Sunday Funnies...

 Ahh. more innocent times, when we feared invasion by little green men....

Abomination!

A few years ago, my family and I went on holiday to Denmark. In between Legoland and the airport, we stopped at roadside services for lunch. As we ate our chicken and chips, I spotted a man eating what appeared to be an enormous burger covered in gravy – using a knife and fork, as to do otherwise would have been logistically challenging.

I find a lot of the so-called 'gourmet' burgers to require a knife and fork or careful dismantling to eat, especially if they come with a little stake through the middle to hold them together. Covering them in gravy is a new form of diner inconvenience though... 

I had always thought that gravy was a uniquely British invention and holidays to France, Spain and Italy had done nothing to change that view. However, after some quick Googling, I discovered that the man was eating a bøfsandwich, colloquially known as a “gravy burger”.

I didn't have to google, there's a picture of this gatronomic disaster in the article, and as someone who loathes gravy, I cannot understand it's popularity at all. 

This creation is local to Jutland, although is now spreading around Denmark and probably dates back to the 1950s.

It's a firm 'no' from me. 

Does ‘Set A Thief To Catch A Thief’ Translate Into Greek?

Police in Greece have been recruiting migrants to violently push other migrants back across its land border with Turkey, according to wide-ranging evidence uncovered by the BBC.

Well, they do come to take on the dirty jobs that citizens don’t want to do, after all… 

Our findings reveal allegations of brutality, with witnesses reporting migrants being stripped, robbed, beaten and even sexually assaulted. It has been claimed that mercenaries have been unofficially employed on the border since at least 2020.

That’s a risk factor of being involved in a criminal enterprise like trying to enter a county illegally, the people you are mixing with have no morals, like yourself. 

The Greek prime minister told the BBC he was "totally unaware" about allegations of the use of migrants for pushbacks, while the country's authorities have not responded to our written detailed requests for comment.

You can just feel the simmering rage in the copywriter that those filthy dagoes are refusing to answer the allegations, can’t you? 

Pushbacks - forcing migrants and asylum seekers back across borders without due process - are generally considered illegal under international law.

Ah, international law! And we all know that wrong ‘uns love to rely on that, even though its unenforceable, don’t we, Reader?

Gaslighting Is Normal Now In The MSM

It's not confined to nonsense like 'she exposed her penis', oh, dear me no...

The mayor was taken to Bochum hospital, where Stalzer was found to have 13 stab wounds to the upper body as well as multiple hematomas and skull fractures. Despite her extensive injuries, the SPD politician survived the ordeal and was questioned by police - revealing that her life-threating condition was caused by her own child.

No, Reader, not true - she has no children. But like so many middle class white female leftwingers afflicted with suicidal empathy, she adopted two. Both foreigners.

Police initially arrested both children but the pair have been released after the public prosecutor's office decided it would not pursue an attempted homicide charge, downgrading the crime to the German equivalent of grievous bodily harm.

Whut!? 

The 17-year-old's calling the emergency services is considered a 'resignation from the crime' and because neither child is considered at risk of fleeing, they will not be arrested.

Germany is doomed, isn't it? 

What Sort Of 'Revelation' Is It, Really?

A teenage girl brutally stabbed to death by a migrant in a murder that has sent shockwaves through the Netherlands was a highly intelligent middle-class student who had recently graduated from high school, we can reveal.

If she'd been a thicko would it have been less of an outrage? 

Known only by her first name Lisa, the 17-year-old had been enjoying a night out in Amsterdam with her friends when she decided to ride her electric bike home to the small village of Abcoude. Around halfway through her journey, she noticed a man was following her, causing her to call the police to alert them she was being stalked and harassed.

But remember, whren seconds count, the police are minutes away. 

Within 48 hours a suspect was arrested at a refugee centre, a ten-minute walk from where she was found, held on suspicion of murder – and for the rape of another woman days earlier. And while he has remained in custody for more than a week, Dutch detectives are stumped and still have no clue about his identity. The suspect, believed to be in his 20s, is thought to be an illegal migrant who had not registered at the refugee hostel he was staying in.

