Iqbal Mohamed spoke out against Tory MP Richard Holden's efforts to bring in new legislation to prohibit the marriage of first cousins:
'An estimated 35-50 per cent of all sub-Saharan African populations either prefer or accept cousin marriages and it is extremely common in the Middle East and in South Asia. The reason the practice is so common is that ordinary people see family intermarriage overall as something that is very positive, something that helps build family bonds, and helps put families on a more secure financial foothold.'
Richard Holden warned there had been a 'worrying trend' of an increased rate of cousins marrying among some communities in Britain.
Holden outlined 'health, freedom and our national values' as three areas of concern over family intermarriage in the UK.
He urged the Labour Government to look as his Bill as a 'vehicle for positive change in our country', adding: 'Because, in the end, it's about more than one marriage - it's about the values and foundations of our society and our democracy.'
Europe needs more women like this one!
'The woman, 20, was standing on an escalator at Kaiserslautern train station, in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate, when the 64-year-old man grabbed her bottom on June 29, Bild reported.
The woman took out a folding knife and made a stabbing motion towards the man.
The woman, who lives in Germany told police she tried to keep the man at a distance, but when he backed away, she followed.
The man from Eritrea, a country in East Africa, grabbed her arm, and as the woman tried to free herself, she stabbed him in the heart “during the same movement”, according to prosecutors.
The man died at the scene.
The woman has been charged with causing bodily harm resulting in death and could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
In court she argued she acted in self-defence and did not intend to stab the man in the heart.
After reviewing CCTV footage, prosecutors believed the woman did not intentionally stab the man in the heart. She allegedly wanted to injure the man but not kill him.
After the incident, a search was launched for the woman, who soon turned herself in at a police station.
The American has since been released. Youth court is due to decide if it will accept the charge against the woman.'
The editor of a left-leaning British newspaper offered its staffers counseling to cope with Donald Trump’s “upsetting” victory in Tuesday’s presidential election, The Post has learned.
Katherine Viner, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, urged journalists at the newspaper’s UK and Australia offices to contact their colleagues in the United States to “offer your support,” according to a copy of her email obtained by The Post.
“I know the result has been very upsetting for many colleagues,” she wrote.
“If you want to talk about it, your manager and members of the leadership team are all available, as is the People team.”
Viner added that employees upset by Trump’s return to the White House can access free mental health support from internal company portals, according to the memo.
“The election has exposed alarming fault lines on many fronts, which we will be examining in the weeks and months ahead,” Viner wrote.
A Belgian publisher has withdrawn the sale of a comic book after controversy erupted over the books' racist depiction of black people and 'hyper-sexualised' images of women.
The publisher Dupuis announced that its graphic novel, Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, would be removed from shops after the book was called out on social media.
In an announcement last week, Dupuis said it was “profoundly sorry if this album has been shocking and hurtful”, adding that it had been done in a “caricatured style of representation from another era”.
The publisher added that it was “more aware than ever of our moral duty and the importance of comics,” adding: “We take full responsibility today for this error of judgment.”
Spirou and the Blue Gorgon, a satirical tale of so-called “eco-terrorists”, junk food and plastic rubbish, was first published in September 2023. The comic book was widely reviewed in the Francophone press back at the time of its release, and there was no controversy around it.
However, in October 2024, a TikTok video denounced its portrayal of black people and women. The viral video led to a great deal of criticism. One internet user noted that all the white characters were human beings, while black characters were depicted as monkeys in the book. The user also pointed out that the women were typically drawn with plunging cleavage and tiny waists, and were “hyper-sexualised”.
After the publisher’s decision, local media reported that approximately 30,000 copies would be removed from sale, a decision said to be the first of its kind in Belgium.
Comic strips are considered an art form in Belgium and France, but some works have been strongly criticised for their stereotypical depictions of women and people of colour.
A similar uproar had occurred in 2011, with many seeking a ban on the 1930 comic book Tintin and the Congo over its portrayal of Africans. The request was turned down by Belgian courts.
The cartoonist behind the Blue Gorgon, Daniel Henrotin, who uses the pen name Dany, said he had been emulating the style of the late Belgian comic strip artist, André Franquin, who was celebrated in the 1950s. Dany said he recognised he had “made a mistake” and was “truly sorry if I could have hurt anyone”.
