at Trinity College Dublin since 1747.

It boasts about 10,000 members and has achieved a mild sort of celebrity outside of Trinity's venerable grounds thanks to the controversial debates it has hosted over the years.

This week it found itself in the glare of public opinion once more when it was revealed that an invitation to the veteran atheist, evolutionary biologist and contrarian Richard Dawkins to speak at the society had been rescinded.

According to the TCD student newspaper, the University Times, the Hist's auditor (chairperson) Bríd O'Donnell said the society would "not be moving ahead with his address as we value our members' comfort above all else".

Professor Richard Dawkins

Announcing the cancellation on her Instagram page, O'Donnell said she had been "unaware of Richard Dawkins' opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening.

"I had read his Wikipedia page and researched him briefly," she wrote. "Regretfully, I didn't look further into him before moving forward with the invitation... I want to thank everyone who pointed out this valuable information to me. I truthfully hope we didn't cause too much discomfort and if so, I apologise and will rectify it."

As soon as the University Times tweeted the story, the floodgates opened. The vast majority of those who responded to the post suggested the society had made a mistake in favouring student "comfort" over robust debate and engagement with different ideas.

The Trinity professor Brian Lucey tweeted: "I suspect that almost every headline speaker over decades has had some comments that were regrettable, unfortunate, disreputable or disgusting. That doesn't mean they're not worth debating."

Some suggested it was a form of cancel culture and one that was becoming more prevalent in Irish universities.

TCD economics lecturer Ronan Lyons, a former member of the Hist, was among several academics to argue that the society had acted unwisely. "College life is supposed to be a time where you are out of your comfort zone and where you are challenged to ideas that might be different to your own," he says. "The idea of 'comfort' just doesn't come into it.

"I have no problem if there are established rules. For instance, if it's a case of, 'We welcome debates of all kinds, but the following topics are not up for discussion, such as the Holocaust', that's fine. But the idea of a debating society that would prioritise the comfort of its members sort of misses the point of a debating society. 

Think of the Oscar Wilde quote: an idea that is not dangerous

is unworthy of being called an idea at all."

Wilde himself attended a number of Hist debates while an undergraduate at Trinity.

"I'm not telling any society what it can and cannot do, but I'd be worried if it affected the attitude of learning new ideas in education," Lyons adds. "I mean, I'd be worried if my students didn't want to hear new ideas.

"One of the modules I teach is the development of the Irish economy and, in principle, somebody with certain personal, political beliefs, might be uncomfortable with some of the ideas that you come across when you study Irish economic history. Like, 'Was the Famine a genocide?' Almost certainly not by any reasonable definition, but if you're of a certain political persuasion that would be an uncomfortable view.

"Another module, the history of the world economy, also covers some very uncomfortable topics, such as slavery. It's not easy to talk about that, but it is something that has to be taught. You don't go to a gym to be comfortable, you go there to push yourself and I think college is like a mental gym where you're getting yourself out of that comfort zone."

For University College Cork student Bryan O'Shea, the founder of Free Speech Ireland, third-level education is the very life-stage when challenging ideas are confronted. "University should be anything but a safe space," he says. "Debating societies and universities should provide an open forum for discussion and critical thinking. It is the key tenet of a university - to confront students with challenging ideas and dissenting opinions.

Illiberal trend among progressives

"No-platforming a speaker suggests the correct position has been decided in advance. This is unacceptable. Any institution genuinely committed to public debate should push back against the illiberal trend prevailing among left-wing, progressive students.

"We see this manifesting itself elsewhere in society as well. The ostracisation and dogmatic response to anyone who questions the Covid-related restrictions is an example. There is an absolute refusal by a lot of people on the left to engage in a free and open exchange of ideas with those whose opinions they disagree with."

O'Shea believes the no-platforming phenomenon is, chiefly, employed by liberals. "They have totally rejected the idea of free speech and embraced their own b
eliefs that they deem to be the morally correct and unquestionably virtuous ones," he says. "They seek only to enforce their orthodoxy. Progressives have wormed their way to the top of Irish society and have demonstrated their absolute intolerance for dissent."

And not just Irish society, it's all over the western world.

It is a sentiment that is echoed outside of Ireland, particularly among academics such as Jordan Peterson - equally loved and loathed for his 12 Rules for Life bestseller and refusal to recognise words such as 'cis', a comparatively new derivation to describe someone whose gender identity is the same as their sex at birth.

The provocative broadcaster Piers Morgan is set to challenge the no-platforming orthodoxy in his forthcoming book Wake Up: Why the 'Liberal' War on Free Speech is even more Dangerous than Covid-19.

Some are especially concerned by what they see as an erosion of free speech on our university campuses - a trend that is said to have been prevalent in some US universities over the past decade.