There's a system that's working well, then! 

One local added: 'What happened to Lisa will probably have a deep and profound impact on the sense of safety and security of parents and girls.'

And what are you going to do about it? Nothing, and carry on importing Third Worlders? Maybe put the same effort into protecting children as you put into protecting cats.

Switzerland, It's The New France...

Switzerland may face more scenes of violence next week following two nights of rioting, according to one of the country's top sociologists. Dramatic riots erupted in Lausanne, Switzerland, over the weekend after a migrant teen was killed in a scooter crash while fleeing the police.

Note that: not 'By the police'. But of course, that doesn't matter, any more than it does in the banlieues of Paris. 

Much of the anger came from a long-standing view that police in Lausanne are systemically racist against migrants who have settled there. Marvin's death was the third death involving police in less than three months in the city, with seven in the wider Vaud region since 2016. Five of those deaths were of men originally from Africa.

What did they expect would happen when they allowed a large population of immigrants to settle in Switzerland? Had they not seen how it had gone elsewhere in Europe? Having professors of sociology didn't exactly pour oil on troubled waters:

Sandro Cattacin, a professor of sociology at the University of Geneva, told the Daily Mail that he believes Switzerland, ordinarily seen as a beacon of stability on the continent, will see more violence in the coming days. Cattacin warned that pressure groups may see the riots as a chance to latch on and cause their own violence: 'I expect that we will have [riots] again next week. Now you have these other groups, people related to more to more aggressive anti-capitalist positions, who say "OK, that's the moment we can have riots".

We call them 'rentamob', prof!  

He added that the only way to dissipate the anger felt by society was to open a dialogue between the police and marginalised groups

What do you expect the police to say:'Obey the law'? 

Gosh, I Wonder Why?

 

Being a Muslim in a country with a long colonial history, which has also had to deal with terrorist attacks carried out in the name of Islam, is an everyday challenge.

Well, yes, it would be... 

In January 2015, for example, I was as profoundly shocked as everyone else in France by the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo journalists in Paris. As the country mourned, I was invited by a major radio station to comment, but was first asked, live on air, to “dissociate” myself from the attackers.

Why did you have to be asked? Wouldn't any normal person automatically do so? 

I couldn’t hold back my tears – because, even with a media profile, I was reduced to the most racist perception of my identity. I was strongly defended that night by others who took part in the show, and received much support online, but I couldn’t help thinking of the millions of French Muslims who, unlike me, would have no microphone to defend themselves against vile accusations.

It wasn't a 'racist' perception - Islam isn't a race. it's a belief. A stupid belief, but then so are many other religions.

...French Muslims present a paradox: we are part of every social sphere, yet many of us have not given up our cultural specificities. And that is precisely what we are blamed for – integration without assimilation. This is why the same government can claim it uses the law to fight against Muslim “separatism” while denouncing the threat of Muslim “infiltration”. Muslims can’t win: we are blamed for being part of the national community and for being outside of it.

Because every time yousqueal that you've 'assimilated' it turn out to be untrue, when you reveal your real allegience. 

It Could Be A Lot Of Things But Not 'Racism'...

The historic town of Jumilla was on the frontline of conflict between Muslims and Christians when the Moors were kicked out of southern Spain in the 13th century. Muslim migrants may have felt more welcome in recent years when they have lived largely happily alongside their Spanish neighbours, and enjoyed freedom to worship.

But things have changed.  

But a decision by Jumilla town council to effectively ban religious events from being held at public sports' facilities has threatened to ignite community tensions.Muslims have no doubt that the ruling is aimed at them as it will prevent them from having traditional Eid prayers twice a year at the town's Antonio Ibanez Morales football stadium.