The 81-year-old artist denied having any racist or misogynist intentions and added that his goal was not to mock or denigrate people of colour and women.
“I heard it said that we cannot draw like that today. I respond that humour and caricature are in the DNA of the Belgian school of bande dessinée," the artist reportedly said.
That's huge number, but I heard that the game is woke as hell.
Any explanation?
So far, so good.
He was serving a two year and eight months prison term after being jailed in August.
Judge Richardson told him: 'You did not yourself attack any police officer, as far as can be detected, but what you did was encourage by your conduct others to behave violently and you were part of this mob.'
Naziki's family said of the 52-year-old, who had lived in Italy for 24 years: 'He was a good man and we want justice. Everyone who knows him will tell you that. She ran over him four times and then just calmly drove off when he was dying and didn't even ask for help.'
Italy's deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini took a different view and wrote on Facebook: 'This drama is the consequence of a crime. If the man who lost his life hadn't been a delinquent this wouldn't have happened.'
Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Saying it "cannot cope" with large number of migrants crossing its border, the Netherlands unveiled strict new anti-immigration measures Friday.
Prime Minister Richard Schoof and Minister of Asylum and Migration Marjolein Faber will enact the new emergency law "as soon as possible," the government said in a statement.
The legislation will pave the way for the country to opt out of the European Union's asylum and migration policy, which it plans to do next week.
"The voter has given a clear mandate. We need to change course and the influx must be reduced immediately. We are taking measures to make the Netherlands as unattractive as possible for asylum seekers. And there is no place here for anyone who abuses our hospitality. I am going for a safer Netherlands," Faber said in the statement.
The Netherlands last fall elected the nationalist conservative, far-right Party for Freedom or PVV. The PVV garnered around a quarter of total seats in the Dutch parliament and now leads a coalition government.
"People feel the consequences of the asylum crisis every day," Faber said in a video statement posted on X.
Faber also made it clear the Netherlands will ask Brussels for an opt-out of the EU asylum and migration policy and instead "join forces with like-minded countries in Europe" in a move she said will strengthen control of the country's border.
The government said the "strictest asylum regime ever" is necessary to curb the flow of migrants into the country it contends is leading to problems in the public housing, health care and education sectors.
Under the new rules, the Netherlands' declaration of undesirability will be expanded in an effort to more quickly deport immigrants who commit crimes.
The term nuclear family will also be limited to the narrowest possible definition. The country plans to only allow families of migrants to reunite if a clear permanent residence exists and one family member has had legal residence status for at least two years. That family member will also need to have a "suitable income."
Asylum seekers will now be required to return to their country of origin as soon as it is safe there and will no longer automatically receive an asylum permit for an indefinite period after five years.
"By limiting the influx, fast procedures, a punitive approach to troublemakers, stricter border controls, limiting the possibilities for subsequent travel and firmly focusing on return, the Netherlands must become a leader in Europe when it comes to admission rules," the government said in its statement.
From 1.8 million to 0.9 million. LOL
"Elon Musk makes no secret of his support for Donald Trump"
Rossmann has fleet of about 800 vehicles, buys 180 cars a year.
The drugstore chain, which is among the largest in Europe, said its decision was with immediate effect and due to what it called an "incompatibility" between statements by Musk and the values that Tesla represents.
An extremely dangerous Somali migrant, who had previously killed a man by stabbing and beheading him, was inexplicably let out of a psychiatric ward for an escorted visit to the cinema on Thursday, August 8th, during which he escaped, reports media outlet Nius.de.
The 22-year-old man, an asylum seeker from Somalia named Mursal Mohamed Seid, was sentenced to an indefinite stay at a psychiatric hospital in 2022, after he murdered a 52-year-old fellow resident at a homeless shelter, stabbing him 111 times with a knife, and then decapitating him.
The Deggendorf regional court ruled at the time that the suspect was mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia, and that it was unclear whether he had been able to mentally grasp the seriousness of his actions. The court had heard that Seid believed there were two demons inside his roommate that he had to kill.
His carers at the psychiatric ward of the hospital in the southern German town of Deggendorf let him out for an accompanied visit to the cinema on Thursday. The man escaped when he went to the toilet, and, after a large-scale search of the area, was found and detained eight hours later, five kilometres away. According to media reports, he did not resist arrest.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann expressed his outrage, telling daily Bild: “I will order a detailed investigation into why the district hospital allowed this highly dangerous man to go to the cinema at all.”