In their polemical 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff argue that today's teenagers and early twentysomethings are being disadvantaged as a result of 'safe spaces', 'trigger words' and the banishment of those deemed to cause offence. They argue the phenomenon of 'safetyism', coupled with over-parenting when children are young, has led to the emergence of modern identity politics and hypersensitivity. And to cancel culture and no-platforming.

Labour senator Ivana Bacik, who has long associations with the Hist, believes it is unfair to castigate today's university students as less robust than those in her time at college and argues that modern-day campuses are just as willing to entertain challenging ideas as before.

"No-platforming is not a new phenomenon," she says. "It's been happening for years. In 1988, I was one of a group of students at the Students' Union at Trinity who wanted to no-platform the Holocaust-denier David Irving. At the time, we made a strong argument that he should be prevented from organising on campus; but it wasn't a free-speech issue."

The issue provoked much controversy at the time - and did so again a decade later when students at UCC planned to have Irving address them. For many years Irving, who is now 82, had been a free-speech test case for universities here and in the UK.

"I would never want to de-platform anyone, unless their views have been shown to be completely wrong, as has been the case with Irving," says Bacik. "His assertion that the Holocaust did not happen is outrageous. I think anyone who wilfully distorts history should not be afforded the free speech rights of everyone else."

While such contentious issues would be magnified by social media today, Bacik says the students' union stance on Irving caused considerable publicity at the time. "It wasn't just a college issue," she says, "there were all sorts of letters published in the Irish Independent and the Irish Times - as students, we were strongly criticised for denying him a platform."

Bacik, who has spoken on panels alongside Richard Dawkins, has been on the receiving end of the no-platforming phenomenon. "Some years ago, I was invited to speak at Notre Dame University [the private Catholic research university in Indiana] and the invitation was rescinded by the university organisation over my pro-choice views on abortion."

Where does she stand on no-platforming those who have inflammatory views, but don't distort history or, by any reasonable measure, tell lies? "It's very tricky," she says. "You have to take each speaker in context. Free speech is a hugely important principle in any democracy, absolutely, but it's never been an absolute right. In our constitution, it's subject to restrictions. There are libel laws and incitement to hatred laws in Ireland, too. And one has to bear that in mind.

"When it comes to universities, the whole point of debating societies is for students to hear different sides of a debate. At the same time, there's no right to be invited. It's up to the students on these committees to decide who to invite and who not to and I'm not going to wade into that one."

UCD graduate Juliette Barnes, keen debater at the university's Literary and Historical Society - commonly known as the L&H - believes college can be a key time for being confronted with ideas diametrically opposed to your own. "I always spoke on the freedom of speech side because I'm a big believer in it and a big believer in pushing against cancel culture and no-platforming in general.

Flaw in the debate

"I'm a libertarian, so I'm all about individual people feeling enabled to do what they feel is the right thing to do economically, freedom of speech-wise, socially, whatever. And I think people absolutely should have the right to say what they feel even if it's obviously wrong, or inflammatory, or stupid, or hurtful. But I similarly think the flip side of that is that individual organisations also have the right to choose who they want to give a platform to."

Barnes has been following the Hist/Richard Dawkins story with interest this week. "A flaw in the no-platforming debate is where we can sometimes assume that a platform is a privilege you have when a platform is actually not synonymous with free speech. Free speech is the right you have and the platform to execute that upon is the privilege."

For Barnes, there is a difference between controversial figures being invited to a debate with those of opposing views as distinct from merely getting to address an audience, uncontested.

"A situation where there is a debate and the audience is getting to hear both sides is a reasonable contention," she says. "When I was in college, there was a big furore [at TCD] over the Hist inviting [then Ukip leader] Nigel Farage and people saying that the issue with him being invited was that he was just an individual speaker in an environment that wasn't being moderated by a hardened journalist and that would give him [Farage] an opportunity to say what he wanted and ride roughshod over everything."

Ultimately, the Farage visit went ahead - with the political journalist Pat Leahy chairing the discussion - but not before the Hist decided to revoke the awarding of the gold medal that it presents to many of its guest speakers.

For Bryan O'Shea, it represented much that has gone wrong in college campuses today. "They [the Hist] issued a grovelling apology for the high crime of inviting Nigel Farage. It will be interesting to see who they invite through the rest of the year. Will they all be left-wing? If so, will these speakers make people feel uncomfortable?"

While committee members of the Hist may have been feeling the weight of opinion this week, some have called for tolerance. Tomás Ryan - the TCD neuroscientist who has become a well-known figure thanks to his media engagements during the Covid pandemic - urged those critical of the decision to rescind the Dawkins offer to take a philosophical approach.

"This was a mistake," he tweeted. "But undergraduate students need to be allowed to make mistakes, ideally without intense international social media pressure. This seems like an error of judgment rather than intolerance. TCD encourages respectful debate from diverse perspectives."