Will they simply say ‘Well, it was nice while it lasted’ and find alternative options? Reader, place your bets:  

Muslim men were talking of little else, and expressed despair at the ruling, as they arrived for Friday afternoon prayers at the town's main mosque.Logistics worker Aouissat El Mamoun, 27, who grew up in the town and used to play football for Jumilla, said: 'It's really bad and I regard it as racist.'

First, it’s not racist as ‘Muslim’ is a belief, not a race, and second, what do the women think of this? Don’t they get a say?? 

Farm worker Adam Salifu, 43, who is originally from Ghana, said: 'This is a peaceful town and everyone gets on with each other, whatever their religion. 'There are people from every country in Africa in my village. Some are Muslim and some are Christian, and we have no problems with each other.'

And maybe the Spaniards have noticed that their town is suddenly full of African men practising Islam and they aren’t all that happy about it?

'What we really need is a new mosque because this one is quite congested. We are looking for some land to build, but the council have not provided anywhere.'

Why should they?  Did they provide any land for the other religions? 

What's Wrong With The Danes?

A zoo in Denmark is asking for donations of small pets as food for its predators. 

Good grief, we stopped this nonsense back in  the 18th century!

The Aalborg zoo said it is trying to mimic the natural food chain of the animals housed there "for the sake of both animal welfare and professional integrity" and offers assurances the pets will be "gently euthanized" by trained staff. The zoo in northern Denmark explained in a Facebook post that "if you have a healthy animal that needs to be given away for various reasons, feel free to donate it to us." The zoo points to guinea pigs, rabbits and chickens as possible donations. After being euthanized, the animals will be used as fodder, the zoo said.

How will they be euthanised? No journaliist appears to have asked that question? Most modern methods - as I pointed out at Tim's -  that people would expect would render the carcasses inedible due to the chemicals used. So the 'gentle euthanasia' the zoo promises is a lie. Oh, if only we had journalists who were capable of more than just regurgitating press releases...

And what pet owner wouldn't be present when their pet is euthanised? 

H/T : Blinky via Twitter

When The Worm Finally Turns, It Isn’t Pretty

The first time I went to Hanau, I was creeped out by how ordinary it was.

Imagine being 'creeped out' by something ordinary? 

This mid-sized city of 100,000 people right in the geographical centre of Germany, looked and felt like many other places in western Germany I had been to: built around a bombed and reconstructed old town, expanded by a soulless mall with a multiplex cinema, surrounded by a vast industrial area and neighbourhoods separated along class lines. What the city prides itself on is that the Brothers Grimm grew up here in the late 18th century before they started publishing folk tales such as Cinderella and The Frog Prince. Since 2020, however, Hanau stands for something else: it’s the place where a far-right gunman killed nine people he assumed to be immigrants, and afterwards killed his mother and himself.

Ah. Not something 'ordinary' at all, then... 

Emiş Gürbüz, mother of one of the Hanau victims, spoke at this year’s official commemoration, attended by the city’s highest-ranking politicians as well as Germany’s federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “This event is a stain on the history of Hanau and of Germany,” Gürbüz said, close to tears. “If everyone had carried out their duties, these nine people would still be alive.” Gürbüz’s son, Sedat, was killed during the attack at the shisha bar he had previously owned. He was 29 years old.

It's a familiar refreain, if the cast of victims is different this time.  

But what followed this year’s commemoration – which, unfortunately, coincided with the anti-immigrant and racist discourse of the final week of the federal election campaign – was frankly shocking. The coalition of mainstream parties that runs Hanau’s city government issued an extraordinary statement laying into Gürbüz, accusing her of political agitation, disrespect and of “exploiting” the atrocity. It said that no such future commemorations would be held in Hanau to mark the victims. Citing another speech that Gürbüz made at the Berlin film festival, the statement further alleged that she had publicly expressed hatred for Germany and Hanau. “Why she applied for German citizenship in such a state of mind will probably remain her secret,” the statement added.