Germany has witnessed a series of brutal knife attacks around the country, committed by migrants. The country is constantly grappling with mass immigration: 352,000 asylum applications were handed in last year, and 132,000 until June of this year.
Mursal Mohamed Seid’s case is reminiscent of another Somali migrant’s crimes committed in 2021. Abdirahman Jibril, a 24-year-old homeless man, who arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker in 2015, killed three people with a kitchen knife in a shopping centre in Würzburg, Bavaria, and wounded seven others. His defence attorney said the suspect had been suffering from a psychotic episode and “voices prompted him to commit this horrible crime.”
Taking place at the University of Sheffield, researchers “will take an unflinching look at the white-centricity of folk music repertory, performers and audience by conducting fieldwork to shed light on long-standing vernacular singing practices of ethnic minority cultures in England”.
They then hope to “increase accessibility to the folk club scene and take the first step in a process of decolonisation within the folk music canon”.
The project has been awarded £1,485,400 from the taxpayer-funded UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under its “future leaders fellowship’’. It has also been granted extra funds on top of this from bodies such as Research England (which also falls under the remit of UKRI).
Prof Dennis Hayes, director of Academics for Academic Freedom, told The Telegraph: “Journalists will be pleased to know that there will be an endless supply of stories about disciplines being told by universities to ‘decolonise’ and of money being spent on studies of ‘whiteness’ in any and every conceivable subject.
A new toolkit for ‘decolonising’ philosophy in universities dismisses canonical western philosophers from Plato to Wittgenstein as ‘dead white males’ who engaged in “armchair theorising” and must now make way for voices from the ‘Global South’.https://t.co/wOsgdTPYa7
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) June 20, 2024
“The reason for this is institutional groupthink in universities. Universities have adopted the need for decolonisation, and the victim hierarchy of intersectional theory, as essential to upholding their inclusive values. This groupthink is a threat to academic freedom. It silences almost all opposition as academics fear being charged with racism if they speak up against being told what to think.
Fay Hield, professor of music at the University of Sheffield, said: “The term decolonisation is often misinterpreted. Our research highlights the different under-recognised communities who have helped to establish cultural life in England. Folk music is a constantly evolving genre, which has taken influences from a diverse range of people over centuries. It is part of the UK’s cultural heritage and should be celebrated. Our aim is to break down the barriers for people to get involved in folk music. Opening up the genre to different audiences will help to sustain the nation’s folk music for decades to come.”
History lecturers at Liverpool University are being urged to "problematise" whiteness and heterosexuality in their teaching — the Russell Group institution's new 'diversity' guidance also proposes compulsory inclusivity training for academic staff.https://t.co/W8SHRj1N9r
— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) June 18, 2024
A recent survey that asked participants if they wanted to see more white players on the national football team. The poll by the ARD public broadcaster said 21% of respondents agreed with the proposition.
Amiddle school teacher in the northern city of Treviso has exempted two Muslim students from studying Dante on the grounds that it is a religious work that clashes with their Islamic faith, local dailies reported Friday. The Divine Comedy, with its visions of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, is stepped in medieval Christianity and the Prophet Mohamed is one of the historical figures placed in the Inferno. The teacher asked the families of all the students who are exempted from religious studies on religious grounds if they also wanted to be exempted from studying the greatest Christian poet, and two families said yes. The case spurred criticism Friday with centre-left Democratic Party (PD) Senator Simona Malpezzi saying it was "profoundly wrong" to deprive any student of the "deep knowledge of Italian culture that studying Dante brings". She added: "Knowing Dante does not take anything away from the children's religious confession".
Data shows that the name Muhammed - which ranked 20th in 2012 - has soared in popularity in recent times, and now ranks at number two.
By the way,
"2022: Eighty-four percent of Americans say that some Americans not exercising their freedom of speech in everyday situations due to fear of retaliation or harsh criticism is either a very (40%) or somewhat (44%) serious problem, according to a new national New York Times Opinion/Siena College Poll. Over half, 55%, of Americans say that they have held their tongue, that is, not spoken freely over the last year because they were concerned about retaliation or harsh criticism, and compared to 10 years ago by 46-21% Americans are less, rather than more, free to express their viewpoint on politics, and by 35-28% less, rather than more, free to discuss issues of race."