Are they not supposed to mention the fact then? Is she supposed to be allowed to complain about anything she likes, and no one ask awkward questions, stifled by her victim status? 

But why would it be inappropriate for a grieving mother whose son was murdered by a racist and who now has to witness almost every political party campaigning on anti-immigrant manifestos, to express hatred for what Germany has become?

It's not. She's perfectly entitled to her free speech. But so is everyone else. And if they have decided they've had enough of the whining from someone given everything they didn't have in their home country, and the ingratitude shown for having been given it, then they'll exercise their own free speech to express it. It's unfortunate, but when you try to bottle it up this is what happens.  

At a time when far-right support has reached historic levels, it’s a peculiar take on the term “respect” to treat survivors of a racially motivated right wing terrorist attack in this way. Is this to be the fate now of anyone of migrant heritage who criticises public failings?

Well, nodding silently and never asking questions hasn't worked so well up to now, has it? 

Topical!

Matt always has his finger on the pulse...

Without Human Agency..?

Of all the MSM, the 'Guardian' was the only one to admit to human agency behind this latest atrocity.

President of the State Criminal Police Office, Andreas Stenger, said at a press conference that the suspected driver - a 40-year-old German man - shot himself in the mouth when he was arrested, local newspaper Mannheim24 reports.

A German man? Or one of the 'new Germans' we are left to wonder. 

The man reportedly used a blank round and is currently being treated in hospital. His condition is thought to be stable. The public prosecutor told local media that there are indications that the perpetrator is mentally ill.

He has a record: 

His latest conviction was in 2018, when he had to pay a fine for a hateful comment on Facebook.

Interesting... 

 

At Least He Was Intelligible

...which puts him one up on a lot of the London Tube staff:

A ticket inspector’s bilingual greeting to a Flemish train passenger has created a political war of words – and an official complaint – in language-divided Belgium. The country’s language watchdog is investigating after a Dutch-speaking commuter protested a conductor’s use of “bonjour” – French for “good morning” – to welcome him onboard during a rush-hour train from Mechelen, in Flanders, to the capital, Brussels, in October. Writing on Facebook, Ilyass Alba, the French-speaking conductor, said that on the day in question he greeted passengers entering his carriage with a resounding “goeiemorgen, bonjour”.

And this is a big thing over there! 

The use of both the Dutch and French greetings was not good enough for one Dutch-speaking passenger, who told him off, saying: “We’re not in Brussels yet, you have to use Dutch only!”

That told him!  

The passenger was technically right, as under Belgium’s complex language rules conductors should in theory use both languages only in Brussels and a few other bilingual regions. “The file is under review,” the Permanent Commission for Linguistic Control said, adding it would ask the national railway operator, SNCB, for more information on its enforcement of language policies.

Ah, if only that was the only thing other country's transport systems had to worry about.... 

Well, Clearly, You Married The Wrong Type Of Man, Sweetie

A singer with a Swedish disco band who performed at this year’s Eurovision has told of the “dehumanising” and “distressing” consequences of Brexit after her British husband’s application to remain in Sweden was rejected.

It's not a vendetta against Brits, love. Sweden has fallen out of love with immigration and obviously doesn't want to have to make a value judgement about who deserves to stay. 

Their ordeal began three years ago when Solomons, who had been living in the country since 2012, learned from one of his British employees that he should have applied to remain in Sweden by the end of 2021. He quickly applied but was this rejected in August this year on the grounds that he was late.

Merkel Solomons said she felt embarrassed to be Swedish and could not understand the approach of the authorities given that Solomons is a fully integrated member of society, a stepfather to her two children, paying taxes and a Swedish speaker.

Should probably have married a drug dealer instead, love. They went soft on those for years.  

All those things - that we think of as good things - never counted for much before, and Sweden has reaped the whirlwind of that particular policy in the past. 

I Thought They Said ‘Diversity Is About More Than Colour’..?

It looks like that idea's gone out of the window now...

As Ursula von der Leyen sweet-talked and bullied EU leaders to send more women to Brussels over recent weeks, I kept hoping she would also make her incoming team of European commissioners more racially diverse. Thanks to an unexpected twist of fate involving (very) complicated Belgian politics, Hadja Lahbib, Belgium’s foreign minister, could soon make history as the first ever EU commissioner who is also a person of colour.

The person writing an anguished column in the 'Guardian' about the awful fact that a lineup of EU Commisioners is nearly all white (but could have gay or non-visibly disabled members) is none other than Shada Islam (a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. She runs New Horizons project, a strategy, analysis and advisory company). 

We can just imagine what sort of 'advice' you get from such a company...

If she gets the parliamentary thumbs up, Lahbib and the incoming EU Council president, Portugal’s former prime minister António Costa, who is of Goan and Mozambican heritage, will give a much-needed reputational tweak to an EU that boasts about being “united in diversity” but whose institutions still keep no data on their staff’s ethnicity and are visibly and notoriously “all-white”.

Now do Nigeria's government.  

Maybe The Critics Are Heartless Morons?

Critics say the deaths are tragic but have been blown out of proportion.

This is the resurgence of predators like brown bears in Europe which are now so numerous, they pose a threat to human life and agriculture.  

In Romania, which is home to the most brown bears in Europe, the animals killed 26 people and injured 276 over 20 years, according to the environment ministry. Data from Eurostat shows that motorised vehicles killed 45,000 people in the country in that time.

We can't really do without motorised vehicles, they are intrinsic to our society. Large man-eating predators, not so much. 

But wait, Reader! That's not the daftest assertion they have to make, no, not by a long chalk.

Cultural associations are a problem for the wolf, which has long been portrayed as the villain of fairytales. Helmut Dammann-Tamke, president of the German hunting association and politician with the centre-right Christian Democrats, says the threat of wolf attacks on sheep is “like something on a serving platter” for the far right because it reaches people on an emotional level. “This issue is an incendiary force in the hands of populists.”

Those dastardly far right, errr, wolves. 

A 2022 study of German municipalities found that wolf attacks on livestock predict far-right support. After controlling for factors such as immigration and jobs, the researchers found wolf attacks were associated with far-right gains in municipal elections of between one and two percentage points.

And suddently, I'm in favour of 'rewilding' after all!  

Environmental activists question whether blanket policies to cull animals will do much to avoid conflicts with humans and have called for measures to promote peaceful coexistence that range from fences and guard dogs to awareness campaigns for visitors.

Sounds a lot like what they call for when they want to persuade us 'diversity is a strength not a threat', doesn't it? 

This Is The Attitude That Lead To That Victory In The First Place...

German chancellor Olaf Scholz has urged mainstream parties to exclude “right-wing extremists”, after preliminary results showed the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had come top in a state election, while a new populist force on the left established a firm foothold in the country’s political landscape. 

Voters in two closely watched elections in the former communist east made their dissatisfaction with Germany’s mainstream political parties clear, putting the AFD in the top spot in Thuringia, with 32.8% of the vote, and second place in Saxony, with 30.6%, according to preliminary results.

And lo, there was a great rending of garments and gnashing of teeth!  

“Our country cannot and must not get used to this. The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation,” Scholz said, adding that the most dire predictions, that his centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) might fall out of a state parliament for the first time, had not materialised.

This time, Scholz, This time, and with that attitude towards the voters, who knows what will happen next time? 

It Should Be A Belated Wake-Up Call For The UK Too…

If there was shock, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Mario Voigt, leader of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in Thuringia, assumed the pose of an election winner, even though his party came second by some margin, with 24% of the vote. He announced he would begin coalition negotiations with other “parties of the democratic centre” – meaning without the AfD. In Saxony, where the CDU won narrowly, their leader, Michael Kretschmer, has also ruled out working with the AfD. In both states, this will require the centre-right party to build complex alliances with two or three leftwing parties.