CBS Studios and its parent Paramount have been sued for allegedly carrying diversity quotas that discriminate against straight white men in what may be the opening legal salvo against efforts to boost diversity and inclusion in Hollywood in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision knocking down affirmative action.
Brian Beneker, a script coordinator for SEAL Team, alleges in a lawsuit filed in California federal court on Wednesday that he was repeatedly denied a staff writer job after the implementation of an “illegal policy of race and sex balancing” that promoted the hiring of “less qualified applicants who were members of more preferred groups,” namely those who identify as minorities, LGBTQ or women. He seeks at least $500,000, as well as a court order making him a full-time producer on the series and barring the further use of discriminatory hiring practices.
Beneker is represented by America First Legal Foundation, a conservative group founded by Stephen Miller, a White House policy advisor under the Trump Administration. The organization has been filing complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against major companies, including Morgan Stanley, Starbucks and McDonald’s, over corporate diversity and hiring practices that allegedly run afoul of civil rights laws. CBS, which declined to comment, is believed to be the first company in the entertainment industry in its crosshairs.
The lawsuit was filed following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. In that case, the group that sued claimed a violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which protects against discrimination by the government. Although the ruling is not directly applicable to companies, which are governed by a separate set of federal and state anti-discrimination laws that do not allow employers to consider race in hiring decisions, several legal experts told The Hollywood Reporter to expect a surge of reverse discrimination lawsuits challenging diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
In the complaint, Beneker, who has worked as a script coordinator for CBS’ SEAL Team since 2017 and also wrote some episodes as a freelance scriptwriter, details instances in which he was allegedly passed up for staff writing positions in favor of Black or women candidates, who he claims were less-experienced than him and often had no writing credits.
When he asked why a Black writer was hired instead of him in 2019, he was told by the showrunner that it was because CBS wanted a minority to satisfy racial quotas for its writers’ rooms, per the complaint. It was allegedly indicated to him that he “did not check any diversity boxes” as a straight, white man.
Since 2020, when he was allegedly assured that he would receive the next available staff writing position, Bedeker says CBS has brought on at least six additional writers, all of whom are women.
“During Season 6, (in approximately May of 2022), two female writer’s assistants, without any writing credits, were hired as staff writers,” states the complaint. “The first of these two hires was black. The second identified as lesbian.”
The lawsuit argues CBS’ hiring practices has “created a situation where heterosexual, white men need ‘extra’ qualifications (including military experience or previous writing credits) to be hired as staff writers when compared to their nonwhite, LGBTQ, or female peers.”
According to the complaint, CBS carries racial quotas. In a 2022 interview, CBS Entertainment Group chief executive George Cheeks allegedly said he set a goal that all writers’ rooms on the network’s primetime series be made up of at least 40 percent minorities for the 2021-22 season. Seventeen of 21 shows hit or exceeded that target, he said.
For the 2022-23 broadcast season, the network said in 2020 that half of all writers must be nonwhite as part of a broad initiative to “more accurately reflect diversity both on-screen and behind-the-camera.”
The complaint brings claims for violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bars racial discrimination in the making and enforcement of private contracts, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, religion and sex, among other things.
The lawsuit further calls into question the legality of diversity, equity and inclusion programs that explicitly account for race, which was on legally tenuous ground even before the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. Last year, 13 Republican Attorneys General wrote letters to Fortune 100 companies warning them that several of their efforts to boost diversity are discriminatory. In response, a group of Democrat Attorneys General urged them to “double-down on diversity-focused programs.”
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Department of Justice maintain that Title VII bars discriminating in all actions affecting the terms and conditions of employment, including those falling short of hiring, firing and promotion decisions, wrote EEOC commissioner Andrea Lucas in a Reuters op-ed. The Supreme Court’s ruling could implicate race-conscious corporate DEI initiatives from providing race-restricted access to mentoring, internship or training programs to tying executive or employee compensation to the company achieving certain demographic targets.
A federal judge last year dismissed an investor lawsuit against Starbucks’ board for supporting the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The complaint targeted a policy aiming to increase minority representation at all corporate levels to at least 30 percent by 2025.