Yes, it's the AfD's victory again, worrying all the right people in the left-wing press. 

Disgruntlement with mainstream politics was long treated as a peculiarity of the former East Germany, which included Saxony and Thuringia. The vice-president of the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt of the Green party, herself a native Thuringian, was not alone in claiming that some east Germans are “stuck in dictatorship glorification”. Now Göring-Eckardt’s Greens have been kicked out of the Thuringian parliament and are polling at 11% nationally. Telling voters that their concerns aren’t real, it turns out, is not an election-winning strategy.

We'll have to see how it plays out in the UK next election, because I'm sure Sir Kier Stalin will try it. 

There were lively public debates everywhere in the buildup to the elections. People discussed politics at workplaces and at the kitchen table. Turnout was at a record high, with three-quarters of people casting their vote. East Germans are neither fed up with politics nor with democracy. They are fed up with not being taken seriously.

Ringing any bells, yet? 

The same applies to other demographics. A staggering 37% of young voters in Thuringia have voted for AfD. In Saxony it was 31%. Though higher than the national average, this is still in line with what we saw in the European parliamentary elections in June when the AfD beat all three parties of Scholz’s coalition in the 16-24 vote, coming second with 16% – just one percentage point behind the conservatives. The AfD also won the working-class vote by some margin in the European elections, but this fact gained little media attention and seems to have raised no eyebrows in the other political parties.

Ask Germans what their main concerns are. Immigration tops the list, followed by energy prices, war and the economy. The word I heard over and over again in recent months was angst. Given that a growing number of immigrants are being charged with violent crimes, which are on the rise, many feel this is an issue of safety.

Yes, this is definitly starting to seem very familar. 

These are uncomfortable topics to discuss, especially for left-leaning parties, but discussing them is exactly what they must do instead of handing a monopoly over those issues to the AfD. That is not the same as plunging into populism. If centrists don’t start a constructive debate on sensitive issues, nobody will. The response to the regional elections must be more than preventing a far-right takeover. This is a belated wake-up call for Germany’s mainstream parties. I hope it will be heard loud and clear in Berlin.

It needs to be heard in London too.  

Well, You Wanted Diversity...

...so much so you held a festival for it! So why surprised when diversity showed up? 

A knifeman has left several people dead after stabbing random passersby in the neck in a horrific 'terror attack' at a diversity festival in Germany. Three people died and four were left seriously injured after the knife attack, with armed police swarming the streets of Solingen.

Any idea which particular flavour of diversity is responsible?  

No arrests have been made as of yet, with the suspect said to be on the run and a situation centre set up in Café Kersting following the savage rampage. Police said they have no idea what the attacker looks like but warned of future danger.

Go on, have a guess! I'm betting he doesn't look like this: 

 

Police are said to be classifying it as a terrorist attack, according to Bild. Germany's armed special police officers have been deployed to assist at the scene.

Let's hope they do better this time.  

Well, I Guess It Beats A Blackboard Rubber Whizzing Past Your Head...

...that's the method my teachers often employed! 

The “silent fox” gesture – where the hand is posed to resemble an animal with upright ears (the little and forefinger) and a closed mouth (the middle fingers pressed against the thumb) – has long been seen as a useful teaching tool by educators in Germany and elsewhere. It signals to children that they should stop talking and listen to their teacher.

Seems harmless, I suppose.

But authorities in the port city of Bremen say the symbol is “in danger of being mistaken” for the right-wing extremist “wolf salute”, from which it is indistinguishable. The salute was recently the focus of a diplomatic and sporting row, when the Turkish national football player Merih Demiral used it to celebrate scoring a goal in Turkey’s round of 16 match against Austria at the Euros earlier this month.

And why should this be controversial?

Germany is home to an estimated 3 million ethnic Turks, who make up the country’s largest single ethnic minority and form the largest Turkish diaspora globally.

Ah. I see.